Somatic healing seems to be all the rage at the moment. Or, at least, I seem to be seeing more and more headlines about how somatic healing has helped people overcome years’ worth of stress, tension and emotional pain.
But, if I’m being truthful, I never really understood what somatic meant.
So, as is my way, I decided to do a bit of a deep dive and find out what it’s all about. And what surprised me most was that, although I’ve never knowingly practised somatic healing, I’m actually a big fan of many of the techniques that come under the somatic umbrella.
So, what actually is somatic healing?
The word somatic basically means relating to the body. Somatic practices work with the connection between what we’re experiencing emotionally and what is happening physically within the body.
And this makes sense to me.
After all, stress isn’t something we only experience in our thoughts. We can feel it in a clenched jaw, a knotted stomach, shallow breathing or that horrible tight feeling in the chest.
As Empaths and sensitive people, we can spend so much time thinking about what we’re picking up from other people, or trying to work out whether an emotion belongs to us or someone else, that perhaps we forget to notice what our own body is doing in response.
This is where somatic grounding becomes interesting.
Rather than trying to think your way out of everything, the idea is to bring your attention back into your body and the present moment. And there are some simple ways to do this.
So, after doing my research, these are some of the somatic grounding practices that stood out to me. Not only because they’re easy to incorporate into everyday life, but because many of them are things I’ve already found beneficial without ever knowing they had a somatic label attached to them.
1. Notice where you’re holding tension
This sounds incredibly simple, but how often do you actually stop and notice what your body is doing?
After being around a stressful person or spending time in an overwhelming environment, you might notice that your shoulders are practically touching your ears. Perhaps your stomach feels tight or you’ve been taking shallow breaths without even realising it.
So, the first practice is simply to check in.
Where am I holding tension? Am I breathing comfortably? Are my hands clenched? Is my jaw tight? Is there anywhere in my body that I’m unnecessarily bracing?
You don’t have to analyse every little sensation or start looking for something that’s wrong. You’re simply noticing what’s happening.
Then, if you realise your shoulders are tense, let them drop. If your jaw is clenched, relax it. If you’ve been holding your breath, allow yourself to breathe normally again.
I really like the simplicity of this because it’s something you can do anywhere, and it takes less than a minute.
2. Use your breath to slow everything down
As you probably know, I’m a big, big fan of breathing exercises. They hold a special kind of magic for me.
So, I wasn’t particularly surprised to discover that breathwork features heavily within many body-based and grounding practices.
One of the easiest techniques is simply to make the exhale a little longer than the inhale. You might breathe in gently for around four seconds and then breathe out for around six. There’s no need to become obsessed with counting; the idea is simply to slow everything down.
Humming on the exhale is another technique you might want to experiment with, or even just allowing yourself to take a long, natural sigh.
The beauty of breathing exercises is that you can use them almost anywhere. If you’re in a busy environment, you’ve just had a difficult conversation or you can feel yourself becoming overwhelmed, nobody even needs to know you’re doing them.
Slow breathing can have a calming effect on physiological arousal, which perhaps explains why I’ve always found it such a useful way of bringing myself back down after feeling overstimulated.
3. Bring your attention back into your body
When you’re overwhelmed by everything happening around you, your attention can end up everywhere except where you actually are.
You’re noticing someone’s tone of voice, wondering why another person seems upset, replaying a conversation from earlier or thinking about something somebody said.
Before you know it, you’re completely caught up in everything that’s going on around you.
A somatic approach would be to bring your attention back to physical sensation.
Put both feet firmly on the floor and notice the pressure beneath them. You could place one hand on your chest and the other over your stomach and notice the warmth of your hands. Or simply become aware of the chair underneath you, the temperature of the room, the feeling of your clothes against your skin or the ground beneath your feet.
Obviously, I’m a huge fan of being outside for this. If I can get onto grass or be surrounded by trees, even better.
But you don’t need to be barefoot in a forest to ground yourself.
The point is simply to take your attention away from everything that’s happening in your head and bring it back to where you physically are.
Almost as though you’re saying to yourself:
“I’m here. This is where I am. Come back to me.”
4. Shake off the tension
Now, this one might sound a little strange, but bear with me.
One of the recommendations you’ll often come across with somatic practices is movement. This might involve gently shaking out your hands and arms, rolling your shoulders, stretching or simply moving your body after an intense or stressful experience.
And again, this makes sense to me.
Think about how physically still we can become during an uncomfortable conversation. We might sit there with our shoulders tense and body rigid, then walk away carrying exactly the same posture.
So why not move?
Shake out your hands. Stretch your arms above your head. Roll your shoulders. Walk around the room. Put some music on and move for a couple of minutes.
You don’t have to think of this as literally shaking someone else’s energy out of your body. It can simply be a way of releasing some of the physical tension you’ve been holding onto.
And don’t worry about what you look like. You can always do it when nobody’s watching.
5. Use water as a reset
This was another recommendation that immediately appealed to me because I’ve always found water incredibly grounding.
It could be as simple as slowly washing your hands under running water and actually paying attention to the sensation. Splashing some cool water onto your face can also feel refreshing when you’re overloaded, or you might prefer a warm shower at the end of the day.
I particularly like the idea of using a shower as a transition between the outside world and coming home.
If you’ve had an intense day, you could even imagine everything you’ve been carrying washing away with the water.
Whether you see that as an energetic practice or simply a psychological ritual doesn’t really matter to me. Sometimes having a clear signal that says, “The day is finished. I’m home now. I can let it go,” is enough.
And there’s no need to start plunging yourself into freezing water in the name of somatic healing. Comfortable temperatures are perfectly fine.
Try a five-minute somatic reset
What I particularly like about all these practices is that you don’t need to dedicate an hour to them.
You could put together a five-minute reset to use whenever you’ve been somewhere overwhelming or spent time around someone whose energy has left you feeling drained.
Try grounding at the beginning and end of the day
Another suggestion I came across that I really like is using these techniques at both ends of the day.
In the morning, before getting caught up in messages, other people and everything that needs doing, take a couple of minutes to notice how you actually feel.
Are you calm? Tired? Anxious? Happy? Is there tension anywhere in your body?
This gives you a baseline.
And I think this could be particularly useful for Empaths because, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it’s much easier to notice when your emotional state has changed after being around someone if you knew how you felt beforehand.
Then you can do something similar at night.
Instead of taking every conversation, every worry and everybody else’s mood to bed with you, create a little transition period.
Take a shower. Stretch. Go for a short walk. Sit outside for ten minutes. Do some breathing exercises or simply put your phone down and allow everything to become quiet.
I love the idea of thinking of this as shedding the day. (see this post on Comfy Clothes and the Empath for more on shedding)
The thing is, we don’t always need another complicated system or another label. Sometimes we just need reminding that our body is part of our emotional experience too. Maybe it’s simply about remembering how to come back to yourself.
And, for an Empath, I think that’s particularly important.
If you regularly come home feeling as though you’ve picked up the weight of everybody you’ve been around, rather than immediately trying to analyse every emotion you’re feeling, perhaps spend five minutes coming out of your head and back into your body.
Ok, that’s it for me today.
Until next time,
Diane
By Diane Kathrine
