Small Practices, Big Renegotiation
The Scale of Somatic Expression
There’s a lot of talk these days about the importance of movement and exercise in relation to nervous system regulation, trauma recovery and even somatic therapy. Much of the content I’ve seen speaks to the concept of using exercise as a method of finding the right amount of charge, stimulation and then subsequent shifting back to more baseline states to support the nervous system and body in finding healthy cycles of activation and rest.
I agree with the concepts of exercise and activation based practices within context and yet what I often see discussed less is the importance of scale in that process.
It’s true that we need movement and stimulation to encourage healthy energy use, followed by appropriate rest and recovery.
Here’s what’s also true: when we live in a system with a history of disordered exercise, or one that isn’t well-resourced, jumping straight to conventional forms of movement will be perceived as a threat—or worse, overwhelm our systems entirely. Similarly, if we’re living in a body that’s already out of capacity or overwhelmed by everyday stressors, adding more stimulation without equal or more resources can simply be harmful.
The word I hear most often, from clients and even other practitioners, is should. We should be doing X, maybe in a specific way. We should restrict, we should be more disciplined, we should do more, we should should should. The thing is, shoulds are, by nature, sympathetic energy. They are voices that, at their heart, are trying to help us—and most of us have learned to interpret them as faults.
Until we’ve developed a working relationship with the shoulds that live within us, engaging in meaningful, progressive practices isn’t truly possible.
Unexamined shoulds are only heard as shame and pressure, further heightening our stress response. Should we move with those shoulds? Yes. Should we run from them or move toward the expected outcome that the shoulds tell us will prevent all bad things from happening? No.
If only I did more of X, I would finally be the person I think I need to be to fit in with my perceived community norms.
When reacting to shoulds, this sympathetic energy doesn’t lead to a healthy ebb and flow in the nervous system—where we express and expend energy toward resolution, then shift into rest, digest, and recovery. Instead, it becomes a vicious cycle of bypassing meaningful expression and recovery for short-lived hits of urgency-fueled busyness and mindlessness, followed by overwhelm masked as superficial rest.
Renegotiating this begins, in my experience, with practicing sitting with the shoulds—pausing to witness them and how our body responds to them—before acting on them in any direction. And then doing the same practice with whatever response (action or inaction) arises from our system.
Scale becomes important as we navigate what this means in our systems.
For some people, this might look like recognizing a should saying they should eat less or avoid certain foods, sitting with the discomfort or reaction from that inner pattern, noticing what the body is actually suggesting, and eventually leaning into the body’s desire as the next step.
This practice also gives us an opportunity to recognize the building blocks behind the shoulds. What aspects are perhaps aligned with our body’s needs? What aspects need reframing or support?
It could also be noticing the reaction to “shoulded” exercise (I should go on a walk or do a workout), then slowing down the response enough to see where urgency tries to take over and regulating before and after. Or noticing whether the shoulded exercise matches the body’s capacity in the moment and adjusting accordingly.
Or perhaps it’s feeling called to go on a walk, but doing so in a way that allows awareness to guide how the body responds and when capacity is being met. Can we simply aim to meet the edges of our capacity and then shift gears, instead of constantly blowing through our inner boundaries?
Most people I know are pushing themselves too far with too few resources in their system, but would say the opposite if asked.
It feels good to respond to the urgency created by shoulds. We feel productive, and society tells us productive is good. But productive and true expression—riding the wave of stress response in our system—are different things. One brings us down from an upward surge of energy. The other tries to keep us on top of a wave designed to crash perpetually.
Neurobiologically, it’s not dissimilar to bypassing disappointment, sadness, or anger because they don’t fit the convention of convenience our society calls “good.” We humans do a lot to avoid feeling, and that can easily manifest as doing more, more often, rather than doing and then resting in rhythm. Or doing more to keep ourselves out of the sensations that come with riding the wave up or down (think the felt experience of anxiety, disappointment, embarrassment, anger, dissonance) instead of allowing the doing to help us express those things toward a meaningful biological outcome: resolution and rest.
It’s these same people I’m often coaching to bring a little more awareness to what’s already unfolding for them, and then to practice tolerance for the opposite side of this coin: the rest and resourcing required to bring regulation back in.
Differentiating what the patterned, “protective” voices or urges want us to do from the more subtle biological needs that exist behind them is a challenging process.
It feels backwards and regressive, too slow and small or simple to be useful. And yet, given enough practice and time, it provides opportunity to renegotiate our relationships with body, mind, food, movement, needs, and wants.
It’s from that foundation we can begin finding ways to move, express, resource, and rest meaningfully.
Nuance and context are, as always, imperative. How we meet our capacity and work to widen it can be relative to the day. Our systems sometimes need more or less based on the world around us and how our body is integrating those environments. This is why intention and presence—embodied awareness of where we’re at in the moment—is such a foundational skill.
Some contemplations for you to sit with and perhaps journal around:
How do I feel before, during, and after a “should” based activity or practice?
What comes up with the idea of giving permission to the want or need in the body, regardless of the should soup we all live in? What would it be like to allow whatever the body asks for?
What shoulds have I been following and for how long? What benefit or harm has come from that?
