February 19, 2024 • 16 mins
Welcome to the latest episode of the Inscape Quest podcast show. Your host, Trudi Howley, guides listeners through a special micro session on managing stress and anxiety using somatic practices. Trudi shares a remarkable list of 15 quick interventions aimed at increasing your tolerance for stress and anxiety, providing moments of calm and rest throughout your day.
The episode introduces the concept of somatic practices, focusing on body-based techniques aimed at restoring balance and calm, even in moments of stress or anxiety. These ranged from deep breathing techniques, the simple act of orienting to your physical sensations throughout the day, to more elaborate strategies like the Tapas Acupressure Technique, imagery and tapping.
Trudi emphasizes these practices, which take just a couple of minutes each, are ideal for incorporating into your daily routine, breaking the cycle of anxious thinking and helping listeners to foster a sense of calm and centeredness. It's about becoming familiar with your body, understanding the state of rest, and then adjusting to reduce states of fight or flight.
Each of these practices serves as a means for self-regulation, stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system, thereby increasing sensory awareness in the body. The strategies shared are designed to be highly accessible and easily practiceable for anyone in need of stress and anxiety relief.
Join Trudi on this journey to navigate stress management and wellbeing, and don't forget to subscribe, share and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or Podbean. Follow @inscapequest on Instagram for more insight into cultivating healthier, happy lives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello podcast listeners, thank you for tuning in today to the InscapeQuest podcast show.
I am your host, Trudi Howley.
Here I am talking with people about how they engage with their relationships, work and passions.
Please subscribe and share this show with a friend.
(00:20):
And thanks to you, we can grow meaningful conversations together, one episode at a time.
Let's get started we're going to play around with
another micro session today and you're going
to get 15 tips to incorporate some basic
somatic practices that can provide for
(00:43):
you a new way of approaching stress and anxiety it'll increase your tolerance
for both and you can have moments of relief throughout the day and you can practice
these and build on them and make the moments of calm and rest even longer.
(01:03):
So these are just little moments. It's not like sitting in a therapist's office for an hour.
You can do these quick micro interventions in a couple minutes,
and I'm going to give you 15 of them.
So these are basic somatic practices and basic bodily-based practices. is.
So let's get going with some slow, deep breaths.
(01:27):
Simply doing a minimum of just three rounds of deep breathing is a great way
to quickly regulate yourself.
Deep breathing can be done by inhaling in an easy, relaxed way,
bringing your attention to a soft breath, staying aware of the breath for the
entirety of each full breathing cycle.
(01:50):
You could add add counting to this. You could choose to count in for three,
hold for three, exhale for three.
Inhale for four, hold for four, out for four, or longer if you choose.
Or you can simply exhale one beat longer than you inhale.
(02:11):
So inhaling for three, holding for three, exhaling for four.
Play around make it your own practice
breathing immediately activates our
parasympathetic nervous systems and adds
some breaks to any feelings of agitation or arousal you have it's your first
(02:32):
go-to intervention you can layer this by noticing little things like paying
attention to the difference in the temperature of your breath on the inhale and exhale. Give it a go.
Number two, let's do orienting. Orienting is a great and simple technique.
(02:54):
Simply turn your head and neck slowly and purposefully.
Look around at the environment you're in right now.
This is orienting, and it's a way to be in your immediate environment,
noticing what your eyes might be drawn to today.
You can name five things silently to yourself. You could choose also,
(03:19):
it might be five colors you notice, five objects that are jumping out at you,
or choosing five particular shapes.
You can expand this type of orienting by naming sounds that you can hear.
You could do that for a count of four.
You could also include textures that you could touch. It might be the chair
(03:42):
you're sitting on, the surface that your feet are in contact with.
Touch your clothing, your hair.
You could also layer this with smells. What can you notice?
And you can also include things that you can taste.
And please, the invitation to do all this is without any kind of judgment or interpretation.
(04:06):
It's simply orienting your senses.
Okay, so number three, your physical sensations need to be checked in with you
throughout the day, especially when you're working long hours.
Remember to ask yourself, am I hungry? Do I need to drink some water?
Do I need to use the bathroom?
(04:27):
If the answer is yes, act on it.
Set a boundary around your basic needs to get through the extra long haul of the day.
If you need to distract yourself from perhaps dissociated eating or snacking,
you need to practice a pause.
Practice noticing that you might be devoid of pleasure in the eating or snacking
(04:51):
and simply on autopilot.
As you pause, you can pause by orienting.
You can pause by taking some breaths. take this
moment to notice where you are and what's
going on inside of your body okay number four feel the weight of your feet and
(05:11):
body on the ground as you either stand momentarily or you can do this seated
bring your full awareness you might be sitting in your car or resting on the edge of of a chair.
Even if you're standing or sitting, you can practice gently shifting your weight
slightly from side to side.
(05:32):
If you happen to be able to be standing, you can gently rock from your toes to your heels.
You can even do this sitting sometimes.
So that's just bringing awareness to your physical body.
So hand washing, most people do this every day in some capacity.
(05:54):
They might take a shower, have a bath, but the invitation is to fully engage
in the sensation of water droplets on your skin and inhale any soap you might be using.
And so doing this in a mindful way can help you ease anxiety by bringing yourself
(06:17):
back to your physical body.
Okay, you could also add to that by number six, splashing cold water on your
face if you're feeling at all anxious.
This act decreases your heart rate.
It stimulates that wonderful vagus nerve and slows your breathing as the shock
(06:38):
of cold water stimulates our automatic diving reflex that we have as humans.
So number seven, another intervention is oscillating your attention.
If you're noticing things that you dislike in your environment,
you can go back and forth repeatedly between finding things that you do like.
(07:02):
For instance, you may not like the smell of something in the room,
but you can bring your attention to how the texture of the fabric on a piece
of clothing you're wearing feels.
In this example, you're alternating between a sense of smell and this touch
sense instead of fixating on the thing you dislike.
(07:25):
This can be particularly helpful if you're in a doctor's office or a hospital
appointment and you have a sensitivity to smell.
So imagery number eight, I'm going to invite you to deliberately bring to mind
Find a person, a place that's real or imagined.
(07:45):
A pet, a symbolic object that's comforting to you,
spend a couple of minutes fully engaging with the imagery of this person,
place or object and bring in as many sensory details about them as you possibly can.
Take some time with it. Give yourself a break from anxiety and dysregulation.
(08:11):
Number nine sound when we
feel under threat our throat and voices can also
become restricted one way of helping
your voice to open up is by putting on some favorite music and singing along
remember no criticism of our singing skills you can do this at home in the car
(08:32):
and just feel the the deep resonance of sound reverberating through your body.
You could even put your hand on the front part of your body as you feel the
vibration of making sound.
If you're not ready to try singing, you can choose to practice humming in a
long, deep, and even tone.
(08:54):
Number 10 is a quick body scan. It's another way to practice bodily awareness
and bring yourself back into a state of calm and regulation.
We have another micro podcast on this exact thing and goes into a little more
detail, but it's a quick, quick listen if you want to practice that on a daily basis.
(09:15):
So, from the ground up, bring awareness into the toes, up through the legs,
and through the torso, to the neck, head, shoulders, and jaw.
And as you do this, you can simply notice and highlight any tightness or tension
(09:37):
that you might be feeling.
You can then deliberately bring
relaxation to that particular spot you can
do this repeatedly repeatedly and as
needed so this one number 11 is called the tapas acupressure technique it's
(09:58):
another quick reset for a stressed out nervous system and it comes from an energy
medicine technique by Elizabeth Tappas Fleming.
So there's a few instructions here. I'm going to guide you quickly through this.
Gently place one hand horizontally at the base of your skull with the thumb
(10:19):
touching just above your hairline.
With your other hand, place your thumb and your ring finger on either side of the bridge of your nose.
Now, place your middle finger of this hand in the middle of your forehead,
(10:40):
right on that third eye spot.
Hold this position until you take a natural deep breath.
Number 12, we're thinking about a container.
If you're having unexpected distressing thoughts or images coming up for you,
(11:01):
just simply acknowledge them with acceptance, self-compassion, and non-judgment.
If you need, go a step further and place these thoughts and visuals in an imaginary
container where they can be privately held in an imaginary safe spot.
(11:22):
Let the thoughts or images remain there until such time as you have the resources,
to work with a coach, a trusted friend, a therapist, or a time and place where you can attend to them.
This can allow you to function throughout the day without continued distress.
(11:44):
Number 13 is tapping. Touch can be a valuable and comforting aspect to healing
any kind of trauma or dysregulation.
However, when touch needs to be avoided due to perhaps the risk of some viral
spread that we've all been through, people can practice self-touch also.
(12:05):
This can be done by tapping.
Increasing the sensory awareness in the body through tapping can be done anywhere. wear.
Use the tips of your fingers, slightly cup your hands, and gently tap different
parts of your body, alternating the tapping with each hand.
(12:25):
Try tapping the sides of your legs, just above and to the side of your knees if you're seated.
You can tap above the eyebrows or under the nose with one one hand.
You could also play with crossing your hands and alternating tapping just under the collarbone.
(12:45):
This is another way of feeling into your body and getting out of that recurring
anxious thought cycle in your mind.
Number 14 is a self-hug. We can regulate our own physiology through touch.
If you can't hug others, you can try a couple of alternatives.
(13:07):
Put your hand on your heart. Take a nice deep breath into the belly.
And you can also send another person a heart hug if you know somebody else is in distress.
So it works two ways. You can give yourself a a self-hug or send some good energy
(13:28):
to someone that you're thinking of.
Place your dominant hand under one armpit.
Another way of doing this self-hug is then placing the other hand on top of the opposite shoulder.
So one hand under the armpit, the other hand on the shoulder.
Just hang out here for a couple of minutes or at least until a spontaneous deep
(13:55):
breath occurs and you are giving yourself a hug.
Fifteen, let's think about your postures. Check in with your posture.
How are you standing or sitting? Is your spine erect?
Are your shoulders rolled back and down? Is your head in alignment with your neck, feet?
Is your body weighted evenly?
(14:19):
If not, shift your position into a strength-based posture for a couple of minutes.
You can imagine a Wonder Woman pose, and if your hands are free,
you can add your hands on top of your hips to the posture.
In therapeutic settings, practitioners
oftentimes convey empathy by mirroring postures with clients.
(14:42):
Be aware of this. this. Give yourself permission to change your posture,
doing the exact opposite of mirroring if you happen to notice yourself becoming
stressed when you're listening to somebody else.
As you learn to notice a sense of calm happening, it may actually be unfamiliar or uncomfortable.
(15:07):
Comfortable, this doesn't mean to say you have to be disconnected from your
body or in a constant state of flight, fight or freeze in order to cope.
Simply paying attention to body sensations can help you practice getting into a state of rest,
allowing for your whole body mind to get Get familiar with the difference between
(15:33):
feeling calm versus a state of collapse,
a state of fight, or a state of flight.
As you engage in these practices of sensation building and somatic regulation,
avoid interpreting or judging your experience. Simply practice.
(15:54):
Good luck, everybody. practice is essential and the
above suggestions become easy to
do within a few minutes at home or
work as you train yourself you'll soon be
able to do them almost subconsciously thank
you for listening to this inscape quest
podcast with me trudy howley if you like this show please subscribe on apple
(16:19):
podcasts or podbean and leave a comment you can also find me on instagram at
inscape quest thank you for listening and for your shares cheerio for now.
Music.
Hello podcast listeners, thank you for tuning in today to the InscapeQuest podcast show.
I am your host, Trudi Howley.
Here I am talking with people about how they engage with their relationships, work and passions.
Please subscribe and share this show with a friend.
(00:20):
And thanks to you, we can grow meaningful conversations together, one episode at a time.
Let's get started we're going to play around with
another micro session today and you're going
to get 15 tips to incorporate some basic
somatic practices that can provide for
(00:43):
you a new way of approaching stress and anxiety it'll increase your tolerance
for both and you can have moments of relief throughout the day and you can practice
these and build on them and make the moments of calm and rest even longer.
(01:03):
So these are just little moments. It's not like sitting in a therapist's office for an hour.
You can do these quick micro interventions in a couple minutes,
and I'm going to give you 15 of them.
So these are basic somatic practices and basic bodily-based practices. is.
So let's get going with some slow, deep breaths.
(01:27):
Simply doing a minimum of just three rounds of deep breathing is a great way
to quickly regulate yourself.
Deep breathing can be done by inhaling in an easy, relaxed way,
bringing your attention to a soft breath, staying aware of the breath for the
entirety of each full breathing cycle.
(01:50):
You could add add counting to this. You could choose to count in for three,
hold for three, exhale for three.
Inhale for four, hold for four, out for four, or longer if you choose.
Or you can simply exhale one beat longer than you inhale.
(02:11):
So inhaling for three, holding for three, exhaling for four.
Play around make it your own practice
breathing immediately activates our
parasympathetic nervous systems and adds
some breaks to any feelings of agitation or arousal you have it's your first
(02:32):
go-to intervention you can layer this by noticing little things like paying
attention to the difference in the temperature of your breath on the inhale and exhale. Give it a go.
Number two, let's do orienting. Orienting is a great and simple technique.
(02:54):
Simply turn your head and neck slowly and purposefully.
Look around at the environment you're in right now.
This is orienting, and it's a way to be in your immediate environment,
noticing what your eyes might be drawn to today.
You can name five things silently to yourself. You could choose also,
(03:19):
it might be five colors you notice, five objects that are jumping out at you,
or choosing five particular shapes.
You can expand this type of orienting by naming sounds that you can hear.
You could do that for a count of four.
You could also include textures that you could touch. It might be the chair
(03:42):
you're sitting on, the surface that your feet are in contact with.
Touch your clothing, your hair.
You could also layer this with smells. What can you notice?
And you can also include things that you can taste.
And please, the invitation to do all this is without any kind of judgment or interpretation.
(04:06):
It's simply orienting your senses.
Okay, so number three, your physical sensations need to be checked in with you
throughout the day, especially when you're working long hours.
Remember to ask yourself, am I hungry? Do I need to drink some water?
Do I need to use the bathroom?
(04:27):
If the answer is yes, act on it.
Set a boundary around your basic needs to get through the extra long haul of the day.
If you need to distract yourself from perhaps dissociated eating or snacking,
you need to practice a pause.
Practice noticing that you might be devoid of pleasure in the eating or snacking
(04:51):
and simply on autopilot.
As you pause, you can pause by orienting.
You can pause by taking some breaths. take this
moment to notice where you are and what's
going on inside of your body okay number four feel the weight of your feet and
(05:11):
body on the ground as you either stand momentarily or you can do this seated
bring your full awareness you might be sitting in your car or resting on the edge of of a chair.
Even if you're standing or sitting, you can practice gently shifting your weight
slightly from side to side.
(05:32):
If you happen to be able to be standing, you can gently rock from your toes to your heels.
You can even do this sitting sometimes.
So that's just bringing awareness to your physical body.
So hand washing, most people do this every day in some capacity.
(05:54):
They might take a shower, have a bath, but the invitation is to fully engage
in the sensation of water droplets on your skin and inhale any soap you might be using.
And so doing this in a mindful way can help you ease anxiety by bringing yourself
(06:17):
back to your physical body.
Okay, you could also add to that by number six, splashing cold water on your
face if you're feeling at all anxious.
This act decreases your heart rate.
It stimulates that wonderful vagus nerve and slows your breathing as the shock
(06:38):
of cold water stimulates our automatic diving reflex that we have as humans.
So number seven, another intervention is oscillating your attention.
If you're noticing things that you dislike in your environment,
you can go back and forth repeatedly between finding things that you do like.
(07:02):
For instance, you may not like the smell of something in the room,
but you can bring your attention to how the texture of the fabric on a piece
of clothing you're wearing feels.
In this example, you're alternating between a sense of smell and this touch
sense instead of fixating on the thing you dislike.
(07:25):
This can be particularly helpful if you're in a doctor's office or a hospital
appointment and you have a sensitivity to smell.
So imagery number eight, I'm going to invite you to deliberately bring to mind
Find a person, a place that's real or imagined.
(07:45):
A pet, a symbolic object that's comforting to you,
spend a couple of minutes fully engaging with the imagery of this person,
place or object and bring in as many sensory details about them as you possibly can.
Take some time with it. Give yourself a break from anxiety and dysregulation.
(08:11):
Number nine sound when we
feel under threat our throat and voices can also
become restricted one way of helping
your voice to open up is by putting on some favorite music and singing along
remember no criticism of our singing skills you can do this at home in the car
(08:32):
and just feel the the deep resonance of sound reverberating through your body.
You could even put your hand on the front part of your body as you feel the
vibration of making sound.
If you're not ready to try singing, you can choose to practice humming in a
long, deep, and even tone.
(08:54):
Number 10 is a quick body scan. It's another way to practice bodily awareness
and bring yourself back into a state of calm and regulation.
We have another micro podcast on this exact thing and goes into a little more
detail, but it's a quick, quick listen if you want to practice that on a daily basis.
(09:15):
So, from the ground up, bring awareness into the toes, up through the legs,
and through the torso, to the neck, head, shoulders, and jaw.
And as you do this, you can simply notice and highlight any tightness or tension
(09:37):
that you might be feeling.
You can then deliberately bring
relaxation to that particular spot you can
do this repeatedly repeatedly and as
needed so this one number 11 is called the tapas acupressure technique it's
(09:58):
another quick reset for a stressed out nervous system and it comes from an energy
medicine technique by Elizabeth Tappas Fleming.
So there's a few instructions here. I'm going to guide you quickly through this.
Gently place one hand horizontally at the base of your skull with the thumb
(10:19):
touching just above your hairline.
With your other hand, place your thumb and your ring finger on either side of the bridge of your nose.
Now, place your middle finger of this hand in the middle of your forehead,
(10:40):
right on that third eye spot.
Hold this position until you take a natural deep breath.
Number 12, we're thinking about a container.
If you're having unexpected distressing thoughts or images coming up for you,
(11:01):
just simply acknowledge them with acceptance, self-compassion, and non-judgment.
If you need, go a step further and place these thoughts and visuals in an imaginary
container where they can be privately held in an imaginary safe spot.
(11:22):
Let the thoughts or images remain there until such time as you have the resources,
to work with a coach, a trusted friend, a therapist, or a time and place where you can attend to them.
This can allow you to function throughout the day without continued distress.
(11:44):
Number 13 is tapping. Touch can be a valuable and comforting aspect to healing
any kind of trauma or dysregulation.
However, when touch needs to be avoided due to perhaps the risk of some viral
spread that we've all been through, people can practice self-touch also.
(12:05):
This can be done by tapping.
Increasing the sensory awareness in the body through tapping can be done anywhere. wear.
Use the tips of your fingers, slightly cup your hands, and gently tap different
parts of your body, alternating the tapping with each hand.
(12:25):
Try tapping the sides of your legs, just above and to the side of your knees if you're seated.
You can tap above the eyebrows or under the nose with one one hand.
You could also play with crossing your hands and alternating tapping just under the collarbone.
(12:45):
This is another way of feeling into your body and getting out of that recurring
anxious thought cycle in your mind.
Number 14 is a self-hug. We can regulate our own physiology through touch.
If you can't hug others, you can try a couple of alternatives.
(13:07):
Put your hand on your heart. Take a nice deep breath into the belly.
And you can also send another person a heart hug if you know somebody else is in distress.
So it works two ways. You can give yourself a a self-hug or send some good energy
(13:28):
to someone that you're thinking of.
Place your dominant hand under one armpit.
Another way of doing this self-hug is then placing the other hand on top of the opposite shoulder.
So one hand under the armpit, the other hand on the shoulder.
Just hang out here for a couple of minutes or at least until a spontaneous deep
(13:55):
breath occurs and you are giving yourself a hug.
Fifteen, let's think about your postures. Check in with your posture.
How are you standing or sitting? Is your spine erect?
Are your shoulders rolled back and down? Is your head in alignment with your neck, feet?
Is your body weighted evenly?
(14:19):
If not, shift your position into a strength-based posture for a couple of minutes.
You can imagine a Wonder Woman pose, and if your hands are free,
you can add your hands on top of your hips to the posture.
In therapeutic settings, practitioners
oftentimes convey empathy by mirroring postures with clients.
(14:42):
Be aware of this. this. Give yourself permission to change your posture,
doing the exact opposite of mirroring if you happen to notice yourself becoming
stressed when you're listening to somebody else.
As you learn to notice a sense of calm happening, it may actually be unfamiliar or uncomfortable.
(15:07):
Comfortable, this doesn't mean to say you have to be disconnected from your
body or in a constant state of flight, fight or freeze in order to cope.
Simply paying attention to body sensations can help you practice getting into a state of rest,
allowing for your whole body mind to get Get familiar with the difference between
(15:33):
feeling calm versus a state of collapse,
a state of fight, or a state of flight.
As you engage in these practices of sensation building and somatic regulation,
avoid interpreting or judging your experience. Simply practice.
(15:54):
Good luck, everybody. practice is essential and the
above suggestions become easy to
do within a few minutes at home or
work as you train yourself you'll soon be
able to do them almost subconsciously thank
you for listening to this inscape quest
podcast with me trudy howley if you like this show please subscribe on apple
(16:19):
podcasts or podbean and leave a comment you can also find me on instagram at
inscape quest thank you for listening and for your shares cheerio for now.
Music.
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