Bring your body into the conversation
I’m an accredited body-oriented coach. That means my coaching focuses not only on what you’re thinking and feeling but also on what your body might be telling you. Because your body has its own story to tell.
Psychotherapist Deb Dana says our brain is like a city with a five-lane highway coming out of it. One lane is going out into the body, telling it what to do. Four lanes are moving in the opposite direction, gathering information from the body and taking it to the mind.
That’s a fascinating image, because it suggests that eighty percent of our mental processing is occuring outside the brain. It’s happening in every part of our body as we take in information from our surroundings.
Even more important, our body is making decisions based on that information long before it ever comes to our consciousness. It’s telling our palms to get sweaty because we’re in a room of strangers. It’s holding us back from speaking up because it’s not sure we’re safe.
It’s also the feeling in our gut that we’re right about something. It’s the posture we project when we’re feeling safe, engaged, and interested. It’s the warm feeling we have when we’re talking with someone we care about.
Often, we operate in a top-down fashion, with our brain trying to tell our bodies to get with the program. We buckle down, even though we’re feeling strangely sluggish when we just got the promotion we’ve told ourselves we’ve always wanted. We push through the pain, even though part of us needs a break.
That strategy works for a while, but not listening to what our bodies have to tell us hurts us in the long run. We need to listen to the wisdom our bodies have stored inside them, feel awe at how our bodies have gotten us through life, and trust that our bodies are strong enough to bear the deep emotions we're pushing away.
So when I coach clients, I make a point of bringing their body into the conversation to help them work with and not against it.
To give a taste of what that looks like, I’ve created a resource on what’s known as the polyvagal theory, a cutting-edge, science-based approach that gives insight into why we react to life as we do. You can download it for free on this website.
And if you want to learn about how my coaching can help you, book your free Discovery Session here.
