“The Benefits Of Somatics and Dance For Ultimate Self-care”
Helene 
Self-Care and Regulating our Nervous System
As dynamic holistic caregivers of the world we wear so many different hats. We may have businesses to run, we take care of our families and clients, and we have our transitions – life circumstances may force us to change our living arrangements, take care of aging parents, or we may suddenly find ourselves in a completely new situation that we didn’t expect at all. Sudden losses, separations, disappointments and traumas. But this is not an article of doom and gloom. Rather, it is a practical and prosaic look at all the support and tools we already have to navigate the cycles of our lives.
We can feel scattered because we have so many things pulling us this way and that, and when you consider we have 6,000 plus thoughts a day (1), is it any wonder that we can start to feel stressed, overwhelmed and disconnected?
If you are already starting to feel your nerves getting jangled by reading this, I invite you to just take a deep breath and come back to sensing into your body.
Take a moment to appreciate this hard working body of yours that has carried you from A to B and got you to where you are now. Feel into the solidity of your body, the weighted bones of your skeleton within, your blood pumping through your arteries, the air entering your lungs.
When you slow down to bring attention into your body, you are immediately connecting into your somatic being.
Somatic Self-Care and Embodiment
Somatics has become a bit of a buzzword in recent wellness circles, and in a basic nutshell it is about understanding the science of our mind and body connection.(3)
Our nervous system is a main communicator between our body and brain, so somatics may often talk about regulating our nervous system, and healing our trauma. We often talk of our nerves getting frazzled or how someone or something is ‘getting on my nerves’.
However, somatics is much more than this, as it looks at the four levels of our being –our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual self - our ‘soma’ or living body (rather than our body from the head down).
Being a prolific ‘overthinker’, I know only too well how this can create huge stress and anxiety as thoughts can easily race into overdrive, and it can literally be a handicap!
But by dropping out of our heads and connecting back into those other parts of ourselves, we can start to process our thoughts, integrate and transform them. We begin our journey of embodiment. (Nb for a more detailed look at Embodiment see https://www.niiodance.com/blog...)
The Benefits of Grounding and finding Presence
When we drop into our physical body we feel a sense of ‘grounding’ as we ‘ground’ our active minds. And as we experience a sense of calmness we find more presence, and we start to embrace a skill of resilience.
So the very first step in your self care is to give yourself time. Time to drop into appreciating your body so that your over anxious thoughts ground and settle into the solidity of your body that will hold you.
One powerful way where we find it easier to experience embodiment and presence is when we we go on holiday because everything is so new. All our senses are stimulated with new sights, smells and feelings and we can feel so much more alive. Also when we are traveling we are switching off from our normal everyday, taking active steps to relax.
Tapping into our Parasympathetic Nervous System
And if we are in nature, this is an extra enhancement of our parasympathetic ‘rest and digest’ system. For example on the beach we are close to the earth, the sea and the open air.
However we can find little moments of self-care without going on holiday. We can rejuvenate by travelling internally with our breath, or reset by changing our environment and position.
We often don't listen to our bodies until we have an injury or it complains, which prompts us to initiate change. And yet we already have an instinctual knowledge of the wisdom in our bodies.
For instance, research has suggested that we hold fear in our bones, and if you think of some of the ways we express ourselves eg ‘I can feel it in my bones’ or ‘I felt a shiver down my spine’, you know there is a sense of something deep and true.
Dance and Emotional Freedom
And I will always advocate vitamin D for Dance as it is a powerful way to experience this deep embodiment, as it has been my personal medicine in life, giving me continual support, inspiration and joy.
Dance is also both a container and an outlet for our emotions, where we can give ourselves permission to freely express and channel our frustrations, anxiety, fears or nervous tension. After all we do not always have this opportunity in our everyday lives.
By coming into our bodies and moving, we gain a new perspective. Whilst we may not be able to change a difficult situation, we can always change how it affects us.
We also connect into our spiritual body. We connect into a deeper level of consciousness that reminds us that there is something more in the world, the bigger picture.
As we move and dance, we drop out of our busy Beta brainwaves into Alpha – Delta, the brainwave state of meditators, where we gain fresh perspectives, to expand and broaden our vision. (2)
Dance and Neurogenesis
In fact when we move and dance, we bring new oxygen to the brain and it expands our neural pathways - our brains literally grow in neurogenesis. This paves the way for more creative and ‘divergent’ thinking. We become more resilient, able to navigate challenges and set backs with more ease.
And by the way, this has nothing to do with looking like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, or the dancers in Strictly come Dancing. If you are starting to question whether you can even dance, then you know you are straying into the wild jungles of your mind again.
This is about coming home to yourself.
How often do you truly listen into the messages from your body? Listening to our gut is very important and real, and children are much more attuned to their intuition and sixth sense.
It is almost as though we get numbed by our responsibilities as we enter into the serious world of adulthood, where we are honed by academic systems that still favour our logical left brain thinking.
Often we don’t listen to our bodies until they start to complain when we haven’t taken care of ourselves.
Our Somatic Self Care and Self- Acceptance
However somatics is not just about listening into our bodies. It is in essence about bringing a deeper awareness to ourselves, and also of acceptance.
Accepting all the idiosyncrasies and nuances that make us who we uniquely are, including all the parts that we might feel are unloveable.
We are individual and unique beings, but it also reminds us that we are connected as a whole, to our humanity.
So there you have it. I have condensed a lot of information into this article, so if it feels too much,
then just take a deep breath in and feel that breath coming into your body.
Release that breath into the earth.
Welcome to a gentle coming home.
NB. You can learn more about Niio Dance and the Roadmap I have created in my FREE masterclass; Learn the Ultimate Self-Care System; Somatic Dance for Self-Discovery and Freedom HERE
https://www.niiodance.com/f/rw...
Notes:
1 - Humans Have More than 6,000 Thoughts per Day, Psychologists Discover - Newsweek
2 - What Are Alpha Waves and How to Train Your Brain to Achieve Them - Learning Mind (learning-mind.com)
3 - Home - ISMETA
Categories: : connection, dance, embodiment, science, somatics