In Part 1 I talked about humming as a body-based activity to help settle your nervous system. If it worked for you, great. If not, try to stick with this process of exploring to find out what works for you.
I want to go a different direction today, because in my experience the typical array of body-based mindfulness activities tend to focus on things that are more exclusively inside of you, like breath and rhythmic movements (which I’ll write about another time). But I think there are some things you might like that are more everyday, “inside and outside” connecting activities that you perhaps have not yet considered as ways to settle your nervous system. There are things that just feel good that I can hopefully recontextualize for you as accomplishing this settling effect too.
Enter the hot tub, hot bath, or hot spring. Enter the sauna or steam room. On the other side of temperature, enter a pool, river, lake, ocean, or cold tub, if these are things you find refreshing.
Do any of these sound inviting to you? Do you have a memory of times you did these and how you felt during and afterwards? I know for myself, hot tubs and steam rooms are very relaxing for me. I can feel my muscles relax, my breath becomes slow and shallow; my capacity for anxious thoughts about the future melts away into the simplicity of the touch sensation of warmth and bubbles.
Or, when anxious thoughts do come up during, they’re not as powerful. They have to compete for attention with all the good sensations I’m simultaneously experiencing. If stressful thoughts come up, I can either notice them and let them go, or sometimes even think about how to address them later, but from a state of calm rather than from a baseline of stress.
Afterwards, the body effects often linger on. I’m usually no good for anything serious the rest of the day, I drink a lot more water, and the improved sleep quality is noticeable. One good self-care thing can lead to another. A positive feedback loop.
Until recently I had not really considered that these kinds of activities, besides helping me recover from workouts, also help me on a nervous system level. But recently I’ve learned more about “somatic” or body-centric therapy, and I keep hearing friends and clients describe their experiences doing these activities in similar ways, and it clicked for me: self care activities don’t have to be deemed “therapy” to have a therapeutic effect. If something helps you relax your body and mind, that is the parasympathetic brake, no matter what category it’s in.
From “The Body Keeps The Score” (p. 218-219):
Something to chew on. Time to schedule a spa day!
Coach Mauricio