Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Your body will not lie. Your nervous system cannot lie. Your muscles cannot lie.
[00:00:07] They will tell you before your mind kicks in.
[00:00:11] But we need to practice to build that skill of awareness and to trust the wisdom, intuition, intelligence of our nervous system before all the conditioning our mind went through. And it's going through.
[00:00:30] Welcome to Excellent Rising.
[00:00:32] I'm Anna Mae, Somatic Experiencing Therapist for PTSD and Trauma Recovery. I run Somatic Trauma Recovery center and for all my offerings. Please check the website and the links in the show notes.
[00:00:45] The best way to support this content and podcast since it's independently run only by me and my mic.
[00:00:53] Please leave review and share on your platforms so let's begin.
[00:00:59] Today I want to explore something that your body is constantly tracking. And if you're a Somatic Experiencing therapist, if you're a somatic coach, and if you're doing your work in soma, this is one of the best cues and skills to develop on your PTSD and complex trauma recovery.
[00:01:21] So let's begin.
[00:01:22] Today we will explore expansion M and contraction.
[00:01:28] So this episode continues the framework from previous episode where I spoke about space, time, weight and movement as pillars of healing, relational trauma and regulating the nervous system.
[00:01:45] If you haven't, please listen the episode titled the four Somatic Pillars of Healing Trauma and How to Release Relational Trauma from the Body.
[00:01:57] Today I want to go in something more immediate, something you can track in real time because your body is always responding to people, environments, memories, relationships, energy, tone, relational fields.
[00:02:21] And the question becomes is my body expanding or shrinking?
[00:02:29] This is very, very important in your trauma recovery, in your PTSD recovery, and in your day to day living awareness.
[00:02:45] Am I expanding?
[00:02:46] Am I shrinking?
[00:02:50] So your body is always responding and most people try to understand relationships only through the mind and they can ask themselves what do they mean M Am I overreacting? Um, am I being too sensitive?
[00:03:07] They are so stuck in their mind, their mind noticers.
[00:03:13] But they're not body soma noticers.
[00:03:18] But the body already knows something long before the mind catches up.
[00:03:27] Your body has enormous capacities, enormous wisdom.
[00:03:32] And your body tracks all the time.
[00:03:36] Safety, danger, pressure, openness, constriction in real time.
[00:03:47] And many people have lost connection to this language not because the body stopped speaking, but because survival required overriding it.
[00:03:59] And our over performance culture placed mind over body wisdom.
[00:04:11] So what to track when you around someone or even thinking about them, pause and notice.
[00:04:23] Are your muscles softening or tightening?
[00:04:29] When I'm next to this person, are uh, my muscles softening or tightening?
[00:04:37] Is my posture elongating or shrinking?
[00:04:45] Is My breath becoming deeper or shallow?
[00:04:53] Do I feel open, ah.
[00:04:56] Or compressed?
[00:04:59] Do I feel grounded or hyper alert?
[00:05:04] And more subtily, do I feel like myself or like a younger version of myself?
[00:05:16] This is one of the most important questions because many relational fields pull people out of their adult state into younger survival state.
[00:05:33] These inquiries, let it be your handbook how you observe and how you build relational field around you. Your body will not lie, your nervous system cannot lie, your muscles cannot lie.
[00:05:53] They will tell you before your mind kicks in.
[00:05:57] But we need to practice to build that skill of awareness and to trust the wisdom, intuition, intelligence of our nervous system.
[00:06:09] Before all the conditioning our mind went through, and it's going through before our mind overrides the truth, what uh, our body is telling us.
[00:06:22] And you may normally feel confident, capable, clear.
[00:06:28] And then around a specific person, you second guess yourself, you lose your voice, you feel small or you become anxious or feel emotionally younger.
[00:06:46] What we are observing somatic therapist. I'm um, somatic experiencing therapist and somatic touch therapist for PTSD and trauma recovery. They are trained to observe trauma changes in the tone, tone of body.
[00:07:06] So we are tracking tone changes, posture changes, energy changes.
[00:07:16] And this is not weakness, this is nervous system entering activation freeze or state dependent memory because body is remembering something, what was threatening for you.
[00:07:38] And clinically this is the nervous system shifting between states.
[00:07:43] When your body feels open, connected, grounded, we are in ventral vagal regulation.
[00:07:50] And those states are associated with safety, with connection, with expansion, with presence.
[00:07:58] The tone is more buoyant.
[00:08:02] There is a fluidity in uh, tone, in the tone of our voice as well.
[00:08:08] And then when your body contracts, freezes or braces, the system shifts into sympathetic activation or dorsal withdrawal freeze.
[00:08:24] And that creates tension, collapse, shutdown, hypervigilance, age regression when we would now feel not as 55 but 18.
[00:08:41] And your body is constantly giving you information about received safety versus threat.
[00:08:50] And one thing, you really want to embody it in yourself, in your learnings, in your own medicine bag of your own wisdom, is that every relationship has a, uh, tone.
[00:09:07] Look for the tone of relationship.
[00:09:12] Look for the frequency.
[00:09:15] Observe that felt experience.
[00:09:20] And this stone is created through space, time, bait and movement combined together.
[00:09:33] Please listen. My Previous Episode 4 Pillars of Somatic Healing Unsafe relational fields Feel the tone. What you will get. So the tone in your body, that quality, the sense quality is compressed, it's dense, it's heavy, it's urgent, it's tight, it's downward.
[00:10:05] Space feels smaller, time feels frozen or immediate. There is a sense of urgency.
[00:10:15] Regression, age regression and moment feels restricted.
[00:10:23] So just observe the tone and recall who is that?
[00:10:30] Who is that person or people who are producing this tone in my body?
[00:10:41] Before your mind kicks in, before your mind starts to justify it, before your mind starts to minimize, before your mind starts to make excuses or screaming out loud, recognize this tone and then recognize safe relational tone.
[00:11:06] And that field, that relational field feels open.
[00:11:12] Tone is open, it's fluid, it's spacious, it's very grounded, expansive.
[00:11:23] It goes upwards so you feel taller. So there is a quality of gravity and anti gravity. It's not collapse.
[00:11:38] You feel more yourself, you feel more relaxed, you feel more alive. There is a ton of vitality.
[00:11:47] So the body feels upwards and onwards into heaven and into earth, grounded and expanding at the same time.
[00:11:59] That's the tone.
[00:12:02] So pause here and recognize recall who is the person in my life with whom I have this quality of this tone? The tone in my body was the tone of my body with this person.
[00:12:25] Where I am open and fluid, spacious and expansive, grounded me.
[00:12:35] So your body is never confused.
[00:12:38] This is one of the most important truth.
[00:12:44] That's why we have so much brilliant tools in somatic therapy, somatic experiencing therapy and other somatic qualities.
[00:12:55] The body is never confused, the mind is.
[00:13:00] The mind can justify. They didn't mean it.
[00:13:05] It's not that bad. You're making things up.
[00:13:10] Oh, it's your intuition. Trouble is wrong.
[00:13:14] I'm overreacting or I should stay.
[00:13:20] I should forgive.
[00:13:23] But your body already responded. So listen, that build that trust in the tone of your body, in the frequency of your body, because it already knows.
[00:13:39] Your soma knows contraction versus expansion.
[00:13:46] Am, uh, I contracting with this person in this space or am I expanding?
[00:13:55] Safety versus danger or safety versus confusion. It doesn't have to be big as danger. It can be I feel safe.
[00:14:09] Oh, I feel confused.
[00:14:13] Confusion is a step before neglect and abuse.
[00:14:20] Or your body can feel regulated versus activated.
[00:14:26] And learning to trust, this is a huge part of healing.
[00:14:33] So this is what we do in a somatic therapy. And then we have expansion as a decision tool.
[00:14:44] So this is now more than awareness. It becomes your guidance when you begin asking yourself, where do I expand and where do I contract?
[00:15:00] And from there what do I increase in me with this person?
[00:15:10] What do I reduce with this person?
[00:15:16] Is this person reducing me?
[00:15:20] Is this person expanding me?
[00:15:28] And then what do I move toward and what do I detach from or who do I detach from?
[00:15:39] So your body becomes a real time orientation system.
[00:15:45] And how you feel that is through this constricting, am I constricting inside of me? Or am I expanding? And this is a practice.
[00:15:58] This is a, uh, practice you do every day.
[00:16:02] It could be very frustrating at the beginning, but it's innate. It's enough.
[00:16:10] It was just overridden and we need to retrieve now.
[00:16:18] And how it's a practice.
[00:16:22] We practice this, then it becomes a skill, skill becomes a state, state becomes a trait.
[00:16:33] And I've been practicing this for decades now. This is in my trait. I'm not even thinking about this. It's my default place to start.
[00:16:46] Not in my mind, but in my body.
[00:16:49] And you can do that. Everyone can do that.
[00:16:52] It's a skill.
[00:16:58] And also when people cannot yet feel safety with other people, that is okay, you begin where you are.
[00:17:13] You don't need to orient toward people.
[00:17:18] You don't need to go in relational field with people.
[00:17:24] You're noticing your body around animals, dogs, cats, trees, silence, prayer, spiritual practice.
[00:17:40] So this is also the space you're using instead of people.
[00:17:44] Am I constricting or am I expanding? What's the tone of my body when I'm with my dog?
[00:17:55] And then you notice your breathing, your shoulders, your chest.
[00:18:01] Because the body will show you what regulation feels like without relational complexity.
[00:18:11] It just does.
[00:18:14] So why this matter?
[00:18:16] Many people organize their trauma recovery in lives around logic, obligation, pressure, fear, performance.
[00:18:33] Instead of around noticing the tone, the tone of the field.
[00:18:42] Regulation, clarity, alignment.
[00:18:47] And then over time, we disconnect from ourselves.
[00:18:53] But when you begin tracking your body with this full awareness, you stop organizing your life around confusion, around lack of tone, around frequency which is not matching your frequency.
[00:19:15] So you organize it around clarity, nervous system, safety, and the real time somatic decision system, which is built, uh, on space, time, weight, movement, expansion.
[00:19:33] What is my body telling me right now?
[00:19:36] Am I constricting or am I expanding?
[00:19:42] So healing is not only about understanding the past.
[00:19:47] It is about learning how your body responds. In relationships, in environments, in memories, in conversations, in moments of pressure, in moments of joy.
[00:20:04] Because your body is always orienting you.
[00:20:08] It knows what to do not through the words, but through contraction, expansion, tension, ease, openness, or collapse.
[00:20:22] So this is what is called the tone.
[00:20:27] Read the tone of your body.
[00:20:31] And when you begin to trust that, uh, your life changes not because everything around you changes immediately, but because you finally learn to stop abandoning what your body knows so deeply, with so much wisdom and intelligence. Innate intelligence.
[00:21:01] So this is all for today.
[00:21:05] If this episode resonated with you, please share.
[00:21:10] Leave the review.
[00:21:13] You can find all the links below for my programs and teachings and until the next week.
[00:21:21] Ask yourself throughout the day around who do I expand and around who do I constrict.
[00:21:36] I'm Anna Mael. This is excellent rising, as always.
[00:21:42] Be gentle with yourself.
[00:21:44] Much care.
