Expand Your Ability: Embodiment, Somatics, and Feldenkrais

00:01
Here are a few scenarios. I wonder if you see yourself in them, because this episode may be for you then. Do people sometimes say that you are too sensitive, and do you find that frustrating? When you feel a sort of slight from someone at work, and then your mind keeps processing it on loop for way too long afterwards? Just rumination after rumination? Do you feel a twinge of pain at the slightest thought?

00:30
that you might not be doing something correctly.

00:35
Do you feel exhausted by the actions of others? How come they don't care about their work as much as I do? How about thoughts like, if I don't do a good job, they won't like me. And then they'll fire me.

00:52
Perhaps you get riled up quickly, but intellectually you know you shouldn't be so riled up, but you can't stop it. You can't unwind the clock and get calm again quickly. Depending on our history and biology, we may have learned to become quickly agitated. All of these scenarios are all about the same thing. Your inner alarm bells and your responses.

01:22
This episode offers a reframe and a possible technique that you can practice right away to see if it's helpful with the above situations. What's the technique? Here's a hint. This is potentially the most boring episode you will listen to, and I mean that in the best way possible. Stay tuned to find out what I mean. Welcome to the Expand Your Ability Podcast. I'm your host, Jeffrey Schwinghammer.

01:50
This show is about how we can learn and grow, regardless of our history, into becoming the people we want to be. A part of learning and growing is changing how we historically respond to the events of our lives. We have to change those old, outdated patterns for something new, more variable, more capable. In this episode, I will first lay the groundwork by talking about some essential ideas.

02:20
Then I will describe the technique and then offer a guided meditation of the technique. So to begin, sensitivity. So I've been called too sensitive and that sucks to hear. And I bet you think it sucks to hear too if you've been called too sensitive too. Okay, why does it suck to hear? Well first off, it...

02:46
I can't just dial back my quote sensitivity like I'm experiencing something that is difficult. Don't you see that there's a problem here? My being is trying to let you know that there's an issue. And so just by labeling ourselves as too sensitive doesn't really remedy the issue. So what would it be like to reframe this experience of sensitivity? Well we could start with sensitivity is a good thing.

03:17
Let's make that clear with an example. Do you want an insensitive baker baking your bread? Each time they put together the recipe, they use huge variations. They don't really check their measurements. Each batch would be oddly different. So there is a sensitivity that the baker must have to the proportion of each of the ingredients.

03:44
for a time I worked at an artisan bakery. And I remember there being a slip up one time when the delicious ciabatta bread had, I think it was twice the regular amount of salt. And it doesn't have that much salt in it, but it was just, it was added in twice. And that bread that came out of that was at best kind of edible.

04:14
but it was also like a desert in my mouth. A little bit of an error led to not great bread. Another example is if your thermostat was wildly insensitive to temperature inside your house and it didn't get triggered on at the right temperature to heat your home in the winter, and I'm in Minnesota by the way so this is a big deal,

04:41
you would be very unhappy very quickly. So there is this neutral practical aspect to sensitivity. Sensitivity is about receiving information from your environment and how specific you are in discerning that information. In certain situations a few degrees can be very important, a few grams can be very important.

05:10
A sensitive person has the capacity to be more calibrated to respond to the world. You can be better situated to support your loved ones if you can pick up the small signs that they might not be doing so well. A sensitive person may also be more attuned to the signs that a person is being dishonest and that can help you avoid a bad deal.

05:40
to our childhood needs. I think a lot of the pain we have comes from our caregivers being insensitive to our needs. Of course, they might be willfully insensitive, and that's no good at all, of course, but also, they might be unintentionally completely unaware in their insensitivity. They just might not know what we need, and that can hurt too. Okay.

06:09
I'm laying out here that sensitivity is not bad, but where does the challenge come in? Let's add a new word to this discussion. Over-excitability. Over-excitability is the intensity of how we respond to stimulus, events, phenomena, people. Here's an example I'm sure you know.

06:35
That small dog that jumps to all fours yapping and yapping and alerting the whole house when they hear the smallest sound outside. Is it an intruder? Woof woof woof. Right? Like they're just so excited. So ready to be on the defensive. The dog is not only sensitive to the environment and the sounds of the room, this little guy is super excitable.

07:02
which may get annoying quickly. You could also imagine a dog that's at rest in his bed. He hears a sound, raises his head, listens, discerns if it's something to be attended to, and then decides to go back to rest. Sensitive, but not that excitable. These dogs are like your alarm bells.

07:31
How loud, how quick, how intense are your alarm bells? And how quickly do you respond? How intensely? Which dog would you like to be like? I'm guessing you might be a recovering dog one, hoping to be more like dog two. So this dog image represents our internal excitability. They are our internal alarm bells.

08:01
Let's think back to the scenarios at the beginning of the episode. The barking dog internally for us could be that we perceive in a moment that we might be doing something wrong. Then the alarm dogs go off. Oh I'm doing something wrong, I'm doing something wrong. Just jacks up in excitement and doesn't come down easily.

08:25
could also be we are berating ourselves for noticing we don't meet our, ahem, high standards. Or if we're ruminating on the same idea over and over, it's like the alarm dog just not getting back to bed. And here's the catch, it's not that we just have one alarm dog active, we can have many, and that's based on our history.

08:56
and we can get in a real tangle when one alarm dog triggers another dog. And that triggers another dog. And boom, the whole neighborhood is a cacophonous canine choir. Unchecked, this sort of situation gets worse with time. For example, I might notice I'm ruminating, so there's some alarm going on. And then I might

09:26
be upset with myself. Oh, I'm doing that thing again. Oh, like I shouldn't be doing this. Another alarm is stacked on that first one. So how can we go to each of these dogs and calm them? Calm down each of our alarms. Well, first off, we have to know when they are happening.

09:52
Sometimes these alarms are obvious by the suffering we have in the moment. Sometimes they fly under the radar affecting our whole day, but we're not sure what's going on. A big step is developing your taste for unnecessary urgency. To catch these moments when you are instantaneously aroused in a moment,

10:16
It's like you've switched gears to something, you hop up a bit, or you feel that sort of oh no feeling. Maybe there's an internal flinch. What's important is to track what happens in your body as well as your mind. As we've talked on previous episodes here on the podcast, we carry our stories with us and they live in our bodies. And what do I mean by live in our bodies?

10:45
They exist in our habitual muscular tone. They are not just thoughts we have. They exist in how we move. I'm willing to bet in your moments of having alarms go off, there is a change in your muscular tone somewhere, somehow. And I'm willing to bet there's an uncomfortable sensation somewhere, somehow, in your body.

11:13
Are these places tense or are their muscles contracted? What sensations do you have? It's a feeling of smallness, warmth, coolness, emptiness, icky, unsettled. These sensations, the sort of excess, irreversible muscular tone is intrinsic to the anxious experience.

11:40
This is a topic I will cover more and more on the podcast, but perhaps this is enough for our purposes now. So, you're aware that an alarm is going off. The next step is low effort presence. Why low effort? The more muscular tone we engage, the more we are acting out our historical habits. Less muscular engagement.

12:10
means more potential for change. Presence is being here now. Here's an image that might be helpful. Let's say you wanted to learn how to swim. Well, it might not be the best idea to jump into the deep end, especially if you have any trepidation of getting in the water. Like, if it's scary, don't go into the hardest part of the pool.

12:40
So what to do? Well, you can go to the shallow end and you can even make it simpler. Let's just do the smallest step. Just dip your toes in perhaps, or put your legs in, or sit in the shallow end. The idea here is to go the easiest path, the smallest step.

13:07
to just get in the pool, to just get wet. That's enough. Take this approach to your experience, whatever you're feeling, thinking, sensing, whatever agitates you, just get in the pool. You don't have to be good at anything. You don't have to take any sort of action to fix this moment. Just be present.

13:37
with whatever experience you're having. Just enter into the pool. Then, what comes next is to act bored. That's it. It's pretty simple. But let's break it down. Let's get more specific here with what I mean by acting bored. I don't mean any dramatic gestures. It's more of a simple stillness.

14:07
soft eyes, soft cheeks, soft mouth, and that can continue to expand through yourself. This isn't so much thinking the words boring, boring, over and over, even though you could do that, and that might be a helpful cue for yourself. This is more taking on the physical act of being bored. Why?

14:37
Well, in short, how we move and act actually feeds back into our nervous system. It's a two-way street. To be clear, this is also not about zoning out. It's not about becoming apathetic. You're still present. You're still here. It's more of a disinterest or just a neutralness.

15:04
it's simply about wearing the expression of boredom and the features of boredom on your face so a soft vision possibility of your eyes lightly moving here or there small moving of your mouth you know just I'm here you can imagine this for movies or something you can imagine a kid being so bored

15:33
on a hot summer day. And I mean, before there were video games and cell phones, that is. Just this, a kid so bored and doesn't know what to do.

15:47
This is the sort of process to cool the jets of that cacophonous canine choir, one alarm dog at a time. You don't have to take any action apart from staying with a sense of bored. As you go through the experience, you might notice the features of your face changing or contorting or taking on the expression of whatever emotion.

16:16
Return to board expression. Board simplicity. And if you're here long enough, actual curiosity may begin to emerge. Those are the ideas. Let's give this a go and see if it's helpful for you. Find a place to be comfortable. Sit on a couch or lie on the floor. Both are good.

16:44
Just find a way to be well supported.

16:49
And here at the start, is there something stirring already? Is there something nagging at your attention? Are there any ruminations? Check in with how this manifests in your body. And whatever you notice here will do. It could be a discomfort or a muscular tension or a sensation.

17:19
of your body on the floor, sense the places where you're more in contact with the surface and where you're less in contact.

17:29
and just get in the pool of your experience. Just be in the waters of your sensation. You don't have to do this in a hard way. You don't have to get there deeply. No, just enter the pool.

17:49
And here now, what would bored eyes feel like?

17:58
How would they move?

18:01
How about the muscles around your eyes? The sense of your cheeks? Your lips?

18:12
You could begin to softly open and close your mouth, move your lips around over each other. It's just simple movements.

18:29
be in the world, but not taken by anything. Your eyes can be soft, they can gently

18:39
swim around the environment or be still.

18:48
Everything that arises is okay, good. Be with that sensation, be in the pool. Stay with this expression of boredom.

19:01
You can even move your head a little bit this way, a little bit that way.

19:11
Every doubt or concern is just another alarm bell.

19:20
Am I doing this right?

19:23
All of these thoughts you can treat with a sense of boredom. Boring. By being bored, does your experience begin to change?

19:41
like ice melting into water, or fire fizzling itself out. There's nothing to do. You don't have to be attached to the story of any one of these thoughts or difficulties.

20:04
They certainly assert themselves, don't they?

20:10
They feel like they need to exist. They say this is important. Pay attention to me. Okay, I am in the pool. I sense you. And I'm bored at the same time.

20:27
If you like, you can name whatever experience is coming up.

20:37
Treat it as an experiment. Treat all of this as an experiment. Huh. Well, what if I am bored now? Just... ..bored.

20:49
I know I have alarms going off, but I am bored.

20:55
And perhaps over time, you might begin to notice that there is a possibility that can emerge. This possibility of thinking. Something like, Oh, that's Jeffrey doing that thing again.

21:14
Huh. This is Jeffrey... Doing... Doubt. This is Jeffrey doing...

21:26
concern.

21:30
This is Jeffrey running through rumination scenarios, trying to come up with solutions for something. Whatever it is, however you notice it, it's boring every step down, regardless of whatever urgency you feel.

21:57
Okay, so that is the gist. This is a simple, repeatable process. I will speak a little bit more, but I invite you to stay in this process, to stay in this sense of boredom with your own experience, and you can even treat what I say as boring too. I won't be offended. I think that's great. All right.

22:25
What to look for in this process? First off, everyone is an individual and every time for each person might be different. So there are no hard and fast rules. That being said, it's likely that you might yawn during this process and that's a good thing. This technique doesn't necessarily make the bad go away in a moment.

22:52
It's not that kind of magic, but you know you're on the path when your experience changes.

23:04
It's something like your experience goes from being water stuck in the faucet to the faucet being on a little bit and so the water can drip out. Keep it manageable. A light and slow stream is better. Your experience may intensify at first actually.

23:30
and you might get additional alarm bells around this too. If we've found a thought and sensation and tension so terrible in the past that we didn't want to feel it and so we've kind of put it aside in our experience, tuning into that can actually reveal that it's louder than we want it to be.

23:59
and so if that's the case of course of course you don't want to feel it and if it intensifies that probably meant you didn't want to feel it anytime it came up. all right so let the being bored having this bored expression be a resource for you that it can help you ride the wave even if it intensifies

24:29
bit? Is there a way to stay bored? Stay detached? Oh, this is my history playing out. Okay. And then if it intensifies and you write it gently, I wonder if on the other end will it subside.

24:53
If you have a loved one that can hold space for you as you do this, all the better.

25:01
Here is the thing, as you do this sort of practice, you might find out that there are way more alarm bells, way more dogs, behind the one that's right there right now. You might realize that you have a stock room filled with these old alarm dogs that are ready to go, ready to be excited. And that's okay. That's...

25:30
the human experience to some extent, especially in our modern environment. You're on the pathway of developing your awareness doing this, revealing all of these ways you have these old alarms that in some sense control your future, control your behavior, that summon your attention so thoroughly, and...

25:57
elicit such behaviors that you might not like.

26:03
Well, the answer is to become aware and then to begin to inhibit them. Now you don't have to do this. You don't. You can keep taking the, taking these experiences and shoving them out of sight, shoving them out of your mind. You can put them back under that carpet.

26:25
That's okay. But these alarms won't deactivate that way. There needs to be some practice of being with and letting them move on. And with time there will be more you, more intrinsically you, and less of your history. Less of your history dominating your view. Now that you have an idea of what this is about,

26:54
You can either replay this episode or just take this into your day. Please give it a fair trial. And by fair trial, I mean, try it at least a dozen times in different situations, uh, with different thoughts so you can find your bearings. And if you like it, this is a practice that you can do dozens and even hundreds of times.

27:23
in the coming weeks. I have found it a great first aid for myself as I will occasionally just feel agitated throughout the day, often just from my own thoughts. Oh, this is me worried about this. Okay. Within 20 to 60 seconds, I can practice being bored with it. That alarm begins to subside.

27:51
And then I can continue to move forward with my goals. Before, when I was so stacked with a cacophonous canine choir, I wasn't able to really act clearly because there was just too much conflicting for my attention. If you remember from a recent episode, I talked about cross motivations. Here are cross motivations again.

28:21
They exist in the alarms. Wherever you are at in this, go ahead walk it off. I'm going to review here some of the ideas from this episode. So first, sensitivity isn't bad. It's over-excitability that exhausts and wears us out, tightens us up and contracts our behavior. The world will always continue to move on.

28:50
Our mind will continue to produce thoughts and experiences until it doesn't. So with all of these thoughts and experiences, we need to step out of that story, out of the shoulds or the coulds or the agatas. Let's get bored by that history as it emerges. And by doing so in a low effort way,

29:17
a way of just getting in the pool of our experience, so to speak, softening our eyes, taking on this expression of boredom, we reduce the intensity of the story, we reduce the excitement of the story, we feed into our system a sense of boredom, and that can begin to diminish our internal alarms.

29:46
those dogs. Here's one last image to leave you with. If you were to be reading a book and you found it boring, the characters are just not interesting. It's just not grabbing your attention.

30:03
You would set that book down. And go on to something else.

30:09
So how about the stories of our lives that come out in the way these alarms do? Can we get bored with them? Set them down and live the life we need to live.

30:27
Alright, because talking about what we learn is so important to learning, I invite you to talk about these ideas with a friend. Please share your experience and hear theirs. And what if you got bored together?

30:44
If this episode was helpful for you, I wonder if you would help me by leaving a 5-star review in your podcast app. Any little bit helps the show get to more people. If you find this episode helpful, please share it with a friend that could use it. I'll leave you with a final question today. What did you notice coming up for you? What strategies? What ways of behavior that felt so compulsive?

31:14
and give yourself a pat on the back for being aware and practicing the boredom. Thank you for your attention.