Assess the Body to Hack the Brain
Transitional seasons are full of shifts. I like to mark this time in the calendar with the seasonal transition of Late Summer because my garden pulls my attention with cooler mornings paired with hot afternoons of tomato harvesting.
In our open community call last week, folks talked about the transitions they’re in: reorgs, new leadership at work, career changes, back-to-school routine changes, and the election season.
And with all types of transitional shifts come change and uncertainty. Two words that make human brains freak out! Am I right?
I get it. We can comprehend the why. Our brains evolved to keep us safe in a world of life or death danger from other animals and wilderness. In that type of environment, one of the main ways the brain protected us was to make sure we made choices that ensured stability and the status quo. Fast forward millions of years, and now our environment requires our brains to flex quickly and often and creatively.
Given evolution and society, it’s natural that transitions bring with them increases in anxiety, stress, and possibly grief or loss.
How do we lovingly hack our brains to work on our behalf then during transitions?
In last week’s community session on Semester Scaries, I shared a 4-step process to navigate transitions.
The first step: Assess.
We bring our attention to assessing the body and any felt sensations. This assessment need only take a couple minutes, moving through a body scan or noticing the breath.
But why the body first when the issue with change is with the brain?
Two main reasons.
First, this mindful pause resets our nervous system by bringing us closer to our window of tolerance. Living in our fast-paced world, overing culture at work, and the menopause transition all combine to keep our cortisol levels chronically high that we almost don’t notice when we are ramped up because it becomes a new normal. Our bodies are good at adjusting.
Second, felt sensations are actually the first thing that happens in response to our environment. We think we have thoughts first because we’ve programmed ourselves to prioritize cognition. What all of neuroscience and somatics show is we experience felt sensations in the body first, then those sensations get assigned emotions based on our past (this is why healing embodiment work matters so much), then those emotions trigger the brain’s stories based on other times you experienced that emotion (remember the brain’s job is to protect you so there’s often a negative bias here), and finally we act out based on that contagion.
Here’s a little image I use in my resilient leadership and team trainings:
The response cycle happens in a flash, which is why we need to be intentional about slowdowns and pauses. That brings us back to the invitation in transitional times and spaces. They are exactly that - a chance to slow down and notice what’s happening in yourself as well as around you so that you can then take an embodied action step forward in the direction of what you actually want. Rather than being reactive.
Additionally, who you surround yourself with matters on a deep embodied level, even if you are not conscious of it. This is why I love doing this work in our group. Community is a chance to be held within something bigger than ourselves. Bigger and more spacious than our anxieties, worries, and overthinking. Community takes us out of the narrow thinking in our brain and places us in a bigger, more expansive environment.
And when you do that in an intentional, growth-oriented community like ours, it creates a sense of psychological safety and trust that allows the brain then to stretch itself and take some nudge-like risks.
You deserve to be surrounded by people who genuinely care about your well-being, who are invested in your growth, happiness, and success, AND who can offer strategies and hacks for growing the life you want. I invite you into our community.
Here’s how a current client describes our group:
This is a community of people who want to live a values-centered life rather than a job-centered life. It's a community of tremendous support, kindness, and zero bullshit. I show up because this community keeps me sane. It continually reminds me that I am not my job and that I can have the life I want.