036 - Mini Musing: Bringing the Body Along for Feedback
Welcome back to Threshold Moments, dear listener. In today’s Mini Musing, I share my how my journey into somatics began with my experience of chronic pain as an athlete.
I tell you the story of the trip to Hawaii where I first encountered alternative healing practices. And I share the lessons I learned about feedback at my first post-college job training athletes.
I also unpack moments where feedback might be immediately helpful, and times when we might want to slow our sharing down and bring our body along for the process.
Connect with Sarah
Resources
Threshold Moments Episode 027 – Amina AlTai: Unraveling Codependency
Amina Change Your Life Ep 32: Expand Your Window of Tolerance with Somatic Exploration with Sarah Tacy
Episode Transcript
Sarah Tacy [00:00:05]
Hello, welcome. I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love, and life-saving tools. Join us.
Sarah Tacy [00:00:37]
Hello and welcome to Threshold Moments. Today on the mini musings, we are going to be looking at what in the world is somatic exploration? What in the world is nervous system support? When is a good time to get feedback? How can we include our body in the process while we work out patterns that no longer fit or things that trigger us that we'd like to be freed from?
Sarah Tacy [00:01:18]
And I want to say that this conversation is very much because of Amina Altai. She was on my podcast. We talked about codependency, people pleasing, and how we break those cycles in our lives and in the workplace. And she spoke specifically to being of the global majority and being a female and how that has very specific nuances to it.
Sarah Tacy [00:01:49]
Then I went on her podcast and to speak to the brilliance of her coaching, She asked me questions in ways that help me understand myself and understand the work that I do and understand how what I'm doing now is so closely linked to what I knew to be true at the age of 19. And I just think this actually speaks to her genius. My mom listened to that podcast as well as a loving mother might listen to all the things and She's like, Oh, now I get what you do.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:27]
And so I'm going to take a small piece of that conversation and go into it and the things that I was able to link. When I was in high school, I was a three sport varsity athlete. I had many injuries. I was able to play through them all to some extent. And eventually, when I injured my back, I had to be completely laid out.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:01]
I had teammates. It was my senior year. I had teammates carrying this reclining fold-up chair over to the sideline, and I would just lay horizontal, wrapped in blankets and kind of watch my whole season go by. And When it came around for freshman year soccer in college, I could barely get out of bed.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:27]
And so that was the first time that I didn't make a team, one that I was recruited for to begin with. And then I did end up playing lacrosse in college and generally with pain and through pain. But what I definitely came to understand during this time Because I'd say before this, I was a really, I think I was a really happy, hardworking human who got rewarded for working hard at things I love doing. And when my back went out and I could no longer play sports and I was no longer good at the thing that I got rewarded for, and it was painful to sit or lay, and that made it nearly impossible to be able to really participate in class or do my homework. And because of the level of pain, it was impossible to go out with friends or stay over a friend's house or due to the various medications I was taking from my back, that I was no longer able to drive. And just all these things I identified with, I want to say were taken away. That was how I experienced it. And it was my first experience with depression. I also noticed that depression crept in and it wasn't obvious. It was kind of like that analogy. I know there's probably a better one than this, but it makes a lot of sense to me if you were to put a frog in water and there's got to be a better one. DM me if you have a better one.
Sarah Tacy [00:05:12]
If you put a frog in water and you were to turn up the temperature, by the time the frog realizes the heat, it would be too late. Whereas if a frog jumped into boiling water, it would immediately kind of bounce right out of it. And I kind of found depression to be that way. And I just realized that chronic pain really seeped energy out of my system, took up so much of my focus and really just like, man, when my body is not doing well, it's so hard for my mind to do well. And I just began to see this mind body connection so clearly. And a year later would be when I took this kind of happenstance, divine trip to Hawaii, and I had thrown at my back again. It was one year later. And I took all the medication just to get on that plane.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:09]
And my dad said, you can be in pain in New Hampshire in January, or you can be in pain on the beaches of Hawaii, but you're going to have to, you know, take these pain killers to get there. And so I did that and I showed up and I was taught all about it just so happens that my best friend's mother was very into alternative medicine and alternative ways and had many friends who had healed themselves via visualization. And I learned about and experienced Reiki, Owatsu, reflexology, bodywork, soaking in the ocean, That week I ate vegetarian.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:56]
I had never had, this is going to sound crazy, but I had never had mangoes before. I had never had avocados before. They made Indian food. And just, I just want to say growing up in New Hampshire 30, 40 years ago, we basically ate what was local. And now we have access to all of these things.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:15]
She made wheatgrass shots, like, we're going to drink grass. What's going on? But within those 10 days that I was there, I started a pretty intensive visualization process. My body began to kind of clear itself of many of the medications. The pictures of before and after are just incredible.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:38]
And I was supposed to have a shot upon returning A cortisone shot. And I was so happy. I was like, mom, is it okay? She's like, of course, I'm not, you know, this is not what I want for you. And so I went back without even an Advil in my system.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:54]
And I began to, again, that appreciation for the mind and the body being included. I went back to college and I started a yoga practice. I would say it was in Hawaii that I first opened up a book about yoga and like, extend my arms out, inhale, pull them back to my sides, exhale, like thinking yoga is this, yoga is these postures. And over time, the definition of yoga would broaden to really just be my awareness of myself and space and time and that around me.
Sarah Tacy [00:08:29]
So I go home and I'm starting to understand energy more and We won't go into that energy conversations now, but when I started including and incorporating yoga into my schedule to really balance out the intensity of school and the intensity of practices and the pain, I started to recognize that if I received feedback while I was in the intensity of warrior two, That is when, say, my right foot is out in front of me, the knee is bent to 90, I'm bent at 90 at the hips, and my back leg is straight back, and then the heel goes down in the back, kind of like a high lunge. If I'm in this Warrior II position, and my teacher in college used to say, it was Amy Silzuca, she would say, are you doing this out of Love?
Sarah Tacy [00:09:32]
Or are you doing this to prove something to someone? Or it could be a down dog because my shoulder mobility is limited. And so down dog would be so painful. And I'd look at the people around me and I'd be like, you're a college athlete. Suck it up.
Sarah Tacy [00:09:47]
You can hold this. And when she would say, are you doing this out of love? Or are you doing this to prove something to someone? I would go, oh, that doesn't sound like love. Because when I do something out of love and I'm in warrior two, some days it's going to be that I could stay there longer.
Sarah Tacy [00:10:06]
I can stay in the tapas, that internal heat and burning and fire. And I can see that my body has so much more than my mind thinks it does. And other days when it's out of love, I might come out early and I might come into a child pose and I might make adjustments. And so that there's not going to be a right or wrong that is universal in the class. But if I keep tuning into, am I doing this out of love or am I doing this to prove something to somebody and I'm doing it while I am activated, while I'm having the challenge, it's easier to implement again.
Sarah Tacy [00:10:49]
And so I had a challenge every single season. I would go through a slump. I would start out and I would be so excited to start the new sport that I was playing or the new season. And I feel like I usually went out on a high, like get the goals, have the assist, be a great defender, whatever it was for the sport I was in.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:12]
And then I would start to worry about maintaining my reputation. And if I missed one goal, I would spend the rest of the game looping thinking about what I was going to tell the people on the sidelines who came to watch. And I was no longer in the present moment. So by having yoga, I could practice over and over in the present moment.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:41]
Why am I here? Why am I doing this? Why am I here? Why am I doing this? It also happened to be a really great prehab, prehabilitation instead of rehabilitation for me.
All the balancing, but that can be a different episode, maybe, not ever on this threshold moments. So I was a psychology major. I was also a religion minor. I was so interested in spirituality and the mind, clearly the body. I was in physical therapy all the time since the age of 14 on. And so these three worlds were going to come together. But I was so sure from a very young age that I was going to be a psychologist. I was very sure that I was on the track to go from the college I was in to a PhD program. But what I learned during this transition of including yoga was that being in my body, while learning the lesson and having some safety and activation, like I'm still in my range of tolerance and I'm having the same activation that I'm going to have later, and I'm receiving a message that I can start to fine tune in myself while I'm slightly activated. I'm not in the red. I'm not out of the window of tolerance. I'm not out of my range of resonance. And within it, but I'm in like fast health so that next time when I'm in fast health on the field and I start to get towards that edge where I would no longer be in my window of tolerance where I start looping, I can start to recognize it because I've already been there and I've had a teacher with me asking me to reflect while I'm in that space. Fast forward to graduating. I start as director of research and development at Blue Streak Sports Training in Connecticut, Stanford, Connecticut. And I did get to do some research and development, but also I ended up just training athletes for hours at a time on an overspeed treadmill where there's a mirror in front of them and they're going for four to 8 seconds at a high speed. and I'm giving them immediate feedback on their form.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:00]
There's a mirror in front of them. It's unlike most treadmills you've seen. So directly in front of them, there's a big mirror. There's nothing blocking them between their body and that mirror except for a bar to hold on to if they need to or if the protocol calls for it. And what we learned from John Fapier, who is a sports physiologist, was that if you can get feedback immediately or within 15 seconds of the action, you're more likely to be able to make a change.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:31]
If you can get feedback within 15 seconds or even immediately, then you're more likely to get to keep that change. I might say to someone, I put my hands directly over their knees. When you're sprinting, you want to knee drive around 90 degrees. And I might put my hands slightly above their knee if it's not quite there. I'm like, wow, that's amazing knee drive.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:55]
And sometimes just that little positive feedback can fuel a little bit more. Any chance your knees come all the way up to my hand? Wow, look how that's touching my hands, see in the mirror, feel it in your body. And then next thing you know, that's just a pattern that they get to keep. So what I'm learning over and over again is that when there's some activation that matches the activation that they're gonna be in later and there's enough safety around it and they're getting feedback, and I'm gonna say like feedback that they're open to, then you get to keep it and it's very different.
Sarah Tacy [00:15:33]
So what I realized was like, oh, this is so different than if I, when I go to, an appointment, if I were to go to a psychologist, and I want to say there's such a huge, important place for a psychologist and psychiatrist, but this is my personal experiences. If I go and I sit on a couch and I talk about a thing and I'm super calm and I'm relaxed and I'm laid back, and now I'll take it into parenting and I talk about a situation for parenting. Now say something happens and I get really activated, or maybe it's between myself and my husband, I get really activated. When I go out of that range of tolerance and my amygdala gets hot, I don't have as much access to my prefrontal cortex.
Sarah Tacy [00:16:20]
I don't have the same access to the information I had if I received it while I was calm. If you can see my hands, like one is up high. where I'm at when I'm activated, and the other is down low when I'm getting the information of what I could do next time I'm activated. And if you've ever felt really upset, say you're in a long-term relationship and you felt really upset with your partner, and you're feeling the feelings of anger, or maybe you're feeling the feelings of sadness, it's a little bit like when you smell peppermint. or you smell your favorite soup that your mom made when you were a kid, if that was something that happened in your house.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:05]
If you smell the peppermint again later, it's going to activate the memories that were there when you smelled it the first time. If you smell that soup in a deli in New York, you might remember the soup that your mother made you when you were a kid. So certain smells, certain songs, sounds, and feelings will bring up a lens that reminds us of every other time in our life when we've felt that way, which I think can sometimes make it hard when we're recounting things on a mental level and our body is calm. Or maybe we recall it and our body starts to get heated and we're still not finding tools to meet our activation in the session.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:54]
So when I'm doing nervous system support work with people, if they were to bring a story to me and say, Hey, there was this time or what was, you know, what's current is I went to go meet my coach and as soon as they started raising their voice, I started to, I just, I went quiet and I started to freeze. And now there could be so many layers and so many places that we could go, but I might start at like preparation if we were to back up a little bit. Let's back that story up a little bit. What happened the moments before it? What were you feeling in your body?
Sarah Tacy [00:18:38]
We might talk about the first word or how did your body feel when you walk through the door? Where did you feel it? And being able to track the feelings in the body So we really have to slow the story down a whole bunch generally. And then are there any layers of support that we could add?
Sarah Tacy [00:18:57]
So this might not land for everyone who's listening, but sometimes it's, oh yeah, you know, I'm going to imagine I walk into the room and my body actually already senses the tension. And maybe we time jump again to being a little kid, but say we don't, say we stay there and my body starts to feel the tension. And maybe we could find a layer of support. Maybe that is like the widening episode that we did here on Threshold Moments. What else is in the room?
Sarah Tacy [00:19:28]
And I think I started to say something and didn't complete it that some people might say like, oh yeah, I imagine my healthy and whole ancestor standing behind me and I can really feel less alone. And when I feel less alone, I can start to notice that my body starts to fill out a little bit more and I start to feel the ground beneath me. And you can begin to even use your imagination as a resource, like who else might be there? Who else might be accompanying you, seen or unseen?
Sarah Tacy [00:20:01]
What else was actually there? And we can still go through and play through the moment that we can start to meet the body as we go. So, okay, here's the activation again. So that then if you were to go back into that space, and I'm not saying that this is all what this work is, but if you're going to go back in that place, your body can start to feel the activation and remember the sequence.
Sarah Tacy [00:20:26]
Okay, like now I take a breath. Now I find my feet. Now I notice that there's more around me. Now I imagine that I have my ancestors standing back behind me. to the right today.
Sarah Tacy [00:20:38]
Now I can feel the backside of my body. Now I take another breath. Or now I have choice. I'm not going to go. I'm actually not going to go into that room alone.
Sarah Tacy [00:20:49]
I know it's waiting on the other side. I am going to do this over Zoom. I'm going to do it on a text. I'm going to actually bring my friend physically with me. And it's not that we always get to be so prepared that we never get caught off guard.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:05]
But as we are working with the scenario, instead of just giving a mental context of what's there is we go into the activation, we notice the activation in our body, and we start working with the body as the story unfolds. We start noticing where and what images and what timeline and what support we can add so that we're not just going in for catharsis. we're going in to possibly add some stability to our body as it brings forth the stories. And it's not unusual that the body may like push away with the hands or make a movement and like, oh, the body has these unfinished patterns. Should we finish some of these patterns?
Sarah Tacy [00:21:57]
I wonder what it would feel like we finish these patterns as you tell the story. So The way that I think that it was interpreted too on the podcast that I was on was that giving immediate feedback is helpful. And that's not always true. So I just want to be clear on that too, which is like if a child were to do something, say my little one hits me and I have this like physiological reaction of like, oh, why did you do that?
Sarah Tacy [00:22:29]
And like right now might not actually be the time to decipher why or to tell the lesson. It might be a time to like take a breath, reflect, try to see my child, try to connect to my child. And then maybe at another point when, you know, I have a different therapist who would say like, oh, you know, strike when the iron's cold. Tom Kubasic, I think I'm saying his last name right.
Sarah Tacy [00:22:56]
So this might seem the opposite. Strike when the iron is cold. The difference is, are we speaking to someone? Are we giving feedback when someone is open to it? So in the yoga class, open to it.
Sarah Tacy [00:23:13]
In the coaching situation, open to it. In a therapy session, open to it. In a heated moment where somebody is out of their range of regulation, out of the place where they have access to prefrontal cortex, some reasoning, their breath, their tools. Maybe not the moment for that. Maybe that is just the moment for stabilizing and connecting.
Sarah Tacy [00:23:37]
But Amina then said, like, as a coach, how would this apply? And the answer was that you can do role-playing, right? Like, this is another way, role-playing. Oh, your boss comes to you. You want to say this?
Sarah Tacy [00:23:51]
What would you say? How does it feel? And in that role-playing, you can start to notice the activation of if you had to say this thing and you're saying, yes, I would love some feedback and yes, I would like to bring my body along with me. So I'm going to notice my body. I'm going to slow it down now so that I'm better prepared when I go to do the thing.
Sarah Tacy [00:24:10]
Does that make sense? I'm pausing as if you could give me an answer. I do imagine on the other side that you're like, yes or no, and not quite. So feedback while we're activated, but in our range of resonance, in our range of regulation, in our window of tolerance, this place where we can feel embodied, where we feel somewhat stable, even if it's fast or slow possibly, and we get feedback, I'm going to say like in the fast health of playing a sport, in the fast health of a debate, in the fast health of a hard conversation, or maybe it's like the slow health of a hard conversation, that you could practice it with another.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:10]
You could work in a somatic session so that your body is included so that there's kind of a match of the practice round. or of the reliving it, but you don't relive it without then adding more layers of support. I just want to say this is why I love Amina, because I feel like when she interviewed me and I was explaining this, it just made so much sense. And I'm wondering, does it still make sense? Long and short of it, for me, it's always been so clear that the body needs to be included in my healing process and that when I'm including the body, whether through movement and feedback or through working through a mental, what I would think is like a mental story to notice that my body has its own story too. And if that can get included, then I generally get to keep more of the new pattern. It feels more like real time activation and attunement and alignment, and because it feels real time and aligned, that that is possibly where the alchemy is coming from. I'll finish out by saying, show me again and again ways in which I can find healthy activation while being witnessed lovingly by another.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:48]
Who is there to show me resources that I couldn't see on my own or updated ways to do things that I couldn't see on my own. People who will act as loving, reflective mirrors in times which don't feel totally peaceful to me, but I am available for feedback. May I have times like that? May I have people like that who are attuned? May my body be included.
Sarah Tacy [00:27:25]
Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome.
Sarah Tacy [00:27:50]
It's very easy. It's very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacey.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe and like. Apparently, it's wildly useful.
Sarah Tacy [00:28:03]
So we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom, subscribe, rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.