It might surprise you to learn that, by nature, I tend to be more of a thinker than a feeler.
Years ago, a somatic therapist asked me to feel the experience of gratitude in my body.
At the time, I had a regular gratitude practice. I made gratitude mandalas. I thought about what I was grateful for. I could name the people and experiences I loved and appreciated.
But I had never really stopped to feel gratitude.
So I did.
I slowed down and turned my attention toward the experience itself. And what emerged was a powerful, golden feeling that seemed to expand through my body.
It kept expanding until I began to fear I would burst apart with love.
I have remembered that experience for years.
Partly because it taught me something about gratitude. But even more because it showed me the difference between knowing something and experiencing it.
And it showed me that we can have limits around how much we are able to feel, even when what we are feeling is beautiful.
Somatic therapy is an invitation into this territory.
It asks us to step back, for a moment, from our conceptual understanding of ourselves and our lives and instead notice the body's direct experience of what is happening right now.
We might encounter anxiety first as tension in the chest, a fluttering in the belly, or a tightening in the throat—before it becomes the concept anxiety.
We might discover sadness as heaviness behind the eyes.
Anger as heat.
Or gratitude as something golden and expansive.
When we can stay with the direct experience of a feeling—without immediately escaping it, explaining it, or trying to change it—we begin to teach the nervous system something important:
I can feel this and still be okay.
Many of our patterns for moving away from difficult feelings began very early in life.
And they were intelligent.
Children can't regulate everything they experience on their own. We depend on stable adults to help us with feelings that are too much to manage alone.
When that co-regulation isn't available—whether because an adult simply wasn't present in a particular moment, or because they weren't capable of being present—the nervous system finds other ways to protect us from overwhelm.
We learn to move away from what feels like too much.
We might disconnect. Distract ourselves. Become very good. Get busy. Shut down. Take care of everyone else. Try to control what is happening around us.
These responses aren't random.
They are adaptations.
And often, they worked.
The trouble is that a response that protected us when we were young can become automatic long after we actually need it.
Rather than trying to reason our way out of an old pattern, somatic work gives us an opportunity to create a different experience in the body.
We notice the feeling—and discover that we can remain with it.
We learn to notice and linger with what feels steady, pleasurable, safe enough, or simply okay. That capacity becomes a resource when difficult feelings threaten to overwhelm us.
Sometimes we can even give the body a chance to complete something it couldn't complete in the past—the impulse to push away, move toward, speak, protect ourselves, or leave.
And over time, we can begin to reshape relational patterns that were established when we were very young.
The nervous system learns:
I can feel this and stay here.
I can feel this and still have choices.
I don't have to respond in the same way I once did.
We can understand ourselves beautifully and still find ourselves repeating the same patterns.
Sometimes what changes us isn't another explanation.
It's having a new experience.
Sometime this week, see if you can catch a pleasant moment—a sunset, the warmth of a hot shower, lying in bed after a busy day.
Instead of moving on to the next thing, pause.
Notice:
Where do I feel this in my body?
What does it actually feel like?
Can I bring three slow breaths right into that feeling?
You don't need to make anything happen. Just give yourself a few moments to experience what is already there.
You might be surprised by what you find.
