Movement and Stress — and Dance!

[progressally_objectives]“Trust your body. Listen to it — not [only] to the specific circumstances of the moment but to the deep, primal messages of your evolutionary heritage:

I am at risk/I am safe.

I am broken/I am whole.

I am lost/I am home.”

Emily Nagoski

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When we are stressed, we feel at risk, lost, even broken. Learning to manage stress means listening to the signals of the body so we know when to take nurturing action that brings us to a feeling of safety and wholeness… of being at home.

We’ve been doing this through paying attention to the breath and to the body. This week is about taking some “action.” It’s about movement.

In these first two videos, I introduce the important concepts we will be working with this week.

Introduction to Week Three

Download your “Mindfulness Practices” lab report here.

What is Movement?

Remember when we learned about the body’s stress response cycle in Week One? In general, when it works as evolution “designed” it, it goes something like this:

An even shorter summary is: RISK –> ACTION –> SAFETY

We can now see a few problems with this model for 21st-century hominids:

1. In most cases, neither fighting nor fleeing are culturally acceptable options (though you may want to, you cannot punch your boss or run away from him)
2. Sometimes, we cannot fight OR flee, so instead, we FREEZE.
3. And if we FREEZE, or we don’t FIGHT OR FLEE, the stress cycle is interrupted, and does not resolve.

Stressus Interruptus

When our “first-world problems” stress us out, we usually cannot discharge our stress the way our hairier ancestors did. We either bottle up the rage or the desire to escape, or we numb ourselves. This numbing, as I’ve shared before, often takes the form of disordered eating or drinking, or compulsive behaviors such as sex or shopping. (There’s a reason we sometimes talk about the “Four F’s” that make up basic human “drives”: Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and …err…., sex.)

What’s a modern ape to do?

We need to take ACTION that discharges the stress response. We need to complete the cycle. As Emily Nagoski writes, you need to “do things that communicate to your body, ‘You have escaped and survived!'”

In short, the research tells us that these activities include:

• walking
• running
• dancing or any other form of physical activity/exercise
• sleep
• affection and connection with others
• meditation and mindfulness
• yoga
• tai chi
• therapeutic crying (the proverbial “good cry”)
• primal screams (in an appropriate context!)
• art or other creative outlets
• expressive writing/journaling
• self-compassion and kindness (more on this next week)

You’ll recognize a few things we’ve already learned (or will learn) in this class. As for the rest…. as I said in the video, experiment! Find the activities and restorative practices that are nurturing for YOU.

Just Dance. Shake It Off. Let It Go.

Can I suggest a dance song for you though? Get your Taylor Swift on and “Shake It Off.”

Why Ms. Swift? Well, have you ever watched a nature documentary and seen an animal that’s about to be eaten “play dead”? That’s an extreme FREEZE response…. a form of our numbing behaviors. It’s an evolutionarily ancient strategy to make the moment of death less painful. But imagine instead that the animal manages to survive. What does he do next?

He starts shaking. He’s literally discharging the interrupted stress response by shaking it off. Perhaps you’ve experienced this if you’ve ever woken up from a surgery that involved anesthesia (an induced freeze). Often you come out of the surgery trembling… it’s the body’s natural way of discharging the stress associated with immobility.

This week, we’re discharging the stress. So start by shaking it off!

Take a look at the list above and select an activity that can help you discharge your accumulated, interrupted stress-response energy. Which items on the list appeal to you?

For me, it’s dancing. I dance in two different competitive and performance lines throughout the year, so that’s MY go-to form of self-care. I find that learning complicated choreography, getting feedback on the small changes that will improve my form, and seriously sweating while twirling and kicking — and even whip-nae-nae-ing! — reduces my stress and makes me feel amazing. Plus it’s my girl-time when I get to hang out with my dancer friends.

What I have a harder time with, though I’m working on it, is just letting go and dancing in a way that feels good to ME. I like choreography and counts of 8. I sometimes freeze when the coach says “improvise!”

But when I put on some music at home, with no one watching, and just start moving … it’s a totally different experience. I tune in to how my body wants to move, to the stretches that feel good and the ones that don’t, to internal sensations and muscle movements, and to external sensations like my feet on the floor or my hands in the air (like I just don’t care!)

I think this is part of why we LOVE watching kids dance. They’re so uninhibited. They just move in the ways that make their bodies feel good. There’s no plan, no choreography. It’s just pure, joyful, in-the-moment aliveness.

In fact, I snapped this video the other day of my son (age 6) dancing to the music that played while a new level in his Wii game loaded.

If dancing appeals to you, try channeling your inner six-year-old and just MOVE.

Beyond the stress-reducing, mind-quieting, heart-pumping, smile-inducing benefits, it’s a way of connecting, I believe, to a universal human energy. As a species, we danced long before we wrote epics or built cities or filed tax returns. Dance is a way to connect to our primal life force.

Happy dancing!

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“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
Alan Watts

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body.”
Martha Graham

“To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.”
Agnes de Mille

“When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way.”
Wayne Dyer

“The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.”
Charles Baudelaire