Somatic practices bring you back to your body. In today’s world, with everything going on, the mind is overactive and overstimulated. This can create a disconnect with our bodies, which actually holds the answers to everything we experience on an emotional/feelings level. In this post I share an easy somatic practice to slow down an overactive mind and take you into your body for the answers.
What is the practice?
This somatic practice is called SIBAM and it stands for Sensation, Imagery, Behavior, Affect and Meaning.
This practice was developed by Dr. Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing.
Below is an explanation of this practice so you can do it yourself, but you can also download a free meditation taking you through the steps by clicking the Somatic Meditation button below.
How it works
1. Take a moment to orient you awareness outside of your body, into the environment you’re in.
Take note of what you notice around you. For instance what’s outside of the window, what’s in the room you’re in, and also notice what your body is in contact with, like the chair or floor. Take note of the textures, colours, shapes etc. around you and in touch with your body.
2. As you send your awareness out, what are the sensations you start noticing inside your body?
Consider weight, temperature, movement, heart rate, feelings of heaviness, lightness, stillness etc.
3. As you notice these sensations, are there images that emerge in your mind because of these sensations?
This can be visuals in relation to what you were visually orienting to outside, or the sensations you notice within. It can be memories, symbols, or a scene playing out in your mind.
4. With these images, and the sensations, is there a behaviour or a movement that wants to happen in your body?
Perhaps you feel the impulse to move, tense up or curl up your body, or stretch your arms above your head. Maybe you feel like you want to push something away, or start rocking your body, or give yourself a hug. Just notice what movement (behaviour) wants to happen.
5. As you follow the sensation, image and movement (behaviour) that wants to happen, is there an emotion that comes up?
Maybe you feel sadness, or joy, worry, hope. Perhaps you feel frustration, anger, or a glimpse of peace, wonder, awe… Just notice.
6. Finally, what is the meaning of this in your mind’s eye, what is your mind and thoughts saying about all of this?
What is the narrative that emerges for you as you notice the sensation, imagery, movement and emotion within?
What this exercise helps us with
This exercise supports our system in calming racing and fixed thoughts, actually expanding them, so we can move out of the mind and into the body.
By doing this, by moving into our body, we explore the spaces in which our experiences take shape (imagery, sensation, emotion etc.) and this slows down the pace of the overthinking mind, or the fixating mind, which can bring analysis paralysis and completely stops solutions.
By bringing the body also into the conversation, we ask the body: “what else is there?”
From this space we expand into clarity and solutions.
Below you can get a free meditation taking you through this exercise.
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