PLAY IT SAFE: PUSHING PHYSICAL BOUNDARIES FOR PERSONAL POTENTIAL
When was the last time you experienced feeling unsafe?
Chances are your mind went straight to the most scary experience of the last 10 years. We tend to think of safety in terms of black and white / on and off / the extreme perimeters.
I’m interested in the subtler shades of unsafe … the gray ones.
Your body was designed to be a highly sensitive receiver of environmental information. Your senses pick up light, fragrances, heat energy, touch, sounds from your environment. Likewise, you constantly translate signals from other people via facial expressions, body language, vocal tone, and spatial proximity, that can tell you about what’s going on around you relationally. There is a lot of information about your reality that you can intake as valuable input … or ignore.
The way you tune (mindfulness) your receiver (body) is up to you: Do you ignore the input / or integrate it?
Regardless of how well you consciously pay attention to the information your body is picking up or not, the fact is your body is constantly listening for signs of safety or danger.
IT’S LITERALLY ITS JOB.
That information … those cues of safety & danger … determine so many of your unconscious habits (that in turn pre-determine 95% of your
s e e m i n g l y - conscious choices).
We tend to be familiar with, and recognize how, our body-mind system responds to extreme danger - just imagine a lion or intruder charging into your space right now. Chances are you’d run / or fight / or possibly even be so frightened you’d freeze in place. These responses (actions) are governed by the Vagus Nerve … and I promise we’ll talk more about this soon.
Most of us (pathology & extreme trauma aside) also know what it feels like to experience the feeling of safety (our rest & digest state of being). Maybe it’s through being held by someone you love / or cozying into bed at night / or running on a beach somewhere. There’s a distinct FEELING to it. My experience is that safety feels like Home. (However it is you qualify “Home.”) That place where you can settle in, just be you, and know that whatever choices you make will be supported.
There’s a lot of space between safe Home … and an intruding Lion.
Those are the gray unsafe places that our body-mind is constantly qualifying as more or less dangerous.
So, again, and with that in mind … when was the last time you experienced feeling unsafe?
Signals of feeling unsafe (from a physiologic body-mind perspective) include: holding your breath / rapid breathing / tightening your muscles / hyper-focusing on a single task / speeding up a movement / being overly cautious of a movement / glazed expression / darting wandering eyes / tight jaw / throbbing heart beat / decreased proprioception & interception (ability to sense your Self) / negative self-talk (I can’t do THAT)… to name a few.
Now, I don’t know about you but that also sounds like a running list of things I’ve experienced, and witnessed in others, during movement practices.
We often feel unsafe in our movement practices because in absence of real worry (read Fright: like being chased by lions and experiencing true famine) we fear things like getting “IT” wrong / disappointing someone (our own expectations included) / potentially hurting ourself / or lacking the ability to discern the signals our body is sending to our brain constantly - signals of safety or danger - because we choose not to pay attention to (or value) the free wisdom available to us from within our Self.
My question is - What choices & habits, in your movement practice, feel SAFE to you? Are they (honestly) keeping you safe or keeping you stuck? A resource or limitation?
Are you interested in pushing your personal boundaries of safety by experiencing security in expectedly unsafe feeling scenarios?
Are you interested in exploring, through movement, the gray areas of unsafe in an effort to expand your definition of what/where is safe for you? To enlarge where in your movement … your body … your life … you feel at Home.
Can you knowingly choose to experience surprise / startle / and discomfort in your body for the sake of upgrading and broadening your personal definition of safety … and potential?
We expand our positive perception of the world and our role in it when we challenge our safety narratives, and how we should behave in / respond to / and experience reality.
And it can be as simple as choosing to be aware of and explore differently your movement practice.
It comes down to self-regulation, and utilizing personal tools that interrupt the impulse to fight / flight / freeze. Tools that redirect our perceptual experience away from feeling unsafe to one of feeling tethered by a sense of security. That security comes from within … the wisdom that your experience of reality is not finite, and possibly not even accurate … that you have a choice in how you experience and interact with the world. The more you finesse your self-regulation tools the more your body-mind trusts itself, and begins to more correctly distinguish between true signals of danger and misinterpreted ones.
Self-regulation tools can be as simple as remembering to breathe … or dilating your perception wider, rather than vigilantly focusing … releasing muscle tension … or even smiling.
I’m an advocate for “play” because it’s the place we each learned how to self-regulate while discerning between feelings of fight/flight and feelings of happiness/excitement. Similar chemicals appear in our physiology during frightened sympathetic nervous system responses, as when we experience the emotions of happiness and excitement - like in play. Our “thinking brain” tells our “emotional brain” when/if we should feel safe or not … whether we are secure or in danger. Mostly this happens through self-regulation (and co-regulation: again, Vagus Nerve … we’ll talk … I promise); or having the capacity to focus attention / control emotions / while managing thinking, behavior, and feelings.
Which is driven by experiences. The more times you experience these chemicals the more you are able to discern whether you are feeling safe or in danger as you experience them. Through movement and play you create the discernment needed to distinguish between feelings of safety and danger … especially when you play/engage with others and witness their response to the experience. (Are they happy or scared? Should I be?)
You create a clearer sense … a marked and robust outline of … the Home Feeling.
When you know what Home (Safety) feels like … how your body-mind system recognizes / responds / and interfaces with it … it creates the capacity to explore / innovate / and push your limits & boundaries. When you know where Home (Safe) is …. What it feels like … and how to return to it when we feel little lost … you take more chances … you risk … YOU GROW.
These same tools and experiences have direct carry-over to life skills. When you learn through a movement practice how to discern signals of un/safety coming from your body-mind (breathing / tension / feelings / etc.) you can potentially apply and recognize those signals elsewhere … in social settings / at work / in relationships / even in true danger. Through movement you can learn to hear the free information that your body is sending you daily about your Self and your world … your reality. It can be as simple as listening to your own breath.
What looks a whole lot like exercise is a space to optimize your whole self.
What looks like physicality is … physical-psychology.
The rewards go beyond muscles & movement … they reset & optimize your mindset.
HOMEWORK: Pick a favorite breathing technique … it can be the Coherency Breath I described in THIS blog post. It could be Dr. Andrew Weil’s 4-7-8 breath I’ve discussed with those that have signed up to receive my emails. Or it could simply be listening to the sound of your own breath as you inhale & exhale.
Then pick a familiar exercise you have some experience & comfort with (It could be a Yoga Asana / Pilates exercise / Lifting a weight / or other)
Do a few repetitions to gauge how you feel
The way you just “did it” is your safe / familiar / routine way
Now … choose a slightly unsafe way to do the exercise: change where your feet are / turn your head another way / place your hands somewhere different / do it in reverse / … there are a lot of options
Notice if you experience signals of unsafely (described earlier)
If not … pick a slightly more unsafe choice to explore
When you recognize signals of unsafely … ask yourself to practice you favorite breathing technique as you continue
Keep increasing (incrementally and slowly) your unsafe choices to expand your definition of “safe.”
The goal is NOT to scare yourself … but to broaden where & how you can recognize and induce the HOME Feeling (Safety)
~ james CRADER
