We practice Orienting in Somatic Experiencing because it is a tool for settling the nervous system and a crucial survival skill- where am I right now? What is actually happening around me? Do I need to respond? With those questions answered, our animal bodies can either respond or relax.

Sometimes our bodies get stuck or lost in time, or we dissociate because what is happening inside of us (interoception) is overwhelming. We practice Orienting in Somatic Experiencing to bring us into the present moment by putting our attention on what is outside of us (exteroception): “I am here, in this room, and this is what is happening here.” Orienting can also override the frantic action of the amygdala (the part of the brain that triggers the fight or flight response) by emphasizing the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that sorts and categorizes). Simply naming the objects in our immediate environment can be tremendously helpful, and using all of our senses to locate ourselves in time and space really grounds us in the Now. This assumes that the Now is ok!

Here’s a “Quick and Easy” orienting exercise led by Steve Hoskinson of Organic Intelligence.

I assisted Steve for a couple of years when he was teaching for the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute. Since then he has moved into teaching in his own unique way, still focused on helping people integrate their whole selves into the present.

Original post from September 2015:

I am late to the game on this, but after talking with one of my clients recently about being extra-sensitive to the feelings of others, among other things, I finally did a little search online about it.

I have never identified as a “Highly Sensitive” person because (according to my therapist) I have excellent coping skills, and (it’s my feeling that) I’m not THAT sensitive. I’m lucky enough to be able to dial it in and dial it out most of the time, but there are times when I have to do a little self defense in the empathic realm, and my education about how to do that has been piecemeal.

There are a lot of us out there who get stronger signals from the world, which many of us read as ANXIETY, dreadful inexplicable anxiety. Somatic Experiencing has helped me tremendously with that, making it possible for me to experience anxiety as a felt-sense phenomenon that may or may not have a real issue it is trying to help me with. My discernment skills around that have gotten pretty good, and I may be able to teach you some of those skills if you like.

But–in big energy situations where my senses tend to get weirdly overwhelmed (a great example for me is festivals, where lots of crazy energy is running rampant) I have found it necessary to to a little self-care up front with little practices I’ve made up on my own. If the message about how to take care of oneself in this way has had a hard time reaching me, a person who has been surrounded by resources for over 20 years of working in the healing arts, then maybe it’s having a hard time reaching you, too.

Here’s a local class for you sensitive peeps out there that might prove helpful: http://www.annaholden.com/sensitive-self-program-series/sensitive-self-defense-training-course/

I’ve been clicking around on this website, too: http://hsperson.com
Something about the language of this site speaks to me less (I don’t identify with it), but I appreciate her focus on research, and have her book reserved at the library.

UPDATE, August 2021:

I never did read that book, because it didn’t really speak to me. Here are some practical ways I work with being sensitive on a daily basis:

• If I am feeling something hard and it’s not obviously attached to the moment, I ask, “Is this mine?” Sometimes it is, and then I will use my SE tools to help me through it. Sometimes it’s not, and just asking that question helps dispel it. If it’s not mine and simply identifying it doesn’t allow it to move on, I will encourage it to keep *moving through me and consciously try not to attach myself to it, no matter how fascinating it is. It is a choice, then, and it makes less sense to hold other people’s stuff (off the clock) when I have my own to work with.
• *My teachers have counseled letting things move through rather than resisting. Resistance creates stickiness; allowing things to move through–well, they just keep moving. If there is inherent stickiness, I sometimes use a visualization to help it along. My metaphor is star energy that sweeps from the top of my head through my whole body (and whatever I am touching) into the ground, but you do you.
• When I know that I will be working with something challenging- a situation, a client’s particular issues, just a lot of stuff all at once- I place myself firmly in the context of my little piece of being. I bow in gratitude to the archetypal energies of the four directions, acknowledging my ancestors and the borrowed bit of the earth that my spirit animates right now, and in this way I feel more connected to all that is. No need to shoulder this stuff alone, especially since I didn’t create it all myself.
• When I have agreed to hold someone else’s psychic, physical, or emotional stuff for a while, I purposefully set it down once we have finished. I have a little ritual around it, takes about 15 seconds. I do this better in a professional setting, could benefit from remembering to do it when it’s less formal.

In my cosmology, I have agreed to walk the earth and do some amount of the work that needs doing. Discerning what is mine, asking for help, and cleaning up when done are all ways that keep me working without exhausting myself or burning out.

The Rolf Pelvic Lift is a classic piece of self-care. I often recommend this for people, usually with more emphasis on allowing the weight of the body to pour through the feet into the table and a lot more cues about letting your butt kind of go along for the ride, but if we have done that in the office together already this is a nice little reminder for you. Benefits of this nice slow movement increase with patience and a little practice, and can include a settled nervous system and a spine with a little more space and ease at the base.

In my own adventures of owning and maintaining a human body I have (re?)discovered the joys of “tummy time”. Parents will be familiar with tummy time as a thing we have our babies do to develop their back and neck muscles that eventually becomes rolling over, crawling, and the like. We basically plop them down on a blanket on their bellies and try to entertain them while they work for that strength and coordination, and they automagically know what to do.

Well, guess what? All the sitting, slouching, forward leaning posture we spend our lives in means that as adults we begin to lose that lovely back extension we worked so hard for in our earliest days, and we don’t seem to automagically know how to fix it. I am finding that a few minutes on my belly on the floor each day goes a long way toward making me feel more balanced, strong, and coordinated. I credit Vitality Pilates and Heidi Gans, PT, for having me do this regularly, and my own silly brain for connecting it to the thing we all did as babies quite naturally.

I found a nice little video from Bex Burton on YouTube with some basic Pilates-inspired tummy time exercises that is a great place to start. IMPORTANT: Supporting your spine by lifting the navel off the ground is the foundation of this exercise. If you are sacrificing that lifted navel to accomplish any of those other moves, back up, hug it up, and make the gesture smaller. When my back is really mad or I have been bent over gardening or working for awhile sometimes simply laying face down and hugging my spine with my navel and just thinking about extending is enough work.

Remember that the intent here is to counteract a deep and enduring slouch and that even if all you do is lay stretched out on the ground on your belly you will be accomplishing some of that. Lifting your navel makes it safer for your low back, and the other moves she throws in there make it more challenging and effective.

See you on the rug!

I just found this little gem, an embodiment/movement practice in app and book form put together by fellow Guild graduate Ruthie Fraser. I have downloaded the app and am itching to explore!

http://www.stackyourbones.com

Awhile back I had a whole rash of people coming in with the same kind of rotator cuff issues. It inspired me to look for something they could do themselves to help with what is clearly a common problem.

These “most famous on the internet” physical therapists have some basic tests for you to see if you are dealing with an Impingement issue here. If you ARE, then you can do these exercises for making space around the impingement, and these for strengthening and stabilizing.

It is my experience that doing nothing and hoping that a persistent rotator cuff issue will just go away on its own is not likely to work. Massage/bodywork can sometimes help get things back on track, but truly doing something about it on the regular– like, really really regular–has a tendency to help. I have a funky shoulder that pretty much needs me to do a set of simple exercises three times a week on an ongoing basis to be happy. It helps! Not doing them makes my shoulder hurt again after not too long.

I recommend that people with sharp pains in their shoulder joints get themselves a good PT and then do what they are told!

A client just asked me if there was something he could do to help his chronically stiff and achey neck on his own. Of course! I made a short playlist of YouTube videos to help this goal.

First, my Somatic Experiencing training tells me that orienting is hugely important for the neck, as the desire to point our most-used information-gathering tools at objects and scenes of interest is crucial to our sense of safety, and that desire can help unlock movement potential.

Next, from Mary Bond, a Rolfing Movement teacher, some physical cues to help ease the subtle movements at the top of the spine.

Finally, if you are looking for a slightly longer exploration, a short neck-releasing Awareness Through Movement class by David Zemach-Bersin of the Feldenkrais Institute.

Movement is life! When it comes to the neck, the more subtle the release, the more powerful– if you can get the strong muscular ribbons on all sides of your spine to let go, even just a little bit, the big movers will have more freedom to let go, too.

I just did this nice little self-care ritual of Mary Bond’s. I spend a lot of time in my bare or socked feet at work, but as she points out, that flat surface isn’t particularly interesting to my feet, and just threading my fingers through the toes as she suggests was a revelation.

This past weekend I was up by the Hamma Hamma river on the Olympic Peninsula and was walking barefoot on the sun-warmed river rocks, massaging my feet on the old logs, and allowing the forest floor to stimulate all of the receptors on the bottoms of my feet. So good! It makes me appreciate how my son Huck has toughened up his feet with a mostly barefoot summer and now his steps don’t have to be so tender and tentative when he walks the earth that way.

Dr. James Oschman has been a friend of the Rolfing community for a long time. He has theorized that fascia is the primary energy conductor of the body, and written a couple of books explaining how “energy medicine” is a real thing and not just an airy-fairy new-age wish.
This article is about receiving positive electrons, which are powerful antioxidants, from the surface of the Earth by walking barefoot outside, a practice called “Earthing”.
One of the primary goals of a Structural Integration series is to help people find support from the earth– or the ground– so that they can find the length that comes from having a nicely rooted foundation. Waking up the soles of the feet to sensation and discovering their inherent ability to adapt to the varied surfaces of the earth gives us an all-over feeling of greater security and lightness of movement.
Here, Mary Bond, a wonderful Rolf Movement teacher, has several exercises designed to wake up the feet and lower leg.

Mary Bond is the Chair of the Rolf Institute’s Rolf Movement program. She has authored two books, Balancing Your Body and The New Rules of Posture, and numerous magazine articles on bodywork and movement. Her teaching emphasis is on the practical sensory and movement awareness that contributes to sustainable improvements in mind and body functioning.

Here is a preview for a DVD that should be available November 1, 2011 that shows how to do a regular household chore with less strain: