Clarifying Your Yes and No ⦸
I’ve been reflecting on how this time of year (holiday szn) can mean different things to each of us. You may also notice that different parts within you hold polarizing feelings about the holidays. One part might feel excited and joyful, another part may feel anxious, overwhelmed, perhaps nostalgic.
In seasons like this when there’s already so much to hold, and then layer in multiple social commitments, your embodied sense of yes and no can become a little muddy… harder to feel into with clarity and discernment.
One of my favourite somatic practices for re-establishing a felt sense of your YES and NO is soo simple, that it might even sound silly (until you try it!)
Here’s my somatic invitation for you today:
Find a comfortable seated or standing position. Feel your feet on solid ground. Spine tall. Pelvis rooted. Gravity as your anchor.
Feel into the edges of your body, your skin. The containment of your skin, holding you, serving as this boundary between the outside world and what’s on the inside.
Feel the boundary of your clothing, holding you, containing you.
Now, try saying “No” out loud. That’s it, just “No”, nothing else.
Pause and track your bodily sensations. What happens on the inside? A sense of contraction? Empowerment? A foggy feeling? Maybe a lightness or expansion? What happens to your posture?
Repeat this 2-3 more times.
Now, try saying “Yes” out loud.
Pause and track your bodily sensations. What happens on the inside? What sensations are present? What happens to your posture?
Repeat this 2-3 more times.
This practice is incredibly helpful for creating what we call a “Somatic Imprint” or “Somatic Bookmark” of how your yes and no feels on the inside… creating an internal map you can return to.
This practice becomes even more powerful when you have a practitioner as a loving witness helping gently prompt you in tracking your body’s felt sense in real time. It can become even more powerful when we add in a relational component of saying yes or no to each other and seeing how the body responds. This can be both edgy and fun to explore!
I hope you give the practice above a try and notice how it feels to lean into. You might choose to explore it before a work or familial gathering, as a way of orienting yourself beforehand. Enjoy :)