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Show Notes

In this episode, I’m sharing another short somatic practice inspired by the changing seasons here in Alaska — this time exploring our relationship with cold temperatures and how our bodies respond to them.

As we move toward winter, I invite you to get curious about what happens in your body when you feel cold, or even just think about being cold. We explore how our bodies often respond by bracing, tightening, or holding tension — sometimes in obvious ways, and sometimes through subtle sensations we might not even notice.

Together, we practice noticing those patterns and exploring what it might feel like to soften into the cold, rather than automatically resisting it. We also touch on how movement can help us generate warmth from the inside, and how learning to trust that capacity can change our relationship with winter and being outside.

This episode is an invitation to get curious about your body's habits around cold — and to explore whether there might be moments when a little less bracing and a little more softness feels possible.

Timestamps

00:00 — Introducing a somatic practice for cold weather
01:00 — Noticing your body's response to cold
02:00 — Using sensations, images + posture to build awareness
03:00 — Exploring cold through experience or memory
04:00 — Recognizing bracing + tension in the body
05:00 — Noticing subtle patterns of holding
06:00 — Experimenting with softening into the cold
07:00 — Movement + generating warmth from within
08:00 — Updating our body's habitual responses
08:45 — Closing reflections + noticing what changes

Submit your questions for the Q&A [here]

Photos and links from this episode:
www.mindandmountain.co/podcast

Transcript

Sarah 0:03
Welcome back. I've got another somatic snack for you, and I just before this recorded one on darkness, and I realized right after I finished that that I needed to accompany it with My favorite somatic exploration for cold. Yeah, another part of the season that the arc of the year is turning toward for those of us here in the north. Colder temperatures, lots of things that come with that, and the one I want to bring forward for today, another this is another topic that has a lot of different things that I love to explore inside of it, but today's somatic snack is this simple exercise for the cold. So, what I want to bring to awareness here is what happens in your body when you feel cold temperatures, and yeah, multiple ways to experience this one. One is right now, as I mention it, there's some sort of somatic response happening for some of you. Some kind of just the idea of it. You know, maybe maybe it's our something's already happening for you somatically that you can notice. Turn your attention, your interoception muscles On, not everyone has really honed interoceptive muscles, or maybe even has access to that skill because we have different brains and things. So, you know, maybe you notice sensations. I'm always looking for sensations if it's available, And if not sensations, maybe it's a image or a posture that you find your body taking. Okay, so maybe you've got something going already, and feel free to just continue getting to know that experience, you could experience play with this by going somewhere cold. Maybe you can step outside if it's cold right now. Step outside with no clothes on. Let me know how it feels. What happens in your body? Or maybe you can recall a memory of a time you were cold, and that might kick off a response now. So it's not remembering what your body was feeling then, but it's like coming into awareness of what's happening in your body now as you bring these experiences to mind. Okay, and then the thing that often happens for people-you might have noticed this already, or maybe as I talk about it, you might come into some more awareness. But often there is some degree of bracing that happens in our bodies when we feel cold temperatures. Yeah, so it might be like kind of an obvious major thing, like a big clamping down of some major muscle groups, or it could often be something more subtle, like little way that the skin tenses up, or a little line of tension that goes along both sides of your spine. Yeah, so taking a moment here to see if there's anything that you're noticing. If you found something, see if there's a different body part that's also part of this story that your body's saying. Yeah. Okay. So then, next part of this is to see, like, see if that response is necessary. And you know, one way sometimes I invite people into this exercise is by inviting the body to soften into the cold, or to let some of the cold temperature come in. Can you let some of the cold come in, and that be okay? There is something really interesting there that often our bodies are like bracing, Tensioning up, like even the little micro muscles on the skin, you know. Keeping our heat probably functions, you know, to keep our heat inside and kind of contained to some degree, but there's a stress response that we're inside of when we're doing that bracing, and if we're a little bit looser in our body, generally, especially if you're gonna go like move, go on a walk or a hike or something, even just get out to the car. Um, I just had a little trip on my walk. Caught myself though, and we're coming down to a river. Maybe you'll hold. You'll be able to hear that. If we're gonna go move, we will feel better. We'll feel looser. We'll have a better time moving if our body is a little bit looser. Get a little blood flow moving, and that heat that comes from the inside rather than from bracing against the cold. You know, that's sort of a second tier to this practice.

Sarah 7:10
Is the one of moving your body in the cold and learning the ways that movement generates internal heat, and then we really don't have to be as braced or as protective of ourselves inside of cold temperatures if we can trust that there's a way, a mechanism that our body has of building heat on the inside that we can we can really rely on. That's like that's one of the coolest things I would say about getting into winter sports and the way it changes your relationship with winter because you know how to generate heat on the inside. So okay, wow! I'm getting into another topic, gonna have to save that one. Okay, see what it feels like if it feels available to soften into the cold, to let some cold in, to really notice if there's a bracing pattern that shows up when it's cold, and what it might be like, like if that response is really, if it's a habit that the body has, and if it might be ready to update that habit with some new information, like oh, this is cold, and it's also okay, maybe, to feel a little bit of that cold in the way it comes in contact with your body. Okay, let me know what you noticed with that

Unknown Speaker 8:55
one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai