Somatic Skills: Orienting

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Show Notes:

Episode 4: Somatic Skills: Orienting

In this episode, recorded on a rainy day in the Eagle River Valley, Sarah introduces a foundational practice named 'Orienting' as part of a new series called 'Somatic Skills.' Sarah elaborates on the importance of this mindfulness practice, which involves using the senses to engage with and notice one's environment.

The episode includes practical guidance on how to implement this skill in daily life to achieve better mental health, presence, and well-being. Sarah also emphasizes the value of slowing down and paying close attention to sensory experiences as a means of enhancing one's connection to their surroundings and ultimately improving nervous system regulation.

00:00 Welcome to the Eagle River Valley

01:35 Introducing the new Somatic Skills Series

03:21 Mini Orienting Practice

10:51 Orienting Through Different Senses

16:59 The Importance of Orienting in Modern Life

24:56 Practical Applications of Orienting

31:44 Final Orienting Practice and Conclusion

Resources:

Submit your questions for the Q&A segment here

Photos and links from this episode can be found at www.mindandmountian.co/podcast

Transcript:

[00:00:10] Hello, welcome. It's a wet day here in, I'm in the Eagle River Valley outside of Anchorage. Walking on. A lovely trail in the fall. Rain. It is definitely fall here. The leaves are turning yellow and red and a little bit earlier in the day I was up in the tundra and the tundra when it is fall. It is the most gorgeous thing.

[00:00:49] It's changes colors, just the way that like I hear of on the East coast and the leaves turning. We have some of that here on our leaves as well, but the tundra when it turns just so gorgeous. I took some pictures for you and I'll put them up on our webpage with this podcast on the show page. If you wanna see what I have been orienting to today in gorgeous fall, Alaska vibes.

[00:01:35] Today I'm starting. A series that I'm calling Somatic Skills, and I wanna introduce the foundational skills of nervous system work here in this podcast so that you can take them and be in practice of them both together here on as we spend time together in this format. And then. I am hoping that you're able to take them out into your regular life and be in practice of them just on a regular basis.

[00:02:17] 'cause these are, I think of them as life skills that we were not taught most of us. And they have made a huge difference in my life and in the life of the people's lives of the people that I work with. And so. This is one of the goals of this podcast for me, is like bringing these foundational nervous system skills outside of traditional therapy setting and just out into the world to universalize them so that everyone can be in practice and have access to it.

[00:02:58] Because I, in my mind, these are the skills that help us be more human, more embodied, and. More present and through that have like better mental health and more access to joy and presence and relationship. So yeah, I've got, that's the vision. And we're gonna start today with a skill that's called orienting.

[00:03:32] Okay, I am walking on a section of trail that's like, got a little bit of a grade to it, so I've been trying to record these podcasts on either like flat or downhill, so I'm not too like out of breath and dysregulated myself while I am talking to you about regulation. So let me just slow down.

[00:03:59] Catch my breath and I'll invite you also to join me in just like taking the pace down a notch, whatever you're doing. Our bodies, our minds tend to move pretty quick, um, but our bodies generally need some time. To take in the information that they're seeing.

[00:04:31] So we kind of need to move slower when we're doing embodiment work.

[00:04:41] That in itself might be a somatic skill. Maybe I should like build that one in. But you'll notice as we play with these different practices that they. All tend to involve a, an element of slowness, so just turning the dial down a bit on whatever pace you were engaged on, seeing how that feels, if we can just step into a slightly slower rhythm together.

[00:05:17] I found that with my walking pace and I'm noticing I can breathe a little easier.

[00:05:24] Feels good.

[00:05:29] Yeah. Okay. So the practice of orienting is the practice of letting your senses notice the environment that you find yourself in.

[00:05:46] So. I am gonna tell you more about this and why it matters, but let's start with just a little micro orienting moment together. Just letting your attention move

[00:06:06] around away from any screens that you might be engaged with. Letting your eyes notice what's around you.

[00:06:20] And see if you can do it at a slow enough pace that you like actually really see what you're seeing. 'cause we do all day long kind of like generally see if you have sight or hear if you have someone who has that sense available.

[00:06:40] But because there's like so much that we have to take in through our senses all day long. Our brain has a way of short cutting and thank goodness, you know, 'cause it's like a lot to take in modern life. But with this practice, we actually wanna like reverse that shortcut and slow our orienting, slow our sensory experience down enough that you can like actually see the things that you're seeing.

[00:07:22] A visual, like a metaphor I like for this is the, the way that like a little bird, if it was like flying around, it would land on a branch and rest there for a moment and be able to rest its wings. We kind of wanna do that with our sight and land it somewhere and see what you're seeing. And then rest for a moment there.

[00:07:48] And then let the little bird like take off again and go fly and land somewhere else. And just notice it, like a lighting around the space that you're in, around your room. If you're inside or I'm out on a walk noticing. The many different colors of these leaves as they're transitioning into fall,

[00:08:24] and that's the practice noticing the things around you. And then we can also bring some attention in to notice what is happening in our bodies.

[00:08:39] And especially looking to see if there's like anything that's different after having spent a few moments orienting our senses to the environment that we're in. I

[00:08:56] like, I'm noticing it's actually feeling quite a bit easier to be moving at a slower pace now. Like my body settled into that slower rhythm as well. And there's something that feels nice about that. Sometimes you notice that the pace of your thoughts slow down a little bit.

[00:09:18] If there's any like clues that there might be deactivation happening in the body, we always want attention to catch that and notice it and enjoy it.

[00:09:34] Yeah, and whatever you're noticing is totally fine because the other thing that sometimes happens when I. Um, guide people into an embodiment practice is that sometimes it's the first time you've paid attention to your body in a while. So it's like you're moving out of maybe a disembodied or a numb place and starting to pay attention.

[00:09:53] And maybe you notice that there's like some stuff going on in the body and that's a really okay and normal thing to be noticing too, if that's what you've got. And you might notice that your body needs some tending of some sort. Maybe you need to move or change a layer or go pee or get a snack. So that's good.

[00:10:17] That's good information to like open up the dialogue between you and your body

[00:10:27] and then always gonna be inviting you to like follow those kind of impulses. If you are hearing something that your body wants, see if there's a way you can offer it. A little bit of that. And that's the way we start to like build this trusting relationship with the body.

[00:10:51] Okay, so you've had a sample of orienting. I did that. I guided that primarily through the sense of vision. But we can orient through any of our senses. So you know, as I'm talking here, I'm curious if you can hear the rain or not. It might be kind of subtle in the background. Maybe you can also hear footsteps on the dirt trail, and maybe there's also some sounds in your space that you're also noticing so we can orient through sound.

[00:11:33] Through our sense of touch, noticing the temperature of the air, the feeling of rain on my face. Uh, maybe the feeling of your fabric against your skin or the, if you're seated, sometimes you can feel the chair underneath you or your back support feet on the ground. All of these would be ways of orienting through touch.

[00:12:02] Sometimes people have like a favorite fuzzy blanket that you wanna like bring into your orienting practice, touch against a particular type of fabric or texture.

[00:12:22] Sometimes orienting through taste can be fun. It's like one of the practices of mindful eating is to slow down enough to like really taste each bite.

[00:12:37] Or maybe you have a favorite like peppermint candy or a type of tea that you drink, and noticing the way that that flavor lands in your body can be a way of orienting as well.

[00:12:56] So it's, you know, it's a simple practice and honestly that's like one of the challenges with it. It's like sounds so simple that it's hard to like get buy-in sometimes I find. Because it feels like, yeah, we're doing this all day long, but like when we slow down enough to do it mindfully, it has a really different impact in the body.

[00:13:31] And I hope that you've gotten a little bit of an embodied sense for that already, because that's what's gonna create the, um, new pattern. That we're looking for with this. When your body gets a reward of like feeling a little bit better, feeling a little bit more like settled, that's gonna help this be something that your body that you remember to do more often and.

[00:14:04] Once that starts to click in, if you can get into the habit of orienting, like I'm, I orient like all day long now,

[00:14:17] especially anytime I notice like my body's getting activated, there's something stressful going on. It's one of the like, first things I reach for is like, okay, I'm getting, there's stress happening. Not that like stress is a bad thing. But often the experience of activation is the experience of track tracking a potential threat or a potential challenge, and that's usually part of the whole truth.

[00:14:51] It's part of the information that we're getting from our environment. There's something stressful out there. And it might be a future stressor or it might be a present one, and our bodies are designed to like orient toward, like find the threat. That's a survival strategy. Sometimes it's called a negativity bias because it, but it's like very functional.

[00:15:18] It's like a thing that our bodies have needed to do. As we've evolved to be able to stay alive, we gotta, like, if there's a threat, we need to find it, figure out how to respond to it. So our body's gonna do that on its own.

[00:15:42] Complexity here is that many of our modern day threats are not as life threatening as our nervous system is evolved to. Deal with. So we've got a lot of non-life threat stressors pinging our nervous system all the time. And because our nervous system has this bias toward finding the threat, it has the potential to be like oriented toward threat all day long.

[00:16:09] If, you know, if we don't do something different intentionally, 'cause there's plenty of stressors out there we can find, you know, on your phone. On the news, like there's plenty and they're kind of grabbing, they're like out there trying to get your attention too. Whether it's because like they have this potential threat quality to them that the, our body is like designed to, to keep an eye out for, or if it's because it's part of the way that our.

[00:16:45] Um, modern day new systems have also evolved to, to like lean on that and to try to grab your attention.

[00:16:59] So part of the skill of orienting is the ability to notice. The things that aren't grabbing your attention, the things that are not threats, because they are also part of your reality. They're just not as grabby as loud as the threatening things or stressful things. We're just like. Uh, anxiety producing things, you know, they're, those things are gonna grab your attention.

[00:17:39] So this is, this practice is trying to like even out the scales so that your body is also noticing the things that are just neutral.

[00:17:54] That practice of just like looking around and letting your body notice things, like at the most simple level, it's, it's a practice of letting your body be like, that's not a threat, and that's not a threat, and that's not a threat either. Like that. Those are some neutral things that aren't coming at me

[00:18:18] and it's like kind of wild that we need to like. Slow down and be conscious enough to do that. Our body isn't really, doesn't really do that on autopilot,

[00:18:34] so it's an important practice. I'm curious, you know, if it's always been as as important and as critical of one as it is in our modern day life these days. Where we're living so much on screens and in the, in the future or in the awareness of, oh my gosh, of all the really challenging things going on around the world, outside of our initial, like our immediate bubble,

[00:19:11] but for the world we're living in right now, it's a very critical skill. And I hope I'm making a compelling argument for it because, uh, if you get in the habit of orienting even just like five times a day, it will change your life. It will change the way your body feels.

[00:19:39] And you know, one of the things I was, when I first learned about this as a skill. I was in my starting my somatic experiencing training, and they gave a lecture on this and sent us out on the, on the exercise of doing a slow, as slow as you can, walk around the block and notice as many things as possible.

[00:20:07] And when I. Was hearing about this and the impacts of it. I had this like, whoa, aha moment in which I realized that the impacts of orienting, they feel so nourishing inside of the nervous system and. I think now this is my belief that those of you that like me like to be outside a lot, like to spend time outside.

[00:20:44] You know, we're co-regulating with nature. We're out looking at beautiful things, noticing the environment, hearing the birds, maybe spotting them, watching the leaves change. All of that is an active orienta orienting practice.

[00:21:07] So I wonder if that isn't a big part of why we like to be outside, because it asks us to orient to our environment to notice the things around us, and then. As we do that, maybe not actively thinking like I'm going to go orienting. We go think like I'm gonna go be somewhere, be outside and be connected to the beauty of a natural world.

[00:21:45] We are finding ourselves, orienting and then reaping the benefits of that. A more present state that orienting brings us into.

[00:22:00] So one way to practice orienting is to go somewhere beautiful and enjoy it. Take in the the big vistas, and also take in the super small details of the space in the tundra. You know, you can like. Tender can be really like big and um, spacious, but when you can like zoom in and there's so many different, like animals and plants that you would be so easy to not notice if you were moving faster.

[00:22:39] So I wonder if for one, if we didn't evolve to orient all day long. It's actually, you know, when I am out on a long back entry trip. And especially in the Brooks Range where there aren't any trails unless you happen to be on caribou trails, which are amazing. Um, but you're doing a lot of walking through the land and having to navigate based on the subtle differences between.

[00:23:09] This color green and that color green, that type, that means that sort of plant or that means alders or that means willows. Let's not go there. But like this shade of green means firm ground, like hard tundra dryness or something like that. Let's go. We wanna walk on that kind of green, those are subtle nuances inside of an orientation system, inside using our senses.

[00:23:33] To pick up the subtleties of the environment and then use them to determine where we wanna go and what we wanna do with our bodies and how we're gonna move through this space. And gosh, if that doesn't feel good, there's like probably something that really evolved in us to use our senses in that way.

[00:24:01] To spend the day outside moving through the land and orienting. So it might be a factor of modern life that we're just not using that skill as much. And so now we have a practice, a somatic skill that's called orienting that we have to do a little bit more intentionally to bring this part of our humanity back online.

[00:24:34] The skill of noticing the quiet things that aren't a threat, that aren't grabbing your attention and letting your body land that those things are there so that it's not just noticing the potential threat, but it's also noticing all the other aspects of the environment. I like to bring this into a work meeting, um, for if you, you know, if you're in a meeting where there's like stressful stuff going on and you can like, feel your heart rate increasing or your jaw tense up, it's like getting a little bit, um.

[00:25:14] Yeah, getting a little bit activating and then we can let the meeting continue on and you can still be present in the meeting and you can orient to the space that you're in and help your body see that. Like, yes, there's a stressful thing going on. And look at these walls. Look at the table. Look at this plant that's over here.

[00:25:39] Look at the snacks, look at the piece of art on the wall. Like let your body notice that this in inside of this room. There's a lot of other stuff outside of the part of it that's stressful and that like really it's very unlikely that any of this is a life threat right now.

[00:26:07] So we can, we're, we're not trying to like trick the body out of being stressed in the moment. We're just trying to like also help it remember that there is more going on than just this one stressful situation. There's also a room that I'm in that it has a roof and there's plants and there's other stuff.

[00:26:29] Expand the perspective.

[00:26:36] Okay. I feel like I've given a pretty thorough rundown of orientation, though. There's always more to say, so I expect to be talking about this more and more as we go, but I want to, let's do another little practice here together. And then we'll wrap it up. So this time you can, um, you know. Okay. One more thing.

[00:27:15] Uh, you know, there are a lot of other mindfulness practices that, that fall into this category that you might have heard about. Um, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 is a common one. It's like a little bit more structured where you learn name like five things you can see four things, you can hear three things you can smell, like go through the senses like that.

[00:27:42] Um, sometimes even more guided would be to just like pick a color and be like, okay, blue, like, name as many blue things as you can see. So you can be pretty like directive with orienting if you want, if, and sometimes that can be useful. Sometimes inside of like a really intense emotional moment, like, um, a panic attack or like something that's like a really big feeling.

[00:28:14] One of the practices to help. Again, bring you out of a really intense activation cycle and into the present moment is to like, hold a piece of ice in your hand or put your, like wash your face with cold water. Cold plunging is a version of this too. Um, that's a orientation to touch and the touch that you can't help but notice, which is like a very cold temperature.

[00:28:47] So there's a, there's ways to kind of like wake the body up and like be like, no, orient to this. Instead of whatever threat you were noticing orient to this cold ice chunk in your hand. And that can be helpful in shifting attention from whatever was grabbing the attention before using the senses. So there might be times for more of those like specific directive practices and for the purposes of what we're doing here today to like try to get in the habit of finding ways to help support.

[00:29:34] Our nervous systems. The nervous systems are the people who we find ourselves with to be the grandmother clock that other people can help sink, like gravitate their own nervous systems too, if you're able to solidify your own. That's a metaphor that I mentioned inside of episode three, if you wanna circle back to that for more detail.

[00:29:58] But, um, the idea is that if you. Inside of your own nervous system have a tether to safety that other people's nervous systems will also pick up on that. So you might wanna orient. Yourself, or sometimes I do, I call it like se somatic experiencing on the down, low on the dl. So se on the dl, um, where if someone is experiencing a lot of activation or stress, sometimes just like pointing out a few things to them like, oh, do you see out the window how the sky's blue today?

[00:30:39] Or see how in that painting there's a horse doing. Like who knows what, um, or, oh, I really like the color of your sweater.

[00:30:56] These are little micro ways to help someone else orient to the environment. And again, we find ourselves doing that naturally in some ways, but there, there might be a way to weave that into your life as well. Just a little bit of like bringing people's attention to the room that they're in, outside of their internal experience, out into the space.

[00:31:24] You can kind of sneak that in, um, without telling them necessarily that you're trying to help their nervous system orient. But you might do that experimentally and see if you notice anything shifting inside in the field or in in their nervous system state. Okay, let's do a little orienting together to close this out.

[00:31:51] So again, finding what feels like maybe a slightly slower rhythm. If you're active,

[00:32:07] and then this time I'll let you pick a sense that feels like one you wanna play with. And generally we'll pick a sense that's like easy, that comes easy. We don't need to effort here. So if site comes easily to you, let's con like practice that again.

[00:32:31] Or if you're noticing that you wanna orient through touch or sound,

[00:32:42] and the invitation here is just to let your senses notice something.

[00:32:58] Let that little bird land somewhere. Notice what you're seeing or hearing.

[00:33:13] Maybe this time you're seeing something different, which would not surprise me at all. 'cause there's so much to be noticed in our environments.

[00:33:27] Sometimes it can be nice to let your orientation have a 360 degree cycle to it, so not if you're driving of course, but you could use your mirrors maybe. But if you're not driving, maybe you let your sense, let your body rotate. So you can take in what's behind you.

[00:33:59] Notice any safety cues. Maybe there's a solid wall back there or a piece of art for me. There's a beautiful valley. I will take a picture of it in case you're curious.

[00:34:18] Notice how inside of that rotation, your torso's involved, your necks involved, your eyeballs are involved. There's a way our whole body is designed to help us orient.

[00:34:40] And then if you went one direction, we can. Slowly come back to forward. And then let's do the same thing on the second side. Again, just like letting it be nice and slow. Notice a few things, maybe some new things,

[00:35:12] letting the. Eyes look up above you, maybe down below, and then eventually making your way around to check out behind

[00:35:31] Feel the way the torso rotates. And the neck. And the eyes here too. And maybe this opens up something else that you can hear. A different way that you're feeling the textures on your body

[00:35:57] or some new sights,

[00:36:04] and then we can work our way, you know, at your own pace. But. Working your way back forward, and then we did 360 degrees around us, but let's also do above and below. So taking a moment to look down at what's under you,

[00:36:28] noticing the ground or your feet,

[00:36:33] and then also up above.

[00:36:43] Feel the way the neck and the eyes work there too.

[00:36:53] Yeah. And then as we're doing this, you know, you can keep orienting to your space as I invite you to bring a little bit of attention to your body. And see what you might notice about your, your overall state here.

[00:37:13] Is there anything subtle that might be different?

[00:37:22] Sometimes you notice that we're breathing a little deeper and not maybe because we're intentionally doing it, but just as the body settles into, uh. A different nervous system state, you might find yourself breathing a little differently, maybe a little easier,

[00:37:43] maybe some tension is dropping out of some part of your body that you hadn't even noticed was tight before. Or sometimes we notice that, um, digestion can wake up if we're moving out of a little bit of a freeze. Sometimes we have some tummy gurgles or some yawns. Or even, uh, extra salivation is a clue that that might be happening.

[00:38:12] Whatever you notice is great though. So just taking a bit of time to bring the body into this practice, noticing any impacts it might have had.

[00:38:34] And then if there's anything you wanna anchor in, take note of it. Little somatic snapshot of where you find yourself now. It's been a pleasure. I'd love to hear how this lands for you, if you want to share. I am . Um. Yeah, I'm, I have a Instagram for sure you could reach out there. And I've also been enjoying on these podcasts, the people that listen on Spotify, there's a comment place there.

[00:39:06] So there's some ways we can be in conversation about this. If you feel like sharing, it's always nice for me to hear back from you as part of my co-regulation team. Nice to hear anything that you're noticing as you play with these practices. Um, I do wanna also mention, I don't have a q and A in today's episode, but I have a q and a form.

[00:39:35] If you have a question that you want me to speak to on the podcast, please drop it in. The question form that I'll link up in the show notes. I would love to hear from you and support you in getting to know your nervous system and those of the people that you support. So, um, yeah, thanks for sending your questions over.

[00:40:03] Thanks in advance. Okay, I am wrapping up. Thanks for being here for this co-regulation conversation on orienting. I hope you found it useful, and I look forward to next time. Until then, take really good care of yourself and each other. See you soon.