Sarah 0:11
Hey, there. You can maybe hear my crunching feet on the snow. It is single digits today here in Anchorage, and you're coming along on what feels like a little bit of an experiment, this idea of winter outdoor podcast recording. I started this project in the summer when I was trying to get out for as many walks as possible, and I didn't know what it was going to turn into when the winter came. And so here we are. It is December. We are nearing Solstice. I'm recording this at 4pm and the sun set is almost done here. We're having a cold snap, single digit weather, which is actually nothing compared to the northern part of the state Fairbanks, and those areas are having like, 40 below temperatures this week, so we are in it what I'm hoping so to bring you behind the scenes. I'm like, walking in my puffy layers, with some big mitts on, holding the phone close to my mouth to talk. So that's how logistically this is happening. And I am just hoping that the sound of like the puffy things and the gloves isn't gonna mess with the audio quality. I guess we will find out. So yeah, thanks again for being along for the ride here. You know, we're just like, kind of casually out for a walk together, at least in in my idea of things, and I hope that's a bit, I hope that can be felt. And then, you know, like, where everything here, if it doesn't work, we'll iterate and let us know, and we'll come up with a different way to do it, since a lot of like, the way I'm trying to do things here is just really raw and human and imperfect. Like, sometimes that means that things are a little bit messy along the way, and hopefully not so much that it's annoying, though, right? Like, hopefully it's like, the like feels human and maybe a little bit raw, and that gives us, like, a chance to play with what our expectations are, and like, track our nervous systems as they engage with like, authentic humanity, rather than like perfected AI, you know, like perfectionist standards, but I am trying to keep like a high quality at the same time. So always kind of working in that, in that tension between, yeah, keeping like decently high standard, and also trying to be real and allow for things to be imperfect, and iterate along the way as we experience something and then learn and adjust. So yeah, you know, this is kind of a iteration in itself, because I'm doing an embodied athlete episode here. That's my topic for today, and I'm really excited to talk to you about it. It's actually for a while I was considering naming the podcast embodied athlete. I just like, I really love a concept, and it's something that's often on my mind, and it's like a big like call out to the fitness side of my work, which is the foundation of My business, and this nervous system work is the like a layer that I'm adding on and deepening into more and more these days. But the the like athlete side and the mental health informed fitness side, like that was kind of a foundation of things. And so I don't know, I feel like I'm. Many of you who are here are probably coming from that place with me and like, maybe have been like, along for the ride as my work has evolved and the my approach to movement has been shifting as well. And so, yeah, I want to just get into that and talk to you about how the evolution from where my fitness teaching started when I was doing like fitness classes, learning to back country ski and in Social Work grad school at the same time, like with the ways I was bringing in mental health strategies to the workouts, like, that's that's kind of the foundation of things. And I started to go into this a little bit during the previous episode. I'll link it up in the show notes, but one where I was talking about what we're doing with ski babes differently this year, and how weaving in somatics in there is kind of a new place where I'm excited, and now I've been doing that for a couple months and teaching some live classes that have this, like nervous system emphasis and just like really enjoying it. So, yes, I want to talk about that, and about how the idea of embodiment and this nervous system skill set as I've been in it, and understanding my own nervous system from that this place, it's shifted the way I navigate my own fitness and My athleticism and the way I want to, like, bring this work together for people who are, you know, in my classes, and also inside of like, this culture that I feel like is the bigger picture, the shaping of the culture of outdoor recreation and fitness culture in general. One thing I'm noticing just right away is that it's really different to talk when it's a single digits. So I'm like, recognizing I'm like, a little bit more out of breath, and it's gonna require me to take my walking pace down a notch so that I can, like stay in a calmer breath pattern and a more settled nervous system place. So while I downshift and give my body a little bit tough time to recognize that shift. Maybe you're hearing bikes pass by on the trails. Join me if you feel like it. See if you know there's any way that the pace that you are operating at right now might be able to also come down a little bit. You know, sometimes we just like, end up in rushing behavior, just as a habit or social conditioning. You know, that feels like we should be getting a bunch done, or like there's always more to do. And, yeah, this practice of, like, recognizing when we're rushing and noticing the impacts on the body when that happens, and taking advantage of times when that's not necessary. I mean, sometimes we need to rush and like, sometimes we need to push our bodies and override and really go for it, and also often we really don't. Gosh, I'm thinking like, especially in this time of year when there's just like, so much going on, and people are sharing with me often how overloaded they feel and how, like, it's dark a lot, and the body animal body might want to be more internal and rest and hibernate and just like slow down. But so much of our culture is like speeding up right now, with all the end of year things and holidays and just a lot to do this little practice of just noticing when you're rushing. And you know, the things I was catching, I was like noticing my breath getting a little bit. Weight in my chest and some tension building up in my shoulders and throat,
Sarah 10:11
and yeah, this practice of learning to feel the body in these subtle ways, it's really helped me, like, catch these nervous system processes early, like we can often, like, catch our stress when it's like spiked and we're overloaded and overwhelmed and we're at like a nine out of 10, or maybe an 11 out of 10. But it's a really pretty amazing thing when you can build the interoception, subtlety, awareness of the little micro symptoms when they're early in the stress cycle, and give your like. For me, it's like if I'm just in my mind and just aware of, like my thinking patterns, and not connected with the body, then I won't catch the cycle until it's at that, like 910, 11 place. But if I'm in the body and tracking those body sensations, then I have a much better chance of noticing things before they get big, and it's so much easier to catch something and, like, make a little shift in how you're engaging with a thing When it's small, before it's, like, really spiked. So okay, so I've slowed down. I'm feeling a lot better, more spacious in my chest and a little bit more calm overall. Feels really nice walking in the forest on the trail system, and it's getting pretty dark already now that sunset's finished, okay, and let's make this transition. Let's, like, really start to talk about what I mean by embodied athlete. So I you know, it's actually not that dissimilar to what I was just talking about, because as I had this phase when I was starting to study somatics, and was also, you know, it happened to be at the time when I was also, like, in a fertility process, and things weren't going as planned, and I was kind of needing to pull back from working as, like, pushing my body as hard as maybe I used to. And there was, like, a lot of stuff that kind of fell apart at the same time in that era for me, the the like idea that if I trained my body, I could get what I wanted out of it like that fell apart, because it certainly it's not the way fertility works at all. And honestly, it's like not the way our bodies work very often, except for when we have these windows of athletic privilege when things work out that way. But seems like at some point that idea comes crashing down, and I, inside of that time period, really had to, like, do a lot of deconditioning and unlearning around these kind of unconscious ideas that I had for myself. One of the really deep ones that was definitely challenging to tease apart and uncouple was this belief that, and it was certainly this was like not conscious at all, but I can see it now in retrospect, that I was I had this association between my ability and like, my performance and my self worth, like the the like earning of worth through doing Well athletically and by like, being able to keep up and being able to do challenging things, and then like, you know, the way social media can, like, play into that too, taking really cool pictures, and then hearing accolades, oh, there's a helicopter overhead. You might hear, like, all of that can really feed that cycle of this idea that, like, I get feelings of worthiness through doing well, doing cool things outside, or having being able to, like, do challenging things with my body. Yeah. So, okay, there's like, a whole conversation to be had there. I I guess the thing I want to say about it right here is that inside of that fertility process, for me, this was, like my journey. I'm really hoping, as I share my stories, that they're like generalizable, and you can relate to pieces of them. Of course, you don't have to, like, take what you want and leave the rest, but I think there's, like, some some somewhat universal concepts here inside of what I'm sharing. So that's my intention with bringing these forward. Yeah, but so I kind of, for a while, almost had to let go of my athletic identity and the goals that I had had for myself in that area, and some of that was to prioritize the fertility process, but some of it was also I see now as like, kind of a necessary phase of uncoupling these concepts of self worth and ability. It's almost like when I I took those couple years, I was calling it like a slow season, but it ended up being like a multi year season of just like not prioritizing athletics. And it was a very kind of, kind of a scary time, almost because it's like, had been so much on my identity and I was still running my business, which was she, like, sharing fitness with folks, and I could just at that time, like I could really feel when I was teaching the ski babes workouts the way I and some are strong, like, the way I knew how to do them at the time that I was kind of ramping my nervous system up in order to perform as a teacher and to, like, like, Do the hardest level of these exercises to show people what's possible. Kind of like using my body to try to, like, show other people a model of a way to be. But it wasn't like feeling that good for my system eventually, and that started to happen when I was, like, starting to learn how to feel, actually, like, feel my body and the like. The outcome of that was like, eventually, after like, taking a few years away from teaching and diving into somatic work and helping my nervous system learn a different way of operating inside of activation. So a lot of my work has been learning how to how to help my nervous system come out of activation and actually deactivate and access settling and rest in a in a way, because I would say, like, previous to this journey, I was using exercise as a way to take the edge off my activated nervous system state. So it was just like, I'm living really activated, like, my nervous system kind of doesn't know any other way, getting a lot of accolades for it, and a lot of like, internal accolades too, like, I'm starting, like, earning my feeling of worthiness through that and and Then, like that, the the effort of workouts or outdoor time, it would like help me use up some of that activation in the system. And that would help my I'd be able to rest after having, like, taken the edge off the activation through exercise, both physically, you know, and also like, Okay, I did something now I can, like, feel a little bit better about myself, and that also helps us rest, you know, when we're feeling okay about ourselves. So if that was my strategy for a while, at some like that, when that all start to fall apart. And I, like, for one, wasn't able to access exercise in that same way during that fertility process and then, and so, like, I imagine that being similar when you're navigating like an injury or an illness or just like an aging process, if we're. Enough, you know.
Sarah 20:01
But then also, as I started to, like, learn how to feel my body and be in the sensations of what my body was actually experiencing, I started to realize that I like, there was a significant impact to my system, to be operating in this way and like the that, that pattern of living in high activation and getting ourselves down to rest through exhaustion, it's like, that's pretty demanding rhythm, physiologically. And so I started to, like, feel the parts of my system that were like, not really into that, that I was having to override in order to achieve this, or to access this, like, achievement pattern and the things I was like, having to push down and and ignore, and I was like, there was just a lot of overriding going on for me in those in that pattern of sustained high activation and then exercise As a way to to come out of it. You know, if you've been in the like ski babes and summer strong world and engaged through the mindset modules where I was, I teach a lot of the like mental health strategies for shifting our relationships with our bodies and with movement. Those, those are like, I think of those now as like, the foundational strategies that were helping me navigate this high activation state and the way I was, like, over coupled with body and keeping up and like, needing to be able to, like access, like use, use movement and outdoor time and all that to feel good when my system was like, kind of like, pretty stressed and always really Close to shame or that feeling of unworthiness or unbelonging, like all those, all those, like, patterns are things that I have practices around navigating, because I was so always. They were always, like, so close at hand. And so I had to, like, develop this array of strategies for tending to myself within them so that I could still exercise and get outside and help myself cope with those emotional patterns that were that were like come up pretty, pretty often. Now I kind of understand that as the state of activation and high activation, and of that over coupling between worthiness and our bodies, you know, whether It's like how they look or how they perform. And and so then, like, there's been this whole process of shifting all of that, and as my nervous system has come into a different baseline, where as it used to be, like, pretty high, and I'd have to, like, find ways to come down now through these, like, years of work and practice and like this re shifting of things, this new baseline that I'm at it like it heals so different to move and to engage with my body from This place, like those, those sticky places, those emotional patterns that used to be so close to the surface and so present they there's, like a lot a lot of room now inside my system for experience activation before I hit those that like, that place where those patterns show back up, so let's I mean, oh my gosh, I'm just like, so grateful for that. It feels so different now to be coming back into my athlete self and I really am this year, like feeling my way back into skiing and regaining different types of fitness, and doing it from a place where this question of like, is it possible? To to be embodied and be an athlete at the same time, like that was a really big question for me for a long time. And I mean, I It's an inquiry, it continues to be, because I am, like, still exploring this as I go, but, and just like I had to for a while, kind of let go of what it like my identity as an athlete and just see like, like, maybe, what if I let this go? Can I still find a different way? Can I find a different source of self worth that isn't contingent on performance. I mean, gosh, I really actually hope that for everyone that feels like, in a way, that's, that's like, one of the pillars of of what I teach, and what I want to, want to bring through for people, is this sense that that like, actually there's, there's a way to feel internally worthy, rather than looking to source it from our external, either from people outside of ourselves, or from our like accomplishments in the world. That's like, one of the things that that as our nervous system settles, we're able to like land in a place of well being internally, without needing to find well being in all the things.
Sarah 26:38
But then it was also kind of like I I needed to almost let go of the idea of of athleticism, or of of, like being an athlete, if I for a little while, just as I deepened into my embodiment work, because for a while, I just really wasn't that sure about if these two things could go together, and one one of the pillars. So I want to talk here now about, like, a few different aspects of what I mean when I'm talking about embodied athlete, and one of them is presence. So, you know, the heart of somatic work and nervous system work is really about presence. We talk a lot about like being in the body and like using interoception to help, like, notice what's going on with the body. But the real reason for that is that the body is always in the present, and the mind is not so but the mind can also be in the present, which is why, like often, it can actually be a really nice tool. But with athletics, one, one thing I noticed for I think this is really common, and it was something that I started to become aware of myself when I started down this embodiment path, was that I was often experiencing like, once I would get moving, I would often actually disassociate from my body and like, be either off in my mind or just be, like, kind of not paying attention to anything. And I mean, honestly, disassociation is like a incredible tool for getting us out of pain, getting us out of the body. That's like, what it's evolutionarily designed for, is for intense moments when what's going on in the body is really too much to be with all at once, and so we can, like, disassociate and not be in the present with the body, with the sensations, and that helps take the intensity down. And we definitely need that sometimes, as a like recurring strategy for navigating the body, though it like it has its costs. And when I was on this, like, learning curve with my own nervous system, I mean, I still am, probably a lifelong process, to be honest, but the started to realize that when I moved into an activated state with exercise, when I started to, like, breathe faster or fatigue my muscles, you know, and there'd be like discomfort that would start to show up. I would just kind of like pop, like, just pop out of my body and and be somewhere else, not present with the sensations of of all of that. I. Yeah, and because I was like actively working to try to learn to stay in my body and stay present with what my body was going on, was experiencing it like those things weren't very compatible for a while. I think that's some of why I had to back away from ski bibs for a while, personally. And instead of doing things that were like physically activating, whether you know that workouts or outdoor time that was stressful or scary, I just like put that on, on pause for a while, I was learning how to be in my nervous system in a different way that wasn't depending so much on this disassociation pattern. And so now, now that I'm like, coming back around to it, this is like one of the things I'm always tracking is what it means to be present in the body as we are moving and as we're going through intensity cycles in workouts. You know, it's like very straightforward, because we're doing an interval, and this one's a hard one, so maybe we're jumping, maybe we're going fast, or we're doing our max interval and bringing the option of intensity in. And then there's this question of, like, what does it mean to be present with the body as it's moving with intensity and with activation? And that, honestly, I didn't have the ability to do that for a long time. That's just like I didn't have the neural pathways for it. And I wonder if it has a quality inside my body, experience of fear, subtle, you know, like, really subtle. Like, not something I was conscious of, generally, but the feeling was like, There's activation. A lot of it, it's uncomfortable, kind of it must mean I feel like my body was making that mean that something bad was happening or might happen. And so something kind of scary was, like the quality of that was around, and so I kind of pop out, and that started to, I started to feel that somatically, and just feel that that like was not a pleasant experience to be feeling that sort of ambient fear that, like, wasn't really a real, you know, it wasn't really associated with anything, but my body was like associating it with activation, and I was really, I wanted to, I mean, I did a lot of work to uncouple those things. And so this is one of the one of the pieces to me, that is inside the work of embodied athlete, and that is, how can we be present with the experience that we're Having while we're moving, while we're engaging with our athleticism, and that means maybe present with the discomfort or the intensity or the activation. And that's a that's like a that's a skill that's like something you need certain practice with. And the neural pathways for certainly taken some time to develop for me and and the skill now that I'm in is noticing the edge of it, like when, what does it feel like to be present with it, and what does it feel like when it's getting close to too much? And like, that pattern of wanting to disassociate is showing back up, and then the practice of like, what and what do we do? Then do we notice it and tend to it so that I can, like, come back in and a little bit away from that edge that's become something that's easier and easier to do, and it's something that we're playing with. Those of you who are like inside of ski babes now we're coming to the live workouts or doing the recordings of those. I'm like, weaving that into the max interval part of the workout, because it's just like the perfect place to practice that where it's like a space for dealing, for going intense for 20 seconds, taking little breaks, and we can, like be in the practice then of grounding our body and accessing safety. Like before, and then feel the impact of a 22nd hard effort. And what needs to happen in between those to help the body like, come back down or even in in them, in the interval while it's happening, like what needs to happen to help the body realize that there's this is intense, but there's also safety present. We're okay. This is like we're opting into this. We have choice. We can stop anytime, and like all those little practices of helping the body start to kind of uncouple intensity from unsafety. So presence is a big one, and I kind of think it's the key to this whole question about like, being in your body and being an athlete at the same time. And I am really convinced here. I'm collecting more evidence on this, but and I like look forward to exploring it more as this process continues to go, and I'll share more with you as I learn. But I'm pretty convinced that there are some pretty big gains to be had from approaching your movement practice from this way
Sarah 36:24
that it's like, the ability to be present with your body while you're like in intensity is one of the huge supports for injury prevention. It's like the ability to be with those sensations that's like, how we end up differentiating the discomfort of fatigue from the discomfort of I'm like, overdoing a part of my body that's maybe going to, like, turn into an injury of some sort, Like an overuse injury, and the this type of like presence that I'm talking about, where you're also, like, really oriented to your environment and yourself, that also has a lot to do with our ability to prevent The kind of like, more acute injuries as well. It's not to say that, like, accidents won't happen, and we won't, like, catch an edge or slide a skate into a crack, you know, like, those things could absolutely still happen, but we have a better chance of being aware of the other, like, contributing factors to them with this type of presence that I'm talking about here, because it's an internal presence with the body, and it's also an external presence with the moment, this practice of being oriented and noticing when we're losing that orientation and that the present moment awareness, those are all, like, really big contributing factors to the more like acute injuries that happen because of something like an unbalance, or like going too Fast, or, you know, like all these kind of combination of environmental and physical, like, things that pile up and lead us to, like, losing our balance or whatever. And then this is, like, comes back to the falls and close calls episode, but when things do happen, if we have the skills to be with ourselves inside of the experience of something happening that was unexpected, that also will Help the experience itself land more gently in the body, so that we're able to have a growth experience come out of it, some learning, and less likelihood of a stress injury come from having like a fall or a slip or a crash, like, if we can, like, be with ourselves through those experiences. So I think there's just, like, huge implications for longevity with movement, both from, like an injury prevention side of things, and also from we're not frying our nervous systems along the way, and like accumulating load in the inside the body from having overridden things over and over, just like lots of good stuff. You know, my enthusiasm? About this, right? I just like it just, I gotta say, it just feels so much different inside my body these days to be moving and to be like not having to push through to make that happen. And that's not to say that those skills of pushing through and overriding and disassociating, like all of those strategies have their place, and they're not going away, because there are times when we need them, there are times when they're really important and they're tools for doing really hard things. I'm imagining, like, really, like, long expeditions where you know you have to deal with whatever weather comes your way and you need to get a certain amount of need to get somewhere, or, like, when things don't go as planned on your adventures, and like, there's some requirement sometimes for that, that extra push. So that's there. It's there when we need it. But we we really like if we can break the habit of that being the norm and have most of our work be from a place that's within our nervous system capacity. It like it really can shift a lot of how these efforts land for we're not if we're able to effort and access intensity from a place of safety and like, I can be with this rather than a place of like, this is scaring my body a little bit, and so I need to, like, not be present with it, disassociate and like, not, not try to, like, not notice that it's happening. Super different the way that lands inside of the system. Okay, I think I'm coming to a close here, feeling pretty warm, even though it's still chilly out. I feel like my lips are a little bit like moving a little slower. Maybe you can hear it in my voice that I have that like cold face feeling, but I can also hear, feel and kind of hear for myself, the like way I get so excited about this way of approaching movement and how life giving it has been for me to be able to, like, come back into the world of movement and athletics and and honestly, to be coming back around to my body of work with ski babes and Summer strong and balanced training, but to now be accessing it in this, this, like, truly embodied way it's It's really thrilling for me to realize that, like, I can keep sharing this work with you and with the world, and do it In a way that feels really good in my system. And this, it really is this really cool space now that's been developing around, like being able to practice these nervous system concepts, these mental health concepts, in a movement space. You know, we I used to think about the way that ski babes and summer strong was helping us build the muscle memory for the things that we like go outside to do, which it absolutely does. And then we were also building skills around tracking mental thought patterns, around keeping up and like all of the like worthiness challenges that can come up inside of a movement practice and outdoors, so like building skillfulness around tending to those and becoming aware of them. And now this layer that's so exciting for me is this layer of tracking the body, the somatics of the nervous system, as it rides these waves of intensity and activation and then comes down the backside of them and playing with the tools that support those waves moving through the body without getting stuck in activation and then also staying like, tracking our presence and the feelings of safety and learning what we need to do to be tested. Third to safety and presence, even inside of the activation that we bring in when we're going into like physical intensity. So like, that's, that's this whole piece of laying out the like muscle memory this time, it's like in the inside the nervous system, neural pathways, but like, it's, it's so good, it's really powerful stuff. And I'm super excited that it's coming together in this way. And I'm like, seeing the, seeing the potential for embodied athlete as a lifestyle. And you know, I'm thinking of this as as a series, since I'm not doing like the whole podcast with this theme, but I do want to keep you updated on this process, so I imagine this will be something I'll tap back into as I learn more about my own process, and maybe share it with other folks in the community and in my clients. But let's just we'll just keep this conversation going as we explore.
Sarah 46:23
What it means to be an embodied athlete and how that how that can be possible. I'm walking past the ice rink here, so maybe you hear the person who's playing hockey. Great. Okay, that's where I'm going to wrap up for today. Thanks for being along for this wintery walk and this exploration of athletics and embodiment. It's a really exciting place for me, and I hope you enjoyed the conversation until next time you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
