Somatic Snack: Working with Physical Discomfort

Show Notes

In this episode, I’m out on a chilly fall hike in Alaska, kicking off a series of shorter episodes focused on simple somatic skills you can experiment with in everyday life.

We begin with a practice for those moments when something in your body feels uncomfortable — maybe a cranky knee, an unhappy hip, or an ankle that’s bothering you on a hike. Rather than focusing all of your attention on the discomfort, I invite you to get curious about what’s happening in the same joint on the opposite side of your body.

We explore how our nervous systems are often much more practiced at noticing pain and discomfort than the quieter sensations of things feeling okay. By intentionally paying attention to those subtler sensations, we can begin to expand our awareness of what’s happening in our bodies.

This episode is an invitation to practice noticing the quieter signals your body is sending — and to get curious about what you might discover when you shift your attention.

Timestamps

00:00 — A chilly fall hike + returning to the podcast

01:00 — Introducing a series of shorter somatic practices

01:45 — Working with discomfort in the body

02:30 — Shifting attention to the opposite joint

03:15 — Why discomfort grabs our attention

04:00 — Noticing quieter sensations of okayness

04:45 — Practicing + closing reflections

Submit your questions for the Q&A [here]

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

Episode Transcript

Sarah 00:09
Hi there, Sarah here. I'm out on a kind of chilly fall hike. And I have, yeah, it's October, and there's some snow up in the mountains here that I was just hiking through earlier, and winter is settling. It's not settling, and it's it's arriving here, yeah. And I've unintentionally been on kind of a little podcast break over the last little bit, and I have this, you know, it's a this project I've been in here on the podcast, and over the last year, and I have been wanting to hold to my weekly commitment to myself and to you. So inside of this break, what I have been thinking about is wanting to get back in and to come on with a series of shorter episodes, somatic snacks. To I guess I just make up for, but yeah, just have stick to my weekly commitment, though this one will come all in one blast. But yeah, my intention, my idea is to keep them pretty focused and give you a scenario, a situation, and a strategy or a skill, something to play with, and then send you on your way. So let's get into this first one. This one is for when you are having some discomfort in your body, especially the stuff that is like. I mean, for me, this is often I'm having it right now, which is why it came to mind out on a hike of some sort, an outdoor day, and feeling a cranky joint, like a unhappy knee or ankle or hip or you know maybe it's shoulder, and so the strategy that I invite you to try would be to see if you can land your attention in that joint, but on the opposite side of the body. So, if it's your left knee that's a little bit unhappy, this practice invites the attention to land inside the right knee, and see what the sensations are that's happening over there. And the thing is that we often have a vocabulary and a practice for identifying discomfort sensations, and less of a practice, less vocabulary, less habit of noticing these sensations that might be more on the "I'm okay" kind of side of things, and in some ways, they like they like legitimately are harder to pick up because they're not generally as noisy. Like they they tend to be more subtle, and the pain discomfort sensations tend to be loud, have some volume. They grab your attention. So, some of the skill here is building the ability to notice sensations that aren't grabbing your attention, that are quieter. Yeah, so that's the practice. Play with it. Let me know what you notice. Always love to hear how these things are landing, and that. It's gonna be our first somatic snack in this series, so that's the episode. Thanks for being here, and take good care of yourselves and each other. And I'll see you back for the next

Unknown Speaker 05:15
one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Somatic Snack: Working with Physical Discomfort

Yes! So glad you're here.