Anxiety is not just a head issue

Don’t worry, this article is not going to warn you against the physical impacts of stress – I’m not into motivating self-care through fear.

Actually, I believe the body can relate to stress in very creative and generative ways — not just be passively harmed by it.

I wrote this as a doorway into imagining, sensing, and maybe even appreciating the multi-directional communication system within us that keeps us alive in every sense of the word — A system that delivers all kinds of messages, including those we sometimes call “stress” and “anxiety.”

When a client comes to me complaining of anxiety, I never assume I know what that means until we go a little deeper. Not just into their thought patterns, but also into the sensations and subtle movements that their body is expressing.

Anxiety might be a hard lump in your throat, a squeezing in your gut, a jittery star-scape through your whole being, the feeling of not being able to move, or of not being able to sit still!

Can you remember the last time you felt anxious? What did your body do or feel?

The embodied experience of anxiety or stress is really never quite the same, from person to person, or from moment to moment.

You might be thinking: I don’t have an embodied experience of stress. It’s all in my head. Well… your head is a part of your body, so there’s that. And more importantly, it is possible to sense what is going on in our physical heads and the rest of our bodies when we think or feel something.

Learning to sense (like literally sense: hot, cold, squeezing, jumping) beneath the story of a stressful experience, is almost like magic in a dualistic world that tries to convince us our thoughts and sensations exist on separate planes.

If you’re caught in a fruitless cycle of trying to think your way out of your worries… you might want to consult your body instead.

Doing so might open up new possibilities for inner peace, creativity, and even fresh thoughts.

Join us to learn about this and more in our Embodied Living Community. We’ve recently opened our doors to new members, and can’t wait to get to know you!