Anxiety Isn't Just in Your Head: Working With It Through the Body
Anxiety can start as a thought. But very quickly it becomes a whole-body experience.
Your heart races. Your breathing changes. Your muscles tense. Your stomach drops. Your attention narrows and your thoughts speed up. Suddenly you're not just thinking that something is wrong. Your whole body is responding as though something is wrong.
Why thinking your way out doesn't always work
When anxiety hits, most of us try to talk ourselves down. "I'm fine." "There's nothing to worry about." "Just calm down."
Sometimes that helps. But often the body is still saying something different: something isn't safe. Anxiety isn't only a thought. It's an embodied experience, and the body can react before the thinking mind has caught up.
That doesn't mean anxiety is your fault, or that you're doing it wrong. It means there's more than one place to work.
The body as another place to work
Embodiment means building a clearer relationship with what's happening inside you. Noticing your breath, your heartbeat, tension, temperature, movement, without being swept away by them.
Research on interoception, the sense of what's happening inside the body, suggests that how we sense and interpret these signals plays a part in anxiety. Learning to feel what's going on, without getting overwhelmed by it, gives you something practical to work with.
Capacity, not elimination
The goal isn't to never feel anxious. Anxiety is a protective response, and it has its place.
The aim is to become less stuck in it. To notice "my heart is racing" without jumping straight to "something terrible is happening." To notice "my body is activated" without needing to escape it straight away.
Sensation, then awareness, then choice.
Where TRE® comes in
In TRE®, your body may move, shake or tremble. The goal isn't to shake until the anxiety disappears. It's to practise staying connected to yourself while your body is activated, and to slow down and settle when you need to.
You stay in charge throughout. You can pause or stop at any time. That sense of choice is a big part of the practice.
A small practice to try
When you notice anxiety rising, try these in order:
Notice. Name what you feel in your body. "My chest is tight."
Orient. Look around the room. Notice the chair beneath you and what's around you.
Feel your feet. Press them into the floor.
Breathe out slowly. A longer exhale is often enough to start with.
The space between feeling and reacting may be tiny at first. One breath. One pause. It can grow with practice.
A complement, not a replacement
None of this replaces talking therapy, medication or other professional support. Anxiety can have many causes, and different people need different things. If anxiety is affecting your daily life, please speak to your GP. The NHS and Mind both have good information on where to start.
I'm running Nervous System Reset with Yin & TRE® at MoreYoga on Saturday 31 October (Clerkenwell) and Saturday 21 November (Canary Wharf). I also integrate TRE® into my one-to-one sessions and retreats. Find out more at whoislikemike.com.
Sources
Khalsa, S. S., et al. (2018). Interoception and mental health: a roadmap. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 3(6), 501–513.
Paulus, M. P., & Stein, M. B. (2006). An insular view of anxiety. Biological Psychiatry, 60(4), 383–387.
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How Emotions Are Made. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
NHS: Overview – Generalised anxiety disorder (nhs.uk)
Mind: Anxiety and panic attacks (mind.org.uk)
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