Grab, Center, Face

My heart is heavy. So much is heavy right now. I am finding I need more space in my days, in my schedule to pause, slow down, center, breath. More space to do some extra tending and to metabolize the grief and the rage and the whatever else the world is throwing at me.

This week in the somatics practice group I am facilitating, we practiced something we call “Grab, Center, Face.” It’s come to be one of my favorite practices inside this lineage//work of transformational embodiment practice called somatics.

A “grab” is any kind of pressure, stress, hook, anything that throws us off center, activates us in some way. All of us are getting grabbed all day every way - whether it’s the news, an activating email, a child needing something, a bill to pay.

The “center” piece is about first slowing down enough to just notice we got grabbed.

What did that feel like in our bodies? Can we let that run and just be with it for a moment? And then instead of whatever our habitual reaction (reaction = unconscious, unchoiceful response) might be, can we find our way back to center, and from there access more choice in how we might like to respond, in a way that’s connected to what we care about?

I wish we could get together a do the practice in person so you could really feel it in your body (and stay tuned - I will be offering more somatic practice spaces both online and in person coming up this fall!), but I hope you can feel a nugget of the practice through what I have shared here.

The Grab, Center, Face practice is particularly useful inside of conflict and tension. As I was working with a client recently who is anticipating entering a conversation that will likely feel like a grab to her nervous system, we tried on this practice to help her prepare.

She was pleasantly surprised to feel her own ability to intentionally come back to center when she could slow down long enough. She really only needed a few beats of pause, and it opened a totally different quality of space and shifted quite dramatically what felt possible in a previously very stuck-feeling dynamic.

In my Navigating Conflict class, we call this “practicing the pause” - how can I make even a few beats of space to slow down, reconnect to myself, ground, in moments of activation or conflict?

We practice this together in the class, and students have also found it tremendously helpful.

I share all of this, because I know so many of us are needing more ways to resource and ground right now.

I want you to feel like you have practices to call on, practices to come back to center and ground and what you care about.

If this speaks to you, I’d love for you to consider joining Navigating Conflict: Building Resilience for Your Working Relationships. This 8 week online course starts Sept. 3, and promises to be a juicy space of resourcing and skilling up in the face of ever-escalating grabs.

And in the mean time, I invite you to take just a couple of slightly slower, deeper breaths.

Take a beat to notice where your body touches the surfaces below you.

Take in three shapes or colours you see in the space around you.

Notice a tree or a plant or an animal and see if you can try on feeling connected to this more-than-human neighbor.

How does your body feel now? How might you be in some micro-practice of the pause? Of slowing down to be with yourself?

What might this make more possible?

I’d love to hear what you are practicing and what you are noticing.