Let curiosity & kindness be your guide to releasing tight muscles
One of the words I’ve started to bring more into my teaching is the word curious. I encourage people to explore and be curious as they notice, sense, and feel their bodies.
And I do that because most of us are pretty hard on ourselves when learning something new. Our internal voice can often be judgmental, critical, exasperated, impatient. By using the word curious, I hope to shift the tone of those internal conversations.
In a recent podcast, That Anxiety You’re Feeling? It’s a Habit You Can Unlearn., parts that I’ve already talked about in an earlier blog post, Dr. Jud Brewer, a psychiatrist and direction of research and innovation at the Mindfulness Center, refers to curiosity as a superpower that can help address and redirect the brain’s attention away from feelings of anxiety. While anxiety is different than tight muscles, the two are connected and influenced by the brain.
This is what Dr. Brewer has to say about curiosity:
“So here I highlight curiosity. I think of it as a superpower, because curiosity not only feels better than anxiety, but it also is intrinsically different….anxiety feels closed down, whereas curiosity feels open or expanded. And you can’t be closed and open at the same time. So if you inject a little bit of curiosity into that closed feeling of anxiety, we can actually start to move in the opposite direction simply by being curious in that moment.”
He makes an important point about curiosity -- it’s a word that evokes a sense of openness and freedom as opposed to anxiety that instills more a feeling of being shut down and closed. Exchange anxiety for tight muscles or pain and it works the same way.
Here’s how I use the word curiosity in my somatic movement classes to change the internal talk that might be going on in people’s minds.
Don’t make this a big movement or make it too extreme so you might bring on a cramp -- we’re exploring and being curious about our bodies and how they respond when we make these movements
Take your time and be curious about what muscles easily release and what muscles might be gripping a bit. And see if just by being aware of those tight muscles, can you help them let go...even just a bit.
Through my words, I’m hoping people will make the movements soft and gentle, to slow down and really notice, sense and feel how the body, and particularly the muscles, respond as we move. There’s no right or wrong, it’s just being with our body at this moment in time.
Before I end this post, I want to touch on kindness. If curiosity is a superpower, then kindness is the super of all superpowers. Self-judgment, judging ourselves all the time, regardless of circumstances, is what we see in western societies a lot. It can become a habit that people have a hard time changing.
In somatic movement that self-judgment habit can get in the way, big time, of noticing, sensing and feeling our bodies. It’s the same with anxiety. We lose a sense of how our bodies are responding to ongoing worry.
But as Dr. Brewer explains, when he asks people with serious anxiety problems what feels better in their bodies, anxiety or kindness, kindness always wins.
“When you judge yourself, does it actually feel good? Does it feel closed down? Does it feel contracted? Typically, the answer is yes. And then I can say, well, how does that compare to when you’re kind to yourself? And they notice, well, kindness feels better. It feels more open and expanded.
So the commonality between kindness and curiosity is that both feel more open. They both feel more expanded than judgment and anxiety, say. So if you think of the broad category of things that make us feel open and expanded, kindness and curiosity are these two main flavors, if you want to think of it that way.”
You can listen to the full interview with Dr. Brewer on the Ezra Klein Podcast, That Anxiety You’re Feeling? It’s a Habit You Can Unlearn.
A reminder that my next somatic movement classes start in early August. I’m offering basic somatic movement classes and twice-weekly classes for more experienced somatic movers.