Embodied Clarity

An Embodied Approach to Stress Management and Work/Life Balance

January 14th, 2009

I remember my days of practicing law.  The stress was constant and very intense. I found it hard to make time to go to the gym, see friends, or go to an art gallery. My productivity at work suffered. I felt constantly behind the eight ball.  Over time, I became so frazzled that I was often too tired to connect with people and loved ones when I finally left work.  My life felt more and more out of whack as I let the pressure of practicing law slowly pull me away from myself and what was most important to me.  Ultimately I the balance became so lop-sided in favor of work that  I had to leave the practice of law because I was burnt out mentally, physically and emotionally.

Increasingly, law firms are paying attention to issues of work/life balance because of the critical role it plays in the retention of talented attorneys.   Much of the current work-life balance discussion centers on firm policies that support flex-time, part-time, compressed work weeks and virtual workplaces.  However, while the firm’s policies are important, it could be a long time for policies catch up to the needs of working attorneys.

At its core, the concept of work/life balance is the result of the perception that you can complete your work and still have enough energy to connect to the people and things you love outside of work.  You, as an individual, play an enormous role in feeling like you can finish your work, avoid burnout, prevent stress-related illnesses and stay engaged and connected to your loved ones and hobbies. Surprisingly to some your BODY is the key!

Anxiety and stress bombard you all day, but you are probably largely unaware of their on your body.  Consider the following scenario:
You are driving to work and get stuck in traffic or delayed on public transport.  The whole way, you worry about not arriving on time for an important client meeting.  You tightly grip the steering wheel, clench your jaw and hold your breath.  You arrive at work to find out that your assistant is out sick and a quiet case has “heated up“ requiring lots of immediate work.  You hold your breath and literally brace yourself for a hard day by tightening your chest as you head into your client meeting 10 minutes late.  The meeting goes well, but you now have a mountain of work ahead of you.  Again, your breathing becomes more shallow because your diaphragm is rigid from holding it together and your blood pressure is increased.  By noon, your shoulders are creeping up towards your ears from all the tension and holding.  You run out for a power work out at the gym, but you are rushing so much to and from that it hardly gives you a break from the tension of your day. You don’t even notice that you were clenching your jaw the whole time and held onto the stair master with a grip that could strangle a small animal.  When you return to the office you have received an unexpected motion for discovery from opposing counsel and just about “lose it” as your heart rate and blood pressure increases.  But you hold it together by again contracting your stomach and chest, holding your breath while your shoulders continue to creep up so that you finally resemble a headless horseman.  Just as you are about to leave for the evening, you get a nasty and contentious call from opposing counsel.  You definitely feel shaken as your heart rate and blood pressure shoot up dramatically. You have a headache and pain and tension in your neck and hands.   You rush home to spend time with your spouse and kids but you are exhausted and would rather tune out by watching TV.

For most of you, this is a common day.  Your body is constantly responding to day-to-day stressors—getting more and more wound up each day without you really noticing.  And, if you do notice, you tell yourself to grin and bear it or tough it out.

Most people in corporate America view the body as the mechanism to haul their brain from meeting to meeting and ignore the critical role the body plays in coping with stress. We rarely consider how our own self-image and ability to perform at our best is affected by our own posture, breathing, and muscle tension etc. In reality, the body and mind are far more integrated than we could ever imagine.   It may be surprising to learn that your body, posture, muscle tensions, and facial expressions actually affect your ability to think clearly, perform at your best, regulate your emotions and mood, and your ability to renew and rejuvenate.  The intimate link between the shape of the body and our ability to perform is understood more clearly everyday because of exciting new research in the field of neuroscience.  And, it’s why the field of Somatic Coaching, which works with the body as well as the mind to develop great leaders, is continuing to gain momentum.

The bottom line is by paying attention to the subtle changes in you body and learning to leverage the wisdom of your body you can perform at your best and feel a sense of balance—whether that means a high conflict situation with opposing counsel, the day to day stress of work, or simply connecting to your loved ones after work.  Let’s look at why and how focusing on your body can make this happen.

We are Embodied Beings:
The Link Between Thought, Emotion, and Muscular Contraction

Moshe Feldenkrais was a pioneer in the human potential movement and revolutionized the way we view movement, expression and self-image.  His philosophy that developed in the 1950’s –1970’s was at the forefront of in changing reductionist views of the body and mind.  He explained that our moods, emotions and thoughts are expressed through our body language, posture, gestures, and facial expressions.  In other words, every thought or feeling has a corresponding set of muscle contractions associated with it.   So the thought, “there is no way I can get all this work finished” and the subsequent overwhelmed feeling have a corresponding set of muscular contractions. Over time, patterns of muscle contraction develop and get hard-wired for each emotion and thought.  In this way, certain thoughts patterns or emotions have a physical shape.  In many ways, these patterns are predictable and thus, body language experts can read a person’s physical cues and analyze what that person is thinking and feeling.  Some external manifestations, such as crossed arms, may be obvious; while others, such as touching an ear, are more subtle; yet others, such as a change in breathing pattern, are subtler still.

Most of us think that thought and emotion occur in the brain and cause the body to respond.  But, the remarkable thing is that the opposite is also true.   The brain receives information from the body that affects your emotions and moods.  Because the muscle contraction or shape is hard-wired with the thought or the emotion, the shape of the body, such as being slumped, causes the neuro-chemical reaction associated with sadness.  For example, a scientific study showed that bringing the face and mouth into the shape of a smile actually causes a rush of endorphins and other biochemical changes associated with smiling.   Conversely, making an angry face creates the biochemistry of anger.

Ultimately, your posture reflects your moods and thoughts but your body and its posture also send information back to the brain that generates thoughts and feelings.  In fact, your posture is so powerful that studies have shown that slumping actually makes it more difficult to recall positive thoughts. You are literally happier and smarter when you sit up straight.

The Posture of Anxiety and Stress
Feldenkrais studied the shape of anxiety and stress because he thought its presence drastically limited people in realizing their potential.  He discovered that all humans have the same response to stress—contraction of the flexors, (especially in the abdominal region), inhibition of the extensors (which keep us upright), a halt in breathing, followed by a whole series of vasomotor disturbances, such as accelerated pulse, and increased blood pressure.

Recall the previous description of a typical day: throughout the day, you respond to stress by clenching your jaw, holding your breath, making the diaphragm rigid etc.  The problem is that muscles only have an on/off mode.  They are meant to contract and release again. But when you are under constant stress, even seemingly “low-level stress.” the muscles rarely return to their fully released (“off”) state.  And over time the muscular contractions associated with stress become hard-wired into the body, so that even when the external stimulus is gone, your shoulders are still up at your ears, your breath rarely fills the whole lungs, and your jaw remains clenched. Your body is thus in a constant posture of anxiety and stress—continually giving feedback to your brain that you are stressed.

The good news is that because the physical contraction is so closely tied to emotions or thoughts, you can dramatically alter a thought, emotion, or response to stress by changing the pattern of muscular contraction and shape of the body. By interrupting the habitual muscle tension associated with stress, a new possibility of calm, strength, potency and clarity can arise.  Conversely, if you remain stuck in a physical pattern of anxiety you will continue to feel stressed and it is difficult, if not impossible, to have different thoughts, emotions and actions. So, if you continue to sit at your desk (hunched over, jaw clenched, breathing shallow) you will continue to feel overwhelmed and think that the task at hand is impossible.  If, instead, you can restore your breathing, unclench your jaw, and sit upright without increased muscular tension, your heartbeat will slow down, your mood will improve, you’ll have increased mental clarity and more things will seem possible.

Stress and Clarity
Another important reason to gain control over you body as a stress regulator is that stress impairs your ability to think clearly. Remember that we evolved from cavemen.  Therefore, when you perceive an incoming threat, (even just your angry boss or opposing counsel getting nasty), your body responds with a rush of chemicals and neurological impulses that prepare you for fight or flight.  These include increased heart rate, blood pressure, dilated pupils, a rush cortisol and other hormones etc. The irony is that you have nowhere to run and, if you want to keep your job, you probably shouldn’t fight back.

With these hormones and chemicals coursing through your veins, you need to stay calm and focused.  But to add insult to injury, the preparation for flight or fight diverts the resources used for higher cognitive function to survival responses. So, it’s harder to think clearly and remain calm and collected.  By leveraging the body—(controlling your breathing with long out breaths, and reducing the muscle contractions associated with incoming stimulus), you can engage what is called the “relaxation response” and literally reverse the stress response and reengage enhanced cognitive function.

Reversing the Stress Response with Calm Readiness
Because of the intimate link between the body and mind, a state that I like to call “calm readiness,” translates into clarity and improved performance.  Calm Readiness can be cultivated by an exercise, called “Balancing on the Skeleton” that I learned from Chris Fernie, a Qigong master who ingeniously incorporates the theory of Feldenkrais into his teachings.   The practice reduces excess muscle contraction and tension caused by stress and anxiety, thus engaging the relaxation response and changing the body’s shape to one that is associated with calm readiness.

Basic Practice for Calm Readiness
The practice entails standing while systematically going through areas of the body to listen closely to how moving that part affects other parts of the body—while constantly searching for the feeling of less effort and work.

Stand with the feet shoulder width apart and as close to parallel as is comfortable.
1) Feet: Begin by rolling the  feet onto the inside edge and outside edge — slowly and gently, while noticing its affect on the low back, pelvis, chest and neck. Look for the placement of the feet that causes everything in the chain to work as little as possible.  Slowly make the movement smaller and smaller as you get more precise about the correct angle of the feet.  Continue up the body:
2) Knees: what happens when you bend and straighten the knees.  How does it affect the low back, chest, and other parts of the body.
3) Pelvis: tuck the tailbone under slightly, causing the low back to bend, then bring the tailbone away, arching the low back.  Notice how this movement, affects the whole chain, but in particular the low-back, chest and neck.  Search for the place where the low back feels free and hangs towards the floor.  As you get closer to this, make the movement smaller and smaller, getting more and more precise.
4) Chest: Exhale softly and deeply, allowing the chest to soften as much as possible without effort.  Notice how this lessens the feeling that you need to brace yourself or hold yourself up.
5) Shoulders: Begin to take the shoulder forwards and backwards—slowly and gently.  Do not force it or make a big effort.  A small movement is just as valid as a big movement.  There is a placement of the shoulders that causes the arm to feel heavy and long.  Rather than feeling the need to pull the shoulders backward or hunch them forward, they can balance on the shoulder girdle with minimum effort.
6) Head and Neck:  slowly move the head forward and back as if you are chicken pecking.  Notice when you feel tension in the neck vs. when it feels as though the head is being supported by the spine effortlessly.
7) Jaw: Bring your attention to your jaw and any tension there.  Gently open your jaw to allow the bottom jaw to hang open slightly.  Gently and slowly take the bottom jaw left and right.  Do a much smaller movement than you are at first inclined.  Try to let go of as much work and tension in the jaw as possible.  After a while of doing this, slowly close the jaw to a comfortable place.
8) Stand for a few moments to take it this new posture. Revisit previous places briefly to make sure they are still in alignment.  Follow a few long exhales as they travel down through your body.

You are now closer to being balanced on the skeleton.  The muscles are doing as little excess work as possible and the structure of the skeleton is doing more to hold you up.  It will not be your habitual way of standing and it will cause changes in your nervous system that bring a degree of freedom and possibility for new ways of being and responding in the world.

The practical result when you alleviate the excess muscular contraction associated with stress, is that you have initiated the relaxation response — a sense of relief will permeate the body and mind. Because the entire nervous system is calmer and not fighting a perceived threat, your mind can quiet and become more clear.

Time for Renewal:
Renewal isn’t just a 7 letter-word. It’s proven that renewal is the key to high performance and burn out avoidance. Jim Loehr and Toney Schwartz, the authors of The Power of Full Engagement, have coached several world-class athletes such as Monica Seles and Dan Jansen, defining precisely what it takes to perform consistently at the highest levels under intense competitive pressures.  They discovered that the key to gaining the winning edge in high-level sports has little to do with skill.  Instead, their clients gained the winning edge by learning to manage their emotional, physical, cognitive and spiritual energy through adequate rest and renewal.  Muscle fibers and the brain grow best when they are challenged slightly beyond their limits and then given a period of rest and recovery. Likewise, the best way to deal with emotional and cognitive stress is to recover between sessions of high demand so that you are renewed and refreshed the next time you are required to push your personal limits. Loehr and Schwartz have applied their findings to the corporate world, teaching that instead of managing time, the key to performance is in managing emotional, cognitive, physical and spiritual energy reserves.

As previously discussed, when you are in a state of constant low-level anxiety, the system is always being taxed. It’s like riding the brakes of a car.  Eventually, they get exhausted and burn out.  The neuro-chemical changes, muscular contractions, impaired breathing, and increased levels of stress hormones such as cortisol eventually burn out the system. Therefore, it is critical to give the body and mind a rest.  Without breaks, the system simply cannot continue.  Fatigue and illness creep into the system.  Regular breaks “reset the system” and return you to a calm readiness so that you are refreshed and ready to engage on all levels with people and activities that you love.

While there are many ways to promote renewal, the most powerful renewal includes both the body and mind, and occurs by taking the body out of the physical pattern associated with anxiety and stress and placing it into the opposite pattern. Once the physical pattern is shifted, the emotions and thoughts shift, the relaxation response is engaged and the system is restored to a calm readiness. The constant chatter about all the things you need to do, quiets down.  You stop worrying about the last meeting.  You breathe a big sigh of relief.  The experience is one of returning to oneself—you  will glimpse the person that you are without the stress and chaos of life.  And, most importantly, you will be able to be present and enthusiastic in your connection with loved ones, friends, family, and hobbies.

The Basic Practice for Calm Readiness previously outlined is a potent form of renewal because it takes the body out of the physical pattern of stress.  However, you can also seek out forms of renewal that allow your system to rest and do nothing. A work out at the gym, while having some important effects on the body, still taxes the system and is viewed by the body as a form of stress.  Therefore, to cultivate renewal, you want to find activities that initiate the relaxation response.  Anything that requires deep, purposeful breathing, such as yoga (if it is not too athletic), Feldenkrais, body scans, meditation, walking on the beach, or taking a bath, can provide that renewal.  And, for those times when you feel you don’t have time for a long break, simply stopping to take three long exhales will provide a tremendous sense of relief.

Summary
Work/life balance the perception that you can complete your work and still connect with those things you value outside of work. While advocating for policies that support flex-time and compacted work weeks are an important aspect of the equation, you can also take control of your own life by learning to develop a calm readiness that allows you to control your own mental state, improve your performance and ready yourself for meaningful connection with other people and things.   Learning to pay attention to your body will have an immediate affect on your ability to focus, perform and renew! More importantly, when you return home you won’t be exhausted from the continual stress of you day and you will be better able to connect with family and friends.

Entry Filed under: somatic coaching, work life balance