The missing piece for women to feel more rested, radiant, and to embrace their fullest potential
Living ‘in our head’ and feeling disconnected from ourselves
We live in a society that leads us - particularly as women - to be orienting upwards and outwardly.
We spend a lot of time ‘in our heads’ caught up in thinking, planning, strategising, organising, analysing,....
These are undeniably valuable skills - but most of us have practised them to such an extent that we are experiencing life through our thinking.
We think about life, which takes us away from fully living it.
Being ‘in our head’ so much, disconnects us from our bodies over time (truly noticing its sensations), and we lose the ability to be deeply and wholeheartedly present in our everyday life.
Have you ever experienced a beautiful moment where you were physically present, but you didn’t experience the moment fully, in all its richness: the joy, awe, enchantment, happiness, contentment, and other sensations and emotions alive in your body at that particular moment. I call this living as a hologram version of ourselves - we are alive, but not fully engaged in life.
We also have a tendency to orient outwardly.
As women, we are socialised to be more attuned to the needs of those around us than to our own.
It can look like prioritising everyone else’s needs and happiness above our desires and needs. Maybe we are finding ourselves in patterns of people pleasing, over-giving, self-sacrificing and self-abandonment (leaving ourselves last - and never quite getting to this last item on our to-do list).
Over time, these patterns leave us feeling empty and perhaps resentful: who looks after us while we look after everyone else? Who is holding us while we hold so much?
Because of our lack of attunment to ourselves, we also miss the cues that our body is sending us to let us know that it is feeling exhausted and empty, and to tell us that something needs to change.
Without hearing these cues, we continue to push through to the point of exhaustion when our resources are already depleted.
We hit burnout.
These outward (outside of ourselves) and upward (in our thinking) orientations also lead us to ultimately feel disconnected from ourselves.
Many of the women I support share that they find it challenging to connect with what they like, what gives them joy and pleasure, what they enjoy when they aren’t focused on everyone else’s needs.
They may be longing for more joy and a deeper sense of purpose in their life but they struggle to identify what it means for them and how to get there.
This disconnection can be so profound that some of us might feel like we have lost touch with who we truly are, beyond our roles and responsibilities. Who we used to be when we felt rested and radiant …
Reconnecting with ourselves and rediscovering our deepest yearnings is vital to live the life we truly desire. A life that isn’t guided by what we are told to do, or by what others expect us to do, but by our own inner voice and somatic intelligence.
This requires us to re-orient downwards (into our body) and inwards (towards our inner landscape, OUR desires, longings, yearnings).
Why is a somatic approach the missing piece to help women feel more rested, grounded, radiant, and to embrace more of their potential?
Soma means ‘body’ in Greek, and a somatic approach to coaching is one that invites us to work with and through the body and the nervous system.
Polyvagal Theory teaches us that ‘story follows state’. In other words, the stories swirling in our mind moment to moment are born from the subtle sensations present in our body beyond our conscious awareness (our interoception).
In the words of Deb Dana: “Story follows state”, which means that sensations come first.
Then the mind tries to make sense of them through thoughts and stories.
What does this mean practically?
It means that to unwind the stories and habitual patterns keeping us stuck, we need to become curious about our sensations: dialling down the volume of the story in our mind and safely attuning to what sits underneath: what’s happening within the body.
As we learn to listen to our body and track sensations, we realise that its cues become a pathway to come home to balance, grounding, and stability - even when the world around us feels chaotic and uncertain.
This is why our body is a doorway for healing, rediscovery, and empowerment.
It allows us to reconnect with who we are beyond the stories we have about ourselves.
Our body also holds the somatic intelligence that helps us to navigate life in a way that reflects what we truly want, rather than what we have learned to be ‘the right, and only way’. It shows us the way through subtle sensations. Think about the last time you said ‘yes’ to something, and truly meant it - what did this ‘yes’ feel like in your body? Perhaps an expansion in the chest, a warmth in the heart, and opening, …? Now bring to mind the last time you said ‘no’ - notice what this felt like in your body. Can you sense the delicate differences between a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’? Now imagine saying ‘yes’ when you truly want to say ‘no’ … You will begin to notice an incongruence between your words and your body’s intelligence and wisdom.
Somatic inner work (working with and through the body) is an invitation to bring the centre of gravity of our life back inside of us and to listen. We begin by cultivating a sense of safety, grounding and resilience within ourselves. Then, as we learn to recognise our body’s subtle sensations, we reclaim our inner authority - we make decisions and choices that are coherent with what we truly want. We build the capacity to express our opinions more boldly, to say ‘no’ and set boundaries to protect our energy more easily, to stand up for what we believe in and to embrace our fullest potential and to have more impact and influence.
It’s an opportunity to reconnect with our deepest yearnings, and to rediscover who we are behind the persona that we have learned to portray in order to belong.
It’s a journey to re-ignite parts of ourselves which may have been dormant for a long time, because it didn’t feel safe for us to show up in the fullness of who we are, whether our experiences taught us that we were too much or not enough on some level.
As we meet ourselves with compassion and acceptance, we create a profound anchor within ourselves, a resilient and flexible inner core that opens the door to new, bolder possibilities in every area of our life.
Rather than outsourcing our sense of worth and validation, we become self-sourcing.
We believe so fiercely in our own worthiness and wholeness that we no longer need to rely on the external world to validate our right to belong.
How do I know if somatic coaching is right for me?
The best way to find out is to experience it first hand.
But here are a few pointers. Somatic coaching can help you if you:
Would like to feel calmer and more grounded so life feels more easeful
Yearn to be more present in your life and to feel more fully alive
Want to reconnect with yourself, your body, your desires and who you are
Would like to experience more self-confidence and self-trust
Have a deep longing for more: for yourself, your life, your leadership, but you are unsure how to access this
Want to feel more empowered
Are ready to step up in your leadership (in your family, community or workplace)
Know there is more to you, would like to reignite parts of you who feel dormant and to embrace the fullness of who you are
And more …
If you are curious about how somatic coaching could support you personally, we offer a complimentary 30 minute call where we can answer any specific questions you have and explore together how it could support you.
