This is the second in a series on ideas to keep you sane. Each part is standalone, but in case you missed the first part, you can read it here.
In this post and the last, I’ve been drawing on my day-to-day experience to illustrate principles that I feel could support our collective sanity. The one I want to dive into today is the idea that more = better. This notion has successfully colonised many aspects of life, including the way that people approach their wellness practices.
When I lived in the UK, I learned that the British have a word for things that you just can’t get enough of: moreish. Biscuits, for example, are often described as moreish, because you want to keep eating more and more of them. What I’m talking about in this post is not the pleasure of something moreish but the alarming diffusion of more-ness into every facet of life. Everything needs to be more, better, faster, stronger, etc.
The example that really took me by surprise—and was the initial impetus for this reflection—was how people think about breathing and breathwork. It’s usually something along the lines of breathing more (deeper, longer, fuller, stronger) is better. For the record, this is not true. Breathing is a behavior that is responsive to context; sometimes you need to breathe more, other times less.
Breathing health lies in the resilience and flexibility of your breathing system to respond appropriately to the context you find yourself in. It’s not ideal to breathe more when you need to breathe less (eg. during rest or calming activities), or to be unable to breathe enough when you need to breathe more (eg. during exertion or mobilisation).
In terms of wellness, more-ness shows up in seeking the most intense experience, the deepest transformation, the fastest results. This mindset is clearly influenced by the desire for: (1) a quick fix, and (2) value-for-money. People want to go to a workshop that’s one-and-done, or attend a retreat that’s so powerful that it will totally change their life ie. rid them of all their problems in one go. When they tell their friends about sessions they’ve gone to, or practitioners they’ve seen, they recount the most dramatic part of the process, the part when they felt that huge shift, the coming undone, the amazing release. (Of course, not everyone is like this, but this tends to be the default mode, especially for beginners.) The marketing of such experiences also contributes to this impression, because how better to sell something than to make it more? More potent, more transformative, more everything than what anyone else is offering.
I won’t deny that such experiences have their own magic. When we surrender control to a space or to another person, the flow of life becomes much stronger within us. More possibilities open. And yet, the more disembodied we are, the more stimulation we need in order to feel that flow at all. So it becomes a cycle of amplification, intensifying everything, rather than of sensitisation. In the words of movement pioneer Moshe Feldenkrais,
In order to recognize small changes in effort, the effort itself must first be reduced. More delicate and improved control of movement is possible only through the increase of sensitivity, through a greater ability to sense differences.
We are all susceptible to more-ness, myself included. My latest wake-up call came through my skincare routine, when I ended up overdoing things with too many new products and had what’s called a ‘purging’ experience. (As unpleasant as it sounds.) It reminded me of the way people sometimes talk about doing detoxes or going on ayurvedic retreats: they’re awful while you’re doing them (because of all the accumulated toxicity in your system), but afterwards you feel great. Then again, after the high, it all falls apart and we return to the old ways that led to the buildup of toxicity in the first place.
what makes somatics somatic?
What’s ironic—and especially irritating to me—is when the word somatic is used in this way. Someone told me recently about an experience she had with another practitioner, who did a manual adjustment that left her suddenly shaking and weeping as she discharged all her pent-up emotion. She then asked me, “Isn’t that what somatic work is about? Is that what you do too?” This kind of interaction has happened enough times that it can’t be a coincidence; people here seem to believe somatics is about triggering wild and uncontrolled discharges of energy and emotion. When I scroll through Instagram, I sometimes even see reels by studios that feature participants crying during workshops and therefore presumably experiencing a fantastic, deep, one-of-a-kind release.1
Again, there is nothing wrong (and undeniably something fascinating) about such experiences. But to me they are not the goal, and definitely not the defining feature, of somatic practice. If I may venture a definition-in-progress of how I see somatics:
Somatics is about the felt experience of the body. It is not just anything that involves the body (the word for that is ‘physical’).
Somatics involves a deep understanding and respect for how the human body works. It is an ongoing inquiry (not a one-and-done), which creates deep transformation through subtle, incremental and sustainable changes.
Somatics is also a philosophy, a way of reorienting yourself to living life in tune with your body and the bodies of others, including the larger body of nature. The longer you practice, the deeper this philosophy takes root in you and the more it influences how you live your life.
Our bodies, when we understand them, already and always reflect the way that nature works, the way that life evolves. Most of the time, this is in small, simple, step-by-step ways that make sense within, or are responsive to, a specific context.
It is only when something in the ecosystem has gone wrong that large-scale changes and disasters occur; and they do so in order to discharge pent-up energy and realign the entire system to a new direction on its path. These are the kinds of changes being triggered by the approaches I hear about and frequently see on social media.
Large-scale changes are not meant to happen all the time. We certainly don’t need to be seeking them out regularly and on purpose. Life has a way of providing the opportunity to have such experiences to us, unexpectedly and free of charge—this is the invitation, or what could happen, when we lose a loved one, or a job, or move country, or get sick.
More importantly, for dramatic changes to be successful they need to be nested within a framework of healthy and useful micro-scale habits, routines and structures. Otherwise, the detox program fails and you return to your old, pre-detoxed self within weeks or months. Or, you have a great release in a workshop, but in the absence of any follow-up, that feeling disappears without leaving a long-term impact on you.
The way that we humans successfully invoked (and integrated) large-scale changes in the past was to turn them into initiations. An initiation is a ritual way of marking a significant transition in a human being’s life. Initiations have their own set structures, in-built support systems and meaning frameworks. Retreat experiences are somewhat initiatory, or can be if they are managed well. But strolling up to a weekend class is not really the same thing, unless you take responsibility for creating the structured container and integrating the experience yourself, afterwards.
I’m sensitive to the fact that sometimes, the simple presence of supportive community and a little targeted guidance to be in touch with your own body can trigger intense release. Again, this is likely because we’re habitually so disembodied, and tension has therefore been building up under-the-radar for so long, that it will take any opportunity to be discharged. This is not something a participant, or a facilitator, can control. But I think it’s very important to reorient our teaching styles, practice choices, frameworks and expectations away from purposefully seeking such intensity, and towards cherishing the small, subtle changes that regular somatic practice brings.
Some years ago, at an online summit, I recall hearing an anecdote about Moshe Feldenkrais (quoted above). Apparently he said that if, as a result of a hands-on adjustment, a student displays any excessive, out-of-control responses such as crying, shaking, uncontrollable movements, spacing out etc.—then the practitioner has failed them by introducing too much new information to the nervous system at once. It is the practitioner’s job to titrate what they do, so that the student’s nervous system can take it in without getting overwhelmed. What would the world of wellness look like if more of us appreciated the skill and subtlety involved in working this way?
I want to close with the reminder that in nature, cycles of growth (and decay) happen almost imperceptibly, and yet still yield astonishing results. We can never tell the exact moment that winter gives way to spring, but along the way, we see the little signs, and they all add up. The way nature does things has sustained life for millenia. Why should it be any different for us?
If you need any further, more poetic, reminders to take things easy, slow down, do less… check out my three-part series on How to Approach Somatic Practice.
And if this piece sparked any realisations or ideas in you, let me know in the comments or via email. I’d love to hear where and how more-ness manifests in your life and how you deal with it.
Let’s not go into the privacy implications of this.
Loved this one!
So much well said. Thank you. At a personal level it truly saddens me that the small incremental changes and nuances of practice are not “cherished” more. For me, this is the more-ish of practice 😀