When we experience stress, our bodies respond with a cascade of physiological changes meant to prepare us to take necessary action. All of our systems are impacted by this hormonal mobilization, and, in modern circumstances, our body can remain in a state of chronic stress activation until receiving cues that the danger is over. As Emily Nagoski found in her research for the book Burnout, “physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle.”

 

When we move, our bodies are able to discharge the energy of accumulated stress.   

 

Additionally, returning to our early years, our sensorimotor cortex is the earliest to myelinate — for glial cells to wrap around nerve fibers (neuronal axons), supporting brain growth and development. This happens as we're experiencing our earliest attachment interactions, developing our stories of ourselves and the world.

 

Thus, I believe the core hurt in relational patterns is more easily accessed through embodied processing — work that incorporates movement and felt experience, or proprioception (awareness of position and movement of the body in space) and interoception (sensing signals from within our own bodies). As we practice tuning our attention to what our bodies are communicating, we begin to develop internal space — our capacity to integrate.

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This is a path for healing different levels of disconnection, dissociation, or numbing many of us experience, and leads to more opportunities for pleasure, presence, and the ability to take conscious action instead of unconscious reactivity.