Your Body Holds Your History
(and your geography, your science, your music…)
(The full version of this article, written for Dukes Education's Insight Magazine, can be found here. )
Are you comfortable right now? This was my opening question to the group of educators sitting in front of me in a conference room at Wembley Stadium in January. If you were there you might be surprised to notice how often the other person takes no time at all to respond. A quick, yes! Which is the correct and polite response in our society. Sometimes just a shrug which, I suppose, means, ‘I guess so?’. Depending on the age group there will be the individual in the room who shouts, ‘No!’ (maybe exposing something interesting about the impact of psychological discomfort on physical discomfort).
But the question I am really asking is: do you know if you’re comfortable? Are you aware of how your body feels right now as you sit in a room full of people, on a hard chair facing the front, being asked to sit still, be quiet and listen (we’ll get back to this set-up in a bit). When you heard the question, did you take any time at all to check in somatically before answering?
What becomes immediately apparent is how many of us are either only dimly aware of what’s going on below our chins or dismiss all communications coming from ‘there’ almost completely. We’re so skilled at it too! Physical urges are powerful and yet we’re able to override them within the space of a moment.
Why is that?
Because we’re trained for it. From the moment we start school. Any institutional setting depends on the homogenous behaviour of a group. From a young age children are largely motivated by extrinsic rewards: If you do this, we will be pleased with you; if you do that, we will be displeased. Unfortunately a lot of the things we don’t want children (and young people) to do are the very things that their bodies and nervous systems are sending urgent signals to their brain to do NOW: run around, fidget, move away from a busy environment, go to the toilet, laugh at an adult, fight, flee, laugh and spin around, hide, defend, sleep…
Remember that set-up I mentioned before: sitting in a large group on a hard chair, facing the front, being asked to be still, keep quiet and focus? We’re so good at being in a classroom. In the example of my talk, it’s likely that even those in the group who had had a terrible time at school, masking their way through every day as a matter of sheer survival, whose bodies were even now yearning to rather be outside lifting something heavy, or in a quiet place reading the information instead of listening to it in a group - despite these many individual needs and preferences - each and every person was more or less able to sit still, be quiet and (at least feign) focus.
Such good adults, such well-repressed bodies, ready for that desk job! That’s not a judgement, that’s all of us processed through a system that was created to serve a particular kind of socio-economic need.
So, fast-forward into adulthood, is it any wonder that of the 33.7 million days of missed work per year, stress depression and anxiety account for 16.4 million - just under 50% - and musculoskeletal issues for 7.8 million, or 23%. In my experience working with hundreds of clients who arrive in my practice complaining of back pain, shoulder pain, stress, an inability to relax their bodies, poor sleep, anxiety, it’s an arbitrary line that separates psychological and emotional pain from physical (musculoskeletal) pain. I believe it’s possible to trace a significant proportion of ongoing pain to this ability of ours to sit still, be quiet and ignore our bodies to gain the extrinsic rewards we’re taught to strive for.
And some individuals must pay a much higher price than others - when 70% of effort is being used to override the urge to fidget and shout out, that’s a mere 30% left to process what’s being taught. But we don’t grade on the 70%.
It’s common now to hear that ‘sitting is killing us’. But it’s not sitting so much as ‘sitting uncomfortably in habitual hunched over postures for vast swathes of our days from childhood, doing small repetitive movements in unnatural light for abstract rewards that form our sense of self-worth… it is this type of uncomfortableness that is, perhaps not killing us, but definitely causing us considerable amounts of pain - both physical and psychological.
I have had many young adults come in to see me because they feel constantly tired and anxious; sometimes they have unexplained tingling in their extremities; they feel ‘down’. And often, the very first thing I will notice is that they aren’t breathing! Well, they are breathing so shallowly as for their breath to be almost imperceptible. (Perhaps that is how you are breathing right now? Take a moment to check in). This shallow breathing which indicates a weak diaphragm can be directly attributed to spending too much time sitting in a fixed, hunched posture. And, for teenagers especially, after feeling exhausted from sitting at school they may spend the rest of the day sitting or lying at home, with those that need it getting their dopamine or expending their testosterone through gaming. This is not their fault, it’s the reality we’ve all co-created.
The front of our bodies being habitually contracted limits lung capacity and lack of movement means we are not stimulated into breathing fully. Breath rate impacts heart rate which impacts brain waves which dictates body tension… ‘not breathing’ ultimately leads to chronic tension. Chronic tension can take the form of back pain as much as it can the form of anxiety or ‘panic attacks’.
What can we do?
There are simple and not-so-simple interventions worth considering. Being aware, for example, that boys’ testosterone levels increase 7-fold between the ages of 10-15 lets us know right away that to insist they sit still when their very chemistry is demanding that they run, play fight, fidget, build and go for targets - is a cruelty. Standing desks, short, sharp bursts of activity and, perhaps most importantly, the message that what their bodies are telling them to do is natural, powerful and good and can be channelled accordingly - could all make a significant difference to mental and physical health as well as self-esteem. Being aware of the major hormonal changes in girls’ monthly cycles and the impact of each phase on physical and mental strength and capacity - something that can be clearly and precisely followed and understood - can allow for young women from puberty onwards to play to their strengths and, again, to feel empowered by those somatic experiences being taken into consideration in daily life.
Encouraging connection with the body and expression from the body, for example giving more weight to activities like singing and PE and introducing intermittent movement and task-switching are all things that could potentially fit within the education system. Installing a 30-minute-maximum requirement to sit and focus on one task, then providing a 3-5 minute fidgeting, breathing - or simply standing-up - break, might turn a few lives around.
My hope is that our children know when they are uncomfortable and have the tools and nervous system flexibility to deal with discomfort without suppressing it, or feel free to make themselves comfortable without fearing retribution. Life is not about being comfortable all the time, I know, in fact stress and discomfort are important resilience-builders and motivators - but we are faced with an epidemic of chronic pain and chronic conditions and if we start with our own relationship to our bodies and how healthy that relationship is, we can start to undo some of the damage and create different outcomes for ourselves and our loved ones.
