The power of self-soothing touch

Breathwork and mindfulness of the breath practices can be excellent for boosting calming activity in the nervous system. Any time you are working with the breath, you are working with your vagus nerve, which is why doing these practices regularly is so helpful for reducing stress in general. However, breath-centric practices are not always going to be accessible for everyone: ya girl is not a fan of breath-based practices with a sinus or chest cold 🤧. Additionally, many folks may not feel comfortable doing a practice with focus on the breath because their very intelligent nervous systems are like, "nope nope nope" based on a previous adverse experience with breath restriction, or panic attacks, or asthma...you name it! It's super common.

The fantastic news is we have a lot of ways to work with the vagus nerve besides working with the breath!! In this week's video I share two practices, first rocking, then soothing self-touch. I've included rocking before, but self-touch is a new one so I hope you give it a shot and feel the benefits!! Which leads me to my nerding out point 🤓for this article...

The calming power of self-touch

Self-touch is an amazing tool in your self-regulation tool kit. Because us humans are wired for connection, touch can be an excellent way to help bring us into that optimal nervous system state of ventral vagal. This is a blended state of parasympathetic activity with enough sympathetic that we are feeling "online" and present and ready to connect. I previously wrote about the ventral vagal state so feel free to check out that article if you want a refresher or to learn more.

The wildest thing about self-touch is that our bodies and nervous systems don't really know the difference - the same biophysical reactions happen if we are putting a hand on our heart, or giving our trap a squeeze, as if someone were giving us a hug. In studies, self-touch moves the needle on boosting parasympathetic activity, although often the boost is slightly larger when compared with getting touched by someone else, eg "social touch." One study compared self-touch to hugs and found no difference in the level of cortisol and that the self-touch group returned to cortisol baseline faster than the hug group (after a stressful event that was part of the study). Another study involved measuring people's levels of anxiety and taking note of how often they self-touched during conversation. Turns out, people do this subconsciously and there was a relationship between how anxious people were and how often they self-touched (more touching, more anxious). So our bodies are basically getting us to do this without us even having to think about it to help soothe stress!

So how do you do it? The best way is to experiment! (come on, did you guys honestly think I would say anything different?) Different kinds of touch - pressure, place on your body, holding still, making circles, patting, etc- will feel better for different situations. For instance, when I am really stressed in the moment (frustration, anger) I like to rub both of my flat hands on the tops of my thighs - maybe its the big surface area of touch, but it works the quickest. For end of the day stress, I will give myself a little trap massage or just rub the sides of my neck on the drive home (for a few seconds with one hand unless stopped at a traffic light, of course!). When I am feeling emotionally tender (overwhelmed, hurt) stroking one cheek with one hand is so soothing.

In the video, I invite you to explore some self-hugging touch. Some other things you might try are simply slowly rubbing your palms together, one hand on the heart/one on the belly, both hands on heart/belly, or placing a palm on your cheek. Just to get your gears turning! What matters most is that you notice a difference in your body and nervous system.

Speaking of experimenting

If you do feel comfortable working with the breath, feel free to try out these two practices from the video in conjunction with a breathwork tool. The multiple avenues of calming and soothing activities can make powerful shifts fast! Give this week's practices a shot at the very least and let me know what you think. I do hope you benefit from them!

Also, since social touch is also super helpful, hug your people more often 😉 I mean there will be lots of gatherings happening with the holiday this week, so even if those family visits are stressful, try to counteract that stress with extra hugs!

Seriously though, wishing everyone joyful and peaceful gatherings on Turkey Day 💗☺️🦃

In deepest gratitude,

Carly

Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter!! If you know anyone who would benefit, I would be delighted if you shared the love and passed it along 🙏

I greatly appreciate any feedback, comments, or requests for practices/info. I've got a lot of knowledge and skills to share with people, so tell me what ya need and we'll see what I can do!! Simply respond to this email to send me your thoughts 😊