Resilient Joy Begins in the Body
A Somatic Practice to Support Your Creative Life
If you’re feeling creatively flat, anxious, or like your energy is scattered in twelve different directions, you’re not stuck - although I hear us saying that we are all the time. You’re likely just disconnected from your body. And honestly? That makes sense.
We live in systems that reward overthinking and disembodiment. Many of us were trained, especially in academic, clinical, or leadership environments, to live from the neck up. To override the signals of fatigue, inspiration, or emotion. Factor your identities into those environments and you’re adding on layers of gaslighting, compartmentalizing bodily needs and pains, and making sure you don’t do anything that could be interpreted as ‘too emotional.’ UGGGHHHH
Our bodies are the original source of creativity, clarity, and resilience. So training us to not know how to connect to–let alone feel–them has been a massive tool of systems.
An antidote? Somatic practices.
Somatic practices are how we gently return to our bodies and reclaim our creative power to take embodied action.
Let’s start at the beginning on this one. Because while last week’s practice of journaling likely was more familiar, what even are somatic practices?
Somatic work invites us to notice and feel what’s happening inside, without needing to fix it, analyze, or judge it. Somatic practices help you move from survival mode into a more spacious, responsive nervous system where joy, creativity, and presence can actually land or be felt.
This isn’t always easy. For many, reconnecting with the body also brings up grief, sadness, or anger. That’s normal. That’s part of the repair. There’s been lots of trauma inflicted on our collective bodies, and likely at the individual levels also. Enough so that the known threat of it keeps us hiding pregnancies, miscarriages, illnesses, and other losses or changes.
Resilient joy isn’t performative. It’s not something we paste over our exhaustion. It’s a capacity we build—slowly, consistently, compassionately. And somatic awareness is one way we begin to grow that capacity again.
Try This: A Simple Somatic Connection
This practice takes a couple of minutes. No tools needed. It’s one that I started with to reconnect to my own body and often use at the beginning of other somatic work just to walk my brain back into my body. Give this script a try and make it your own.
Sit or stand in a way that feels grounded.
Place one hand on your chest and the other on your belly or I always liked both hands on my upper chest.
Inhale slowly for 4 counts… exhale gently for 6 counts. Do 3 rounds.
Take your attention down to your toes. Wiggle them a little bit as if they’re asking your brain to come all the way down from the head to the feet. Notice the pressure or touch between feet and shoes or floor. Try stretching your toes. One foot. Then the other. Maybe both at the same time. Try lifting only the big toes, or the pinkie toes. Feel your breath and attention lay at your feet.
Just let your awareness settle inside you.
This is embodiment in motion: Noticing → Listening → Allowing → (Eventually) Acting
Your creativity is not separate from your body. Your body is not separate from your joy. This is why somatic practices matter for creativity and resilience.