Retraining Our Nervous System for In-Person Events
Hello friends and happy June! Can you believe we’re almost halfway through 2022?
This past week I’ve been reflecting on this year’s goals, thinking about the next six months and putting all my autumn plans into place. I’m excited to be traveling, visiting friends and also having friends visit me here in Portland.
I’ve also really enjoyed my time working with dancers and troupes through private lessons, coaching and yoga therapeutics these last few months. Still, I’m anticipating the emotional overwhelm of stepping into in-person General Skills, Teacher Training and Technique for Teachers next month (wow it’s next month!).
On this note, the troupe director of this week’s group private lesson brought up such a great point during our zoom lesson and I thought it would be a great discussion topic. In fact, this is such a big topic that I’ll be sharing ideas with you throughout the month.
How do you manage and plan classes for students that haven’t danced together in two years?
Of course, there are several approaches to this, but my immediate thought is to first focus on retraining your nervous system to relax around others and then do some fun exercises to reconnect with your dance mates.
Before we get into connecting with fun, group activities, let’s work on connecting with ourselves.
First, let me get a little "woo-woo" with it and yes, there is science behind this too.
When we dance as a group, we share energy…Prana. We create a thread of connection between us that enhances trust, allows us to read body language more easily, sense emotions, etc. We open our energy (chakras) and the energy around us (Koshas) and share this with others around us, it influences our subtle body energy, our emotions and nervous system.
This is a “muscle” many of us haven’t exercised in a while. Instead, we’ve gotten used to being on guard, not getting close, covering our smiles in masks and generally avoiding sharing energy or breath with anyone outside our homes. I understand we’ve all had different experiences through the pandemic, so please know I’m just speaking from my personal experience.
If you aren’t sure what I mean, check in right now…take a deep breath in, as you breath out relax your shoulders and your glutes and relax your jaw. Notice any tension you were holding onto unintentionally. Now do this again when you are around others and you’ll notice how often your body is in “fight or flight” mode whether you realize it or not.
Not only does this impact your connection with others, but it will inhibit your movements too by limiting your natural range of motion.
We need to rebuild trust so we can let the energy flow again. This begins with doing some personal work before you even get into class.
As someone who has suffered with anxiety my whole life and has to consciously prepare my nervous system before teaching or being around people, the number one way I’ve learned to manage this is through getting grounded.
Most people get grounded by taking a walk in nature, putting your hands in the earth or doing something that is earth or nature based. (We touched on this a while back with the blog on Earthing)
But you can get grounded several other ways. Here are three of my go-to grounding practices:
Diaphragmatic Breathing
Rooting visualization
Sitting in stillness and listening to my breath for two minutes
Here’s a lovely class where I teach grounding and centering through a yin practice and use all three of these throughout the class. I’ve made this class FREE for the next few weeks so please feel free to share this with anyone you think would benefit from it.
Teachers, I want to challenge you to take (or even just listen) to this class and see if you can use this information to create your own 2-5 minute grounding exercise. Not only to use before you walk into your classroom, but also one to guide your students through at the beginning of class. It pairs beautifully with the Gratitude meditation.
I'd love to hear your experience in the class and other ways you get grounded. Maybe I'll share a few here next week!
Speaking of next week...next we’ll look at some fun way to rebuild connection with your fellow troupemates and students.