Embodiment

This challenging year for my health has necessitated me tuning in to my body in a way that is new for me. I would almost say that I had hoped to never have to pay this much attention to my body: how it is feeling in all its different parts, and what makes it feel better or worse. I have spent my life pushing past, tuning out, denying (and indulging), and otherwise ignoring my body’s messages to me. Suffice to say, it has been suboptimal. I am ready to do better for myself. 

In the last few years, I have heard a lot about embodiment. I’m not clear whether it’s my age as a woman in my late forties, or the popularization of things like yoga and therapy, or a growing awareness of our sensory systems, or some combination, but in my life, at least, the idea has become too loud to ignore. I want to talk about how embodiment is a goal for our preschool aged children, so that they aren’t beginning their journey to being a friend to their own body in middle age. 

Some years back, I was trying to learn a whole lot of information very fast about sensory processing, because I was working with kids who had strong needs that I had no idea how to address. How that showed up was through behaviors that on the surface were baffling, and sometimes scary for me. I knew some kids who pushed or hit other kids, hard, often. I knew some kids who took off their clothes and painted themselves in mud and paint every day. I knew some kids who would only ever wear very tight, too small superhero costumes to school. I knew some kids who could not be persuaded to eat anything at school. I knew some kids who became increasingly distressed throughout the day as they became progressively more uncomfortable. I knew some kids who could not seem to relax and just play. 

I wish I could tell you that I learned about sensory processing in school, but alas, a Master’s in Human Development gave me absolutely no information or clues of even where to look for what all these behaviors might mean. I actually first learned about all this here at Cottage. Back then, we had the mighty Mona Delahooke as a Parent Ed speaker on a semi-regular basis, and we hosted Tina Payne Bryson on at least two occasions. It was somehow my incredible luck to just be in the same town as these world-renowned writers on the forefront of understanding the fundamental truth that kids (people) do well when they can. They were writing books that have now become must-reads for parents and anyone working with kids in a conscious, evolved way. 

I have to hedge about what way we are working with kids because I am sure it is clear to all of us that many professionals working with kids, across education, various therapies, behavior coaching, medical professionals, all the way to playground monitors have absolutely no experience understanding sensory processing, and may have never heard of it. I imagine as parents of young children, most of the families even at my school are, at best, very new to the idea. So here’s the briefest intro: You have heard that we have five senses: Sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell. Well, surprise! There are at least 3 others that everyone should know about, and they are proprioception, vestibulation, and interoception. 

Here are my shorthand explanations of these three: Proprioception has to do with our relationship to the space around us, and how we feel that is in our muscles and joints. It’s how we know how much we need to squeeze to pick up a paper cup to drink it without crushing it, or how much force we need to shut a door. It’s how we can close our eyes and put our finger on our nose. Our Vestibular sense has to do with our sense of being upright; the fluid in our inner ear settles or moves to tell us if we are in motion, upside down, spinning, or at rest right side up. And Interoception is the feelings we have on the inside of our body that tell us things like when it’s time to go use the bathroom. It lets us know when we are hungry or thirsty or sleepy. It helps us identify feelings inside us and where they are coming from. 

In my learning, I have come to recognize that while every person has a sensory system and has needs and preferences in relation to our individual experiences, some folks have more pronounced or more compelling sensory preferences, and more sensitive sensory systems. Sensitivity is a sliding scale; what might be uncomfortably loud for one person is completely fine for another. 

Imagine a recording studio with faders that can move up and down adjusting levels for each of the eight senses we have discussed. Most people like things kind of in the middle, with a little individual variation where, say, you prefer lamps to overhead lights. Some people, even as little babies, have their faders adjusted to the extremes of some or all the different senses: Loose clothes touching them feel intolerably itchy, they can hear electricity inside of buildings, certain food smells or textures make them nauseous, they never can tell that they need to use the bathroom before it’s an emergency, they get instantly carsick, and socks are either a hard yes or a hard no. 

Many of us are finding in adulthood that we ourselves have some of these more extreme sensory experiences, or are just learning that other people aren’t even bothered by the sound of a working refrigerator. I am one of these people. I have long described myself as “sensitive”, but I thought I was talking about how I cry at things like sentimental TV commercials, not about my various sensory systems. It had never occurred to me before I directed my learning at understanding kids exhibiting distress behaviors related to their sensory needs that I could also pay attention to my own body in the same way. 

I found that most socks are too tight, and that allowed me to only buy the kind of socks that don’t hurt me. I found that if I play music at dinnertime, I am less inclined to be irrationally angry about how loud someone is chewing. I found that I often eat when I have just had a full meal, or not eat for many hours, because I was not noticing how my belly was feeling. I found that wearing my bangs long looks pretty but gives me a big headache, so I keep them short or push them to the side. There have been a million tiny things for me to notice. And my ability to notice granted me the freedom to choose. I am now able to choose to make myself comfortable, when before I would have just started feeling angry, or exhausted, or desperate to move but inhibited by social convention. 

I made room for myself in my own body. I am learning how to be a friend to myself. I have to keep listening, because it turns out she has a lot to say, this body. She’s been waiting for me to notice, like a child tugging the leg of my jeans while I talk on and on about something that doesn’t matter. 

Kids are doing this all the time, but they don’t have words for it. They take off their hat and throw it out of the stroller. They take off their shoes as soon as they get to preschool. They wait to come to snack until the table is a little quieter, when most kids have finished. They decline to join Morning Meeting, where people sit close together on the floor and sometimes everyone is talking at once. They are making accommodations for their own sensory needs, and we can choose to recognize and respect them for that. 

Adults, in our ignorance of sensory processing, persist in asking kids in a million little ways to ignore their own body’s messages. Kids are new to the world, and they already have a lot of messages from outside their body about how the world works, like what we expect of them and how we want them to behave. The example that rattles me most is around toilet learning: we want kids to become proficient, and we know that some people successfully eliminate the need for diapers via bribes of candies or stickers. Largely absent from our considerations are how our childs’ body actually feels, unfortunately. This is something we literally cannot do for them; to really master this skill, they need to learn to recognize that feeling inside themselves, know what to do about it, and then make and execute a plan to fulfill on that goal. 

For us, who I will assume, mastered this long ago, it feels very simple. For a kid, there are so many factors that make this a sometimes slow and difficult process, from the noticing that feeling, and knowing what it means, to being able to execute a plan of running to the potty when they are right in the middle of something else that feels important to them, to having the motor skills to pull down their pants in time, to say nothing of the emotions that can accompany things like potty accidents or painful elimination. And then, once they reach school age, we are asking them to ignore what they have only so recently learned, because we ask them to hold it all through class and wait to go to the bathroom at recess, their one chance to play! 

So often, schools, and our rules, are enemies of kids’ embodiment. We teach them to stay seated, feet on the floor, facing forward, eyes on the teacher, not talking to their friend right beside them. Imagine yourself on a coffee date with a friend. Do you sit that way, or do you cross your legs, lean an arm on the backrest, swivel side-saddle? Moving your body that way is a response to your body asking for proprioceptive input. Your legs pressing together, your arm leaning on the backrest; these are you recognizing some quiet message from your body that likes when there is a little bit of environmental pressure on your muscles and joints. When kids do that, we say they are wiggly. We correct them, redirect them to sit in a way that provides social feedback that they are listening attentively. 

Another way would be to recognize that good listening neither requires eye contact, a still body, nor feet flat on the floor (or sitting “criss cross applesauce”, if you teach young children). We can often listen better while doodling, shaking our leg, looking at things in the room, or walking a short distance to the pencil sharpener. We could be adults who encourage kids to notice when they need to use the bathroom, and go right then. We teachers could notice what makes one child withdraw or go quiet as much as we notice another child when they yell or push people (because both are signals of distress).

I want Cottage to be a place where we learn how to notice both what might be preferences or sensitivities being expressed by our kids, and also how to notice for ourselves what we are feeling, and what that feeling might be urging us to do, to accommodate ourselves. How many times did I drive home with my kids when they were young, gripping the steering wheel and gritting my teeth, because they were screaming and we had stayed at the park too long and now we were all hungry? A million times. I wish I would have been able to notice I was getting hungry and just eat a snack, to accommodate my distress from screaming and put in earplugs, to feel my teeth clenched and recognize that I needed to calm myself down before I tried to solve anyone else’s problems, because I was too dysregulated to help anybody.

Ignoring or failing to notice these things about ourselves is how we end up yelling, or saying things we swore we would never say. But equally, it’s how we are far from knowing the fullness of how to use our bodies to experience pleasure. It’s wearing clothes that are uncomfortable to you, because you made up a rule that you have to. It’s how we press on through symptoms that point to a real and growing problem. 

This year, when my body needs so much of my attention to heal from cancer, I am learning to love knowing the feelings I experience through my sensory system. They cannot afford to be an inconvenience to me, because I need to pay attention and accommodate myself all the time. That in itself has brought me the awareness that I had been considering my sensory needs,  the feelings inside and outside of my body, as inconveniences, or things to hide, ignore, or avoid.  This year, I am promising myself that I prioritize listening to and caring for my body.