The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Embodied Practice in Psychology: Managing Anger, Stress and Burnout

Starting point is 00:00:00 We train psychologists to think brilliantly, but no one really teaches us how to feel, not properly, not in our bodies. Today I'm joined again by Dr. Sunilad, consultant counselling psychologist, and we're talking about something most clinicians were never trained in, embodied practice. Because here's the uncomfortable truth. You can analyze anger, you can formulate trauma, you can intellectually understand stress, and still be completely disconnected from your own body. In this episode, we explore what happens when you stop trying to think your way out of discomfort and start learning the way to feel your way through it instead.

Starting point is 00:00:39 If you work in mental health, if you live in your own head, or if you're constantly on and don't know how to switch off, this conversation is for you. I hope you'll find it really helpful if you do. Please comment, like and subscribe for more. Hi, welcome along to the podcast. I am joined again today by the incredible Dr. Sanil Lad, who is a consultant counselling psychologist. Hi, Sanel. Hi, Mary Ann. Good to see you again.

Starting point is 00:01:11 Lovely to have you here. And today we are talking about a different topic. For anybody who might want to catch up on our previous episode, where we're talking about growing up in a different body, please do check that out. Could I ask you what embodied practice means to you? Yeah, so I think that's really important. question. So I'm, so when was it back eight, nine years ago now, I trained as a yoga teacher. But before that, one of the things I started to recognise that being a psychologist very much got stuck in the head. And what embodied practice means to me is actually how do we start to feel,

Starting point is 00:01:56 not just in our head, but within our bodies, but started to link in that sense of felt experience, whether that is an emotion, but be able to move it through the body, for example, not just through thinking differently. So are we talking about, you know, when we're with a client, for example, when we notice a physical reaction to something they say, are we talking about that level of kind of connectedness and sharing our journey? Or are we more talking about our own embodied practice and a sense of ourselves in our body? Could you kind of talk to us about that?

Starting point is 00:02:43 Yeah, that's a really good question, Marian. I often don't, you know, if we think from a psychology perspective, there's often, you know, feelings of transference, countertransference, We might feel something in our body, but we often go into this sense of interpretation. What I like about embodied practices, when we start to feel from the bottom up rather than the top down, it's that sense of, well, actually, how could I, if, for example, I'm feeling anger, rather than using a technique to switch it off or to say this anger is not real, actually an embodied practice might be about how do I use my breath, how do I use my body,

Starting point is 00:03:23 how do I scream and shout, for example, in order to let it go, but without a sense of needing to hurt anyone? Yeah, okay, when I was working in youth prisons, my job was to kind of look at anger and young people, I would be so much better at that job now than I was in my mid-20s, mid-to-late-20s. as I'll say. And at the time, lots of advice around how to deal with anger was, you know, go and punch your pillow or go and kick something. And actually, even at the time, I'm not sure, more sure this is right. I'm not sure this is sitting right with me because that is showing that we need to be able to do something physical to almost kind of decompress this anger. And that I just don't think is functional. And sometimes that is, has been picked up in a

Starting point is 00:04:17 in a household as a learned strategy, as a copied strategy of watching grown-ups deal with conflict, watch grown-ups deal with anger. And actually, it's really interesting when we work clinically with people, is that often they think anger and violence are the same, and they're not. It's possible to be angry and write a strongly worded letter to ASDA. It doesn't always mean that you're going in

Starting point is 00:04:42 and you're smashing things up and, you know, scaring or intimidating people, does it? No, not at all. And I think there's something about actually, how do you really sit with what that anger might mean? And it's often, you know, what has it triggered off for? What does that mean, for example? And I guess, again, I work from a very much a CFT,

Starting point is 00:05:07 a compassionate mind perspective, and thinking from an evolutionary perspective. So what is it about this experience that has set off that level of defence. Is it something that really needs to be there? But also, what have I learnt throughout my life, which means that this pattern keeps playing itself out, for example? Why does someone cutting me up really create that angry response?

Starting point is 00:05:32 Is it that actually I thought I was going to die, for example? Or is it just become, like you said, a learned behaviour where anyone, because it's about me as a person, how dare they do that type? of thing to me. So I think there's something about how I use my yoga practices to not only be aware, and I'm not just talking about the physical yoga, which we often see, but a lot more of the deeper yoga knowledge that I'm aware of that I've been studying over the last few years. That about get me a sense of, well, what does non-violence mean, for example?

Starting point is 00:06:10 Yeah, and I think it's only really probably my experiences with yoga and Pilates that get me to check in with my body fairly regularly. And I'm like, oh, Marianne, like drop those shoulders down. Like we don't want to be wearing noses earrings. And just the difference that that level of attunement to our body and kind of checking in mindfully in that moment can be transformational, can't it? Yeah, and I think that's a really important point to think about in terms of how we live our life. at the moment. We're often not checking into our bodies instead what we're doing. We're looking outside. We're checking our phones. We're checking even all those different gadgets, which might tell you your blood pressure is high, your pulse is high, you're not sleeping rather than really

Starting point is 00:06:57 asking yourself and developing the tools to actually understand, well, what is it that you actually are feeling in your body? How do you train yourself? How do you start to practice all those things that make you shine that spotlight into yourself. And I think, you know, the way that we live our lives now is very different to many hundreds, thousands of years ago, for example, when we were connecting to nature, walking around, doing all those things. No wonder, the NHS has got all sorts of problems with people with their backs and all of those kind of things. Because actually, in terms of how we've developed, actually, we're not necessarily practicing. those things. We're living lives which are quite sedentary, so we're not kind of looking after

Starting point is 00:07:45 our bodies in the same way. We're feeding ourselves all sorts of stuff which can be really unhelpful. You know, over the last couple of weeks, I've tried to have a bit of a detox off social media. It's quite interesting, you know, what kind of information that feeds our mind, especially at the moment with whatever's going on in the world. Actually, how that can also lead to that sense of fight and flight constantly coming on because we're getting angry by what we're seeing, but also what the algorithms are doing. They're not giving us hopeful messages all the time.

Starting point is 00:08:17 They're giving really kind of dark and dangerous things at times, or also lots of divisive messages that start to make us feel fearful or hatred towards other groups as well. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I think anything that we, do that gets us to really think about our body in the moment can almost show us when we're using it not properly. So I've been weight training for about just over four years now and very accidental. That's the whole story how that happened. But I now, when I'm stacking

Starting point is 00:08:56 my dishwasher, will get myself into a position where I can do flat back to do it. And that actually is going to be much more protective of my back than kind of hunching over and kind of just not using my body in a way that's going to prevent injury. And even the way I stand when I'm boiling the kettle, I'm just more purposeful about the way that I use my weight distribution. Are there any other ways that we can kind of start to become more embodied? I really like the particular word that you're focused on, start. Because, you know, often people talk about, oh, well, I can't do yoga because I'm not

Starting point is 00:09:38 flexible because I've seen this kind of picture of mainly it's women, but women doing bendy positions in a way. And yoga has now become that in itself. I think what I'd say is that actually what we need to learn to do is actually what is the relationship we need to have with our body. Again, focusing on the whole kind of compassionate mind three systems, trying to think, think about the intention that you go to a class with in order to develop that relationship with the body, trying to avoid getting into that blue system, the drive system, the achievement system. We often, you know, even do different practices to achieve something. So how can we look at doing practices just to develop a relationship? How do we develop that relationship to

Starting point is 00:10:34 our body and be just really curious. How can we be playful? So if, for example, you do decide to have, you know, you decide to load your dishwasher. What if you moved in a certain way, in a different way? What if, for example, you know, one of the experiments I often do is, you know, if you clasp your hands together, what does that feel like? Now what I'd like you to do is change whatever the thumb, so if your left thumb was over your right thumb, moving it. Now, just kind of sensing and feeling that in the body, it might feel really weird because what you've just done is that you've just created this new pattern in your brain. And I think we get used to how our brains have been conditioned in a way.

Starting point is 00:11:22 And we just want that all the time because it feels comfortable, whereas we drew something new and it's like, oh, that doesn't feel nice. but the more you keep practicing it in that way, actually you'll just become accustomed to it. So the same way, how do we start? How do we start to develop that small relationship to our body? Be really curious and get a sense of, actually, if I've got tightness, if I've got inflexibility,

Starting point is 00:11:47 how can I be curious about it rather than shot myself off from it or just avoid doing it? Yeah, I think it's that idea when I've been doing strength training or even yoga for that matter. You've almost got to be able to tune into the day, different sensations your body can give you. So it can give you a little rumble, like, oh, don't carry on that because that hurts.

Starting point is 00:12:07 But you know, when it's sweet pain, when it's kind of ligaments and tendons stretching, maybe we can tolerate that for a little bit longer. Obviously, if it's a searing, stabbing pain, then we should stop that. But we can tolerate some uncomfortableness. And that might be an essential part of growing. So I think, you know, one of the things I often focus on is how do we be more comfortable about being uncomfortable?

Starting point is 00:12:38 You know, I think obviously growing up, life is uncomfortable. And I think what we've got to learn is how do we learn to sit with that in a better way? I think we're we've got loads of resources available towards now, which means that people want the easiest option, the quickest hack. And again, we're fed all this information through social media and stuff. We want the quick, easy answer in a way. But actually, sometimes for our growth, you know, I look back now. And even in my yoga practice, in my physical practices, I look back now.

Starting point is 00:13:15 And there are things that I couldn't ever do when I started where I can now. But that's taken years, but we're often on the mindset. Actually, in three classes, I want to get that done. You know, after this prescription, I want, you. know, it needs to be sorted, but that's not always possible. So I think it's really important we think about what needs to take a bit of time. How do we rewire our brain? But that takes a bit of time and effort as well.

Starting point is 00:13:43 And I'm thinking about the embodied stuff as a way of buffering our stress as well. So I'm aware that I often will go to a Sunday lunchtime, if my kids aren't playing football, that is. a Sunday lunchtime yoga class. And it's a really nice, slow pace. So it is challenging at parts, but it's not, it's probably not the kind of class I might go to on a Saturday morning or on a Wednesday evening, like where I might want something a bit more stretchy. But it's about honouring that actually this is a really nice wind down to the week.

Starting point is 00:14:23 It's a really nice chance to check in with my body. and to honour it and to know that in giving it that hour to rest, to recharge, to gently stretch, to feel strength and power and mastery, that that might well serve me incredibly well in all areas of my life. Yeah, and I think it's really important for us to kind of recognise, well, what are those strategies that we use? sometimes that can be helpful in the short term, but actually in the long term, there might not be very helpful. So I think as you were talking,

Starting point is 00:15:00 it really made me think about actually when I first started, you know, working in prisons throughout my careers has felt difficult, you know, hearing some really difficult stories. And sometimes back in the past, one of the things that I would do, if I'd had a really tough day, you know, had some really awful things,

Starting point is 00:15:20 I'd kind of give myself a glass of wine or two and that'd be a way to kind of try to decompress or, you know, I guess it might be a bit of chocolate and everyone's, you know, everyone's coping strategies will be different that they've developed over their lifetime whether it is food, internet, anything, anything that is kind of addictive in a way, that gives comfort.

Starting point is 00:15:45 And I think that's the thing we need to kind of recognise, well, our body is constantly seeking comfort. in a way. And I remember once one of the things that happened, I had a really tough day and I decided actually rather than have a glass of wine tonight, I'm going to get on my yoga mat. And I got on my yoga mat and actually, you know, just the story that I'd heard was kind of continuing to go through my head. And then I'd just put a random playlist on and suddenly this song just really kind of really touched me. And next thing I know, I'm just in floods of tears with just the level of suffering that I'd sat with with that client that day. And I think

Starting point is 00:16:30 there is something about how do we learn to nourish our bodies in a way which we're not often taught, which doesn't feel real. So, you know, it might be going for a walk or again, you know, something where we can just start to slow down. I think we're living in such a fast-paced world that slowing down feels quite wrong. It's like, oh no, I've not got time to slow down. But I think we probably get more awareness, more understanding once we do slow down.

Starting point is 00:17:07 And I think it's about how do we give ourselves permission to do that, really. Yeah, and I think it's always holding in mind the kind of theory from the Bessel van der Kolp, the body keeps the score. If you hadn't done that, how can we know that that wouldn't have shown up somewhere later in your body, you know, that it just would have kept that all in? And so it's allowing, I think for me, it's building ways for us to move our body kind of fully in different ways to see, to see what thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, that conjures for us and knowing that if we are working in mental health,

Starting point is 00:17:52 being subjected to either harrowing things that we hear or scary things or really just emotive, sad things, yeah, that does take its toll and we need to honour ourselves as humans, you know. And often we can't tell people this stuff. This is the tricky thing about being in our job. You might be able to talk to it with someone in your team who it's relevant to, but not everybody, and your supervisor and anyone in the managerial chain. But you can't be talking to everybody and people in your friendship circle and family about this.

Starting point is 00:18:31 And so often what might be, you know, your go-to strategy might be talking, that's kind of off limits. And so you're having to think, well, what else can I do? Yeah, and I think there's something about what embodiment has meant for me. I think we might sometimes get caught up in the thinking loop, needing to analyse it. But like you said, in terms of some of the work that Bessel van de Kolt says, actually our body can also process things as well.

Starting point is 00:19:00 And that's why, you know, whether it is any kind of somatic movement that we do, whether it's singing or dancing or yoga or any kind of expression of the body, how do we start to allow that to allow the energy to move through our body in terms of that trapped sense, the fear, the pain, the anguish of what it is to be human. Do you think this is something people ought to be starting to bring to supervision? You know, the way they're using their bodies to help manage life and to manage their kind of work experiences as well. And if they should be, how might that look during a supervision session, especially if it's not something that your supervisor is previously raised with you? How could they begin to do that, Sarnel? So I guess I'd say get creative. and that could be, you know, starting a supervision session off with checking into the body.

Starting point is 00:20:03 You know, how often do we start off dependent on your modality with, right, well, what's on your agenda for supervision? Actually, yes, you know, I try and just check in with my colleagues of, well, how are you? But it's often what have you done over the weekend. But actually, what if we did a bit of a check-in of how are you in your body right now? what does it feel like you know when you're talking about this case and this problem that you're talking about can we just check in because i'm recognizing you know this is bringing up lots of thoughts

Starting point is 00:20:38 how's it making your body feel so maybe there is just some kind of quick prompts that you can do especially when there is a high level of difficulty or you know a really tricky sticky problem to try and bring the focus back to the body. Because sometimes especially a psychologist, we love a good analysis and a formulation of something. But I guess grabbing that, you know, one of the things that I love tried to bring into my thinking is yogic wisdom as well. And, you know, within yogic wisdom, you've got something called the Kosci, which is the

Starting point is 00:21:13 different levels. So you've got the body, the energetic body, the mind body. and the kind of bliss body and stuff. But, you know, how do we start to bring those different bodies into our thinking? Because it isn't just about the mind. Yeah, absolutely. And this, you know, anyone listening or watching this might be like, this whole body thing, this is so different than what I'm used to.

Starting point is 00:21:39 You know, my parents weren't physically connected to their bodies. You know, the people around me, people didn't really exercise. we've all been very sedentary. It might sound like it's so alien to where you are right now. How would you begin to just be curious and do something differently? So I think it's important to kind of like you said, start somewhere small. You know, if we, again, the reflection might be of not only the environment you were growing up in, but also what was your journey?

Starting point is 00:22:14 So is it? Again, we think, you know, growing up here in England, the vast majority of our school life, we are just sitting. We're taking in learning through sitting. I think things are changing a bit more, but actually just recognising, apart from those couple of hours a week that we'd have PE, we'd generally be sitting for long, you know, a lot of our learning comes through sitting. But we know, for example, how we've developed as human beings when we flourish is through

Starting point is 00:22:45 and learning through play, for example. So how do we firstly recognize that, but then how do we introduce that playful aspect to our day-to-day lives because we can become so serious in learning as well? So how do we get more playful in terms of learning that relationship with the body? And that could be, you know, that could be various things using the five senses, using other people and working towards that, Or even, for example, if you have got a general practice of exercise,

Starting point is 00:23:17 I'm not necessarily talking about yoga, but even just going to the gym, how can you start to really focus on how does your body feel when you're doing that? Again, are you focusing on achievement when you're doing an exercise, or are you focusing on connection? So a couple of weeks ago, I actually got the privilege of teaching just, some, doing some yogic practice to help staff actually to be more aware of their bodies. You know, we were thinking about self-care and that relationship. And just to recognise actually how often we get stuck in the threat system,

Starting point is 00:23:59 even though we might be sitting, breathing, there will be tension. We might be having a thought about, oh gosh, this long list of things I've got to do. And just noticing actually, so when you're in that state of mind, where in your body do you feel that? If you were to direct your breath and just try to slow down your breath in that very physical way, what starts to shift in your awareness, for example. So that slowing down is extremely important. It really is. And I'm a gym member and what I really love is just going along to a different class that I might not have done before.

Starting point is 00:24:36 or seeing how my body and how my mind reacts to that, and often I'll have this idea, oh, I can't do this, I don't get this, I don't understand it. But when we just begin to quiet that noise a little bit and allow ourselves to learn, to be beginners, to just experience and explore and see how that feels, we might just find that, oh, that was enjoyable. When I didn't expect myself to be this master of something

Starting point is 00:25:01 I've never done before, maybe I'll do that again. Maybe that was good. Maybe it's, yeah, it's good to do things we've never done before because something good might come out of it. Yeah, and actually if we think again about kind of brain training and, you know, developing new and neural hormonal pathways within our brains and bodies, that's a brilliant opportunity to do it. This class I went to, it's becoming a regular, but it was like a rave. It was like a rave with martial arts and really, like,

Starting point is 00:25:34 music and lots of a room full of people that already knew what they were doing and me but it was really fun and yeah I'm it's now making making it irregular and just going with a bit of that wildness but just feeling how my body feels and sometimes you know when the mind switches off a little bit and just goes on autopilot that's a wonderful thing yeah no it's absolutely beautiful and I guess we need to bring more of that into our day-to-day lives and and you know, practice that because I'm sure a lot of people would feel better for it. I think so. Thank you so much for our time. Where can our audience learn more about you and your work, Sunil? So I guess the best place is probably my LinkedIn profile. I've often just share

Starting point is 00:26:23 various thoughts on there, but also yeah, often put on links. I do also have a TED talk on embodiment of my own personal experience of yoga on YouTube as well. Great. I will make sure all those links are in the show notes and the description. Thank you again for your time and wishing you well with everything you do. Thanks, Marion. It's great talking to you. Likewise. What an absolute delight to speak with Dr. Sunil. Again, it was the same day that we recorded it on, but his words have really stayed with me. So it's been a couple of weeks since the episode and since I did this because we had half term in the middle. But yeah, it's really

Starting point is 00:27:07 stayed with me and I would love to know whether it resonated with you as well. Please do let me know in the comments and I would love to know if you find this helpful and if you love this episode, you can share any of my reels to your Instagram stories or you can reshare them on TikTok. That would be so gratefully received. Please do tag me in because I love knowing when this content with you. If you'd like to be part of the inner work, you can consider joining the backstage crew, which you can do either via Captivate, Spotify or YouTube, where you get exclusive members-only episodes, and they are called the Inner Work Now. So they're kind of companion episodes, but with new insights, thoughts and reflections from me. And yeah, they've got their very own

Starting point is 00:27:57 theme each week. So it's very much worth diving in for the free three-day trial on Apple. And then if you like it, you know, you might want to stick around. So there's details in the show notes and in the description. And if you're an aspiring psychologist, I think you will love the aspiring psychologist membership, which you can join from just £30 a month with no minimum term. Head to wwwspiring hyphen psychologist.co.com. Then let this be your guide With this podcast, that's your side You'll be on your way to being qualified.

Starting point is 00:28:39 It's the aspiring psychologist podcast With Dr. Marianne Trent

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Embodied Practice in Psychology: Managing Anger, Stress and Burnout

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.