Rewilding — discovering the practice of orientation
A short piece on using an orientation practice to help regulate back to your body’s natural biorhythm.
What is Organic Intelligence?
It’s you! You are organically intelligent! I will explain.
I’m currently in training to become an ICF accredited Somatic Coach at The Somatic School and as part of the course we are building our own self-development practice via the ‘Organic Intelligence labs’. Organic Intelligence (or OI) is a training founded by Steve Hoskinson.
As complex organic beings the understanding is we all have the natural ability and processes to perceive, learn, reason, solve problems, and adapt to our environments. Our ‘organic intelligence’ results from the interactions between our brain, nervous system and physiological and psychological factors.
The somatic approach is that yes psychological therapy is important but we seem to have forgotten BIG TIME about this extremely intelligent lump of meat attached to our head that holds a lot of the answers if we just listened a little.
Our problems aren’t solely focussed on the psychological, some of what’s going on is rooted in the biological.
We need to learn to ‘orient’ our bodies back to their natural biorhythms.
Once we can do that, we will have laid the groundwork for living more congruent lives, dealing with actual issues in the here and now rather than ruminating on random untrue rubbish in our minds, finding joy and pleasure, connecting with each other and all that other good stuff.
We are always ON ON ON
Our natural biology works in ON and OFF – heart squeezes and releases, we are awake or asleep, we breathe in and out. And much much more on a complex and subtle level we aren’t aware of.
We have a natural biorhythm that in our ON ON ON world has been slowly forgotten, buried, forced out of rhythm. We are addicted to ON and to internalised struggle. Away from the here and now.
We are tired so we pump caffeine into ourselves. We’re can’t focus and yet we sit for hours at our desks squeezing more productivity out of ourselves. A headache is coming on and we take a pill and go out to dinner at a loud restaurant.
We push and squish and force our bodies to stay ON. We dampen the nuanced, subtle but ever present signals of our bodies. We ignore the signs and flags that our biology is yelling out to us.
We also have this tendency towards the negative. We look for danger. Our amygdala in our brain is firing like there’s an immediate threat when really all is fine. All our attention is on ‘what’s wrong’. Work harder, more intensely, head down, be resilient through toughness.
Good news though!
We have this natural innate resource (using our senses to practice orienting to our environment in the here and now) to return to our natural biorhythm.
Orientation
We’re not designed to be waiting for the threat. Our fight, flight, freeze and fawn response is meant to be short lived and intense in nature but when our system is hijacked by the desyncing of our biorhythm we are constantly in threat.
The best way to come back ‘down’ is bringing us into the here and now, via orientation.
You want to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes relaxation and counteracts the effects of the sympathetic fight, flight, freeze and fawn response.
Research shows that a quick and effective way to to do this is to orient in its environment.
To be present and ground in the here and now. To tell the overstimulated amygdala ‘don’t worry, you’re safe, you’re calm’.
Ready to give it a go?
Let your eyes wander around your space.
Without any instruction or judgment let them lead.
What do they want to look at? What do they land on in the space. A colour, a texture. Something that they enjoy. Don’t force it.
Now ask the question ‘how can I be doing less?’.
Maybe that’s releasing your clenched jaw. Or uncrossing your legs. Shifting your seated position so your back is more supported.
Maybe it’s softening your gaze. Or noticing the air coming gently into your nostrils and out again.
Ask again ‘How can I be doing less?’
Let your eyes carry your gaze to where it likes.
Go slowly.
When a thought comes just notice that and bring your awareness back to the room, following your gaze, feeling the weight of your body.
How did that feel?
I have been trying this throughout my day. On the bus, waiting for a friend, on a walk, when I first wake up lying in bed.
Just asking myself, ‘how can I be doing less?’ and letting my senses lead me.
It’s remarkably simple and immediately effective.
It doesn’t require an app, or an hour’s yoga class. It doesn’t need any tools or a particular space.
It’s you!
You are fully resourced to orient your biology back to where it needs to be to build pleasure and resilience for your life.
The body responds. It’s calmer, softer, a small yawn emerges, it’s more comfortable, I’m happier to be doing what I’m doing, more positive, a little kinder… all these words came up as the students on my course have started practicing orienting.
It also gave me clues about what I might need. My position was actual hurting my thigh, so move. I’m a bit hungry, so eat. I feel unfocussed, so take a break. I’m alert, so go use that energy! Adjusting to what your body needs.
Now over to you.
The more you do it, the stronger those neural pathways become to orient you to the here and now and for pleasure (more on the bias for pleasure another day).
Would love to hear how it’s going as you start to orient to your environment and find your natural rewilding!