Self-regulation refers to your ability to manage, adjust to, and recover from extreme situations. This can include emotional and psychological self-regulation, and physiological self-regulation. It can be a conscious or unconscious process.
It can be useful to build awareness around how you self-regulate - both consciously and unconsciously - because our systems crave stasis - equilibrium - balance in order to function and relate optimally in the world (whatever “optimal” is for YOU - it will be different for each person).
A healthily, optimally functioning human is designed to be able to return to stasis after a moment or period of stress or stimulation.
We are designed to be able to adjust to the regular ups and downs of daily life. When we experience a stressful stimulus or situation, our nervous systems become activated. Throughout the day, from moment to moment, we naturally move through a process of arousal and recovery. We are generally able to recalibrate using our built-in and learned self-regulation tools and strategies.
The Bunny and the Fox: The Threat-Safety Processing Cycle
A bunny lazily munches on some clovers. It is relaxed and at ease. Suddenly, it notices a fox approaching. The bunny freezes for a moment, assessing the potential threat, then quickly breaks into a run, racing to a safe place. Once it gets to a safe spot where the fox can’t enter, the bunny will lie down and shake. This shaking is how the bunny processes the effects of this stressful moment. The shaking releases muscle tension and helps to process excess adrenaline. This process is the bunny’s way of supporting its nervous system to recover and repair, so that it can go back to nibbling clovers and living its bunny life.
We humans are also animals, so we have a similar physiological self-regulatory process. For our psychological and emotional self-regulation, we can also draw on interpersonal supports like telling a trusted friend about a stressful situation, or getting a hug when we are sad or scared.
Can you think of some examples from your own life of the ways that you self-regulate when you’re in pain/discomfort/just feeling a bit “off”?
In some circumstances, however, our innate process of recovery and repair gets interrupted. For some reason we may learn that it’s not okay to self-soothe or be supported when we are sad or angry or scared. Our family or school or work culture may have certain “rules” around needing to “toughen up,” for example, or we learn that we have to “hold it together” for everyone else.
The natural release of shaking or crying or getting a hug or moving when you need to move might not be modelled or accepted in certain situations. Without this support, our recovery cycle gets interrupted, and we get stuck in an incomplete loop. And so we keep accumulating unprocessed cycles of energy in our bodies until we reach a point where this way of being is no longer sustainable.
This unprocessed energy can show up in your body as:
muscle tension
chronic fatigue
digestive issues
headaches and migraines
irritability
musculoskeletal or postural issues
holding yourself in a particular posture or shape, possibly for protection
brain fog
vocal fatigue or hoarseness
jaw tension
tight or closed throat feeling
It All Adds Up
When we have persistent experiences of stress, it can be taxing on our whole being, taking a toll on our emotional, psychological, and physiological wellbeing. We can get stuck in a habitual pattern of responding to stress, even after the stimulus is no longer present - even after the fox has disappeared.
This stuckness can mean that we are functioning outside of our window of tolerance, or our optimal arousal-recovery zone. From here we may push ourselves to do more or work harder when what we really need is support and rest. When we become dysregulated in this way, we are unable to take in new information (i.e.: learning process or reading a challenging email) or function physically (i.e.: efficient singing coordination or safe lifting) the way we’re used to.
Your nervous system connects to all of your organs and tissues and automatic survival functions, including your heart, lungs, and voice. It also controls your muscles, motor function, and coordination.
When you are dysregulated, ALL of your systems are impacted, including your circulation, breathing, sound-making coordination (aka singing and speaking), and the ability to express yourself fully and effectively. Muscular coordination can also be affected, especially if your system takes you into a protective holding or compressed body posture when it perceives a threat to your safety.
In short, when you are attempting to do something as complex as singing while dysregulated, you may find that pushing or trying harder or practicing more is not working anymore.
You may need to attend to your whole-self regulation first.
Cue: The Alexander Technique
The Alexander Technique can help you self-regulate by teaching you how to slow down, do less, and reconnect yourself with your body. The skills of pausing, sensing, awareness, and redirecting attention you learn in Alexander Technique lessons can support you to recalibrate after or during periods of overstimulation and stress, including helping to regulate your nervous system to bring you back to your optimal arousal-recovery zone.
Through verbal guidance and subtle hands-on support from your AT teacher, each session supports you to bring new awareness to your whole-self unity. We use simple everyday movements like sitting, standing, walking, lifting, and lying down to illuminate the interconnectedness of your thoughts, actions, and muscular involvement/coordination. We explore anatomy to clarify how you’re constructed, and how you can work with your human design instead of against it, for optimal efficiency of movement. We investigate how your attention and intention are inseparable from how you function in the world, so that you can better understand how to work with yourself, rather than against yourself. You will gain tools to help you ground yourself, so that you come back to being a receptive listener, who can respond with flexibility and awareness in a wide range of situations, including day-to-day activities like doing dishes and brushing your teeth, as well as specialized activities like singing and teaching.
FOR EXAMPLE, you may discover that you’ve been working harder than you need to while you’re singing. In the Alexander Technique we call this goal-oriented, perfectionistic over-efforting “end gaining,” and it’s a fairly common way that we get in our own way. Your new awareness of your end gaining, coupled with an embodied experience of how your shoulders relate to your hips - has a releasing effect on your whole torso and breathing mechanism, also releasing something in your jaw, and giving you a new experience of singing with more ease and availability. In learning to allow things to happen rather than doing them, you get out of your own way and can be more available for expression and emotion.
Hellooooooo, increased vocal range!
Hellooooooo, access to resonance!
Hellooooooo, availability for longer phrases!
A NOTE ABOUT POSTURE - When you start to unravel your habitual responses, and begin to notice how these responses have been impacting your body, you may find that you experience postural changes as a result of your new awareness and new way of using yourself. While improved posture is not a goal of this work, you may experience this and other benefits from working on yourself in this way.
After a series of Alexander Technique sessions, many people make new discoveries about themselves. This could include:
postural changes
reduced back pain
relief from pain, muscular tension, and stiffness
breath awareness and ease
more ease working at the computer
responding to stress and anxiety with more flexibility and availability
improved balance and coordination
ease of movement and mobility
preventing injury
expanded attention span and increased focus and concentration
Whatever your reasons for exploring embodied work such as the Alexander Technique - whether it’s an interest in learning about your anxiety, addressing postural concerns, or investigating vocal issues - you will undoubtedly gain new perspective about your innate wholeness. Which, in my humble opinion, is always a good thing.
