When you’re full of stress, it feels good to shake it off — especially if you do it in a semi-dramatic way. Imagine flailing your hands after a big meeting or jumping up and dancing out nerves before a first date. The physical movement seems to release a lot of built-up pressure, doesn’t it?
This is why “somatic shaking” is going viral on TikTok. This ancient mind-body technique is all about jumping and moving as a way to release stress and trauma from the body. On the app, creator and yoga teacher @biancarosestephenson recommended somatic shaking for a few minutes a day, and showed herself giving it a try in her living room. “It looks weird,” she said in the clip. “But honestly, the weirder the better. It’s super liberating.”
Somatic shaking can look like jumping up and down, jiggling your arms, and stomping. In her comments, someone said, “I go into my work bathroom and do this when I’m upset. I didn’t know this was a thing!” Another wrote, “This reminded me of how toddlers will do this when they’re frustrated. It’s amazing how the body instinctively knows what to do.”
By adding somatic shaking into your daily routine, it’s said that it can help you release and recover from daily stress, and even help relieve physical symptoms of past trauma. Here’s what to know, according to an expert.
What Does Somatic Shaking Do?
According to Dr. Scott Lyons, a clinical holistic psychologist and bestselling author of Addicted to Drama, we’re all “memory hoarders” when it comes to stress. Anytime something stressful happens to you — a scary moment, a traumatic event, etc. — the tension and fear gets trapped in your body’s tissues, sort of like clutter in a house. If you don’t release it through mobilization and movement, it can stay stuck and lead to problems down the road.
In an ideal world, all the stressful moments you encounter in a day would travel through a perfect four-stage cycle. The first stage is the stress response, where you get revved up. The second is when your autonomic nervous system kicks in and you use that energy to react to a stressor. (This is the stage we tend to skip.) The third is when you come back into a rest and digest state and start to relax after letting it all out. And in the fourth stage, you recuperate and get ready to cope with stress all over again.
Of course, stress happens all day, every day. “It’s not the big, bad bogey monster in closet,” Lyons tells Bustle. “It's when we can't complete the cycle that it gets clogged up — and that’s actually what causes disease. It’s not about stressors, but the inability to complete our adaption response. Shaking and tremoring is that second stage — it's the release, the mobilization.”
Even though it’s natural to want to shake off stress — Lyons says literally ever mammal does it — we often ignore what our bodies need in the moment. “When we're on computers all day or we have to be the good boy or the good girl [in polite society], we hold still or we freeze and we don't complete that cycle,” he says. “Shaking and tremoring is literally the completion of the things we were meant to do as part of our human evolution.”
After a long day of ups and down, you might also choose to numb out instead. Think planting yourself in front of the TV or scrolling on your phone. This habit can cause your stress and trauma to build up in your body, and Lyons says it can eventually impact how you show up in relationships, how well you sleep, and even how well you connect to yourself. Stuck stress could explain why you feel “dead inside,” dissociated, or dysregulated.
To get science-y, Lyons says somatic shaking gives your body what's called kinesthetic and proprioceptive information, which actually “remaps” your sense of your body from the inside out. Instead of stress staying stuck in your muscles, you feel grounded, confident, and calm.
Make Somatic Shaking A Daily Practice
To try somatic shaking at home, pick a time that feels right for you to move and groove. “I would definitely do it before bed because we're accumulating unprocessed stressors through the day,” Lyons says. “If you're stressed out and you can't sleep because you're so dysregulated autonomically, you don't get to process [your memories from the day.] It keeps accumulating into what we call compound stress.”
A middle of the afternoon shake off could also feel good, as well as after meetings or high-stress situations, like a first date, job interview, or argument. While many viral TikToks show version of ecstatic dance or slow movement meditations, somatic shaking is a bit more over the top.
To truly mobilize your stress response, and move things like cortisol out of your body, Lyons recommends shaking and throwing your arms around faster than your brain can think. “Your thinking mind is in the survival mode and is in trying to intellectualize it, so you have to truly move it through your body, not your brain,” he says. Get up and try it right now: stomp your feet, jump up and down, jitter around, thrash your arms, and get your heart rate up.
As you move, “you want to be able to pour yourself in, not dissociate,” he adds. “Feel your body, feel the tissue, and feel the movement and not just be intellectualizing it and then moving. I can kind of see people just going through the motions like, ‘OK, I am doing it,’ but it's not the same.”
After you shake for a minute or two, stand still and observe how you feel. “That third stage of stress, which I call deactivation, is when you are physiologically meant to become more attuned to sensation and feeling,” he says. To complete the stress cycle, think about what the shaking brought up for you and how you felt. Stand grounded and still for a moment to process.
Who Is This For?
“Honestly, I think everyone should do it and try it out,” Lyons says. If you feel like everyday stress is causing you to check out, or you don’t feel quite like yourself anymore, it could be a good choice. It’ll also feel great if you’re tired of living in a constant state of fight-or-flight.
As you make somatic shaking part of your routine, you should start to feel a little more connected to yourself. “I'm glad people are moving,” he says.
Studies referenced:
Payne, P. (2015). Somatic experiencing: using interoception and proprioception as core elements of trauma therapy. Front Psychol. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00093.
Source:
Dr. Scott Lyons, clinical holistic psychologist, bestselling author of Addicted to Drama
