‘I could be anywhere. My body is my refuge and my home’
Nahid de Belgeonne on her book Soothe & helping busy people calm their nervous systems
I was first in touch with
after doing one of her classes online. I’d never heard of ‘somatic movement’ before and signed up on a whim. I fancied trying something new. After an hour listening to her wise, comforting voice I was both calm and fully invested in her teaching. It’s grounded in good sense, science and decades of experience working intuitively with busy people and their bodies.When Nahid’s book Soothe (out on 21st March) fell through my letterbox and I opened the first page, I was heartened to feel her care and warmth translated in the writing. It is an honest, sensible book full of timeless advice that will stand you in good stead in times of overwhelm. I moved house part-way through reading it. The exercises were hugely helpful.
Here, Nahid chats about how powerful our nervous systems are in helping us navigate today’s world and how she has cultivated a sense of belonging in her body that allows her to feel at home wherever she goes.
‘Soothe’ has become a powerful word for me because it reminds us to think of ourselves as organisms and not a machine. If something you do stimulates you, you calm yourself down. And on and on we go, balancing our emotions so we don’t wear out. Over the pandemic when I was seeing others suffering and dealing with changes in my own life, I felt this need to soothe myself. It was something I could do regularly to bring myself back to my body. And I realised after that, that even the most prickly, time-poor busy person leaves my sessions feeling soothed.
My belief is that you cannot shift a feeling state by thinking your way through it. There are a whole heap of other things that help you self-regulate. I’ve always believed that we move for our emotional health. Our culture encourages us to be on the go, because that’s the only setting we’re allowed to be and it’s the setting that everyone applauds but it needs to be balanced out. And when you know how to do that by regulating your nervous system, you’re empowered. When you know how to very organically protect yourself and your energy, I think you can do anything.
I’ve had a lot of revelations throughout my teaching process that I’m really happy to share with people. I’m honest in the book because I know being authentic helps people to feel less alone.
Intuition and feeling shape my teaching as well as science. Someone will come to see me and they describe their anxiety and their story and it is completely unique to them. I’ll observe how they move their body when they talk about certain things – someone might fidget with their hands while they’re discussing a work stress for instance – so then we’ll explore that. Somewhere in the subconscious there’s another layer of language and I try to let that guide me.
You can’t make decisions from a chaotic mind. Your thoughts are often based on your experiences and that can keep us in a cycle where we just go round and round in our heads. I believe that your nervous system needs to know that it is safe and where it is before you make a decision. Are your feet on the floor? Where are you in the space? And where are you in time? And then you’re breathing in and breathing out. You’re here right now. Answering those two questions is very grounding, especially when you’re going round and round in the stories in your head.
You have the power to fine tune your emotional state. You’re not broken. Sometimes, locating yourself (as above) is all you need to do to just calm that constant chatter and from there, you can get a bit more practical.
Looking after your nervous system doesn’t mean wrapping yourself in cotton wool. I think today’s culture can make us mistrust our actual feelings on many levels. I have to refer to Palestine because it’s always on my mind. I’ve heard people say that they’re really confused about what to think but I don’t think they actually are. On a very physical level, we know exactly that what is happening is unconscionable. But we are in propaganda war which I think means that we’ve lost trust in our true nature and the signals that come from our body because we’re constantly trying to rationalise it and make our feelings fit into the story. We’re conditioned not to trust our feelings.
If you transmute that emotion into action, you’re processing it. Our systems are not designed to process the suffering we see on social media. So we switch it off and pretend it’s not happening. Every day, I give myself a certain amount of time writing letters and signing petitions so that I honour what’s happening in the world without destroying myself. This is the only body I have and I must look after it but it doesn’t mean I can’t deal with the real world.
I feel so completely that my body is my refuge. My body is my home and that means I could be anywhere and feel settled. I will always find that in me. I'm quite happy to be in lots of different situations, it doesn't really doesn't faze me. I think that's really important for all of us. I don’t think it’s about self-belief, it’s just a really lovely confidence that you know you are where you need to be and you’re doing your best given your current resources.
Nahid’s book Soothe: The Book Your Nervous System Has Been Longing For is out on 21st March and you can pre-order it here