“I swear to you, if you just did this one thing every day that takes less than five minutes, in three months from now, you’d be a completely different person.” “Okay,” I thought. “I’m listening.”
I was scrolling on TikTok one night when I came across a video by Emma Marschall, a holistic healing expert.
She was talking about the concept of somatic shaking: something that’s said to help release trauma, stress and anxiety.
“Each morning when you wake up, or whenever you feel like you need it you are going to do a somatic shaking practice,” she explains.
But what does somatic mean? Somatic therapy is a treatment that aims to treat mental and emotional conditions, like PTSD and anxiety, through the connections to mind and body, like grounding techniques.
“Put on one or two of your favourite songs that get you going, get you hype,” explains Marschall. “Plant your two feet on the ground (bonus points if you’re outside and get some negative electrons from the earth!) and keep them grounded the entire time.
Then all you have to do is… shake it out.
“Shake. Get that energy out,” she says.
But how can simply shaking your body help you feel less anxious?
When our bodies are stressed, we go into ‘fight or flight’ mode — when, back in the day, our cave people selves would have had to fight animals or tribes to survive, this mechanism would have come in very handy.
But now, our fight or flight mode can be triggered from a passive aggressive work meeting, or someone aggressively staring at us on the tube. When we’re stuck in one place and feel trapped, our bodies can store up this adrenaline and cortisol and cause us to experience anxiety, stress and mental overwhelm.
According to Dr Peter Levine, shaking can help release muscular tension, as well as burn this excess adrenaline which is triggered when we’re living in fight or flight mode when we’re constantly stressed, and calm the nervous system to its neutral state.
Animals have been known to shake to help regulate their systems. Think of a dog stretching and shaking after they get up, or when they’re scared. Some commented on Marschall’s video, saying they’ve noticed this themselves: “Dogs shake to rid themselves of anxiety so this actually makes sense,” commented one user.
And at the very least, a bedroom dance party can be a lot of fun. Try it tonight!