5 Fast Ways to Anchor the Body When Stressed.

In this blog post I explore the best ways to stop ourselves from spiralling when events or people trigger a trauma-based stress response. The Five Anchors come from Resmaa Menakem’s (highly recommended) book “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialised Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies" and are themselves based on the work of Dr David Schnarch. 

“Anchor 1: Soothe yourself to quiet your mind, calm your heart and settle your body.” 

This involves firstly not saying anything, slow breathing, putting down any objects you might be holding, sitting down and telling yourself to stay calm. One thing that can help is to find an internal resource of safety, soothing or pleasure, bringing this person, place or non-human animal to mind, and allowing that to infuse the mind and nervous system.  

Another alternative is to go to the toilet: excuse yourself from the situation in order to be alone and calm the body. Inserting a pause into proceedings by opening a window, taking off a jumper, taking a long drink also serves the same purpose.  

“Anchor 2: Simply notice the sensations, vibrations and emotions in your body instead of reacting to them.” 

Reconnect with the here and now: 

Bring your awareness to the body and the clothing upon it. Notice all the different parts of the body and where they make contact with your clothing. Notice any other points of contact your body has; with the chair you’re sitting on, the tongue in the mouth, changes in temperature or movement of air across the skin. As you experience each sensation, name it: hotness, coolness, tightness, softness, hollowness, shaking, weakness etc. 

Each time your thoughts and emotions are pushing for a reaction, bring yourself back to the body and its sensations. You may need to do this many, many times, but keep doing it. 

“Anchor 3: Accept the discomfort – and notice when it changes – instead of trying to flee from it.” 

This one takes practice but keep at it. Notice when you get the urge to push away or suppress the discomfort and keep your attention completely focused on it. As you stay with it, it will change, notice this when it happens.  

Don’t get caught up in analysing or thinking about the discomfort, directly experience the sensation of discomfort and notice when it changes.  

Notice what the mind does – it might try and push you into doing something, it might speed up your thoughts, intensify your focus on the racing thoughts themselves or splinter the thoughts into many fragments. Bring awareness to this without acting on the thoughts. Notice any changes. 

Thoughts or images about the past or future might show up at this point, allow them to come and go and stay with the body in the here and now, where are the feet/hands/buttocks/back? 

It’s important to remember that your brain and body are trying to protect you, and discomfort is normal when the body and nervous system are operating at full steam. The only way out is through: accept, experience and allow the discomfort to move through the body. 

“Anchor 4: Stay present and in your body as you move through the unfolding experience, with all its ambiguity and uncertainty, and respond from the best parts of yourself.”  

Keep the first three anchors in play in order to stay in the here and now and in the body. If you’re able to, start to turn towards and investigate what Menakem calls the “heat, peril and possibility of the conflict” (p.170) 

Keep coming back to the here and now using the body anchors; especially when critical, reactive thoughts start to come up. If you can, avoid second guessing yourself or the situation and allow it to play itself out rather than try and come up with an answer or guide the situation towards a particular response or outcome. 

Connect with those parts of yourself that generate your core integrity, this will become clearer and easier each time you disconnect from the reactive cognitive impulses, and come back to the body in the moment. If you feel like you’re losing your mind, or you actually do, in the moment, soothe yourself, slow down and allow the body to settle. This can take a long time, involve a lot of uncertainty and that’s OK. 

“Anchor 5: Safely discharge any energy that remains.” 

Once the conflict or situation has been worked through and/or an agreement has been reached to stop working on it for now, this anchor helps to discharge the energy stored in the body from the conflict. The point is to experience our body’s defend and protect processes, but then to let them move through and out of the nervous system and body. This restorative process is based on Peter Levine’s work observing animals in the wild surviving attacks from predators, and the way they would shake off the event and then continue on with their day.  It’s really important to complete and then discharge the traumatic experience if we can.

Exercise that moves the entire body will help, as will dancing, physical labour or simply following whatever SAFE urges the body is inviting you to carry out – shaking, jumping around, running around the block. My personal go-to’s are dancing, humming and singing.

This is not the time for sports that only move selected parts of the body such as golf or bowling, or for meditation or contemplative exercises such as yoga or Tai Chi as these practices focus energy rather than disperse it. All of these activities have their place but not immediately after a stress or trauma trigger.  

If you are interested in more somatically based approaches to managing stress, trauma and anxiety we offer Mindfulness and EMDR based approaches at Rhizome Practice, as well as approaches that draw upon our Somatic Trauma Therapy training with Babette Rothschild. We would also strongly recommend seeking out therapists trained in Somatic Experiencing or body based Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.