06/08/2025
Peace work and the body
What a strange combination you might think. What has my own body to do with peacework and why should this be relevant in these times of dissonance, polarisation, conflict, war and suffering? What does it help to take care of myself with these realities of polycrisis around us? Well, I don´t have an answer to that.
But it seems we are all somehow affected by those crises and excessive quantity of daily information. At least from my perspective as a body therapist working with stress relief and emotional regulation for the last 10 years, there seems to be a correlation, experiencing every day how dysregulation leads to uneasiness and if unchecked, ultimately dis-ease.
Of course my clients come mostly because of private or work unbalances but I am convinced everyone is also influenced by the wider perceived realities. And those seem to be influencing us and possibly even shrink our window of tolerance.
Let me shortly explain. Our bodies need harmony, balance aka homeostasis to work and function correctly. Homeostasis is the dynamic process by which living organisms regulate their internal conditions (like temperature, blood pressure, and hormone levels) to maintain stability and in our case keep the balance in the body, despite external influences that might have an effect on us. Stress for example is normal for the body and it can deal with it.
The psychological counterpart to homeostasis is explained by the window of tolerance. Meaning while we are inside the frame of the window you feel like you can deal with whatever’s happening in your life. You might feel stress or pressure, but it doesn’t bother you too much. You can regulate yourself.
Problems arise when we are exposed to long term stress or other unbalancing events and our windows shrink and we are easier to be pushed off balance. For me those crises contribute to that. In long term stress or dysregulation we might start to feel agitated. You might feel anxious, tense or angry leading to a nervous system in fight or flight- state or you can experience on the other end of that scale that you shut down, feeling absent-minded or lethargic and even uncomfortably out-of-control, leading to a freeze-state.
While dysregulated we decrease our cognitive function and the ability to engage in healthy social interactions and relationships. In short, it makes us slow, stupid and unkind and either easy to anger or easy to withdraw or even easy to please.
Now imagine the stressed us in our communities or in our society trying to be more active, solving complicated problems that need the ability to think clearly, while allowing us to shift perspective and to act compassionately. Can you see that might be a challenge?
All these reflections started with a message from Tali Padan a little over a month ago, where we agreed on meeting up together with her friend Keren Hoffman to see if we can do an explorational, experimental workshop together, bridging the political and the somatic, through inquiry, somatic awareness and movement.
And that's what we want to try.
If you feel some interest in what I described here, solely from my perspective, I would like you to join us on the 30th of August.
We challenged ourselves to write from our own perspectives about this topic and I want to encourage you also to check their sight of things.
Event details follow.
