Welcome back. Thank you for joining us in part two of bringing the body into therapy. Last week, Kate and I talked a lot about trauma; emotional processing, cognitive processing, sensorimotor processing, and how trauma influences not only our thoughts and feelings, but our body and our present moment experience. 

Today we’re going to finish the conversation by looking at what’s called the window of tolerance. The five core organizers of experience; our feelings and our thoughts, our five senses, and our internal sensations help bring meaning to what we’re experiencing. 

If you’re interested in pursuing sensorimotor psychotherapy, we want to share an insider view so that you know what to expect when you start to work with your body in a therapy session. 

Let’s start by talking about the window of tolerance.  

I would explain the window of tolerance by drawing a window with my fingers. Imagine a window. In an individual, there’s a range of activation or arousal, that’s comfortable. It’s where normal information processing happens. We’re able to listen and respond and make mindful choices, but we’re not overwhelmed. That’s when we are in our window of tolerance.  

If there’s a threat and our system is activated into response, there’s too much arousal to integrate information.  

We can move above or below the window of tolerance.  

If there’s too much arousal, the prefrontal cortex is offline. We are in limbic, sympathetic response, hyper vigilance above a point of being able to respond and integrate information.    

On the other hand, if our arousal is too low, a person goes into hypo arousal, below their window of tolerance. Here a person might be numb or depressed, or just really shut down? There’s not enough activation. There’s not enough arousal present to be integrating. 

Trauma comes into the body on the same pathway almost every time. If you watch the trauma response, almost everyone, first gets hyper aroused. Then, if hyper arousal does not help bring them into their window and regulate, we drop down and then we go low.  

Everyone’s window of tolerance is shaped through past experiences, through childhood, through past traumatic events, etc. Someone might have a very narrow window of tolerance, meaning it doesn’t take much of a trigger to send them out of their window.  

The window of tolerance is also not fixed. It’s something that can grow and change working with the edges of activation, through bringing mindfulness to the moments where we come to the edge of the window of tolerance. That edge is where a lot of sensorimotor work happens. 

Sometimes in session, it’s about finding resources to practice getting back into the window. Sometimes we work on making the window bigger so that the events that triggered hyper or hypo arousal a year ago don’t today. A lot of self-care is working on expanding that window of tolerance. If we feel resourced in our life, like we’re eating well, we’re getting enough sleep, we’re active, we’re doing things to manage our stress, we’re going to feel like that window is bigger. We will have more capacity to respond to triggers or to stressors without getting overwhelmed. 

What factors can shift us in and out of our window? 

Every moment of our lives is organized in our body by our brain or nervous system. We gather information through the five core organizers of experience: thoughts, feelings, our five senses, movement, and inner physical sensations.  

We have information coming in at all times and we don’t just organize and make meaning of it through our thoughts and feelings. The body makes sense of what’s happening as well. Things like movement ranging from small to large, our posture, facial expressions, other gestures, give us information. 

We also want to think about our perception of our five senses. Our perception of smell, taste, touch, sight, hearing, gives us information about the outer world too. 

Then, internally generated tastes and images. You were feeling the color blue earlier and that influences where we’re at in our window of tolerance.  

Lastly, the inner body sensation. A flutter in my stomach can pop me out of my window faster than I can think. And all it is a flutter.  These internal sensations like our heart rate, our breathing, temperature, anything internal are another way our brain, nervous system and body decide where we’re at in our window. 

We have cognition which refers to our mind. It includes our thoughts, the meaning we make of things, the way we interpret things, our beliefs about ourselves, our beliefs about the world. Small thoughts to deep beliefs influence the overall quality of our lives and where we are in our window of tolerance.  

Then there’s emotion. Feelings of being overwhelmed, joyful, sad, feelings of mistrust, or of confusion. Those also shift our experience in the window of tolerance. 

These five elements; thoughts, feelings, our five senses, movement, and inner physical sensations are swirling together at all times. If any of them reads a threat, we could pop out of our window. So then imagine if two, three or four read threat or danger.  

It’s so important to observe what’s happening within our window of tolerance and with these five core organizers so that we can change things. 

Understanding of how we’re organizing can lead us to explore movement and posture. Maybe changing your posture changes your organization of experience. Maybe sitting up brings you back into your window because you feel confident and safe or, for some, sitting up is too vulnerable and it pops them out of their window. 

Learning how your body is organizing experiences allows you to increase your window of tolerance, which leads to change. 

Stitching all of these core organizers together and seeing how they work together to make up the whole experience. Noticing how they’re interrelated and how one leads to another is essential, to bringing the body into the therapy room. There’s lots to be discovered when we do that. 

There’s always an opportunity to notice what’s happening in the body and how to bring in a resource to find a groundedness in the body through mindfulness. Mindfulness is a key component in working with the body. 

What might you expect if you wanted to work with a sensorimotor psychotherapist?  

It’s important to note that everyone is different. Every therapist is different.  

Step one is that we create a safe container. A container is a felt sense of safety that we know that the client feels okay being in their body with working with their body. To create a strong container, we usually check in and assess. We provide a lot of education so that nobody is surprised, nobody feels out of the loop. We explain how the brain works and how the body works, so that we can begin to start observing.  

In sensorimotor psychotherapy, observing how a person is organizing their experience in the present moment, especially in the body, is called tracking. 

It’s our job to start tracking what’s happening in the moment. Noticing any small changes like someone’s eyes dilating or squinting. Maybe their cheeks are getting flushed or they’re getting fidgety. Maybe a postural change, their shoulders round forward, or they slump in their seat Even hand gestures, turning away, or wanting to leave the room.  

If a situation, at one point, was perceived as threatening to our safety and survival, those defense survival responses get triggered and the inability to complete these survival responses can cause them to get trapped in the body. That’s what we’re looking for. Are there any survival responses that are still showing up right now.  

Then, we help build a movement vocabulary with the client. It’s called contacting, when you begin to name what you’re tracking in the body. For example, when you talk about your son, your shoulders rise, or when we focus on this positive from memory seems like your breath slows and deepens. This helps anyone begin to notice how their body is involved. 

We aren’t necessarily aware that we crack our knuckles when we talk about a specific person or that when I ask what it would feel like to tell that person your thoughts, you lean away, and your eyes get really big. Seeing that response really helps someone begin to observe rather than just interpret their present moment experience. 

More often than not, I get an interpretation, not an observation. It must mean something. This is what it means. Now I’ve attached a narrative of shame to it, or self-judgment. I’m so out of shape. We’ve totally skipped observing. We work to observe our experience instead and build a movement vocabulary.  

Sometimes a therapist will ask mindfulness questions, I’ll give mindfulness directives too.  

I’ll pick one core organizer to focus on to allow the body and the mind and the whole self-regulate and come back into the window where they’re mindful and safe. Something like, point at every red thing in the room. 

Then, maybe, we start to hypothesize about why it’s happening. Setting aside the narrative and observing. Allowing for exploration.  

It’s also so important for safety and the whole process to collaborate and decide together what we want to work on and getting permission. At the end of the day, it’s not the therapist’s agenda, so we always check in. Is this where we should be going? How is this feeling? I may interpret they want to talk about that, but maybe it doesn’t feel safe yet to talk about that body gesture. If they say no, that’s important too. No is such a resource. I love when people tell me no. How is your body telling you that’s a no? 

In the therapy room, we allow that response to be followed through with, and that’s called an act of triumph. When we have an act of triumph, that means a survival response is allowed to run its course. Pat Ogden frames it as the possible future becomes explicit, conscious, and with choice.  

In trauma-informed personal training, there are so many moments for active triumph.  For example: Are you ready to return to movement again? Maybe someone says, I am but I can see their hesitancy. I may say, would you like more time? Would it feel good to walk and get some more water? What does your body want to do right now? More often than not, they’re being polite and caring towards me and feel as though they should get going.  

In those moments, we allow micro active triumphs like slowing down and saying no, I want more time. That’s such a success. Being conscious and acting with choice is so healing. It creates a sense of empowerment for a person to feel like they can notice their needs, listen to them and act on them. They can take care of themselves right now. 

What’s your experience of how clients feel after an experience like that? I hear the word relief a lot and usually the client can feel, with practice, the shift. 

Everyone describes it differently. Sometimes there is grief that comes with realizing how that had been impacting them in ways that they didn’t realize until they felt relief. 

There’s also the possibility that they shift into another survival response, almost like they’re stacked. That’s a common reaction that when one survival response is allowed to move through, they’ll shift into another one. 

There’s no perfect path. Our job is to be present and create safety. To be a compassionate witness, be mindful with the client. To help if they need to shift and work on something differently. We ask questions about the present moment and bring mindful awareness to their internal organization. We find opportunity for shifts in the body, helping complete actions and create shifts in the system. 

What is the point of all of this?  

The reason we do the hard work of observing, noticing, processing, and being mindful, is to find places of transformation.  

When we find those acts of triumph or feel something shifting in the system, we can return to the window of tolerance. We want to help integrate this new resource connect to all of the five core organizers, building that movement vocabulary. How can we bring those tools for accessing resources and feeling grounded and empowered and self-compassion into our lives?  

That’s the goal is to help the body, heart, soul figure out a new way of being. 

Thank you, Kate, for your wisdom and your time; for sharing with us how sensorimotor has not only impacted you as a professional, but as a person. I’m really grateful for having you with us in these two episodes.