Orientating to Soothe Heightened Stress Responses

The blog below supports the Therapeutic Movement practice video above.

How the Nervous System Uses Orienting

In this practice, we focus on orientating - a natural process the nervous system uses to soothe heightened stress responses. We do this all the time without thinking: looking around, checking where we are, tracking our routes, sensing our surroundings. These small impulses are part of how we maintain safety in both the inner and outer world. They help settle the mind, calm the system, and reassure us that the environment is stable.

Learning and Mapping New Routes

We learn new routes and patterns quickly. Just like taking a new journey, everything feels slower while we orientate ourselves, then speeds up once the path becomes familiar. This is how the body develops exit routes and options. At a very simple level, it’s knowing where the doors are in the room - an instinctive form of mapping that keeps us grounded.

Bringing Orientating Into Practice

In practice, we can refine this skill by using orientating as a clear point of focus. Not only noticing where we are in time and space, but also sensing the inner world and the outer edges of the body. This is the meeting point of interoception and external awareness.

Returning From Overwhelm

When we move into a trauma or stress state, the system can become overwhelmed. We may “check out” or feel a sense of absence, as though we’ve lost contact with where we are. Orientating brings us back. Through touch, looking, rolling or moving on the ground, and paying steady attention to our motions and placements, we re-establish presence. The aim is not to over-focus or under-focus, but to find a level of attention that lets us land where we are with ease.

This practice is an opportunity to return to the body’s natural ways of settling - simple, grounding, and accessible at any moment.

If you enjoyed this practice, members of Whole Health have access to an entire archive of live and pre-recorded classes, click here for further details.

If you'd like to explore this topic in more depth, I invite you to look at my Somatic Therapeutic Yoga Training - a my 200-hour trauma-informed, specialist training and personal journey for yoga teachers, yoga therapists and movement professionals. For details, click here.