The case for somatic practice as a form of climate adaptation
Finding calm before, during, and after the storm
Nearly a year after Hurricane Helene, a woman from Asheville stood up in a packed room and said she wasn’t sure anywhere in the world would ever feel safe again. I thought, how brave of her; I keep my climate anxiety inside. We were at a somatics workshop led by Luis Mojica. He told her she was right, and not in a dismissive or spiritual bypassing way, but gently, with honesty. He said we can’t find safety by looking outside ourselves — the only truly safe place is within.
After years of working on climate and nature projects, I’ve found myself searching for a “safe place” to live. Somewhere with low risk of storms, floods, and fires. My family moved from Boulder, where wildfire is a year-round threat, to Wilmington, North Carolina, part of hurricane alley and five hours east of Ashville. Buffalo, my hometown, is often called a climate haven, but Asheville was once in that conversation too.
What’s become clear is that we can be discerning about where to live, if we’re so privileged to have options in the first place — options that millions of forced climate migrants do not have — but nowhere is immune to natural disasters occurring at an unnatural rate and intensity. So for those looking for the perfect place (like I’ve found myself doing), maybe it’s time we stop. Stop reading lists of climate safe cities to relocate or investing in bunkers for 2030, and instead, do the one thing accessible to all of us right now: finding a sense of calm in our own bodies.
When I’m even aware of my body, I feel myself bracing, as if bracing for bad news will stop it from happening. What I learned at the workshop is that if we’re not under a real and immediate threat — like Caribbean nations in the path of Hurricane Melissa or western Alaska communities devastated by Typhoon Halong — it’s possible to find a safe, quiet place in our own bodies, even if just for a moment. And that matters.
The goal isn’t to stay blissed out or numb or stop from feeling activated or afraid. I’m also not talking about healing, hacking, or self-optimizing. The goal is simply to practice returning to center and learn to access moments of calm, ease, and beauty instead of living in a constant state of tension, stress, and fear.
Slow breath
Nearly half of young people say climate anxiety affects their daily functioning. Once, on a Zoom call, a marine scientist explained matter-of-factly how artificial light at night disorients sea turtles. It was so upsetting to hear, I had to turn off my camera to collect myself. Then, just last week, I was speaking to a woman in New Delhi, who apologized for coughing so much on the call due to the air quality.
Poor air quality, wildfire smoke, and rising temperatures have made it more difficult to breathe. As Robert Litman explains in The Breathable Body, we’re living in a time when even the simple act of breathing can feel elusive.
Litman says what the body needs is gentle: slow, quiet breathing through the nose. “When we’re anxious, we generally breathe shallowly, high up in the chest with a speedy rhythm,” he writes. “Bring[ing] your attention back to the sensation of breathing can help you slow down and self-regulate.”
The best time to practice, he says, is when you’re not anxious, though he acknowledges we’re anxious a lot. “Yes, climate change and mass extinctions are real and extreme threats, but our system cannot sustain a 24-7 fight-flight-freeze response,” he writes. The key, he says, is presence and mindfulness. If mindfulness doesn’t land with you, another approach to consider is Luis Mojica’s “bodyfulness.”
Where are you tensing?
Luis teaches people an embodied practice called “pendulating.” It’s a way to find internal safety by gently shifting attention between tension and ease.
At the workshop, I found myself mic’ed up in front of a room full of people. I was exhausted, the attention was unsettling, and my legs began to tremble. I wanted to tell my legs to “settle down,” but Luis told me to let them. The trembling was noticeable.
Under Luis’s guidance, I turned my attention to my chest, which felt fine. When I asked it (yes, literally asked it) if it needed anything, my chest began to move in and out with my breath. Soon my legs had stopped trembling, but my shoulders felt tense. I talked to them next. It might sound odd, but with practice, this kind of attention really helps.
Unlike foam rolling, which tries to press tightness away, somatics isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about paying attention to what’s happening in the body, not just to what hurts but also to what feels ok.
Our nervous systems are wired to spot threats, but we’re rarely taught to notice safety, beauty, or pleasure. Pendulating helps retrain attention toward what feels secure by noticing the good sensations that are already there, inside us and all around us, especially in nature. (Luis also teaches a practice of becoming aware of beauty in our external environment, like butterflies or the clouds, and feeling it in your body.)
There’s always a safe place in the body (when all else fails, try the earlobes), but when we lose connection to that sense of safety within ourselves, everything feels like a threat. That can cause chronic stress, adrenaline rush, and fatigue. Pendulating reminds the body there’s at least one safe place.
Pendulating in five steps
Find a part of your body that feels calm, soft, or quiet.
Now notice a part that feels tense, clenched, or loud.
Hold both feelings at once.
Shift your attention between them without fixing or changing anything.
Continue for 30 seconds, a minute, or more.
Pendulating can help you notice that while one part of you feels anxious, another part feels ok. Letting yourself notice what’s not wrong can be surprisingly challenging, but it’s a powerful way to stay connected to your body and the world, even when they tremble.
For a short demo of pendulating, watch Luis Mojica’s 2-minute practice.