"Go ahead and find a comfortable position and allow yourself to find stillness for the next few minutes."
Ever hear something this at the end of your yoga, somatics, or breathwork session? Ever feel the urge to just pop up, grab your gear and go because what's the point? Please, don't! Integration is a crucial step in every healing modality that should never be missed. Let's talk about why.
What is Integration?
Simply put, integration is when we find a comfortable position (traditionally lying down) and do nothing but chill for a little bit. If you have done yoga you may have heard it as savasana or corpse pose. During meditation, integration can be letting go of whatever focus you had and letting the mind wander.
Some modalities call for total stillness during integration. More trauma-informed modalities, however, allow for slow and gentle movement or anything else that helps the person relax. The main characteristic of integration is rest. Not focusing on anything. Not trying to make anything happen. Just recovering.
Why Do We Have Integration?
It can be easy to assume that the work of healing only happens when we are "doing stuff" – when we're in the yoga pose, doing the breathing, or engaged in the meditation. But that is only half of the process.
In order for all the "doing" of healing to make deep and lasting change in our nervous system we need to give it a chance to soak in.
How about a metaphor? When you take a bite of food there's a lot of "doing" at the beginning. You're breaking down the food by crushing it between your teeth, rolling it around with your tongue, and swallowing it. Then that food goes on a slow journey through the digestive system – sometimes upwards of 36 hours! It takes your body that long to pull out the nutrition from the food. The same goes for our healing.
When we are doing the work we need to give our nervous system time to digest what we just did. Think about how much nutrition we would miss out on if it only took us a few minutes to digest our food? When we hurry out of the session before our bodies have had a chance to simmer in what we did, we are equally missing out on critical pieces of transformation that simply takes time for us to absorb.
Things to Consider if You Hate Integration
I get it. Some people just can't stand integration. If this is you, here are some things to consider that may help you decode what's happening:
Is stillness triggering you?
Sometimes integration can be unpleasant because stillness is an expectation. If this is the case for you, this could be a good experiment for exercising your own autonomy (a skill many of us survivors work to grow). As long as you aren't disturbing other people, you can choose to move gently if that is more restful for you.
Do you feel shame around rest?
Feeling shame about resting is quite common. In a hyper-productive culture, most of us have lived with a negative stigma around resting. This can easily transfer to your healing work. As you work with the shame around resting, you can give yourself an assist by reminding yourself that this rest is incredibly productive for your healing.
Have you worked with too much during the session?
Now, this is not to say that every session is going to end at a perfect place where we feel perfectly at ease. But if you are continually entering into integration feeling overly-activated then perhaps you are working with too much during the session. A good experiment in this case would be to try and slow down during your sessions. See what you can do to take "smaller bites" of your traumatic imprints so that there is less energy that needs to settle when entering integration.
Are there adjustments that could help?
There is no right way to integrate. If the way you are being instructed to integrate isn't working for you, you can always make adjustments. Some popular adjustments I have seen/used:
Opening the eyes and taking an unfocused gaze
Gently swaying or rocking
Giving yourself a hug
Playing music (you can bring headphones if you're in a group session that usually is silent in integration)
Laying on your side, with pillows, or any other supports
What are your favorite ways to integrate?
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