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OK [intro]: Hello everyone. Today we’re talking to Christina Devereaux about the power of pausing. Christina Devereaux is an associate professor and director of clinical training in the dance movement therapy and counseling program at Antioch University New England. She serves as co-editor for the American Journal of dance therapy and is a senior faculty member at inspires, a training program for DMT in China. Christina is also an international faculty member for dance therapy New Zealand. Christina received the 2008 president’s award from the American Dance Therapy Association. Christina has a lot more accomplishments that you can find in the podcast episode summary but I did not have enough time to fit that all in, and that’s why I’m intrigued that Christina chose to talk about the power of pausing today.. enjoy!
OK: Hello Christina, can you tell us why you were interested in discussing the power of pausing today?
CD: Sure. Well actually I think there are a few reasons and let me first say that this topic is certainly not something that I’ve mastered but it’s something that I feel like I’ve come to understand for myself over and over is essential to our mental and physical health. And also as a dance movement therapist I’m aware that there may be a misconception that the focus and the DMT process is only on the discharge of emotions or kind of mobilizing everything into action and so I’m happy to give you some personal examples of what I mean.
But I am the first to admit I’m an expert at kind of jam packing my life, like if my calendar has a blank spot I see this as space for one more appointment and people often say wow I admire you, you do so much and well I know there’s no doubt that I’m proud of my accomplishments, but I sometimes don’t see this as a strength and people ask me how I get so much done the truthful answer is sometimes badly. At times my capacity to hold so much certainly can increase my productivity, but other times that are jamming in one more thing actually can create chaos. So this is really, this topic is interesting to me because I know I’m not alone in this experience and I see the same thing happening with my colleagues, my clients, some of my students, and family members, and as our pace and life continues to kind of rev up, people are finding themselves checking email at stop lights or texting while out to dinner… I see you shaking your head so you might know this part of yourself. This is not uncommon, you know people are texting while their out to dinner, on a date or out with a loved one and they’re booking so many back to back appointments, there’s really no time to be in between- and I mean that in between.
So I talked about pausing – we must talk about transition as well because I think this is really the crux of the matter when I really been looking at this for myself and more and more especially as I’m in my mid life, literally in transition. I like to describe pausing as an intentional experience where you allow yourself to temporarily engage in some respite, some hiatus or some breathing space.
The breathing space from the doing experiences to be more. And that could be emotional investment, physical momentum, intellectual tension- literally embracing rather than pushing through transitions and standing at the threshold in between where you’ve been and where you’re going. So in psychotherapy we call this being in a liminal space so I often ask myself, you know what’s wrong with being in between? What’s wrong with that?
Sometimes I feel like we plow through and it certainly can be quite uncomfortable but there’s power in embracing this liminal transitional space because if you give it permission and you can tolerate ambiguity perhaps the anxiety that it induces can actually surprise you. So I’ve learned to trust it and actually funny story– my mother taught me kind of at an early age something that she described as a HALT theory. H-A-L-T. She says you know you can’t make any rational decisions when you’re hungry angry lonely or tired so halt and then wait. You know, maybe back then she was really talking about the power of the pause.
OK: Thanks for sharing that
CD: My mom will be happy to know I shared it
OK: Shout out! … So you said liminal?
CD: Liminal space. it’s Latin for limins I think. That means threshold.
OK: Ah yeah, yes I was shaking my head a lot and I relate to that and I have strong feelings about where we are as a whole going with all this momentum and not incorporating enough pause and I don’t think I’m alone in this or you’re alone. I think a lot of people are probably curious about this subject so I think it’s great to have your perspective on this with your knowledge of dance movement therapy and the mind-body connection
[5:47] So I wanted to ask you what exactly is going on in the body when someone is constantly in motion?
CD: Yeah that’s great. So let’s actually take an example of the beginning of life. At birth a baby is born with like a billion neurons and roughly that’s about as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way so that’s a lot. So these neurons they’re hungry for connection and information and there’s so much happening so rapidly. So much movement and motion in the baby’s brain with every experience and at the same time you notice how important it is for baby to rest and to sleep- sometimes very long periods of time. So what the baby is actually doing during that time is that she’s allowing her body and her brain to integrate all the new experiences.
So there’s movement and then rest and then movement and more rest and it is in the rest or the pause that allows for the integration of the experiences in the brain and the recuperation of the body. So the same movement and rest cycle happens during the rhythm and the pulsations of birth. In labor there’s a movement forward and then a pause and then forward and then a pause and over and over, until the rhythm of experiences transition the baby into birth and the birth transition is complete.
So certainly as we get older and older we can tolerate more experiences and our brain becomes more of a like a master as new neural pathways are myelinated and developed. But it doesn’t mean that we don’t need this fluctuation between movement and rest. It also doesn’t mean that nothing is happening during the pause and the rest. In fact, so much is.
So actually sleep allows our active neurons to rest and the supported cells, called glial cells, clean up the toxins that the neurons produce. It’s like taking out all the trash to the dump and giving room for what’s to happen the next day. So if we don’t get enough sleep and the toxins remain there, that makes our attention falter and our memories impaired and our ability to think through problems is challenged. So literally our brain becomes cluttered, like we don’t take out the trash. It just piles and piles up in and piles up.
Even our insulin can be affected which helps regulate metabolism so without adequate rest or in constant motion, ironically we’re more likely to gain weight and eat more. That’s just a few things that happens in the body.
OK [8:47]: Mm-hmm, so it sounds like naturally there should be a lot of motivation to take pauses. What is this motivation behind moving all the time and not stopping? Why’s there so much anxiety around pausing if it’s such a natural thing that we need?
CD: Well it’s a good question. I think because we’re in a fast-paced environment and everyone’s so intentionally focusing on getting things done and moving forward and getting to the next thing and we have constant bombardment of things coming at us. So I mean it’s just my assumption.
What is the motivation in me? Sometimes it’s, you know, trying to fit everything in or what is the motivation in motion? Is that what you asked? I think it certainly could depend on what’s driving us or are we good enough or are we worthy enough do we do enough? It’s all the enough. That’s what I would assume but I think it’s probably is pretty particular for everyone
OK: mm-hmm and I’m wondering how certain functions like more of the inner workings of the body contribute to this. I read your article on your blog about this subject and you mentioned muscular tension and nervous system processes.
CD: Yeah, imagine if you’re constantly holding and holding and holding and taking in. Your body has to respond to that. Sometimes we come into what we call a sympathetic state of arousal or sort of a fight-or-flight place we could have closed in- we narrow in. We actually prepare– our body prepares to run. When the body is in a state of sympathetic heightened arousal the body says oh my goodness I have– I have so much do, I have to go, I have to be in motion, I have to run, I have to fight or flight. All the blood comes to our limbs so that we can actually run and go out into space or we can fight.
Imagine the tension that that we hold if we’re in a constant state of heightened arousal. Imagine how that– how living in that kind of state of being happens all the time. I actually went on a trip a couple years ago to Bali Indonesia and told my friends that I would let them know when I arrived and I let them know when I was departing but we wouldn’t be in contact in between, and that was my choice.It was the first one that I ever really allowed myself to kind of unplug, really leave, like ever and kind of step back, step away, and it did.
It took me a couple days but what I did discover it was that giving myself permission to kind of take this hiatus. It recalibrated my nervous system in some way, like I noticed I had flashes of new ideas of projects. I really felt my feelings, my dreams were more vivid, my interactions with others- they were deep, they were present and really enduring. This trip I also engaged in creative experiences and I step outside of my comfort zone, but what was also surprising is that I rested. I mean I slept deep and long and because my body was clearly begging for it, and one day out of habit I think I decided to check my email, yeah and because actually the stage of my body immediately changed, and I said wow this is the state that I’ve been living in. It may be very sad, so to me this was sort of attention and the nervous system recalibration that happened for me and that experience of Bali which prompted actually the blog post.
I think it’s also important to state that pausing doesn’t need to happen in isolation it also doesn’t need to be long. You don’t need to go all the way to Bali. I emphasize that there’s importance of getting enough sleep. What is also important is recuperative experiences through the day.
Here’s another example actually I was thinking about. I was teaching a seven hour long seven day class in China and we had breaks in between as well as a longer break at lunch and my first experience I was there, I thought during the lunch break I put on some music and kind of fill the space, but I was actually surprised because the students turned off the lights, they laid on the floor, they closed their eyes and they took a nap. And I was astonished because what they were doing was that they were giving their body time for recuperation and they were integrating their experience by taking a pause and then after they were ready to come back and engage more.
So I don’t know if it’s a culture but there, you know, there are siestas but in other cultures they may take long naps and lunches and they spend time with friends and family but in our culture we go go go go go go go. We work 10 hour days and then we come home, work and then we work on the weekends and then we check our email on holidays, we check our messages, and just imagine what our body is living in
OK: We think we’re being more productive, but from your example and from what we can understand, it actually isn’t being more productive necessarily. It might be more productive to actually take those pauses let information and integrate and make space for creativity just being totally present.
CD: Yeah, because when you when you pause, the intention is for integration to happen and recuperation and then when their integration and recuperation happen that allows for inspiration and then our creative flow can unfold, and that was my experience when I was in Bali. Maybe it was Bali, but I really do feel that it was my intentional slowing down, shutting down, having an opportunity for myself to recalibrate.
OK [15:00]: How does dance movement therapy aid this process?
CD: Well, specifically I think that dance/movement therapy is a discipline that uses the therapeutic relationship and the engagement in interactive movement experiences to build an integration of mind and body. So if one is kind of overriding the other, the work in dance/movement therapy is to try to support clients to bringing this to balance.
So think about- I think of this image of being on a swing set or the experience of a swing, so at the top of the swing, there is a moment where you are kind of suspended in air, where there’s like a vibration of potential energy. But I think dance/movement therapy can get people in touch with these powerful experiences holding onto this potential energy in their lives and in their body and kind of begin to embrace the palpable energetic creativity that happens within that potentiality.
And dance/movement therapists also are very skilled in their ability to attune to clients and co-regulate and experience through the modulation of movement, meaning supporting expansion of movement or the contraction or narrowing of movement. We use the technique called mirroring and in many ways dance/movement therapy can support a down-regulation of a client who might need assistance in engaging their parasympathetic, which is their rest and digest part of their autonomic nervous system to come to a state of calm.
OK: Do you have any examples of how a dance/movement therapist can do that?
CD: Coming to a state of calm?
OK: Yeah. You mentioned co-regulating and, yeah, helping modulate movement.
CD: Well you know it requires really that a dance/movement therapist is really in tune with what’s happening in their own nervous system and what’s happening in relationship with the other. So sometimes I might get a clue like I’m feeling there’s some anxiety- is that coming from me or is that coming from the client? And if I’m feeling anxious then to first put in my body deep exhalations, long exhalated breaths, bringing my body to a state of where I can move into a state of indulging rhythms or indulging experiences. That in itself models and supports a client to get to that place as well.
OK: Mm-hmm, kind of reminds me of a parent-child co-regulating experience.
CD: Yeah! Exactly and actually that’s how we first have our template. Our templae is actually set prenatally. If we have a parent- let’s say, a pregnant mother that’s constantly the state of hyperarousal in her pregnancy, all of those feelings and experiences get translated in some way into chemicals and in the body of the baby. There’s a shared dance there.
And so if we already have this heightened state of hyperarousal, then the stress hormone cortisol it’s more and more heightened for an unborn child, and then when their born, it’s almost like their thermostat is kind of set higher than maybe a pregnant mother who had a quieter, calmer experience or less stressful is probably better term to say. So that’s sort of even prenatally, and of course, if you describe mother/child I would also say that gets enhanced too, and what’s it like if mom’s depressed or mom’s really in a heightened state of hyperarousal or nervous or anxious all the time or feeling abandoned? All of that gets translated to those very fragile nervous systems- remember there’s 100 billion neurons in a baby’s brain, like stars in the Milky Way.
OK [18:55]: Let’s say now we’re working with adults, kind of like the way you were talking about your experience- how do they start becoming more independent of a therapeutic relationship? How can dance/movement therapy still help the person be a little more independent and grow out of that need for someone else to help regulate them?
CD: Mm-hmm well right because self-regulation or the ability to navigate modulate our emotions- that happens through relationship, through those early experiences, so often times dance/movement therapists can support our clients. Again, I feel like one of our greatest strengths as a dance/movement therapist is our ability to attune and mirror and to be with another in that perspective but-
OK [19:43]: Yeah, speaking of clients, I was reflecting on this topic and I was thinking about many of my clients who often describe feeling stuck in their recovery process and it also reminds me of my own conflict between challenging myself to advance in personal and professional development versus allowing space and time for certain energetic shifts to occur organically. How can people distinguish between being stuck versus being in the midst of a pause that will ultimately help them move forward?
CD: Yeah I love this question. It’s a great one.
OK: It’s my life conflict!
CD: Ah-hah, well all I can say is what I really feel strongly about is trusting that transition times always have a purpose, so again I ask myself all the time, what’s wrong with being in transition? What’s wrong with being in that in-between place? Why do we push through it? It certainly can be uncomfortable and here we are- this is where our clients get stuck. These stuck places. This is the liminal transitional space.
If you give it permission and can tolerate ambiguity and getting more comfortable with being uncomfortable and not knowing, perhaps the anxiety that it induces really can surprise you.
Here’s a quote that I love by Father Richard Rohr- he’s a recognized author and a priest. Actually he describes this space as, “When you have left a tried and true but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else, it’s where you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer.” So when we don’t trust or we aren’t trained or comfortable with how to hold anxiety how to live with ambiguity how we entrust and wait, you will run from your experience or we’ll hold on so tightly to that place that we came from, which is I think when we feel stuck and the places that many of our clients are challenged by.
So I think dance/movement therapy can support clients in exploring polarities of tension, like holding and letting go or tension and release. We can model ways that we increase the flexibility the body and I mean flexibility, meaning pre-effort versus being able to do the splits.
OK: [laughing]
CD: I know [laughing]. Flexibility meaning the pre-effort, which is the pre-effort to indirectness or taking on multiple foci, so the spatial intention of taking in more than one option at a time. To learn in the body how to see possibilities- that’s the quality of flexibility in the body. So we also, as a dance therapist, we can invite the qualities of decelerating through movement. The relationship to time is different than just abruptly stopping. I always talk about, it’s not just turning the light switch on and off, it’s about helping us learn about the dimmer switch, all those places in between on and off- not just shutting ourselves down and going. We are learning that how to modulate and go to all those places in between, getting comfortable with slowing down, modulating our flow.
Dance/movement therapy provides an opportunity for us to have- Blanche Evan calls it an embodied rehearsal, which is a term that one of our founders talks about where we can integrate new experiences in our body so that they can become more accessible when we’re confronted with challenges in our life or outside of the therapy session.
OK: So it sounds like there’s not necessarily an answer to knowing am I stuck right now or am I moving forward but, it’s you, know just a transition. It’s more about being comfortable in that unknown in that transition time and trusting that it’s leading us somewhere?
CD: Yeah I mean I’m having an image right now of a baby they say she’s stuck in the birth canal- they’re stuck and not coming out! I think well you know there’s power in this too- are they stuck or are they needing to wiggle their way through or they needing to find a new pathway. The transition is always intentional there’s power in every transition so I’m not answering your question but I am kind of thinking about the concept of stuck and maybe reframing that, okay so I’ve tried this I tried this and tried this- there are other possibilities I just haven’t I haven’t experienced them yet.
OK: Right
CD: Because I believe, and the body tells us that in experiences of transition and experiences of pausing is when integration happens, recuperation happens and then inspiration unfolds.
I mean I do my best thinking in the shower. I get the most inspired at those times where I’m getting ready to fall asleep at night or you know when I’m in the bathtub, where I give myself permission to kind of come to that place of integration and I think, oh the light switch just comes on and now I create a flow- the fluidity and me starts to come more alive. It’s a big message if my creativity halts, then I know I need a pause.
OK: Mm-hmm there’s movement even in the pause like being stuck is not necessarily being stuck and totally stopped- there’s still things happening and things integrating and information processing and mind and body connecting.
CD: Yeah and again I like to go back to the experience of a swing or in the dance world- fall and recovery- there’s an experience the top of the swing where we’re kind of suspended but you are not. It’s not stillness. There’s potential energy, it’s so vibratory, it’s so energetic, so how does that translate- there’s room for growth, there’s room for expansion. It’s there.
OK [26:21]: How would more people taking pauses in their life, incorporating that in their life- how do you think that might affect the collective?
CD: Oh my gosh, well what would it be like if we were not all on our phones- instead we were intentional in these relational moments and just took a moment to kind of integrate one experience to the other. I mean it’s a wonderful thought process actually to think about how more present we might be as a collective. That’s sort of where the mindfulness movement has come on board.
OK: Right. Do you think it would be a deeper body-based process that happens among different people, like would we move differently? I don’t know, it’s a spontaneous question but-
CD: It’s a great question. Will we move- imagine the world, if we were comfortable with ambiguity, we could tolerate transition if we could sink into that place of unknown. I mean I know just personally my life would feel quieter, calmer, more alive, you know, sort of my creative flow. So if one person can feel that experience just that I can imagine maybe we would be more present, rest, digest, we have a lot more energy and ideas people wouldn’t be high-strung so much perhaps.
OK: Yeah, I’m thinking would people feel less fear in general and how would that affect the collective and would we be more harmonious or more kind to each other?
CD: Yeah I mean if we’re- if our body is constantly in a state of heightened arousal sympathetic nervous system then we are afraid, right? There’s some fear and anxiety with that fight or flight. But if we’re in a state where we can be more in a place of- I’m using the terms from Stephen Porges- he talks about the Polyvagal theory, kind of the vagal- um the vagus nerve interaction, the parasympathetic immobilization without fear. Imagine we can slow down, we can be present, we can get close to each other, we can rest we can be engaged, we can bond, we can connect.
I think that’s the intention of the distinct difference between engaging our sleep and rest cycle or, not just sleep and rest cycle, but our social engagement and our safety- the part of a nervous system that says we’re feeling safe vs I have to go go go go go, I have to fight or flight or free. It’s a good thought.
OK [29:05]: Yeah it sounds like it’s something that would really benefit people on an individual level and on a relational level as well. People could be listening to this and saying that sounds great but how do I put that into practice, so what are examples of simple tools or practices that people can use to incorporate pause in their lives, to promote integration and spark creativity and strengthen relationships?
CD: it’s a great question and I would want to invite everyone’s inner expert around what their passions are first and what they want to reconnect to. So I thought to hear from you too about what you feel most alive and what’s creative and when there is flow in your mind-body connection? I mean I think this might be different for everyone but there are ways I think that we can harness the power of the pause. I think they’re certainly individual but one of the things as I spoke about- let’s get off our phone especially especially when we’re in transition you know we’re going from one place to the next, you know. What would it be like if we just acknowledge this liminal space and sink into it and not have to do anything or find a way to entertain or to be busy, to busy our brain?
In other words like really make transition time intentional time between sessions. This is a transitional time, this is a close the door leave the office and get in the car and this is my transitional time from going from one place to the other. Transition, again, this is a place of ambiguity. You might know where you’re going and you might know where you came from but everything in between is up in the air and that can create a lot of anxiety, so if we start to embrace that in a different way, then I imagine that we’ll get more comfortable with ambiguity and tolerate more.
OK: And you were talking about using that time to do things that you’re passionate about? Is that what you were-
CD: Well, you know talking about sparking creative flow, you know, we’d have to shut, um shut the world out in order to reconnect with ourselves. When I had a sabbatical last year I had an intention inside of the transitional time to see more dance, to be in the arts with people that I loved and cared about, so that was sort of an experience to sort of sink into being entertained, not by doing doing doing but just receiving. I’m allowing that to inspire me more and that made me feel alive and more passionate so I think that would be different. Someone else might want to go to an art museum, someone else might want to read a book, someone else might want to take a walk through nature. I think it kind of depends on what makes you feel alive you know what centers you
OK: Yeah I had a story actually that I shared with a new co-worker today from back when I was working at the League and how I used to have a lot of dreams about my work and I was thinking specifically about one where I was doing a session with the kids on a cliff. It was really dangerous and I was, you know, worried in my sleep that I wasn’t keeping these kids safe. I obviously wasn’t letting my brain do all that work to integrate and my mind was in go go go, so of course now I do a lot of active things in my transitional time. Passively I’ll just sit and watch some movies or TV but I think the things that help me is doing things that kind of get me into a flow state, like a creativity flow and a lot of that is really active for me.
So I’m kind of thinking about that now and wondering if I should invest more time in passive flow also, like I’m resistant to doing yoga a lot more than anything else. I’ll go to the gym before I go to yoga, I’ll play the drums before I go to yoga, I’ll cook a meal but there’s something about yoga that I’m resistant to. I think it’s so much harder for me to get on the mat for some reason
CD: Oh that’s very interesting. That’s useful for you know that too about yourself.
OK: Yeah-
CD: I love that you brought in the dream story too. As soon as you were describing it, I’m thinking you were literally on the edge of a cliff, so like right before a state of unknown, you know. Right before a state of- you could jump off or you could walk back but in your psyche you were in the state of sort of ambiguity and you had to protect your clients, so a lot pressure to decide perhaps.
OK: Yeah, that seems pretty ironic now that I’m thinking about that, like that there was a state of ambiguity, that place off the cliff was so scary but probably somewhere I needed to be comfortable with
CD: Yeah so there was intention in that transition and it was important you know you might have felt stuck… Here’s a novel idea that I’m working on: building in blank space in the calendar, building in scheduling integration time and see how you decide to sink into it you know. Do you decide to kind of check out and dissociate, binge watch TV?
OK: So hard to decide!
CD: It’s so hard to decide or, or perhaps seeking a bath or having a deep conversation with someone who’s inspiring to you or or a co-worker, a friend- not necessarily something that puts you in a stress place, not talking about work or but you know, let’s talk about something interesting and inspiring.
OK: Like we’re doing right now!
CD: Yeah, exactly!
OK: I was just thinking about how my idea for this podcast, I had told you, sparked while I was at the tail end of my trip in Colombia and I had felt so clear minded and so creative and these ideas were just flowing out of me. And I think that’s just so amazing how we think that being productive means go go go but really we can get the most, like so much out of transition time and pausing.
CD: Yeah. Yeah pausing isn’t a waste of time, it’s actually providing space for something new to emerge and it’s a good reminder for all of us. Certainly not something I’ve become an expert at but I definitely know when I have a red flag, when I feel like I’ve shut down, I can’t think, I’m not being creative, my flow, my fluidity is stunted then I actually need to stop and HALT- thanks mom! [laughing]
OK: [laughing]
CD: If I’m hungry I need to eat, I need to nourish myself. If I’m angry I need to come into a place where I can settle my nervous system. If I’m lonely, I need to find, be in relationship and if I’m tired I need to rest. It’s a brilliant theory.
OK: I’m going to take it with me! Well, thank you.
CD: Yes, thank you!
OK: I think this is a good spot to pause
CD: I think it’s a great place to pause
OK [outro]: Wow well that was awesome. Thanks Christina for giving us a deep integrated perspective on what it really means to recuperate and rejuvenate. See y’all next time on Mind Your Body!