3 Ways to Practice Embodied Conflict Resilience
- Monique
- Mar 20
- 6 min read
This article is part of a series where I am exploring what it means to practice embodied conflict resilience. In this context, I am referring to interpersonal conflict, which we can experience within our workplaces, activism communities, families, at school, and among friends.
What is embodied conflict resilience?
In an earlier article, I wrote about resilience as our capacity to be in relationship with our current experiences.[1] Resilience is not about bouncing back, resisting change, striving to make things return to the status quo, or tolerating intolerable and unjust conditions.
In this short article, I would like to integrate interpersonal conflict into this understanding of resilience.[2] Two key points about interpersonal conflict are:
Interpersonal conflict is a part of human life
Interpersonal conflict can be generative and lead to personal growth.
I suggest that conflict resilience is our capacity to expand our responsiveness to a changing dynamic in an interpersonal relationship. This might include:
Our capacity to receive a request or feedback without immediately resisting
Our capacity to allow space for curiosity and listening to understand
Our ability to not immediately fix something
Our self-awareness and self-confidence to choose how we want or need to respond to an interpersonal conflict situation
Our capacity for empathy.
So then, embodied conflict resilience integrates our somatic experience, our felt sense,[3] and our self-resourcing capacity into our expanded responsiveness to changing dynamics in an interpersonal relationship.
I consider self-resourcing as the ways that we look after ourselves and trust the intelligence of our nervous system response to a particular situation.
In our embodied work, we want to connect to what is going on internally and somatically to guide our choices and responses. Below are three practices that can support our embodied conflict resilience. It is helpful to understand ourselves as being in practice rather than in a state of final achievement.
Practices to expand our embodied responses to conflict
1. Give yourself permission to pause, notice, and reflect in the moment
Ask yourself, do I feel safe at this moment? Can I breathe and notice my embodiment?
Example: I recall a time when my husband and I got into a conflict over the way I perceived some feedback he was giving me. I became defensive, which is my conditioned response to a changing dynamic in a relationship. I felt my jaw clamp, my back get straighter, and my feet step apart and plant into the floor as though to solidify my resistance. As I listened to him, I also managed to give myself a moment to pause and notice what was going on somatically. In addition to my stance, I felt a flutter in my chest. I understood that I was embarrassed by my defensive behavior. I also felt safe to stay in the conversation at that moment, so I chose to soften my stance and sit down to listen.
A practice of curiosity can help shape and build our conflict resilience. When we genuinely choose to listen to another person with the aim of understanding their perspective rather than building our case against them, we can begin to step into a space of transformation. But first, we want to be curious about our somatic experience and presence. What do you notice when you pause for a moment?
2. Choose how you want or need to respond to an interpersonal conflict situation
Trust yourself to know if you should not engage in an interpersonal conflict. Ask yourself, would it be more skillful for my well-being to address this interpersonal conflict another time? What is your gut instinct?
Example: Conflict resolution approaches and models often teach that avoiding an interpersonal conflict is a lose-lose situation or that avoiding it is a form of denial.[4] Conflict avoidance is often labeled as counterproductive. However, from an embodied conflict resilience approach, and from a nervous system understanding, walking away from an interpersonal conflict or from a moment where you do not feel safe may be the most intelligent response for you in that moment.
You might ask yourself:
How am I doing today? Do I feel well-grounded or agitated?
Do I feel safe in this conversation?
What can I do to support my well-being?
But how we walk away is important; we want to offer another option. You might say to the other person, “I cannot have this conversation right now, but I will come back to you later,” or “Can we set a time and place when we have this conversation together, perhaps online or with another person present?”
3. Practice with a different embodied response to conflict
We all have learned and conditioned ways of responding to interpersonal conflict, ways that have supported us, kept us safe, or worked well for us in the past. And we often embody these. Anthropologist Anna Harris (2016) writes of embodiment as “a way of describing porous, visceral, felt, enlivened bodily experiences, in and with inhabited worlds.” What she calls “our bodily being in the world.”[5]
We can use somatic practices to both notice and befriend our bodily being in the world as well as change it if we choose.
Example: If we tend to hold ourselves in defense or defiance (maybe something similar to my stance described in the first example above), can we practice bringing more ease into our body?
Bowing from the heart: This is a beautiful practice drawn from the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Standing or sitting with feet grounded toward the earth, bring both palms to your heart space.
Inhale for 4-6 counts and, as you inhale, slowly allow your heart space to lift, you might feel yourself getting a little taller, your neck lengthening
Keep your gaze forward
Exhale for 5-7 counts and, as you exhale, slowly bow from your heart, let your heart space lead the bow rather than your head
Your head is just following your heart in the bow
It is a small bow from the heart rather than a deep bow, but it might feel deep inside!
What insights do you notice or feel from this practice?
Example: If we tend to feel ourselves in collapse and pulling inward, can we practice giving ourselves permission to stand more fully in ourselves, without any apology?
Standing fully in ourselves: I like to do this practice in an organic way, adjusting for more movement or stillness depending on what I feel is needed.
Standing or sitting with feet grounded toward the earth
Inhale for 4-6 counts and, as you inhale, slowly lift and reach your arms out to the side and up (depending on your shoulder comfort)
Let yourself expand and take up more space!
Exhale for 5-7 counts as you bring your arms back toward your torso, crossing them over to give yourself a hug
Repeat and notice if you feel drawn to standing still with your arms expanded while you breathe, or if you feel drawn to keep moving with your breath
And notice if you feel more inclined to pull in and come back to hugging your arms around your upper torso, give yourself permission to do that
What insights do you notice or feel from this practice?
Read more from Monique Newton
Monique Newton, Yoga Therapist-C-IAYT, Mind-Body Conflict Coach
Monique Newton is a Yoga Therapist, C-IAYT, Mind-Body Coach, and Conflict Coach. Monique believes in the generative power of somatic awareness for social justice, conflict resolution, and personal transformation. She has dedicated her own healing journey to becoming more self-aware, decolonizing her presence and body, and living with humility.
Monique supports individuals and teams with intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict and working through change. In providing services and support, Monique focuses on trauma-informed approaches and emotional and mental well-being.
References:
[1] See my article, “Rethinking resilience after a cancer diagnosis,” where I draw on this understanding of resilience from Scott Lyons, Somatic Stress Release Certificate, 2024, The Embody Lab: resilience is “our growing capacity to be here with what's here, it's our growing capacity to stay in relationship.”
[2] See my article, “3 Ways to Transform Interpersonal Conflict.”
[3] For more on the felt sense, see Jan Winhall (2021). Ann Weiser Cornell (2023) in her focusing work also supports clients in noticing and being with body feelings.
[4] For example, Kenneth W Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann’s model, the Thomas-Kilmann model, developed in the 1970s or Gayle Wiebe Oudeh and Nabil Oudeh’s Conflict is for the Birds, 2006.
[5] Harris, Anna, 2016, “Embodiment” in Anthropology – Oxford Bibliographies. Last modified August 30, 2016. Accessed August 20, 2020, through the University of Ottawa Library.
Comments