Naming & Noting Practice
When stress and anxiety spike, the simple yet powerful practice of Naming & Noting can help restore calm and feeling more balanced and grounded.
HOW to Practice
Pause what you’re doing and take a few full breaths, slowing down the inhale and exhale if possible.
Next, travel to each center of intelligence – Body, Heart and Mind to notice and name the experience and sensations present.
Stop 1. Body (Physical Sensations) – Start Here!
Lightly scan the body, bringing your attention to an area where sensations feel the strongest. Use words to describe the physical sensations in such a way that another person could really GET and imagine feeling the same thing. Let’s say you are experiencing tightness in the chest.
Is the tightness generating from the inside or coming from the outside of the chest?
Where is it located – middle of chest, to the side, filling the barrel of the chest? How high and low does it go?
Any details that describe the temperature, density, shape, energy (i.e. is it moving or changing or stays the same)? Does it feel sharp, dull? Solid, gas, something else?
If this area or sensation could talk, what would it want you to know? (This takes some imagination!)
IMPORTANT: If this feels too intense at any time, shift your attention to rest on an area of the body where sensations feel steady like the ear lobe or elbow.
Stop 2. Mind (thoughts)
Now, shift attention to the mind. Name and note what thoughts are present using these prompts if helpful.
What is the brain like – busy, jumping, bright, clear, sluggish or dull, steady and focused, like a cat chasing a laser pointer, etc.?
What thoughts are present? Lightly label with words like worry, planning, figuring-outing, rather than getting caught in the details or storyline.
What am I believing about what’s going on? The story I’m telling myself is… (Using light words without getting caught up in details)
Stop 3. Heart (emotions)
Next, bring awareness to the area of the chest where the heart organ is located.
What emotions* can be noticed and named?
In a time of elevated anxiety, uncertainty, and stress, this simple practice can be game-changing.
WHY IT WORKS (Beloved Geek Alert!)
The practice of putting a light label to name the emotions, physical sensations and mental formations (thoughts), directly helps re-route the neuronal pathways from our limbic system (home of fight, flight, freeze, fawn) back to the pre-frontal cortex where language lives. This brings the pre-frontal cortex back online where we are able to access things like perspective-taking, reasoning, enhanced decision making, seeing a bigger perspective, capacity to resource ourselves with techniques, tools, skills like awareness of breath, rather than blunt, auto-reactivity of fight, flight, freeze, fawn. This re-routing sends signals to dial down the adrenaline and cortisol (stress-related chemicals) allowing the parasympathetic nervous system to resume regulated activity like digestion, rest, immune functioning and other measures of balanced well-being.
Good stuff.
ATTRIBUTION
Naming and Noting is an evidence-based practice drawing on the work of neuroscientists and researchers such as Helen Weng, Dan Siegel (‘Name it to Tame it’), Rick Hanson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Kristin Neff and so many more in an exponentially growing canon of research that describes the powerful practices of Naming & Noting and mindful awareness as a way to build capacity to restore and live from a more regulated, compassionate, skillful, calm and grounded foundation. While this research continues to expand and inspire, the roots of these practices span thousands of years across contemplative practices, namely the teachings of Buddhism on the benefits of cultivating mindful awareness.
*NOTES
Most adults living in the US are only able to observe and name the mad-sad-glad trio of emotions. There are many, many more emotions we feel as human beings. Intentionally learning emotional vocabulary and fluency is the foundation for empathy, stress resilience and the vibrance of lived experience. This handy list references 87 emotions drawing on the research of Brené Brown. The more fluency and emotional vocabulary we have, the more powerful this practice is in shifting the sympathetic nervous system out of a hyper-activated stress response to restore calm.
*For many of us, emotional fluency can be especially hard because many cultures, societies and family systems conditioned to disown any emotion other than anger. It goes against the biology of humans to cut off from emotional experience and expression so anything stuffed down comes at a consequence. The Body Keeps Score as Bessel van der Kolk reminds us. When things get stuffed down, they never go away. Instead, denied emotions might explode out in other ways or have so many layers of concrete over them that it deadens our capacity to feel any emotion including joy, love and happiness.