Nahid de Belgeonne is a UK-based somatic movement educator, breath and yoga teacher, and author. In March 2024 she published her book Soothe: the book your nervous system has been longing for in the UK, with its US publication launched in October. Having worked in the technology sphere, De Belgeonne opened London yoga studio Good Vibes in 2006, which she later sold. Now, De Belgeonne coaches clients in The Human Method™, described as “a radical re-learning system that works to intelligently harmonize the mind and body.” Here, De Belgeonne discusses the limits of addressing well-being via the cognitive mind, digital devices’ role in monitoring our bodies, and how in today’s always-on world, its crucial to cultivate a “resilient” nervous system.
"Once you can tune back into yourself and get embodied, it's incredibly empowering, because you're in charge."
Why do you think interest in somatic wellness is arising now?
For so many reasons. I think we've sort of tried everything, and it's not working. Because I think most people are trying to approach this from a cognitive mind, which isn't all of you. Your cognitive mind is made up based on your experiences in life. And you know, you read things, and you try and apply them to you, so you're having to use a lot of willpower to change behavior, and that isn't how behavior changes. Behavior changes when you use your whole self.
Your nervous system is sophisticated, but not in the way you think. We once upon a time thought we were a brain with a body, but we're actually a body with a brain. There are more signals coming from your body to the brain than there is the other way around. And listening to those signals - it's called interoception - can, over time, help you to manage all of your symptoms, from stress to anxiety and all those things, because they're all learned behaviors.
How do you view digital devices’ role in how we interpret what’s happening in our bodies?
I'm not against gadgets…they’re really good for gateway…access points to this kind of work and into understanding yourself a bit better. But have you ever had that thing where your Oura [ring] tells you that you slept really poorly and then that really affects your day? So actually, if you tune into the signals from your body, you will know, am I tired? Am I not tired?
Once you can tune back into yourself and get embodied, it's incredibly empowering, because you're in charge. And you might not be able to fix, you know, how many hours you work and things like that, but you can start to introduce breaks in your day, tiny little micro practices to just help you to bring your whole system back into calm and actually into resilience. To have a resilient nervous system – that’s what we want. So you can adapt and recover and adapt and recover.
Do you think an interest in somatic wellness is partly a reaction to how much the mind and mental health have been centered in the conversation?
I find it perplexing, I suppose, where there is a lot of talk about mental health, there isn't a lot of sorting out the problems that cause mental health. If you can't afford talking therapy, then that's out for you isn't it, or you have to wait for a very, very long time. I think there is an element of seeking. And I think everything is pointing now more and more towards embodying [wellbeing], rather than it just being a cognitive, mind-led practice.
And for somatic techniques, there are fewer barriers to entry?
You can just get on the floor. I was just talking to my client. She's in the TV world, she's so, so busy. We were trying to find the places in her day and the gaps where she could just, you know, retract it. I said, ‘you don't have time to close your eyes and breathe in for six seconds and breathe out for six seconds?’ And she [said], ‘oh, yeah, I could do that.’
Can you see somatic wellness becoming a part of health services more broadly?
This is actually part of your preventative care…how we deal with stress and how we deal with the challenges that we have. You can do something about that, way before you hit a wall. So yeah, absolutely I could [see it taken on more broadly]. It just needs some vision. At the moment, it just feels like all our services are up against the wall. But…I think a lot more attention has got to be paid to how we live, and preventative techniques and practices. Without a doubt, I think we've just got to think about…how we look after ourselves before we get ill, to avoid getting ill.
Do you think workplaces would take on these ideas?
If you treat human beings like human beings, they're going to produce well for you and feel well cared for.
It seems like we're all working harder and faster and we're all burning out. There’re more patterns of burnout than there were before, and I suppose that's because the culture's got so fast. If you receive content really fast, there's a tendency to think that you can produce it really fast.
This thing of constantly working and working and working is just wearing your brain out, over-stimulating [it]. But when you have your best ideas is when you do some work for a bit, for a focused amount of time, and then you take a break from it. It's in the break that you resolve the problems.
Main image: Nahid de Belgeonne. Portrait by Helena Sandberg
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