Mental Health Awareness Month: Are You Listening to Your Body?

Each May, Mental Health Awareness Month invites us to pause, reflect, and recommit to practices that support emotional well-being. This year, I invite you to explore a powerful yet often overlooked ally in mental health: your body.

Mental health doesn’t just live in the mind — it lives in the body, too.

Through the lens of somatic awareness, we understand that emotions are not just ideas — they are embodied experiences, “energy in motion.” Anxiety might show up as a tight chest. Burnout can feel like heaviness in the limbs. Even joy has a shape — a flutter in the belly, a warmth in the heart.

What Is Somatic Awareness?

Somatic awareness is the practice of tuning into physical sensations as real-time cues. It's about noticing what your body is telling you — and learning to respond with curiosity and compassion.

When we pause to Notice, Name, and Navigate what’s happening inside (the foundation of The 3N Model™ I teach), we create space to regulate our nervous system — the command center of our mental and emotional health.

Why It Matters Now

We live in a culture that often tells us to “push through” or “keep it together.” But healing doesn’t happen by force. It begins when we feel safe enough to soften and process.

Somatic awareness gives us a pathway to a more regulated, grounded self—especially in moments of stress, grief, or uncertainty.

This Month, Try This:

💚 Take 3 slow, intentional breaths—inhale gently, then exhale even more slowly—to help reset between tasks.

💚 Gently massage the area just behind your ear and trace down the side of your neck—especially when stress starts to rise. This simple practice stimulates the vagus nerve, helping calm your nervous system, slow your heart rate, and bring you back to center.

💚 Notice any tension in your shoulders, jaw, or gut—and offer those areas gentle, curious attention.

💚 Ask yourself: What am I feeling? Where do I feel it? What might I need right now?

These small moments of awareness and micro-resets are acts of mental health care—simple, subtle, and immediate.

Let’s honor Mental Health Awareness Month not just by thinking about mental health—but by experiencing it, and meeting ourselves and others with greater presence, curiosity, and compassion.

Your body is always communicating. This month, may we all slow down, tune in, and practice listening.