What are you practising without realising it?

When we hear the word practice, we tend to think about something we are deliberately trying to get better at. Learning a language, training for something, preparing for a presentation or developing a new skill.

But we are practising ways of being all the time, often without realising it.

If you regularly say yes when you really want to say no, you are getting very practised at overriding yourself. If your response to a busy period at work is to speed up, work later and take more on, you're practising that too. If you spend much of your day moving from one thing to the next without really noticing how you are, that way of operating becomes increasingly familiar.

We practise in our relationships too. Perhaps you are the one who keeps the peace, avoids bringing something up or automatically looks after everyone else's needs first.

And parenting can bring our patterns into very sharp focus. You might genuinely want to respond differently when your child is struggling, but find yourself getting louder, becoming controlling, rushing to fix things or completely losing patience. Afterwards, when everything has settled, you know exactly how you wish you'd responded. In the moment, though, something much more familiar showed up.

At work, it might be a colleague challenging you in a meeting and suddenly you're explaining yourself far more than you intended. Or an email lands and, before you've really taken in what it says, you're already tense and mentally composing your response.

These situations can look very different, but underneath them there is often something familiar happening.

We strengthen what we repeatedly practise

Over time, the ways we respond become well-worn paths.

Someone who has spent years being the capable one may be brilliant at taking responsibility, anticipating problems and keeping things moving. Those are genuine strengths. But they may also have had years of practice at not asking for help, not showing uncertainty or pushing past the point where they've had enough.

Someone who is very attuned to other people's needs may be thoughtful, caring and excellent at reading a room, at home and at work. But perhaps they've also become very practised at moving away from what they themselves need.

And the parent who becomes highly controlling when things get chaotic may not be choosing to be controlling at all. Getting everything under control may simply have become a very familiar way of responding when things feel too much.

These patterns usually make sense when we become curious about them. Many developed because, at some point, they helped us belong, succeed, stay connected, manage difficult situations or navigate what was happening around us.

So the question isn't whether a pattern is good or bad.

It's whether it is still serving us, and whether we have other ways of responding available to us.

Our patterns aren't only in our heads

This is where the body becomes an important part of the conversation.

A pattern isn't just the thing we eventually do. There is often a whole sequence happening before we get there.

Your shoulders might rise or your jaw tightens. Your breathing gets shallower. You feel heat in your chest or a knot in your stomach. Perhaps you lean forward, brace yourself or make yourself physically smaller.

Thoughts arrive too: I need to sort this. I can't let them down. This shouldn't be happening. Just get on with it. Don't make a fuss.

Then there may be an impulse to fix it, defend yourself, withdraw, agree, take over, work harder or shut the conversation down.

Our body, thoughts, emotions and actions are all part of the pattern.

And often it happens so quickly that we're only aware of the end result.

This is why simply deciding "Next time I'll say no" or "I won't lose my patience" can be so difficult to follow through on. By the time we reach the behaviour we're trying to change, a lot has already happened.

Getting to know the earlier signals

Part of embodied practice is becoming aware of and getting familiar with how your patterns actually feel from the inside.

What happens in your body when pressure begins to build? Where do you notice it first? What happens to your breathing, posture or energy? What thoughts tend to arrive? What do you feel pulled to do?

At first, you may not notice any of it, then you might recognise all of this afterwards. Then perhaps you begin to notice it while it's happening. Over time, you may start to recognise some of the earlier cues.

That awareness gives us somewhere to work from.

You might feel your feet on the ground, allow yourself a fuller breath, soften somewhere that has braced, adjust your posture or simply notice, I'm speeding up here.

Not to make what you're feeling disappear, and not because you need to become calm before you can respond.

It's about including the body in the conversation and creating more possibility within a pattern that might otherwise simply run its familiar course.

From there, something else may become available. You might listen differently, stay in the conversation a little longer, ask for help, pause before responding to your child, say what you actually think in the meeting or recognise that you don't have to act on the first impulse that appears.

The outward action matters, but so does everything that allowed you to access it.

We can not practise not being something

This is an important part of change that can easily get missed.

We can't really practise not doing or being something.

If I want to stop people pleasing, I can't practise not people pleasing. If I want to stop losing my patience with my children, I can't practise not losing my patience. If I want to stop becoming defensive when I'm challenged at work, not being defensive doesn't give me anything to move towards.

Instead, we can ask:

How do I want to be? What would I like to have more access to in those moments?

Perhaps it's being more boundaried, patient, courageous, open or steady. Perhaps it's being able to stay connected to yourself while someone else is disappointed with you, or to remain present when you don't have all the answers.

And then we can begin to practise that.

Not only when things are difficult, but in the ordinary moments of our day.

Why the small moments matter

I often encourage clients and groups I work with to practise centring and other embodied practices in micro-moments throughout the day. It might be while waiting for the kettle to boil, before opening the laptop, walking into a meeting, sitting in the car before going into the house, or simply whenever you remember.

It can seem almost too small to matter.

But we are building familiarity. We're helping the body get to know another pathway so that, over time, it becomes easier to access.

I sometimes compare it to firefighters training.

They don't only practise their skills when there's a fire. They train again and again when there isn't one. Their bodies become familiar with the movements, the equipment and the ways they need to respond, so those capacities are well practised and available when the pressure is real.

Of course our everyday lives are very different, but the principle is useful.

When we are under pressure, we are more likely to fall into the ways of responding that are already familiar to us. And some of those responses may have had years, sometimes decades, of practice.

If we want something else to become more available, we need to give that some practice too.

So if I want to be more boundaried, I can explore what being grounded in myself actually feels like. What happens to my posture, breathing and pace? Can I feel my feet and my own physical space while still staying connected to the person in front of me?

If I want more patience as a parent, I can practise recognising what steadiness and patience feel like in my body before I'm dealing with a child who has asked me the same question fifteen times while I'm trying to get everyone out the door.

If I want greater confidence at work, I can practise taking up my space, staying present when attention is on me, breathing and speaking without rushing, long before the meeting where I might feel challenged.

We are not trying to create a perfect new response that we use every time.

We are expanding what is available to us.

The old pathway doesn't need to disappear. But it doesn't have to be the only one our body knows how to find.

So perhaps there are two questions worth noticing:

What am I practising without realising it?

And:

What do I want to practise on purpose?

Then notice where the small moments are in your ordinary day where you can begin.

Because when the pressure does come, having another way of being available to us can make all the difference.

Go gently, Derval