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Episode: Start Strong: Do This Every Morning to Get Out of Bed, Beat Anxiety, and Feel Incredible All Day

Author: Mel Robbins
Duration: 00:49:12

Episode Shownotes

If you have trouble getting out of bed, there is one simple hack you need to wake up early, beat anxiety, and kickstart your morning. In today’s episode, Mel shares a technique called slithering that will help you on those tough mornings when getting out of bed feels impossible.Mel reveals

how this unique practice, taught to her by her therapist, moves stress and tension out of your body, helping you shift your mindset and start the day with ease.You’ll learn how to use this simple tool to reset your body, tackle morning dread, and take control of your day—no matter what challenges you’re facing.Note: this episode covers sensitive material, including discussion of trauma and sexual assault. If this topic isn’t for you right now – please skip this episode.For more resources, including links to the studies mentioned in the episode, click here for the podcast episode page. If you liked this episode and would like to know more about Mel’s morning routine, you’ll love: 3 Small Decisions That Make You Feel Incredible: Do This Every Morning After Waking UpConnect with Mel:Watch the episodes on YouTubeGo deeper with Mel’s free video course, Make It HappenFollow Mel on Instagram The Mel Robbins Podcast InstagramMel's TikTok Sign up for Mel’s personal letter Disclaimer

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_02
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. You know those mornings where you just don't want to get up? Me too. You know, in fact, for most of my life, every morning when I woke up, I just felt this huge sense of dread.

00:00:20 Speaker_02
I mean, I don't know why it was so hard to get out of bed. So I talked to my therapist about it, and she, gave me this life-changing technique.

00:00:33 Speaker_02
And it's unbelievable how it works, especially on those mornings where you just don't feel like getting out of bed. It's called slithering. And today, I'm going to teach it to you. Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

00:00:57 Speaker_02
I am so thrilled that you tuned in today because we are doing something super cool and extra special. Never done this before. I am laying in my bed right now.

00:01:09 Speaker_02
I have my eye mask on, I've got my retainer in, you might be able to kind of hear a little bit of a, because of the retainer. My cat, Mr. Noodle is laying with me. And today I am teaching you a technique that changed my entire life.

00:01:24 Speaker_02
If you have ever struggled with getting out of bed,

00:01:27 Speaker_02
If you wake up and you immediately feel dread, or you feel like something's wrong, or your thoughts are just overwhelming you, what I'm going to teach you today and share with you will change your life immediately.

00:01:44 Speaker_02
And what are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about this technique that my therapist, the extraordinary Ann Davin, taught me during a period where I was going through a really, really hard time.

00:01:56 Speaker_02
And in fact, things were so difficult that I was having trouble getting out of bed. And that may surprise you if you're a new listener. By the way, if you're a new listener, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family.

00:02:06 Speaker_02
I think it's super cool that you're choosing to listen to something that can help you change your life.

00:02:11 Speaker_02
And learning how to get out of bed on those days where life feels hard, or you're overwhelmed, or like me, you have this pounding sense of dread in your body, it kind of weighs you down like a gravity blanket, and you just want to stay in bed.

00:02:31 Speaker_02
It's kind of interesting, isn't it, how hard it can be to get out of bed some mornings? I've certainly been there.

00:02:38 Speaker_02
And what I didn't know is that all of that dread that I was feeling every morning, all of the overwhelm, it actually traced all the way back to an experience that I had had in childhood. And we're going to talk about that in a minute.

00:02:51 Speaker_02
But I gotta share something with you. I have never been the kind of person that likes to get out of bed. I mean, let's just be honest with each other. For anybody that can spring out of bed when the alarm rings, you're a weirdo.

00:03:02 Speaker_02
For the rest of us normal people who actually wake up and we're sort of like, ugh, can't I just lay here? Why is it so hard to get out of bed? How about hitting that snooze button again and drifting back to sleep in my cozy sheets?

00:03:14 Speaker_02
That's the kind of person that I've always been. And so if that's you, if it's somebody that you love, what you're going to learn today is going to blow your mind.

00:03:22 Speaker_02
You're not only going to learn this technique called slithering, you're going to hear it explained by my therapist, Ann Devon. She is also going to walk you through why this works as what's called a somatic practice.

00:03:36 Speaker_02
She's going to teach you about the deep origins of the stored tension in your body and why you continue to wake up in the morning and feel this sense of dread or like something's wrong or your thoughts are spinning.

00:03:52 Speaker_02
This isn't based on just what's happening in your life right now. This is likely something that you've experienced for a long time in your life and here's the good news. Using this technique, you can move it out of your body.

00:04:06 Speaker_02
And yeah, you may have a lot going on, but you can learn how to wake up and not feel that sense of dread.

00:04:11 Speaker_02
You can learn how to change it so that you wake up in the morning, no matter what's going on, you actually wake up and you feel freedom in your body. It is the coolest thing in the world. I'm going to teach it to you today.

00:04:24 Speaker_02
I'm so excited that you're here. In fact, I'm going to sit up. get the pillow in place, get the eye mask off and settle in. Oh, and you know what I don't have is I don't have my glasses.

00:04:39 Speaker_01
Okay.

00:04:46 Speaker_02
So I don't know about you and mornings, but it has always been the hardest thing in the world for me to start my day.

00:04:52 Speaker_02
And I'm gonna describe what it feels like for me on just any given day, but as I'm describing what it feels like for me from the moment that I wake up, I want you to think about what does it feel like for you most mornings when you open your eyes?

00:05:09 Speaker_02
I want you to think about the sensation in your body. Pull some cat hair out of my mouth first, because I've been petting my cat. Okay. Whenever I would wake up, no matter where I was, the first thing I felt was a sensation of heaviness.

00:05:30 Speaker_02
It's almost like there's always been something standing on my chest. And it goes from that sensation of heaviness, like the bed is a giant magnet and I'm just a little paperclip that's now stuck to it.

00:05:45 Speaker_02
The amount of effort that it takes for me to push through that heaviness in my body and that sense of dread, it is like Herculean. Forget about doing resistance training. Like this is this is pushing through something at a whole different level.

00:06:05 Speaker_02
And once I feel that sensation of dread, you know, of course, what happens is then it triggers my mind to start spinning. And I start to scan ahead.

00:06:14 Speaker_02
And, you know, even though I'm a very positive person, one of the things that I've been learning about life is that our brains tend to default on the negative. So what is it

00:06:22 Speaker_02
that I immediately start thinking about, oh, the thing I did wrong yesterday, the things I have to do today that I'm not gonna get to or that I'm nervous about, the meeting at work that I'm not prepared for, the fact that the kids have all this stuff going on, the fact that I haven't exercised in four days and now I'm kind of beating myself up or that maybe I stayed up a little bit too late and watched yet one more episode of that series instead of going to bed.

00:06:45 Speaker_02
And so the very first thing I feel is heaviness. The very first thoughts aren't like, oh, Let's get out of bed. I'm so grateful I have another day. It's more like, ugh, just like, ugh. That's what I'm working with.

00:07:01 Speaker_02
And it doesn't matter if I'm on vacation. It doesn't matter if I'm in my house. It doesn't matter if I'm traveling for work. It doesn't matter where I am. That is what I feel.

00:07:11 Speaker_02
And what I've come to learn is that's the way most of us feel, that there's something about going from a state of peace and rest to waking up and having to face the day.

00:07:22 Speaker_02
And if you're somebody who doesn't sleep well at night, holy smokes, let's just add on top that kind of disappointment that yet again, you didn't get another good night's sleep. So you're not waking up rested, you're waking up feeling behind.

00:07:36 Speaker_02
And so that's the background here. And if you're somebody who just springs out of bed, like God bless you, but the rest of us kind of hate you right now because that's not the normal feeling for a lot of us.

00:07:47 Speaker_02
But I'm here to tell you by the time you're done listening, you are going to not only understand why you feel that dread and why your thoughts can be really negative and why it can be hard to push yourself out of bed and start the day,

00:08:00 Speaker_02
Even better than understanding it, you're gonna know exactly what to do on those mornings when you feel it.

00:08:06 Speaker_02
And I will tell you based on personal experience, using this technique called slithering has changed my flippin' life because it has changed what my body feels first thing in the morning and it has given me this simple

00:08:19 Speaker_02
seemingly ridiculous thing to do to help me on those mornings where it truly is hard to get out of bed.

00:08:26 Speaker_02
So I want to go back in time, like three or four years, and explain what was happening when I was talking to my therapist, the extraordinary Ann Davin, about all of the challenges I was facing.

00:08:38 Speaker_02
And I'm not going to belabor it because then it's going to get too damn depressing, but we were in the middle of massive life change.

00:08:45 Speaker_02
Like so many of you, our family had moved and we moved from Boston where we had lived for 26 years up to this tiny little town in Southern Vermont. And at the time we were living with my mother-in-law. Now I love my mother-in-law.

00:08:59 Speaker_02
But you know, when you are sleeping at your mother-in-law's house, you're not in your own bed, you are in somebody else's house, and I was sleeping in the bunk room of my mother-in-law's house in Southern Vermont.

00:09:12 Speaker_02
And we're in the middle of this big move, I have no friends, I have lost my dream job, which at the time was being a daytime talk show host, and I just didn't know what I was gonna do with my life.

00:09:28 Speaker_02
I felt like I had made a huge mistake by moving to this tiny town and uprooting our whole life. And on top of all of that, I'm waking up in the middle of the desolate winter months in a bunk room in my mother-in-law's house.

00:09:46 Speaker_02
And let me tell you, I would wake up every morning and it wasn't just the elephant on my chest. It was like, I don't even want to face the nightmare my life has become. I don't want to get out of bed.

00:09:58 Speaker_02
If I just roll over, have you ever had a morning where you're like, okay, if I just hit the snooze button and then I drift back to sleep. maybe I will wake up in a totally different life.

00:10:08 Speaker_02
Maybe this is like just some sort of figment of my imagination, this life of mine. This used to happen to me in law school all the time.

00:10:15 Speaker_02
I would have this fantasy that as I would drift back to sleep, I would wake up and suddenly I wouldn't be in law school anymore. I'd be 10 years ahead. I would be happy. I would have known what I was doing with my life. I'd have it figured out.

00:10:27 Speaker_02
And then of course, I'd drift back to sleep, the alarm would ring, I'd wake back up, I'd be like, Oh my God, this again and now I'm late for class?

00:10:36 Speaker_02
Anyway, I could talk for hours about how hard it has been for me to get out of bed and how awful it is to wake up and the first thought that you have is that you've done something wrong or that someone's mad at you or that the day is just so overwhelming you don't know how you're gonna get through it.

00:10:56 Speaker_02
That's not that empowering. That doesn't feel good. And so, you know, I'm going through this really challenging period where I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I'm so stuck. I don't feel like we made the right decision.

00:11:10 Speaker_02
I don't think I'm going to make it. And I'm sobbing to Anne on the phone and I'm talking about how I just am having such a hard time getting out of bed. And Anne says, Mel, I want you to try something called slithering.

00:11:28 Speaker_02
So Anna and I spend one of our sessions talking all about the sensation. And that's why I asked you to think about what do you feel in your body first thing in the morning? Is it heaviness? Is it dread? Is it excitement?

00:11:46 Speaker_02
Is it like an on-edge feeling because you don't quite know what you're going to wake up to? And so as we started to unpack the sensation and the experience of waking up, she started asking me these questions. When do you remember this first starting?

00:12:02 Speaker_02
And I'm like, I have no idea. She's like, what about when you were in law school? Was it there? I'm like, most definitely in law school. What about college? Yep, absolutely. What about high school? Yeah, yeah.

00:12:12 Speaker_02
As a matter of fact, I had a really hard time getting out of bed in high school. I always felt this sensation like something was wrong.

00:12:20 Speaker_02
And we went all the way back in our conversation to this moment that I remembered where I'm gonna not go deep into the story, cause I don't want things to get too heavy.

00:12:31 Speaker_02
I mean, it's already heavy to get out of bed, but we went all the way back to this experience that I had where I was in fourth grade and my family was away at this ski trip with a bunch of other families and all the kids were sleeping in this big bunk room.

00:12:47 Speaker_02
And I remember waking up in the middle of the night, here I am, a fourth grader, and there is an older kid on top of me.

00:12:56 Speaker_01
And they are doing something to me. And it was a really, I don't know what the right word is, weird and upsetting and confusing situation.

00:13:13 Speaker_02
because it's like on one hand, I was really scared because it was pitch dark and I didn't know what was happening. But on the other hand, and this may sound a little weird, like it felt like, okay, like kind of good. I was so confused. I was not

00:13:32 Speaker_02
as a fourth grader able to process what was going on, like my first ever sexual experience, in that setting, being woken up.

00:13:42 Speaker_02
And I remember just rolling over on my side, like into this ball shape, and this older kid climbed out, went back, and I looked over, and in the bottom bunk next to me was my little brother. And I remember thinking, I need to keep really quiet,

00:14:03 Speaker_01
so that this person doesn't do that to him.

00:14:06 Speaker_02
Like I knew something was wrong, but as I reflect back on it, it's not that the first experience was terror or fear, it was more confusion and this deep sense that this was really bad.

00:14:24 Speaker_02
But again, like my fourth grade little brain, I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know how to process this in a healthy way.

00:14:33 Speaker_01
And so that next morning, when I woke up, what do you think I felt in my body? Heaviness, dread. I felt like I had done something wrong.

00:14:46 Speaker_02
And I laid in that bed and pulled the covers over me and just hid there until all the kids had left because I just sensed that I had done something wrong.

00:14:58 Speaker_02
And one of the things that I've learned talking to the extraordinary experts that we've had on this podcast that you and I are together learning from is that when you're really little, there's this flaw. I'm going to call it a flaw.

00:15:09 Speaker_02
There's a flaw in human design. called attribution.

00:15:12 Speaker_02
I learned this from the amazing psychiatrist at Stanford, Dr. Paul Conti, that when you're little and bad things happen, or the adults around you are super mad or frustrated, or they're not around at all, a little kid does not have the ability to attribute other people's bad behavior to other people.

00:15:36 Speaker_02
There's a flaw in the human design that makes little kids attribute other people's bad behavior to a flaw in you. And so I actually thought this was my fault. I thought something was wrong.

00:15:48 Speaker_02
And I thought if I tell anybody, I am going to get in a lot of trouble, even though I didn't do anything. I was clearly a victim.

00:15:55 Speaker_02
And I'll just state for the record also, my personal opinion about that other kid is if that other kid is doing something like that to a kid, then clearly somebody is doing that to him.

00:16:05 Speaker_02
And so I know that now, but in that moment in my body, my body absorbed that experience.

00:16:13 Speaker_02
And I'm going to tell you something, what I've learned over and over from all these experts that you and I talked to on this podcast and from my own deep experience in therapy and all kinds of different modalities and diving deep into trauma,

00:16:27 Speaker_02
that there are things that happen to you when you were little or in your lifetime. And what I am learning over and over is that it's actually stored as a sensation in your body.

00:16:38 Speaker_02
And if it is your default to wake up and have negative thoughts, or it's your default to wake up and feel that heaviness the way that I do,

00:16:47 Speaker_02
It might not be something as scary as what happened to me, but it could just be that you had a parent or a caregiver that you never knew which version of them you were going to get in the morning. Is mom or dad going to be in a good mood?

00:16:59 Speaker_02
They're going to be in a bad mood. Are we going to have food today? Are we not going to have food today? Am I going to have a good day at school or am I going to get bullied like I normally do?

00:17:08 Speaker_02
Am I going to be able to do what I need to do in this classroom or am I going to sit there because I have a learning disability that nobody's figured out and so I feel like the dummy in the classroom and I'm constantly in trouble.

00:17:19 Speaker_02
And all of these experiences create sensations in your body where you're bracing or you are freezing or you're in fight or flight. And so I didn't know any of this.

00:17:31 Speaker_02
I just felt like there was something wrong with me because I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. Why is it if I have an okay life I'm not happy when I get out of bed?

00:17:39 Speaker_02
I understand cortisol drops and all this other stuff, but why does it have to feel so heavy? And so I'm having this conversation with my amazing therapist, and I'm crying like crazy, and we trace it all the way back, and now it makes perfect sense.

00:17:53 Speaker_02
Of course, if I have that kind of experience, that the act of waking up gets married with the experience. And that sensation got stuck in my body. That's all that was happening.

00:18:06 Speaker_02
And that's why I'm so excited for you to learn about this, because using this technique, I have been able to really move this heaviness out of my body. I've been able to get the elephant off my chest.

00:18:18 Speaker_02
And I have also been able to nurture and support myself in those mornings where the thoughts start spinning, and it's super negative, and I guarantee you, if you try this, this will help you. and it's gonna help people that you love.

00:18:32 Speaker_02
And so I really want you to share this with everybody that you care about because you have no idea how somebody else feels when they wake up. I'm sure there are lots of people that are coming to mind that you know would benefit from hearing this.

00:18:46 Speaker_02
So let's take a quick pause. I've got so much more to share with you, to teach you, for you to learn.

00:18:51 Speaker_02
We're going to hear a short word from our sponsors, share this episode with someone that you love who would benefit from it, and don't go anywhere because I'm going to be waiting for you.

00:18:58 Speaker_02
We're going to keep on slithering our way through this episode after a short break. Stay with me. Welcome back. It's your friend, Mel Robbins.

00:19:13 Speaker_02
Today, you and I are talking about this life-changing somatic technique that my therapist, Anne Davin, taught me to help me get out of bed on those mornings where the dread or the overwhelm or just the, ugh, was just too much.

00:19:32 Speaker_02
So I'm talking to Anne and she says, Mel, we established that this is something that's a pattern. It's a storage sensation from trauma that is in my body, that this is super normal. It's super common and there is something you can do.

00:19:46 Speaker_02
And so she asked me, just like I asked you, to think about where in my body is this thing stored and what does it feel like?

00:19:54 Speaker_02
And as I've described to you, it always is this sensation in my chest and it's this heaviness, this sort of like dark cloud thing, like tar that is like right in there stuck in my chest. And I want you to think about where is it in your body?

00:20:09 Speaker_02
It might be in your ankles. might be on your back, it might be up in your head, like it could be anywhere in your body that you feel this sensation. And then Anne said to me, I am going to teach you Mel. how to move this thing out of your body.

00:20:27 Speaker_02
And she said, I don't want you to push yourself out of bed. That's what I was trying to do. I was trying to force myself through the heaviness. She said, we're gonna do the opposite. We're gonna move with the heaviness. I'm like, what do you mean?

00:20:38 Speaker_02
Am I just gonna like melt into the bed? Because that's what it feels like. I'm supposed to just like disintegrate into the sheets. It's so heavy. She's like, oh, no, no, no, no. You are going to slither out of bed.

00:20:50 Speaker_02
You're going to move with the heaviness, Mel, and you are going to slither and slide one foot out of that bed, and then you're going to slither and slide the other foot, and then you're going to roll off the bed.

00:21:04 Speaker_02
And then I'm like, well, what am I going to do once I roll out? Oh, you're going to be on the ground. And you're going to move around with this heaviness. And I'm like, that sounds odd.

00:21:16 Speaker_02
And Anne has this amazing way of being so compelling that I tried it. And I'm gonna walk you through it. It is unbelievable how this thing works.

00:21:26 Speaker_02
So what I wanted to do to make sure that you really understood this is I reached out to Anne and I said, hey, Anne, would you be willing to just send me a voice memo to really help me explain this technique and how you came up with this and why this works?

00:21:43 Speaker_02
And so I'm absolutely honored to be able to introduce you to my therapist, Anne Davin, and to have you get to experience her wisdom as she is going to explain to you. exactly what slithering is. Anne is extraordinary.

00:22:06 Speaker_02
She has been a psychologist for over 30 years. She has a PhD in depth psychology, a master's in clinical psychology. All of her work focuses on the unconscious mind and how it impacts the human experience.

00:22:20 Speaker_02
And I have had the honor of working with Anne for over four years now, and she's changed me from the inside out.

00:22:27 Speaker_02
And I also just want to take a moment and thank you, Anne, because what you're going to share today is truly going to help people's lives. I just know it. So thank you. And so here's a clip that she recorded for you to explain what slithering is.

00:22:44 Speaker_00
Slithering isn't a formal technique that is taught. You won't find it in someone's lecture or course book. It's an example of somatic inquiry. The beauty of somatic inquiry is that it bypasses trying to make sense of what we're feeling.

00:23:00 Speaker_00
Rather, we let the body speak its mind through movement. Sometimes it's better to feel our way through rather than try to figure our way out.

00:23:11 Speaker_02
I want to make sure you heard that last line that Ann said, that sometimes it is better for you to feel your way through a sensation rather than trying to figure your way out of it.

00:23:28 Speaker_02
And let me tell you something, I've spent my entire lifetime trying to figure out how to deal with the heaviness and the negativity and the overwhelm that I feel when I wake up. Talking about it hasn't worked.

00:23:42 Speaker_02
pushing through it has gotten me out of bed, five, four, three, two, one. But it doesn't remove that feeling every morning.

00:23:50 Speaker_02
So I would wake up with that feeling, five, four, three, two, one, and push my way out of it, but the next morning it's there again.

00:23:56 Speaker_02
What Anne was teaching me and what she's offering in this type of, as she called it, somatic inquiry, it's a big word, but we're gonna unpack that for you, is that when these sensations and experiences are stored in your body, no amount of talking is going to get them out of your body.

00:24:15 Speaker_02
you need to use the magic and the intelligence of your body to move it out of your body so it doesn't live there anymore. And so let's continue learning from Anne as she explains why this technique works and why we were using this right now.

00:24:35 Speaker_00
Our work at the time was focused on healing an early childhood trauma associated with waking up in the morning.

00:24:42 Speaker_00
As that victimized child, you had to wake up and get out of bed and confront the reality of what had just happened to you the night before without the inner or outer resources to do so.

00:24:54 Speaker_00
The dread that you felt upon waking as an adult was a somatic residue of this unresolved trauma.

00:25:02 Speaker_02
Is she not brilliant? And I want to be sure that you're tracking because it took me a little while to truly get this, that it's important to talk about your feelings.

00:25:13 Speaker_02
It's important to talk about what happened, but there's a deeper way to heal the experiences in your life that got stored in your body. whether it's experiences of racism or bias or it's trauma or it's just chaos in your family or uncertainty.

00:25:34 Speaker_02
Ironically for me, another experience that we ended up linking to this one is that there was a friend of mine that was killed in a drunk driving accident when I was in high school. And I was sound asleep when the accident happened.

00:25:46 Speaker_02
And my mom came into the bedroom and I woke up in her arms to her crying. And she was explaining that this family friend, that the son had died. And that was another experience of being asleep and then waking up to really scary news.

00:26:10 Speaker_02
And so these experiences, you don't just shrug them off. They stay with you. And the opportunity here in learning how to move the sensation out of your body is a way that you can heal this.

00:26:26 Speaker_02
And it goes way beyond just waking up and feeling better and waking up and not having the dread.

00:26:32 Speaker_00
My impulse to suggest this to you now, to slither, came from the dynamic interplay of my intuitive witnessing of your unconscious as it expressed itself in the feeling of dread each morning when you woke up.

00:26:47 Speaker_00
The dread for you caused you to freeze, to be immobilized, unable to move into your day with a sense of safety and well-being.

00:26:55 Speaker_02
It took me a while to truly grasp what Anne was teaching me, and so I want to try to simplify this and bottom line it for you.

00:27:03 Speaker_02
You have all of these experiences that have happened in your life that are now stored in your subconscious mind and in the sensations in your body. you don't ever really get rid of it until you truly process it.

00:27:16 Speaker_02
And Anne was linking up that all of these experiences were just locked in my body with nowhere to go.

00:27:23 Speaker_02
And so the dread that I was feeling, the overwhelm, the negative thoughts, the sense that something was wrong, these are things that were happening on the surface that told Anne that there was something much deeper going on.

00:27:36 Speaker_02
There was a stuck sensation or experience that needed to be moved out of my body and her strategy was instead of trying to push through it and soldier forward and just keep moving on, Mel, it's time to move toward it.

00:27:52 Speaker_02
to join with it, and to truly push it out of your body. And that's exactly what you're gonna learn how to do today. And so I wanna explain in detail the process of slithering right now, and I'm gonna break the whole thing down.

00:28:09 Speaker_02
And then we're going to bring Anne back and Anne is going to explain why this works. And then a little later, she's also going to walk you through an exercise with a couple questions so you can start to try out this process yourself.

00:28:25 Speaker_02
Now, giant disclaimer. I'm not a therapist. I am just a person that has had a lot of screwed up things happen, and I'm doing my best to heal them, and I'm sharing what worked for me. And Anne is not your therapist.

00:28:38 Speaker_02
This is a resource and a suggestion that is there for you to try. And for me, this was life-changing. And I'm pretty sure if you lean into what she's saying and offering to you, it'll be pretty life-changing for you and the people that you love too.

00:28:55 Speaker_02
All right, so we're ready to slither. But first, I wanna give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. They're absolutely amazing.

00:29:04 Speaker_02
I wanna give you a chance to share this episode with somebody that you love who would benefit from it, which is basically everybody on the planet. And when we come back, it's slither time, and I'm gonna walk you through it step by step. Stay with me.

00:29:26 Speaker_02
Hey, it's your buddy Mel Robbins. I'm so thrilled that you're here with me today. I'm introducing you to this life changing somatic technique that my amazing therapist Anne Davin taught me.

00:29:37 Speaker_02
And now it's time for you to step by step slither out of bed with me. You're ready? Good. So am I. So I'm gonna walk you through slithering. And as you're listening to this, you're gonna hear all kinds of sounds.

00:29:54 Speaker_02
And the most important thing for you to remember is instead of pushing through the sensation, and whatever it is for you, whether it's on edge or heaviness or dread or overwhelm, you're just gonna join with it and move with it.

00:30:06 Speaker_02
So for me, the sensation is dread, so it's this heaviness. And that's why it's hard to launch myself out of bed some mornings, or it used to be. And so, I'm starting laying down, and I kid you not,

00:30:22 Speaker_02
The first step for me is you're going to think about just letting the weight of your emotion. So for me, dread is really heavy. And so imagine like you've just got like weights on you. And so I would literally just drop out of bed.

00:30:39 Speaker_02
Like I am, imagine I've now got one foot on the floor. Now I've got another foot that is coming out of the bed. My body is still on the bed, but now I am dripping down the side of the bed. No joke. Oh my God. I'm getting on the floor.

00:30:58 Speaker_02
And now my full body is on the floor. And when I first started doing this, I would literally land By the time I slithered and slank out of bed, I would just lay on my stomach on the floor. And you know, I really took Anne's words to heart.

00:31:14 Speaker_02
That instead of, like, truly... fighting the heaviness, embrace it. Let the heaviness just consume you and allow it to have you roll out of bed.

00:31:27 Speaker_02
And then I would just kind of start to move and I'm writhing around and just literally like bending my knees and kind of almost like if you're in an exercise class and they're asking you to just kind of move your body in whatever way and all you're doing is you're kind of

00:31:43 Speaker_02
breaking up the heaviness. Like when you're laying in bed, what I noticed is that it just kind of sits there.

00:31:49 Speaker_02
But when you start to move around, and then I would just like roll around and Ann said to me, Mel, just lay on the floor and kind of twist and turn and move your body in whatever shape you want until you start to feel that heaviness break apart.

00:32:04 Speaker_02
And so I'm literally laying on the floor right now and I'm twisting. And because so much of what's stored in your body first comes to you as a sensation, you feel on edge or you feel heavy or you feel like something's up.

00:32:22 Speaker_02
That sensation is what we're moving through. And for the first couple of mornings, I would literally lay here on the floor as pathetic as it sounds for like a minute or two.

00:32:32 Speaker_02
And then at some point, what Anne was saying is that you'll start to feel the heaviness break apart. And the slow movement is what starts to break apart the sensation that had been pinning you in bed.

00:32:49 Speaker_02
And as you move your body, and you probably hear me on the floor, strange things start to happen. Like your mind now is like, what are you doing?

00:32:59 Speaker_02
And I'm no longer thinking about the day because I'm thinking about how I'm like on this floor and I want the feeling to get out of my body.

00:33:07 Speaker_02
And slowly what starts to happen is that frozen kind of dread starts to break apart based on your own movement. And in the beginning, I would be on the floor and doing this ridiculous snake slither for a couple minutes.

00:33:25 Speaker_01
And then all of a sudden, you feel freed from it. You're not done yet. You're not done yet.

00:33:33 Speaker_02
What you're gonna feel is this ability to actually either sit up or roll over, and you're not gonna stand up yet. That's not allowed yet. because the point is to move through this.

00:33:51 Speaker_01
And Anne told me to get on all fours and crawl across the floor to the bathroom.

00:34:03 Speaker_02
I'll tell you what, I thought when she explained this to me, are you kidding me? It's really gotten that bad that I am going to crawl across the floor? But holy cow, does it do wonders. And so I'm gonna walk you through why this works.

00:34:22 Speaker_02
You're gonna roll and slither out of bed like a snake. You're gonna hit the floor and get your whole body on the floor.

00:34:29 Speaker_02
Then you're gonna move your body around in whatever motion you want in a slow way, and you'll start to notice the feeling and sensation breaking apart.

00:34:39 Speaker_02
And when you feel ready, which for me in the beginning was a couple minutes of laying on the floor, slithering around, shaking this feeling up, then you're gonna roll onto all fours and you're gonna crawl toward the bathroom.

00:34:56 Speaker_02
So Anne said, you know, you stay on the ground for as long as it takes to start to feel like it's breaking up and then eventually you're gonna roll off the ground and onto all fours, which feels ridiculous, honestly.

00:35:09 Speaker_02
Like I remember when I was learning this technique and I got up that first morning on my all fours and I'm thinking, am I really gonna crawl into the bathroom?

00:35:19 Speaker_02
Now keep in mind at this point, I'm sleeping in a bunk room and the bathroom is down the hall.

00:35:25 Speaker_02
So you get on all fours, and the point is you're gonna slowly start to, and you're gonna hear that rug, literally like a dog or a cat, you're just going to crawl toward the bathroom, which for me is not only hard on the knees, but it means I'm risking being seen by my children, or even worse, my mother-in-law.

00:35:53 Speaker_02
Just crawl to the bathroom. And I'll tell you what though, from the very first time I tried this, by the time I got to the bathroom, all that heaviness was gone and something magical replaced it. This sense of freedom.

00:36:14 Speaker_02
by the time I got to the bathroom, that I wanted to stand up, I wanted to face the day, I had moved with and through the heaviness, that it was no longer in me and I felt something else, which was empowerment.

00:36:29 Speaker_02
And it seems ridiculous that crawling across the floor or slithering out of the bed and onto the floor like a snake and moving through it would have this impact, but I did this every single

00:36:44 Speaker_02
morning for six weeks, and I kid you not, slithering not only got me out of bed on those mornings, it did something way more miraculous. See, what Ann was teaching me and what you're now learning about is something called a somatic technique.

00:37:01 Speaker_02
Somatic is a fancy word that means of the body. There are experiences that you have in life that you remember in your subconscious mind, but it's also remembered in the body.

00:37:13 Speaker_02
And remember earlier how we were talking about the fact that I could talk all I wanted about the things that had happened to me and how I feel, but it wasn't getting rid of the feeling in the body.

00:37:23 Speaker_02
In order to move trauma through your body or to get rid of these negative and heavy sensations, you gotta drop from the neck down and process it in the body. And that's exactly what Anne was guiding me in doing when she taught me how to slither.

00:37:39 Speaker_02
I wanted you to have the benefit of hearing Anne explain exactly why she taught me this technique and how it was working to break apart all the frozen and stuck experiences in my body and set me free. Let's take a listen.

00:37:56 Speaker_00
The best way to work with a symptom, a somatic symptom, like this is to join with it, turn towards it, amplify it. When you did so, the residue shifted from frozen to thawing to fluidity.

00:38:10 Speaker_00
Your nervous system shifted from a state of distress to neutral and then to calm. I prompted you to join with the feeling of dread and imagine if it could move. How would it move? Would it slither? Let your body slither out of bed, onto the floor.

00:38:26 Speaker_00
Move slowly. Notice how the dread wants to move. Let the dread lead the movement. Slytherin is the tool you've used to transform the trauma residue. Your body now is more likely to associate a sense of well-being and safety when awakening to a new day.

00:38:43 Speaker_00
And when it doesn't, you know how to shift that feeling.

00:38:47 Speaker_02
So I know you're going to have a lot of questions. Let me just cover some of the ones I get all the time. You're probably thinking, when do I use this?

00:38:54 Speaker_02
Well, I use this technique anytime there's a morning where I just wake up and it just feels like too much to bear. Pull out the slither and you're gonna feel better. And by the way, you can also use this on the couch.

00:39:06 Speaker_02
So if you're sitting on the couch and you feel that heaviness hit and you can't seem to get yourself off the couch, just slide right off, slither on the floor, crawl to the doorway of that room, and trust me, you will break apart that feeling.

00:39:20 Speaker_02
It's pretty unreal how this works. Another question that you may have is related to what if you have a really hard time actually feeling what you're feeling and dropping into your body?

00:39:32 Speaker_02
I can relate to this, especially since I've spent decades running away from this heaviness and this sensation. And so it can be really scary. But here's what I have found.

00:39:44 Speaker_02
The second that you literally just start small, just slide your leg down and out underneath the sheets, and gravity kind of takes over. And what you'll find if you're willing to just try this is that you do have more power than you think.

00:40:01 Speaker_02
The reason why these sensations are so scary is because you don't know what to do with them. And they've been there a long time. And so part of my fear was, is this really what my life is? Is this what every morning is going to be?

00:40:13 Speaker_02
Because this is what it's always felt like. And you'll quickly realize as you're writhing around on the ground and rolling around, and then you roll up to your hands and your knees, whoa, this feeling is shifting. It's weird, but it's shifting.

00:40:28 Speaker_02
And the more that you do this, the more comfortable you're going to become. And look, I was really scared at this point in my life. I didn't want to feel this way. I didn't want to wake up on edge and so anxious.

00:40:40 Speaker_02
And the thing that shocked me is simply trying this made me feel so empowered. It made me feel like these sensations were no longer going to rule my life, and they don't.

00:40:52 Speaker_02
Another thing that comes up a lot, what if you're in a bed that's really high up or you don't wanna risk falling out of the bed because it's high on the floor?

00:41:00 Speaker_02
No problem, just get the leg out first and just kind of inch so that you're sort of laying there and the leg is straight and then you get the other leg out and you can go from a half sit to a lying down to using your arm, it's okay.

00:41:15 Speaker_02
There's no right way to do this, just get yourself eventually on the floor so that you're laying down on the floor. That's the most important part.

00:41:23 Speaker_02
And then the feeling your whole body on the floor and starting to move and roll around, that starts to shake up this heaviness. It's super cool. What if you have a dog? I mean, Mr. Noodle is still sitting here on the bed sleeping next to me.

00:41:35 Speaker_02
He does not care if I'm slithering or crawling because he had a late night out hunting chipmunks, okay? So he's just sleeping. A dog, fantastic.

00:41:44 Speaker_02
Because what happens is as you're on the floor, if your dog comes over and starts licking you and then they follow you and you're crawling down the floor and they're like, What are you doing? What are you doing? You don't feel so alone.

00:41:55 Speaker_02
It actually kind of makes you laugh a little and the laughter and the added kind of fun of an animal being there shakes up all this sensation even faster.

00:42:04 Speaker_02
At least that's what I found when my dogs, Homie and Yolo, would come and crawl along with me to the bathroom. You may be wondering, is this something you can teach your kids? Absolutely.

00:42:13 Speaker_02
It's a fantastic technique to teach to a child who has anxiety, who has trouble getting out of bed, who may have a lot going on that they're nervous about and they wake up and don't want to get out of bed because it's something that you can do.

00:42:30 Speaker_02
You can accomplish this even on the mornings when things just feel really hard. And the best part about this is you're not correcting your kid. You're not pushing them. You are helping them move with the feeling and you can do it with them.

00:42:47 Speaker_02
You can climb into bed and be like, let's slither out of bed today. Let's take that heaviness that you feel, which validates it by the way. And let's use our bodies to move through it and shake it up. And we're going to crawl together.

00:43:00 Speaker_02
And when you feel ready, and this is the most important part that Anne would say to me, when you feel ready, you can go from crawling to standing up.

00:43:11 Speaker_02
And I said that I used this for six weeks straight, and it just broke apart everything that was in my body. But it only took me about a week or two to get to the point where I could crawl three or four crawl steps.

00:43:29 Speaker_02
I don't even know what the technical word is for it when you're on your hands and knees. And I was ready. I was ready to stand up and walk down the hall to the bathroom. And honestly, that was a huge victory.

00:43:41 Speaker_02
The fact that I was ready eight crawls before I had been the week before was evidence that this was working. And I was slowly but surely chipping away at this tar sensation and this heaviness that had held me hostage for so long.

00:43:59 Speaker_02
And it kept progressing like this. that eventually all I needed to do was roll on the floor and then I was standing up. And eventually all I needed to do was put a leg out. And did I need to slide down? Not really.

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As I was sliding, I'm like, oh, I feel free. I can do it. And so you'll see that this works in magical ways because your body is designed to do this for you. And one more thing, don't get back in bed. No matter what, don't get back in bed.

00:44:33 Speaker_02
In fact, one of my habits is as soon as I get out of the bed, as long as I'm not slithering and crawling, I make the bed right away.

00:44:38 Speaker_02
And that's an important thing because once you get up and you get going and you move through this, you can keep going and it's gonna help you move forward in your life.

00:44:50 Speaker_02
And if you're disabled in any way, and physically this is an impossibility, I'd highly recommend that you take this information to your physical therapist or to a nurse or doctor or somebody that is supporting you and ask them how you can use a somatic technique, which is simply joining in with the heavy feeling instead of avoiding it.

00:45:14 Speaker_02
and moving with it. And I am certain that there are ways that this technique can be adapted no matter what you're facing or what limitations your disability may create in terms of the physical nature of sliding out of a bed.

00:45:30 Speaker_02
I really wanted to leave you empowered. And so I asked Anne for guidance on how you can best set yourself up to get the best benefit from this somatic technique. And this is what Anne had to say.

00:45:46 Speaker_00
How can someone who isn't in therapy with a counselor who is trained in somatic inquiry benefit from this approach to healing? You can incorporate it into your self-care routine. Ask yourself, where am I feeling friction right now in my life?

00:46:04 Speaker_00
Is this a reoccurring feeling? Turn towards the feeling by closing your eyes and notice what it feels like and where you feel it in your body. Then ask yourself, if this feeling could move, how would it move?

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For the next few minutes, allow the feeling to move you. You can do this in a quiet space or turn on music that will inspire your movement. When you're complete, check back in with your body and notice what has shifted.

00:46:33 Speaker_00
The benefits of a movement practice help us to free the body from stress that often we don't realize we are carrying. Less stress leads to greater physical vitality and wellness, and we could certainly all use more of that.

00:46:46 Speaker_02
And you know what else we could use more of? Ann Davin. Ann, I love you. Thank you again for helping me share this life-changing somatic technique. And to you, I want to be sure to tell you, in case no one else does, I love you and I believe in you.

00:47:05 Speaker_02
And I believe in your ability to create a better life. And sometimes that means you and I need to try some weird stuff like slithering out of the bed and crawling down the floor so that we can get our power back. You deserve that.

00:47:19 Speaker_02
And I cannot wait to hear what you experience when you try this. I can't wait to see your social media posts about this. And you know what else I can't wait for? I cannot wait to be together with you again in the very next episode. I'll see you soon.

00:47:40 Speaker_02
Oh my God, this is hilarious. Is that what you wanna name?

00:47:43 Speaker_00
Yes.

00:47:45 Speaker_02
Okay, you want me to keep talking now?

00:47:46 Speaker_00
I do, yeah.

00:47:48 Speaker_02
See, my stomach's grumbling. Wow. And it won't stop your stomach from grumbling, but it's gonna help you get out of bed on those mornings where you just don't feel like you can. Okay, great, I got it. Gotcha, okay, ready?

00:48:04 Speaker_02
Like he needs like a, yeah, like a, I don't know if we have insurance for this. I've never opened the show with my retainer in. This is like a, one of those ASMR things that people listen to.

00:48:16 Speaker_02
That's not what I intended to do, but we're going to just kind of keep on rolling here. Okay, you ready? So I'm going to, oh wait, from flight or fright? Fright, it is frightening, isn't it? Oh, and one more thing, and no, this is not a blooper.

00:48:37 Speaker_02
This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.

00:48:49 Speaker_02
I'm just your friend, I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

00:49:08 Speaker_00
Stitcher.