Inner change: listening to the body's tensions
Somatic art therapy, Systema and freediving: what an inquiry into my own tensions teaches me about change from within.
Context
After a midlife crisis in 2023 and a long period of exhaustion, I wanted to understand the tensions my body had carried since childhood, rather than keep compensating for them.
Intervention
I committed to an intensive practice, documented as research: 174 hours of somatic art therapy following Johanne Hamel's method, in which you draw your silhouette to map your sensations; 500 hours of Systema, a martial art that trains returning to calm under stress; and freediving. Daily logs, body maps and measurements repeated every year make up the corpus.
Ethics and safety
This inquiry concerns a single person, myself, and establishes no cause-and-effect link. I do not offer therapy: with other people, body-based practice belongs to trained professionals.
Observed effects
- Full-lung breath-hold from 79 to 100 seconds in nine months
- In a lake, from 12 to 26 metres deep between 2025 and 2026
- Glasses with a lower correction in 2026, after an assessment found my previous one too strong
- An article to be released as a preprint, with an annual follow-up protocol
What it shows
Lasting change also goes through the body: listening to your tensions rather than silencing them makes you more available to others. I bring this attention to my work: to breath, pace and each person's limits.