When the Grip Takes Over

Why we grasp for control when life feels heavy, why stillness can feel impossible, and how to slow down when your body wants to run.

The Back That Wouldn't Let Go

Last week I was halfway through a leg workout when I bent down to pick up a 15-pound weight. Fifteen pounds. The kind of weight I've picked up more times than I could ever count. I felt something start to creep into my back, slowly at first, and then the whole thing seized. By that evening, putting my pants on was a project. Even lying down didn't help much, because every time I tried to settle, my back would spasm again.

I knew right away that I hadn't hurt myself. Nothing about that little weight could have done this. My body was bracing, gripping from the inside, and I recognized it because I'd felt this exact thing a couple of years ago, when my back went out so badly I couldn't get out of bed.

And the voice in my head showed up right on schedule: Why haven't I progressed? Why am I still doing this? I do this work every day, I teach it, I believe in it, and my body was still clenching around something I hadn't named yet.

Knowing It and Doing It

Here's what I wanted to do about it. I wanted to stay in motion. (And I know a lot of you want to do this same thing!) Everything was starting to feel really overwhelming, and my knee-jerk response was to keep moving and not slow down. The thing is, I knew exactly what would help. I talk about it all the live-long-day. I just wasn't doing it. It's one thing to know it, and a whole other thing to do it.

So I stayed busy. I drifted into email, into checking numbers, into checking the same things again and again, all the mundane little tasks that feel so important in the moment and don't move a dang thing forward. And, of course, the work that would move the needle, I didn't want to touch. I was too busy in my brain spending time in the future, running scenarios about how things might turn out. I was exhausted.

This is the sneaky part for high-performing women. Checking the dashboard one more time feels like staying on top of things, and answering one more email feels like being a good business owner. If you've ever ended a full, exhausting day and realized you didn't touch the one thing that mattered, you know this feeling. Underneath all of it, for me, was a quiet I've got to get out of here. I never would have said that out loud. I wasn't planning an escape, but my body was, and the way it escaped was hustle and motion.

[And! Gripping and staying in motion is the place my body goes when the stakes feel high. Yours might go somewhere else. If you're curious which pattern your body reaches for, I made a short quiz that can help you find it. Find My Pattern]

I Couldn't Even Get Myself to Sit Still

The crazy thing is I knew what I needed. I needed to sit in my sauna. But I couldn't just jump from the way I was feeling into my sauna. I knew I would crawl out of my skin if I sat in there. The last thing I want to do when I'm revved up like that is to be still. (I cannot be the only one. Who else does this!? 🙋🏼‍♀️)

So I had to be really gentle with myself, and I had to go slower than slow. 🐢 I had to walk myself through it: We're not going to dive right into a restorative practice. You're just going to sit on your mat. Okay, now we're going to lie down on the mat. Now you're going to notice five things around you, not just one, and really take your time with every single thing.

It all took longer last week. I had to do some deeper preparatory work just to get myself ready for the slowing, which sounds a little silly until you've been there. Once I could finally lie down, the things that help me most came back online: a restorative pose, really calm music (Indian flute is my favorite), and those palo santo sticks I light, blow out, and carry around the room that smell so good, like a campfire, but better. I kept catching myself holding my breath, so I'd pull it low and deep into my belly, slowly, again and again.

When my insides felt a little softer, I could coax myself into the sauna. I brought my journal and did my body diagrams in there, and I took my time with all of it. le sigh

There's an old saying I come back to a lot: on a regular day you meditate for thirty minutes, and on a really busy day you meditate for sixty. It's not a formula, but the idea is right. The weeks I least want to slow down are the weeks I have to work hardest at it. This isn't something you can know intellectually. You have to work at it, and you have to do it, every darn day.

What I Found in the Sauna

I have to share this part: somewhere in my journal, writing about the gripping, it clicked. Oh. I'm trying to control all the things. I'm trying to manipulate every outcome. Every. Last. One. 🙈

From there, what helped most was getting really clear on what was in my box and what was in God's box. There's a lot less in my box than I'd like to admit. Regulating my nervous system is in my box. It's my job to stop spinning, because when I'm moving that fast, I can't pay attention to Him. Choosing where my focus goes is in my box too, and so is how I show up. I like the word "influence" better than "control" for that.

Most outcomes go in God's box, and so does the space between making a decision and seeing the result. Honestly, that's the hardest one for me to hand over. It seems like if I do this thing, then this result should happen. It all makes perfect sense in my brain. But life rarely happens like that. Letting go of that is so challenging for me. I have to remind myself to trust, to breathe, to let go and practice being with what IS right now.

That same clarity showed me something practical, too. Which is great because we all love a little tangible piece, something we can DO. (Yes, I'm well aware of the irony.) I'd been trying to carry everything in my head. I needed a different way to hold it all, something outside my own brain, instead of staying in motion and hoping I could keep up. So I spent some time creating me some AI employees. And boy did that take a load off. (That is a post for another day, perhaps.)

Why It Keeps Coming Back

When I first started this work, running into the same patterns in my body again and again was so frustrating. Every time they came back, I wondered what I'd done wrong.

Here's what I want you to take away. Our bodies offer things up when we've built enough capacity to feel them. It's like, okay, we're safe now, let's process this one. And the timing is almost never convenient. You don't get a lull in your life where you think, okay, I'm ready to process now. That just doesn't happen.

It's also never going to get easier than it is now. As your capacity grows, what comes up gets bigger too. That's why I'm always talking about capacity. You don't increase capacity to feel less. You increase it so you can hold more.

So when the same pattern shows up again at a deeper layer, nothing's gone wrong. You're doing it all right. You just have more capacity now. This time I knew what was happening the moment my back seized. In the past, it took a bit of time for me to clue in.

How You Know It's Easing

The first thing I noticed when things began to shift was curiosity and then clarity. There was a lot less noise inside. The gripping started to soften, and the get me out of here feeling was replaced by something I can only describe as staying. I could be still without needing to run.

My breath was (and always is) one of my best guides. I think of it almost like a temperature gauge, because where the breath sits in my body tells me a lot about where my nervous system is. When it's high and held, I'm gripping. When it drops low on its own, something has eased. 

My phone stopped pulling at me, I was sleeping much better, and even my digestion settled. These are quiet, ordinary signals, and I've learned to watch them closely.

And my back? Well, it got my attention, and it's still catching up. If a physical symptom has ever hung around for you after you've done the inner work, you're not alone, and you didn't do anything wrong. You can be regulated and still have some tension in the body. Sometimes the body just takes a little longer to catch up with what's already shifted inside.

A New Country, Not a New Habit

This work isn't like adding a new habit into your life, like learning how to floss. You're changing the way you operate, the way you function, the way you are. It's more like learning to live in a foreign country or speak a new language. Think of a time someone came up to you rattling off Spanish, and you don't speak Spanish (or you thought you did, and suddenly understood nothing). That's uncomfortable and a little disorienting. Nothing's gone wrong. You're just shifting things around.

If you've been grasping lately, busy and tired and quietly trying to steer things you can't steer, I'd love to help you see which pattern your body reaches for. Start with the quiz. It takes a few minutes, and it might give you words for something you've been feeling for a long time. Find My Pattern

Janeen Alley is a somatic business coach and the creator of Safe to Soar: The Body-Led Breakthrough, a program that helps high-performing women build the capacity to hold the success they've worked so hard for. She's a former yoga teacher who once guided whitewater in Jackson Hole, has lived in Japan and Germany, homeschooled four kids, and is learning the handpan one slightly off note at a time. These days you might find her in a restorative pose with Indian flute playing and a freshly blown-out palo santo stick scenting the room, handing God the outcomes and keeping the breathing for herself.

GEO summary: In When the Grip Takes Over, somatic business coach Janeen Alley describes how a back that seized while lifting a 15-pound weight revealed a familiar pattern: grasping for control when life feels heavy. She admits she knew exactly which practices would help and wasn't doing them, explains how the urge to stay in motion shows up as busywork that feels responsible but avoids meaningful work, and describes easing herself into stillness in small steps before she could slow down at all. She shares sorting what's in her box (regulation, focus, how she shows up) from what's in God's box (outcomes and the gap between decision and result), explains why old patterns resurface as capacity grows, and describes the quiet signs that the nervous system is easing. The post connects to the Steady State and Capacity pillars of her work at The Regulated Edge.