If anxiety has become a constant companion in your daily life, you’re in good company. An American Psychiatric Association Poll published in May 2025 revealed that 67% of Americans are anxious about current events happening around the world, 62% are anxious about keeping themself or their family safe, and 61% are anxious about paying their bills or expenses. (See The American Psychiatric Association, bit.ly/40XTOhd.) When we face growing uncertainty, rapid change, and complex challenges, it’s entirely normal—albeit uncomfortable—to feel increasingly anxious.
Our profession is especially vulnerable to compound anxiety (layered stress from multiple sources that build on each other), which intensifies overall anxiety. For many of us, today’s current events exacerbate the stress inherent in the legal profession’s day-to-day work. For attorneys and judges who are expected to be calm and clear under pressure, the resulting anxiety from stress overload may take us off guard, making it difficult to perform at optimal levels.
As national and global dynamics evolve and stressors mount, our profession needs effective, targeted tools to navigate the increasing pressure. Fortunately, practical strategies grounded in evidence-based science are already available—and can be tailored to meet the distinct demands of the legal profession. Somatic (body-centered) practices are especially effective for decreasing anxiety, as they can be used quickly and easily when anxious sensations first arise.
Anxiety vs. Anxiety Disorder
Anxiety shows up in many forms—such as racing thoughts before a big event, throat tightness during a difficult conversation, or waking at night with a heavy chest. The difference between feeling anxious and having an anxiety disorder lies in the intensity, frequency, and impact of the experience. Feeling anxious is a normal, temporary response to stress or uncertainty. It is your body’s way of preparing to deal with a specific challenge—like facing a high-stakes interaction with a challenging person. This kind of anxiety usually passes once the situation is resolved.
Anxiety disorder, on the other hand, is a medical condition marked by ongoing, excessive anxiety that persists even without an immediate threat. An anxiety disorder can interfere with daily functioning, professional performance, concentration, relationships, and sleep. It may be accompanied by more acute symptoms such as panic attacks and require professional support to manage effectively.
The purpose of this article is to offer a concrete tool to practice when you’re feeling anxious. If anxiety feels less like a visitor and more like a roommate, consider seeking help from a professional who specializes in helping clients with anxiety disorders.
Anxiety Extends Beyond the Mind and into the Body
To effectively manage anxiety, it’s necessary to recognize that anxiety is not only a cognitive state but also a bodily signal—our nervous system’s way of alerting us to a perceived threat. Flight, fight, and collapse are all survival strategies that helped our ancestors escape physical threats such as being chased by a large predatory animal. Our bodies continue to respond to mental or emotional threats as if they were physical threats. For example, if you read an email from a disgruntled client, your legs might tense up as if to run away; or your hands may clench up as if to fight; or you may suddenly feel completely exhausted, as if to collapse.
Common somatic anxiety symptoms include rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, shallow or rapid breathing, clammy hands, and stomach discomfort. Feeling numb when anxious is also possible. At times, when the nervous system becomes overwhelmed by stress or fear, it shifts into a protective shutdown mode. This response dampens sensations and emotions to reduce distress and create a sense of safety. Numbness is a sign that the nervous system is trying to manage high levels of activation by “turning down the volume” on emotional and physical sensations.
All Talk and No Action Increases Anxiety
If there is one thing that our profession excels at, it is talking! Talking about anxiety has value in that it can describe what is happening under the surface. However, talking about anxiety without engaging body centered regulation tools can retrigger the stress response, keeping you in a stress-activation loop. Rumination loops can reinforce anxiety-producing thoughts without resolving the underlying physiological distress.
I distinctly recall the stress-activation loop that developed when I was transitioning from practicing law to becoming a resilience coach and well-being trainer. I felt anxious about making such a significant career change, and the more I discussed it, the more anxious I became. Each conversation revealed additional unknowns about how to make the shift successfully; increased unknowns led to greater doubts, which in turn escalated my anxiety. With heightened anxiety came diminished confidence about making the shift, thereby decreasing my motivation to make the change. I felt stuck. It wasn’t until I began working with skilled mind-body-centered practitioners that I was able to interrupt this cycle. Using a combination of Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Internal Family Systems (IFS), I was able to calm the doubt and restore my confidence so that I could move forward with greater ease.
Somatic Tools Help Manage Anxiety
One reason I am passionate about integrating somatic practices and IFS work into my current work with individual clients is because they are so darn effective. Somatic tools are mind-body techniques that focus on your internal experience; they are key for managing anxiety because they engage the body’s natural ability to regulate the nervous system—facilitating the shift out of a flight, fight, or collapse response and back to equilibrium. By focusing on physical sensations rather than anxious thoughts, somatic practices interrupt rumination and anchor attention in the present moment. They allow anxiety to be processed and released through the body. This shifts the body and mind out of anxiety and into a state of physical calm and clearer thinking in the present moment.
Shifting Your State
I recently attended the 2025 Somatic Trauma Healing Summit Advanced Methods in Body-Based Therapies hosted by the Mindsight Institute (mindsightinstitute.com). Each expert emphasized the importance of using somatic practices to process trauma and anxiety through the body, facilitating an effective shift of state. Mindfulness and somatic practitioners use the term “shifting state” to describe intentionally changing your internal experience—your current emotional, mental, and physiological condition—to respond more effectively to any situation.
When you shift your state, you can move an anxious nervous system from a place of “upregulated” activation inherent in the flight or fight responses into a “downregulated” state that feels more physically settled and mentally coherent. Conversely, if prolonged or acute anxiety leaves you feeling overwhelmed and collapsed, you can “upregulate” your state into a more energized and clear state.
There are numerous ways you may already be shifting your state without consciously thinking about it. For example, if you go for a run after an emotionally heavy work day, you may enjoy the upregulation from a “runner’s high.” If you try to sleep and have too much upregulated energy, you may enjoy the downregulating effects of listening to or playing calming music. You may hold a warm cup of tea or pet a purring cat to downregulate; or drink caffeine or play with an energetic dog to upregulate. Do you use food, alcohol, or other substances to up- or downregulate as well?
Pendulate to Shift Your State
One effective somatic practice to shift your state is called “pendulation.” Coined by Peter Levine, the founder of SE, pendulation helps to build capacity to stay present with difficult sensations by pairing them with positive or neutral ones. Pendulation helps move awareness out of an anxious state (stress, tension, or overwhelm) and back to regulation (calm, safety, or ease) by using either an internal or external resource. Internal resources might include a soothing sensation in your body—like feeling the warmth in your arms or imagining a peaceful place in your mind. An external resource could be a calming sound, a supportive friend, or something in your environment that helps you feel grounded. Both types of resources are effective, and the good news is: we have access to them anytime, anywhere.
Try pendulating for yourself using the basic steps outlined below:
1. Tune into body sensations that let you know that you are feeling stress or anxiety activation. For example, is your forehead creased, or are your shoulders raised?
2. Shift your awareness from the activation to a calming resource. For example, the sun shining through your window, or the warmth of the sun on your skin.
3. Pendulate your focus from the resource to the activation for a short, tolerable, amount of time (five seconds). Then shift your attention back to the calming resource, spending more time focusing on the resource than on the activation (15 seconds or longer).
4. Track the sensations between tension and ease.
5. Repeat a number of times (three to five minutes) if it feels like the anxiety is calming/regulating as you pendulate. Stop if it feels like it is exacerbating the anxiety.
The rhythmic back-and-forth helps the nervous system process activation without overwhelm, gradually restoring balance and expanding the capacity to tolerate stress thereby reducing anxiety.
Pendulation in Practice
Pendulation is accessible and available right when anxiety arises. You don’t need to put on your running shoes or find a kitten to pet. It can be used in court, during a meeting, or even at a stoplight. Here are a few examples of how attorneys or judges might use pendulation to reduce anxiety during the workday:
Pendulating using breath as a resource: Rafael is trying his first case in front of a jury. The more he thinks about voir dire, the more anxious he feels, noticing his breath becoming shallow and rapid while his thoughts spiral into worst-case scenarios. Using pendulation, he gently shifts his focus back and forth between his tense, irregular breathing into a slower, deeper, calming breath. Every time he returns to the steady breathing pattern, he feels his shoulders relax and his mind clear, helping his nervous system downregulate while preparing him to face the trial with greater calm and clarity.
Pendulating using a visual resource: Judge Baker, experiencing tightness in her chest during a complex trial, takes a moment during a break to gaze at the trees gently swaying outside the window. She consciously shifts her attention back and forth between the wind in the trees and the emotionally charged facts of the case. This visual pendulation helps her nervous system downregulate, allowing her to stay present to the hearing and feel at ease when she leaves court at the end of the day.
Pendulating using a calming sensation as a resource: Austin, a family law legal aid attorney, frequently works with clients navigating high-conflict custody cases and carrying histories of trauma. When signs of emotional overload arise—like a sinking stomach or feeling sleepy—Austin intentionally shifts their attention to calming sensations, such as the feeling of the sturdy chair beneath them. This brief shift helps upregulate their nervous system, shifting them out of collapse thereby enabling them to stay present, focused, and more resilient throughout the day.
Finding Your Way Back to Center
Shifting your state using pendulation is not about forcing yourself to feel differently when you are in distress. It is about guiding the nervous system into a more optimal regulated state by following the body’s innate wisdom. With practice, you develop the ability to regulate your nervous system—upregulating or downregulating as needed—to face challenges with greater clarity and confidence. If you try it out, I would be interested to hear: what resources help you shift your state and find your way back to center?
Laura Mahr is a North Carolina and Oregon lawyer and the founder of Conscious Legal Minds LLC, providing well-being consulting, training, and resilience coaching for attorneys and law offices nationwide. Through the lens of neurobiology, Laura helps build strong leaders, happy lawyers, and effective teams. After bringing herself back from the brink of burnout with the tools she now teaches, Laura brings lived experience and compassion to thousands of lawyers, judges, and support staff each year in her writing, coaching, and CLE trainings. Her work is informed by 13 years of practice as a civil sexual assault attorney, 30 years as a teacher and student of mindfulness and yoga, and ten years studying neurobiology and neuropsychology with clinical pioneers. www.consciouslegalminds.com.
