For anyone who has learned to make themselves small, quiet, or convenient.
The Tube, the pavement, and the art of squeezing In
If you travel on public transport in any major city, you already know the choreography.
You sit on the Tube or the bus, and the person next to you has their knees spread wide, claiming half of your seat alongside their own. You feel the familiar, automatic contraction: you pull your knees together, tuck your elbows against your ribs, and pull your bag onto your lap. You might let out a quiet sigh, but mostly you make yourself compact. You spend the rest of the journey carrying physical tension in your thighs, shoulders, and jaw, simply to avoid confrontation or unwanted physical contact.
You see the same dynamic on the pavement. A few years ago, several women documented playing a game dubbed ‘patriarchy chicken’: walking down a crowded street at a normal pace and refusing to automatically step aside for oncoming men. The result, almost universally, was repeated shoulder collisions.
On the surface, these seem like minor everyday irritations. But our physical posture is rarely just about etiquette. It is a direct reflection of how power, privilege, and social hierarchy are experienced in the body. How much physical and emotional space we feel entitled to occupy is learned long before we are conscious of the lesson.
Why certain bodies learn to shrink
Shrinking yourself might seem like a character flaw or a lack of confidence, but it is an intelligent, learned survival strategy.
Those of us in female, Black, Brown, queer, trans, disabled, or neurodivergent bodies often learn early that taking up space has a cost. We learn that standing tall, speaking loudly, or showing visible emotion can be interpreted by those in authority as aggressive, hysterical, or inappropriate. When a society treats your presence as inconvenient, or when social power is fragile and retaliatory, shrinking is the most sensible thing a nervous system can do.
We learn to soften our voices, add apologetic qualifiers to our emails, and squeeze our bodies into the smallest possible footprint. We smile to defuse tension. We swallow our boundaries.
The autonomic nervous system – the network regulating our involuntary survival responses – registers that being visible is dangerous. In response, it pulls us into a state of hypervigilance and partial freeze: shallow breathing, locked diaphragms, and muscular bracing. Over decades, this defensive posture stops feeling like a choice and becomes our baseline. We become experts at being convenient.
Making our bodies as small and convenient as possible may keep us safe, but it is an exhausting way to live.
The trouble with 'abundance mindset'
When people realise how much they have been shrinking, they often turn to self-help literature, only to be met with the popular binary of the ‘scarcity mindset’ versus the ‘abundance mindset’.
We are told that believing there is not enough room, money, love, or power is a limiting belief. The advice is usually simple: choose abundance. Visualise yourself succeeding. Adopt a power pose, repeat positive affirmations, and claim your seat at the table.
This advice is well-intentioned, but it falls flat because it ignores structural inequality. Telling someone who has faced systemic discrimination, economic insecurity, or workplace bullying that their contraction is just a scarcity mindset is insulting. It treats a reasonable survival response as an individual psychological failure.
When your baseline experience has been one of scarcity or precarious safety, the amygdala – the brain's threat-detection centre – narrows your attention to keep you alive. You cannot simply command that survival reflex to switch off with an intellectual mantra.
You cannot think your way into an abundance mindset while your nervous system is still braced for impact. If you want to stop shrinking, the work cannot start with positive thinking. It has to start in your body.
What taking up space actually looks like in the body
Taking up space doesn’t need to involve puffing out your chest or dominating the room. But it does involve refusing to squeeze yourself into a corner.
It is the practice of offering your body enough internal stability that it no longer feels an urgent need to disappear. In somatic coaching, we don’t need to practise aggressive postures. Instead, we practise body awareness:
Dropping the breath below the ribs: when we shrink, our breath shifts high into the chest, bracing us for conflict. Taking slow breaths that expand into the lower belly and sides of the waist recruits the diaphragm, signalling to the nervous system that you are not under immediate physical attack.
Finding your physical base: notice what happens when you sit in a chair. Are you perching on the edge, ready to leap up? Practise letting your full weight rest into the seat. Feel your sit-bones and the ground beneath your soles. You are allowing the furniture and the floor to hold you, rather than exhausting your own muscles to stay suspended.
Widening the peripheral field: under stress, our vision tunnels forward. Softening your gaze and noticing what is in the corners of the room tells the brain that you have situational awareness, reducing the compulsion to look over your shoulder.
Tolerating the pause: when asked a question, notice the frantic impulse to answer immediately to ease the other person's discomfort. Practise waiting three full seconds before speaking. Silence is a form of taking up acoustic space.
These are micro-practices, but they rewire how your body interprets reality. Each time you let your shoulders drop or leave your elbows relaxed rather than pinned to your ribs, you provide physical evidence to your nervous system that you are allowed to exist in this room.
The rehearsal
Unlearning the habit of making yourself small can be uncomfortable. When you first stop stepping into the gutter, or when you state a clear boundary at work without an apology attached, your alarm system will likely flare. It will tell you that you are being rude, difficult, or dangerously visible.
Sitting with that discomfort without immediately collapsing back into convenience is the real work of personal authority.
A question I like to explore with clients who are exhausted from people-pleasing is this: What would it look and feel like if you let yourself take up more space?
How would you sit in your next meeting? How would your voice sound when you ordered a coffee or declined an extra project? How would you walk down the street?
You don’t have to overturn every social dynamic overnight. But you can start on the commute home. Unclench your thighs. Let your ribs expand. Take your hands out of your pockets, plant your feet on the floor, and allow your body to take up exactly the amount of room it was supposed to occupy.
Working together
If you have spent a lifetime contracting your body, swallowing your voice, or feeling like you take up too much room, somatic coaching can help you unlearn the habit of shrinking.
Explore 1:1 work on my Coaching page, learn how breath supports presence on my Breathwork page, or book a free discovery call to discuss where we might start.