Hello Body. What's Up?

Conversing with your sensations and experiences

Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash

Let’s imagine you’re invited to a party. Some dear friends will be there, people you’ve wanted to visit for a while. You’re very fond of the host and you’re looking forward to this. You know the food will be delicious.

As you prepare to leave, you notice that your stomach feels anxious. Not a lot, but there’s a little tightness. That leads you to notice that your shoulders are a little tense too. Your energy level is low and your body feels slightly warm. And if you’re not mistaken, your fingers are a bit sluggish, almost like they’re a little swollen.

And let’s say that you are committed to being “in your body”.

So after these brief observations, what do you do?

Option one: What is my body telling me?

Sometimes, you dive into the information that your body is giving you. You pause and take stock of your sensations and open up even more. Then you allow those sensations to generate memories, associations, emotions, and thoughts. Putting all this information together, you come up with a plan.

With this method, your sensations communicate helpful information and insights. For example, are you getting sick? Is there something about the event that is bothering you? Do you need time alone instead of in a group? Did something happen in the past that might make you nervous about going to this party?

Many therapists use this technique to bring clarity to your true emotional responses. So when people say they are listening to their body, this is often what they mean.

Option two: Just be

As someone who wants to be “in your body”, you have a second option as well.

You can just be aware.

With this option, you pause and notice of how the sensations rise and fall, come and go. You take stock of your reactions to those sensations. (I don’t like an anxious stomach. I wish my shoulders weren’t as tight). You notice the stories they generate. (What if my swollen fingers mean I’m getting arthritis? Is my warm body because of a fever or peri-menopause?) You note how often your mind wanders and “changes the subject”, especially when its not pleased with what’s happening.

With this method, your sensations are strictly an experience. You are living in a human body and observing what that’s like. Your sensations come and go, and sometimes they’re pleasant and sometimes not. Often, they generate emotions and stories. It’s just how things are.

If you gain any “information” from this technique, it’s often non-verbal and non-conceptual. You understand yourself more but you wouldn’t necessarily be able to describe how. It’s more like you become familiar with yourself—you relax into your body and whatever is going on, and recognize it as normal.

Relaying information vs Embodied experience

Neither method is right nor wrong. Both are useful.

However, I’m betting that you have a preference for one or the other (I know that I do).

If you’re someone who likes to ask, “What is my body telling me?”, your default is to examine your sensations for information. Terrific. That’s great.

The hitch is that you can get stuck in a few ways:

• By following the emotions, memories, and thoughts that arise with your sensations, you can get stuck at a distance from what you feel. You’re “thinking” about your sensations and never fully feeling them.

• You can confuse the information you get from your sensations with the idea that sensations mean something needs to be fixed, adjusted, or changed. If you mine your experience for information, there’s a slight bias that experience alone isn’t enough. You need to always be responding.

• The information that your body “tells” you can be influenced by your preconceived ideas. For example, imagine that your knees hurt. If you’re someone who really likes yoga, you may interpret the pain to mean that you need to stretch your legs and do more yoga. It may not occur to you that it might mean you need to take a break from yoga.

But if you’re someone who likes to just experience your body (good for you if you are), you also have to be careful.

You can get stuck repeating the same experience over and over, not realizing that your body is giving you good feedback. For example, if you don’t examine your anxious feeling, you might miss that you don’t want to go to the party and haven’t admitted that to yourself yet. If you don’t question your warmth, you might not realize that you’re getting sick.

This happened to me.

I let my experience of fatigue unfold, week after week, being aware of the fatigue but not connecting any dots. This went on for a long time, gradually growing more intense. Eventually, I spent most of my weekends on the sofa until one day, it dawned on me that spending that much time horizontal probably meant that something was wrong. I needed to do something. I needed to take care of myself.

People who love to feel their sensations can get so enamored with the experience that they forget to use common sense. They relegate their thoughts and emotions to a back seat. They can think that “thinking” is a lesser act than feeling.

Body, Mind, and Spirit

In some parts of popular culture, embodiment is highly esteemed. In those circles, it’s as if being embodied is a higher experience than “normal life”. If someone says, “I was in my head,” there’s a slightly negative tone. On the other hand when someone says, “I did some breathing to get back in my body,” people nod appreciatively, assuming that’s the correct action.

In these cases, the word “embodiment” seems to imply that the body reigns supreme over other experiences in life.

But this is a misunderstanding.

But in reality, to be embodied is to be present in all of life—body, mind, and spirit. No part is more important than the other. Sure, you may have your biases but in the end, you need all of it.

Define your body to include your physical body, mental body, and subtle body. Let em-body-ment mean you embrace it all.***

Practice

Find a comfortable position with your spine tall but relaxed. Take a few moments to notice your breath. Then allow your awareness to move through your body, noticing any sensations.

Then shake up your habits:

• If you’re someone who likes to get information from your body, try just being present. Watch your sensations like a mother watches her baby sleep. Sit openly and let them rise and fall, without analyzing them. If you have thoughts, reactions, or stories about them, notice them and let them pass. Try not to hang onto them as explanations about what you’re feeling. Stay present with the experience itself.

• If you’re someone who likes to just sit, try being gently analytical. When you have a sensation, ask yourself what you can learn from it and then sit with that question openly. Allow memories, emotions, or thoughts to arise. Be curious and invite surprises. Start understanding your experiences as clues to deeper information.

Once you have become familiar with both techniques, alternate between them from time to time. Sometimes ask for information; other times sit with experience.

Next week: Finding Rest

When do you feel at rest? How do get there? We often find ourselves in the most need of rest when we are least able to locate it.

On Monday, July 14 @ 11:00 CT Emily (A Thin Space) and I will discuss what rest means and ways to find rest when it doesn't seem possible.

Join us Monday, July 14 @11:00am CT.

For more information, click Threshold.

Last week: Courage

RECORDING: Courage to live with Sensitivity and Awareness

***Thank you, Kelly. :)