Wise Bodies, Clear Minds
“When you stand with 2 feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance” – Lao Tzu
Picture this: heads, necks, shoulders – with no bodies attached. A box frames the upper body in a perfect square. You see a hand here and there, coming in and out of view. A bed, a wall, a bunch of flowers are in the background. Now and then a cat might appear and disappear…
A Disembodied Reality
Heads and bodies easily become disconnected from each other in this post-pandemic reality. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts and Webex often rule supreme while we humans transform into disembodied heads crammed into small boxes. We joke about the reality of being suited & booted in 2021 – tracksuit bottoms are hidden off screen while the picture we see on screen is polished and formal. Millions of people the world over work with colleagues they’ve never actually met IRL (in real life). ‘How tall is my colleague? I have no idea!’ I heard a student say the other day.
In a world where many of us interact on screens more than we might exist in contact with others in real life – real hands, toes, eyes and noses – it’s all too easy to become detached from our bodies. We might go through the day, week - even months - without a sense of connection to our living body, with our thinking minds running on autopilot and our bodies building up layer upon layer of tension. Actually, the more time we spend outside of our physical, human experience of ourselves, the more likely we are to feel anxious, depressed, stressed, overwhelmed and burned out: as Michael Gungor put it, “burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long”.
And let’s face it: for many months, we may have felt we didn’t need a living connection to our bodies because we haven’t been going anywhere. A student told me recently that she didn’t leave her house for 7 weeks at the beginning of the year. Lockdowns, restrictions, cold, wet weather: living on her own, she mainly experienced herself as a head on a screen with some eating, sleeping and television thrown in. This is, of course, an extreme picture – many of us have been moving, shaking, exercising and engaging in the world in all kinds of ways. And yet, what bonds us equally is that we will likely have spent at least some of this pandemic manifesting as a face on a screen.
Knowing Our Bodies, Knowing Ourselves
I’ve been teaching hundreds of groups over the last 15 months, and if there’s anything I’ve noticed in the here and now, it’s that we find great value in connecting to the body regularly – noticing and acknowledging the toes on our feet, the hearts in our chests and the smiles on our faces. This is at the core of a mindfulness practice: the more we learn to move our attention out of negative thinking patterns in the mind into focusing on the body, the more we grow our capacity to be resilient, present and happy.
The truth is - regardless of the pandemic - our bodies provide us with a physical home and sustain us daily, yet we typically spend more time looking after our houses and cars than we do our own physical self. Our capacity to include our experience of the body in our daily awareness is directly related to our ability to feel clear and balanced in daily life. The image of a lego head and body come to mind here - if we aren’t connected up, feeling whole, how can we truly know ourselves or feel fully human?
So far this year, I have explored 6 key themes in my Know Yourself in 2021 series that have each referred to the body in some way: grounding, self-compassion, intuition, letting go, boundaries and rest. Without including the body, each theme is incomplete. We are unable to access our unique inner Knowing – our experience of ourselves beyond the thinking mind - if we don’t acknowledge our physicality, too.
Today, I want to add more focus and value to these explorations by inviting you to try these 2 short practical tools. These can help you reconnect to the wisdom your body holds – on and off the screen - and to release body tension and reclaim mental clarity along the way.
The good news is that you don’t have to find hours in your day to access the benefit of body awareness – short windows of time go a long way, taking us out of thinking mode and into reality. It’s a bit like getting physically fit or going to the gym - unless we practice regularly, we won’t be able to reap the rewards.
STEP 1: BODY QUESTIONS
First, spend some time considering these questions to get a sense of your unique body, what it likes, and how you can help to nurture and give it what it needs more often. Giving our bodies some love is always valuable.
1. How does my body most like to move?
This is very specific to you – and according to the research, doing what you most enjoy doing will do your body and mind the most good.
2. What do I appreciate about my body? Could I appreciate it more?
What does your body give you? How does it help you?
3. What does my body need at this point in my life?
How does your body feel on a daily basis? What can you give it to help it, to energise it, to feed it?
4. What does my body need today?
Do you need to stretch? Do you need a massage? What about more rest?
5. How do I ‘take my body with me’ as I go about my day?
Do you have a daily practice that consciously connects you to your body frequently?
STEP 2: BODY SCAN
To help you bring greater body awareness into your day to day and release tension, I have created a simple 5 minute body scan practice you can do anytime, anywhere. Doing this often will help you open to your awareness beyond your busy mind, landing you in your physical home and into the present moment. This practice is another route to connecting to your inner Knowing - the latest in my Know Yourself in 2021 series.
I welcome you to access the power and benefit that having a regular mind-body practice offers and I’d love to hear how you find it!
