What is preventing me from being present in my body?
I have redefined the word ‘physical’ in a way that I can live it practically, where I have determined that there is an abundance of support coming through to us if we are able to develop an awareness of what the physical is representing, and then applying it to whatever we are facing in our lives in that moment.
For example, I was recently talking to someone and growing frustrated that they were not understanding me. I was also judging the person based on the perceived lack of understanding. I practiced this awareness of the physical and I became more aware of the plant sitting next to me. I saw in that plant an innocence, as if it were a child peeking at me.
I applied this to the situation and began to listen to the person through the ‘innocence of the ears of a child’, meaning, no judgment, but rather opening myself up to hearing and listening to what they were saying and understanding. Immediately my reactions dropped and I was able to hear their understanding coming through as their personal experience that happened to be different from mine. The communication changed dramatically, and once again, I had received unconditional support from the physical.
The challenging part of living my redefinition of the word ‘physical’ is in doing this very same thing, but instead with my physical body. This is one aspect of the physical that is very close to home, as it IS me in the most intimate and intricate detail. I can hide nothing from my body, my body is my self-honesty, it is the truth of me, and the truth is not always easy to face.
I am finding it very challenging to slow down, breathe, and be present in my body in order to open myself up to a greater awareness. It is amazing to me how foreign it feels to be at home in my own body! I find the most success I’ve had has been in the morning, soon after I wake up and before I start getting caught up in the day. And that success has been fleeting
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I caught myself this morning with my mind racing about how I would be productive and all the things I wanted to accomplish during the day. An overall busy, busy mind. I caught it, which in and of itself can be a challenging thing to do. I slowed down and felt my body. After about three attempts at this I reached a place within myself of quiet stability.
I thought about the vastness of life and the amount of work it will take to do everything I want to do in the coming days, weeks, months, years and decades! It seemed overwhelming, but I realized that it is only overwhelming when I put all of that in my mind in one moment, which I have a bad habit of doing. But doing this is not living in reality, it is living in the virtual reality of the mind. And this is where living my re-definition of the word ‘physical’ was a support for me this morning.
Projecting in the form of planning can be a useful tool of direction. I saw that my entire experience of life and working towards goals can be so amazing when it starts from this place of first finding myself within myself. When it is done this way, it is lived one moment at a time. Being someone that is easily triggered into rush and overwhelm, it is nice to see that I can always handle it when I take it one moment at a time. This is the way the physical moves, breath by breath, never doing more than it can in one moment, and living every moment to it’s fullest.
For me, this morning, living the moment fully simply meant to get up and make my coffee with awareness, breathing, remaining Here. Dressing appropriately for the weather, making my bed and eating something. It is one simple action at a time that will get me through the day in such a way that I can live with myself, accomplish my goals, overcome challenges, explore my environment, and just be.
My challenge at the moment is to not fall into the rush and overwhelming anxiety that I can so easily trigger myself into. When I do this, I go into stagnation and procrastination, I begin to feel as if I do not have control over my own actions, and I create an inner turmoil even when my reality is quite stable.
I have this deeply ingrained pattern from schooling and working life, where I would push myself too hard and motivate myself with stress. I have become addicted to this rushing stress and dependent upon it to move. The vicious cycle here is that I have connected self-movement to stress and strain on my body, where in my mind I have equated ‘no stress’ to ‘no movement’. But I am alos aware of the equation of thinking + lack of action = anxiety.
I see that I cannot simply ‘be here in my body’ without making some changes in my living actions. The process of redefining this word requires some real-time change. This morning was a good example of living that change, where instead of lounging in bed, I got up and began my day. Unfortunately, I fell shortly thereafter, as I stagnated with having given myself no real direction to support myself to continue moving throughout the day.
My solution to this will be to write a daily agenda. I will list a practical amount of tasks and when I face resistances to moving myself, I will look at my instruction to support myself with how to take the next step. I am currently in a situation where I, for the first time in a long time, have no boss, no deadlines and no external motivators. I only have myself and my self-movement to push me with.
At the same time, I will test out experimenting with checking in with my body to see what point come up that are causing any internal discomforts. I would like to become aware of what my body is communicating with me so that I can direct the point specifically. I would like to see, realize and understand the reality of me, of how I have created myself and where I need to apply changes.
I will leave you with this video from SOUL, where Sunette opens up the point of not only what our bodies are telling us but what are we telling our bodies? How have we conditioned our bodies with our thoughts and internal conversations, and how can we read our bodily discomforts to realized what points about us are we not seeing: