What do I mean by body awareness?
Our bodies keep a physical record of how we live our lives – how often we sit, how we move to make coffee, how we get out of the car, how we eat, how we respond to conflict, how we sleep. All the ways we move about and show up in the world train our bodies, and these habits tell our bodies where we need strength and flexibility, or where we don’t need to invest energy and effort. It’s those areas that tend to become inflexible over time, resulting in a sensation of hardness or immovability.
The tricky thing is that we hardly notice these processes happening. It can be quite sneaky. Some of us (me included!) love some routine in our lives, so habits are our jam. But they can also be the cause of physical pain or discomfort when we don’t take the time to counteract them for balance. That’s something we explore in our yoga/movement practices.
But. We can’t know where to start making those changes if you don’t know your body fairly well already. One person’s cue for movement is another person’s ticket to discomfort-ville. Without an honest baseline of how things feel in your body, you won’t be able to distinguish what feels different or what can help, no matter how many different things you try. This is where body awareness comes in - it’s the golden treasure key to opening up a world of healing and rebalancing in all your bodies (yes! all of them!).
When we work with body awareness, what we’re practicing is paying attention to the sensations inside our body (interoception). This includes familiar sensations like feeling hungry or thirsty, or noticing your breath. We don’t spend enough time doing this on the daily! Think about how easy it is to not notice you’re thirsty or full because you’ve got your attention embedded in other activities. It’s quite common, and we encourage it more with our tendencies to multi-task, but what we’re contributing to is blindness in the realm of interoception.
When we aren’t in tune or focused on those internal body sensations, we build habits that don’t serve our greater good. Think of these things as the movements that get you through the moment, but aren’t sustainable in a healthy manner for a long time. It’s the equivalent of one big push to move that heavy dresser, except you never stop pushing, and your body strains and compensates in other areas for years (yikes!). No bueno.
So we start somewhere that might seem extra obvious, and step by step, we inch into the micro level. Maybe you feel tired often. When you focus on the internal experience of being tired, where in your body seems to feel it the most? Is there a certain part that feels fatigued or especially worn out? Zoom in on that. What habits do you hold in that space? Do you move it the same way often? Does it feel like you’re gripping or holding tension there? If so, trace that line of effort. Is it actually being caused by compensating for weakness somewhere else in the body? Maybe. And if so, we have a place to focus on reorganizing, strengthening, and building flexibility.
But what does this have to do with our emotional, mental, and energetic bodies? Everything. All of our bodies are so heavily intertwined; they don’t exist separately from one another, so what’s happening in one is causing effects in the others. Physical deficiencies manifest as emotional issues and mental anxiety. Energetic blockages manifest as physical changes. Emotional disturbances affect how we move in the world. They are all connected, all of the time. Work with one, and you’re working with them all.
So as we explore and practice body awareness, we might notice emotions and thoughts coming up (particularly ones that we tried to shove deep down and never acknowledge in the light of day again). This is normal. And it’s actually welcome! They are part of the issue that needs resolved. We can’t just focus on one symptom of the problem and expect the problem to be done. We need to look at the whole gazillion degree view from different planes and angles. Yes, you might have a physical injury. Yes, it might get better with movement. But! If it has roots in a negative mental thought pattern that isn’t addressed, the physical ailment is going to re-emerge over and over again in a nasty cycle of misery that you might normalize and live with for years. But you, beautiful soul, you have the power to stop that cycle.
Which is exactly why we work to make body awareness a robust habitual practice. We have to keep on living our lives and doing the things that help us sustain our way of living, so we need to counterbalance degenerating behaviors. Body awareness provides us the information we need to do that in a healthy manner that does more than just help us feel good for a moment. It can help us thrive and shine into the world from a place of genuine, sustained centeredness.
How we treat our bodies is literally how we live. And living your life from a place of balance and centeredness makes everything more grand. It helps you show up with love instead of fear, helps you grow relationships, and ponder the world with the wonder of a child instead of the stress of an overworked adult. It helps you regain a sense of freedom, not just in your body, but in your life.
Vote yes for body awareness 💜
