BODY MINDING

................................................. by Stanley

For most civilised people there seems to be a gap between the thinking awareness level and the physicality of the body. Sometimes, on a thought level, a problem or concern can seem trivial; but on a physical level it can have quite a big effect. My boss was rude to me yesterday. I think about it, sure. But it’s not a heavy deal. I am not consumed by it – it’s just life! I didn’t like it, but it didn’t worry me.

But, seemingly unconnected with it, I was tense and sleepless that night and felt unwell in the morning. I say to myself, “I often feel crap after a night like that”. That’s how I pass it off. The two phenomena: the minor incident with my boss and my physical body events – don’t seem to be connected. They are completely different orders of magnitude. The stress of my sleepless night does not match the trivial episode with my boss. If I were asked if there was a connection, I would probably laugh and say, “Oh yes, probably”, and pass it off.

But the truth is that my unpleasant physical experience was quite definitely a reaction to the incident with my boss the previous day. Something instantly happened in my body when my boss was rude to me. But I don’t live in my body; I live in my head where I by-pass bodily events, dismissing them so as to get on with the business of living. Thus, there appears to be completely no connection. My sleeplessness and headache come as though out of the blue. My physical bouts of unwellness seem completely random.

But there’s more to it: the incident with my boss is really only a trigger. My physical reactions have a deeper origin. Most likely as a child the original experience was a physically felt impact that the body has carried ever since. It triggers whenever someone treats me badly.

Real emotional impact is physical – felt by the total organism. In the engulfing physicality of the early incidents there is no split between mind and body. That comes later when we learn, as they say, not to let things effect us. But unknown to us the body goes on carrying the trauma.

Later, it only takes the merest reminder to jog the body’s memory where some small event can cause a massive physical reaction, giving us perhaps little indication of the trigger in present time. Like the incident with my boss I described above.

But even if we suspect the trigger, it still may not lessen the physical disturbance. Cognitively suspecting the connection is not enough.

Some time ago I started a small experiment. I thought to myself: ‘I wonder what it would be like to live in my body instead of in my head’. This led, in the course of time, to a little sideshow I called ‘Body Minding’.

Unlike focusing, I didn’t use interaction between the felt-sense and symbolising; in other words, I didn’t try to name what I felt. Instead, I paid attention to bodily sensations only. To put it another way, I made a space for the body to do its own thing, to carry forward its own needed processes without inquiring or probing, simply recognising non-cognitively what is happening physically. Not trying to solve any problem or difficulty. Not trying to do anything, in fact. It could be described as a time where one just lives in the body, rather than merely having a body. They were like little meditation sessions, except that my orientation was different to that of meditation. I was not watching my body, I was being my body.

What I called ‘Body Minding’ is like, ‘joining in’ with one’s physical sensations rather than merely observing them. You could say ‘being in’ sensations rather then ‘looking at’ them. Quite a trick until you get the idea. To begin with each session took me a little while to get there, but when I did it was quite noticeably different: being alive in my body instead of my head – the locus of myself ‘lower down’.

I have found that just a little practice in Body Minding has made me much more aware of my immediate physical reaction to present time situations. That gap I spoke of at the beginning – the gap between the thought level and the physical reactions of the body – is not so wide. I catch a physical reaction sooner and so I am much more aware of what turned it on. I seem to be more immediately responsive.

It’s not at all that I am practicing body minding all the time. It’s just that a little practice has made a difference to life when I’m not practicing it. Quite small physical sensations are more perceptible and their connection to events of the moment is sharper.

For example – and this is a true one – it’s nine in the evening; I’ve had my meal and washed up – and I think, ‘what shall I do now?’ Instantly I get the slightest empty feeling in my chest – almost unnoticeable. I nearly overlook it.

Ah, I know what that is. It’s the dread of nothing. I’ve known that one all my life. As a child one of the most awful feelings was: ‘there’s nothing to do’. It was more than just boredom, it was more like an anguished dread of nothingness – death’. And I got it too whenever it was time to go to bed which I would put off as long as possible, driving my parents crazy.

And interestingly, that little scene as an adult was at 9.0pm. Nearly bedtime !

But at least that evening I got just what was happening to me. A small thing? Yes, I suppose so. Not exactly life threatening or dramatic. Not the sort of thing they’d give you medication for.

But a win is a win. And a small win leads to others.