9 Keys To Basic Body Awareness
BodyMind Strategies for a more effective, meaningful life.
Tuning into and sensing your body will help you develop basic body awareness and will also help you recognize your body signals. Truly, your body is with you wherever you go, so you can practice body awareness anytime you think of it. Read on for what to pay attention to when you check in and practice increasing your body awareness. I’m including many different ways to approach tuning into your body. Some may work for you, some may not. Do the ones that work for you!
1. What does your body feel like to you at this moment?
When you check in with your body, what do you notice? Do you feel the position you are in, whether you feel hungry or tense or happy? Don’t worry about what you think other people might feel — everyone is different. So take a moment and see what stands out for you when you check in with your own sense of your body. There isn’t a particular ”right” answer for this — whatever you notice is the right answer for you — it’s simply important to have an awareness of your starting point, and this is it.
2. Can you tell you have a body?
Some people can feel the physicality of their body easily, and some people have a harder time of it. See for yourself whether you fit in one of these four categories:
● easily tune into the feeling of your body
● able to tune in but you don’t like it
● able to tune into some parts like arms and legs, but not able to tune into other parts like the torso or pelvis, or one side but not the other
● really mostly or completely unable to sense your own body.
Maybe there is another category that best describes what it’s like for you. None of these are wrong, just how it is for you. If you can’t feel your body, watch for my upcoming article 6 Slow and Easy Steps to Body Awareness.
3. Feel the weight of your body
Whether you are standing, sitting, or leaning against a wall, your body is being pulled on by gravity. See if you can sense that — you may feel the effort it takes to stretch your body up away from the floor against gravity. You may feel the weight of your body distributed down through your torso, into your hips, through your legs, and to the floor via your ankles and feet. Or if you’re sitting, feel all the places your body contacts the chair — the chair back, the seat of the chair, the arms. These are all places you may feel the weight of your body as you rest against the different parts of the chair. If your arm is resting on your lap, try to feel the weight of it as it rests against your leg.
4. Pay attention to your comfort level
Your comfort (or discomfort) level when you tune into your body is extremely important. Ease and relaxation is a goal with feeling your body because it is within ease that you will become adept at noticing your body signals. When you tense up with discomfort, ignore it at your peril! Not a good idea! This will get in the way of what you can gain from increasing your body awareness, and you end up working against yourself.
Notice whether it’s comfortable or uncomfortable for you to pay attention to sensing your body in this way. For some people this is easy and for others it is difficult. Some people just “numb out” and for some, it is actually frightening. If this is the case and especially if it’s frightening for you to tune into feeling your body, this might not be the best practice for you right now. If it’s uncomfortable but you still feel that you want to increase your body awareness anyway, consider getting professional help either with your doctor, a somatically-oriented psychotherapist or a somatic professional such as a Rosen Method Bodywork practitioner. Keep an eye out for my upcoming my article titled 6 Slow and Easy Steps to Body Awareness.
If tuning into your body is easy for you, continue onward! It’s also possible that you may be able to tune in and it may be easy because you are good at blocking the discomfort. See if this seems to be the case with you. If it is, you will see more progress if you go through these steps slowly and attentively.
5. Feel your body breathe
Feel your body breathe on its own. Breathing takes no effort. Your lungs will breathe whether you pay attention to it or not. This is not intentional yoga-like breathing, which is great in a yoga class, but I want you to observe your natural, undirected, unintentional breath if possible. Notice the qualities of your breath — is it constrained? Shallow? Free and easy? Expansive? Something else? Does it move your shoulders? Your belly? Your chest? If you can’t let go and just breathe, that’s useful information too and helps you know more about your starting point with body awareness. So just “have” your breathing exactly as it is, with no agenda for it. To be “with your breath” as it is —a beautiful, intimate experience.
6. Find information
See if you can discern something about your present state by just feeling or sensing your body. It might be something like: I love this — it’s relaxing and easy to tune into my body; I hate this — I feel tense and uncomfortable; I’m hungry; my shirt feels soft against my skin; my shoulders feel really tight. The possibilities are endless and they are all derived from physical sensations. See if you can tell what your body is telling you about you right now. Try for one single thing your body is telling you — it may be very superficial — “my mosquito bite itches” — that’s a great start. This step can be on the surface, like the mosquito bite, or very deep, profound and incredibly useful.
7. Find your tension
Notice where in your body you feel tense and STAY WITH IT. If you find more than one place of tension, which is very likely, focus on the most prominent one. Focus on it by just feeling it, feeling the tension, possibly the pain. Don’t try to relax it or amplify it — allow it to be as tense as it is, just like it is, and stay with the feeling of it. As you feel this tight spot see if you can tell something about the quality of it. It might be sharp or dull or throbbing, it might be like a pinpoint or more spread out. Like a rock or a guitar string or flat or band-like. Or something else. You don’t need to go through the list and ask yourself, “Does it feel sharp? Does it feel dull? Does it feel like a rock?” Simply sense it and see what it feels like to you. Go with your impulse — how would you describe it? At first, it might take a little time to get used to just feeling a place of tension in your body, but if you try this a few times you’ll get faster and more efficient at tuning in. The idea is not to try and relax the tension, but to allow it, even welcome it. It might relax on its own when you pay attention to it, but don’t force it to do anything — allow it to relax or to remain tense, or do whatever it wants to do. Just feel it and notice it.
8. Search for a response in your body
Your body responds to your environment all the time. Unless you are lying flat, your body is responding to the pull of gravity by tightening certain muscles so you won’t fall over. If you aren’t lying down you might be able to feel the effort in the muscles working to hold you up. If you haven’t eaten in a while, you can probably feel the response in your body that communicates “hunger.” If you are preparing to give someone bad news, you may feel a little queasy or tense or maybe even sad. These are all familiar physical responses, right? And mostly easy to observe. There are many much more subtle responses too, and noticing the easier ones now will help you with the subtler ones down the road. If you can observe a more subtle response such as a particular kind of tension that tells you-you don’t trust someone, or the beginning of feeling angry, or your feeling of conviction about something you have to say, more power to you!
9. Find an emotion
A current of emotion runs through you every waking (and possibly sleeping) moment. Big emotions are easy to find but it’s worth checking in to see what emotion you are experiencing right now. It may be satisfaction or sadness, or love or fear, or any other emotion. If you can hone in on an emotion, see if you can tell where it is expressed in your body. Our emotions are physical experiences — there is a reason we call them ‘feelings’ — because we (go figure) ‘feel’ them. If you aren’t able to go straight to feeling an emotion, try this: Instead of starting by feeling your body and looking for an emotion, start with an emotion that is easy to conjure up, feel it, and see if you can observe what happens in your body. Two good choices are love and anger. Think of someone you really love, imagine they just walked into the room with you and see what happens in your body. Then think of someone you’re having a hard time with, possibly someone you’re mad at. Imagine they just walked into the room and see what happens in your body then. This is a good exercise to take a little time with.
