Re-Connecting The Mind & Body Can Change The World
The power of tuning back into who we really are, and being open enough to realise that the mind and body are not separate things.
In western culture, when it comes to our health and wellbeing, we like to separate things; mental health from physical health, emotions from physical experiences, muscles from bones, organs from the rest of the body…
But the truth is our bodies and minds are intimately connected. So is considering them separately really that helpful in the long term?
I am a Dance Artist by day and so the human body is an integral part of my work — I spent years of my life training, learning everything I could about how to translate movement into my body and then what to do with this knowledge and experience which encapsulates so much more than just physical movement.
However, there were many times where I became so focused on how I would be viewed from the outside, that I viewed my whole self like that most of the time — it didn’t stop once I left the dance studio — I became just my physical body.
I read a great article in Flow Magazine recently, called ‘Be Kind To Your Body’, where the author, Otje Van Der Leilij, explains her personal experiences of the ‘third-person perspective’ or ‘observer’s gaze’, and how this places more value on what society teaches us (which is often not truth) than how you feel or who you believe you are — in Van Der Leilij’s own words:
“An outsider’s gaze also disempowers you, because you’re letting your self esteem depend on the judgement of the other, or on society.”
This ties in directly with the separation between body and mind that seems to dominate our society. It reinforces issues around body image, and encourages us to only consider certain external things about ourselves, to break apart into separate areas and fit each one into a box.
This is like an avoidance tactic. If we break ourselves apart we only have to deal with the parts we choose (and therefore society only has to deal with certain things). However, most people will know that avoidance is not the answer.
It takes courage to re-connect. Because then you really feel things. Then you realise the reality of many of society’s messages, and the fact that the only person who can change anything is you.
However, if we’re brave (read: vulnerable) enough to explore the full picture, we will open up a world of opportunity to live our lives how we want to.
Towards the end of my dance training I was introduced to somatic practice, a movement practice, not specific to dance, that emphasises the internal sensations, feelings, and processes of the body and mind.
There are many different types of somatic practice — you might have heard of Alexander Technique or Feldenkrais? These are fairly well known examples. The technique I explored is called Klein Technique and it is still a very strong influence on how I approach my work today.
At this point I’d had niggling pain in my right hamstring from an old injury for two years and nothing would shift it. However, just 6 weeks of daily dance class informed by a somatic approach and my pain was gone.
This changed everything for me. I hadn’t spent hours getting sports massage or physio, I hadn’t taken any medication, I’d just simply been given an opportunity to tune into myself in a way that combined sensation, emotion, feeling and thought with movement.
Eight years later and that pain has never returned.
I think I’ve always known that my mind and body are really one thing — dancing enables you to truly tune into your self (body and mind). I knew that self-esteem was a big issue for me and the days when I had what I would consider a bad class were always the days when I felt very self critical and really switched off from the joy and pleasure dancing gives you (my main reason for pursuing a career in it!).
However, it took me a while to start looking at the whole picture, and allow all of those ‘different parts’ of me to re-connect. My experience with somatics really was the catalyst for change.
Nowadays I work with lots of non-professional dancers and many of them are incredibly surprised by how much their whole self benefits from our classes or projects. In fact, most of the feedback I receive is focused on how much more confident they feel and how much our sessions help them manage their anxiety and feelings of stress. They experience physical benefits too but the mental ones are the ones that really surprise them, and that keep them coming back.
Science will tell you that the ‘happiness hormones’ are released with exercise, and so when I explain that people often then understand why they feel better afterwards. However, there is so much more to it — and not all of it can be scientifically explained in words. There is so much we don’t know about the human body, that isn’t possible to put into words, but comes from experiential information — we know because we feel it, not because it’s been written about.
I also trained in complementary therapies, mainly due to my fascination with humans and wanting to learn about us in a different way to dance. I have to say that I still had moments where I was sceptical— society teaches us that natural approaches can only do so much — but half way through my training a number of clients I had seen regularly for Reflexology started to make significant improvements with chronic issues such as asthma, swelling, neck pain, anxiety and stress. At that point, I had to admit to myself that this really just reinforced what I already knew about the capabilities of human beings— our bodies know how to heal themselves if we create the right conditions.
I’m not undermining the incredible work of medical professionals or scientists, or the need for medication; in fact I’ve seen just how incredible and talented medical professionals can be, and how essential drugs are for some conditions, including those in my family affected by Cancer and friends who’ve needed urgent surgery.
However, we musn’t forget about our whole selves. Instead of trying to find the one answer, can’t we have a range of options? Every single person is different, so why aren’t we more open to embracing this and considering different approaches?
Instinct & Intuition
Gut instinct is a helpful example of the mind-body. We call it this because we instinctively and literally feel it in our stomach and we know it’s trying to tell us something – it’s our intuition. We try to use our logical thinking brain to work things out, but actually most of the time our gut is what we need to listen to.
Have you ever ignored your gut and regretted it later? I know I have (many times)!
Emotion can be felt directly in the body, and isn’t always in the head. Sometimes what is in our heads isn’t actually helpful either, as thoughts do not always mean truth (more on this in my previous article Your Thoughts Are Things). So listening to our instincts is so important.
Another example might be unexplained chronic physical pain, such as lower back pain — one of the most common chronic conditions. It’s clear now that there is a direct link between your thoughts and beliefs with how you experience pain and how you recover, as explained in this Harvard Medical School article:
“Your personal health beliefs and coping strategies can influence both your level of distress and course of the pain.”
Lower back pain is also thought to be experienced more as a result of socio-emotional factors than physical issues or injury too.
So considering our bodies and minds as separate things (and then separating those down into smaller parts too!) will only get us so far.
Many people spend the majority of their lives completely disconnected from their physical bodies — sedentary jobs and screen addiction are significant factors in this. They live inside their thinking minds and forget what it’s like to actually be in their body and their whole self too.
However, all of us are born with an innate ability to be fully connected to both our minds and bodies. Spend five minutes watching babies and children play and you’ll see how interconnected everything is for them — they utilise all of their senses to understand the world, are constantly moving, and use instinct to guide them.
We were all babies once.
So, it’s possible for all of us to re-connect our whole selves, and it’s vital for our health and wellbeing. Here’s a few ideas I use in my dance classes to help us re-connect to our whole selves:
- Breathing — sending our focus to our breathing to bring peace and settle our energy. You can also focus on your breathing as you move or stretch, helping to reduce the ‘fight or flight’ response and encourage yourself (body and mind) to rest.
- Music — music and sound are very powerful. Most people respond to music with a feeling (joy, nostalgia, energy, sadness etc) and also have the instinct to move. Sometimes when my dancers are struggling to explore set movement or create their own ideas, we spend time just responding to music and seeing how it makes us feel. We are led by our instincts instead of our thinking brain. This cultivates playfulness, calm, and a sense of freedom.
- Imagery — adding imagery to movement allows us to create an experience that translates an idea more fully into our bodies via our minds, and encourages us to feel the movement instead of placing most importance on the third person perspective and external shape/form. For example, imagining the arms connected to the spine like wings. The arms then lift like wings from behind and underneath instead of using the top of the shoulders and neck - reducing stress and pain across the upper back, neck, and jaw, and cultivating a feeling of confidence, stability, and calm throughout the body and mind.
These ideas not only re-connect us to ourselves, but to each other.
Connecting to each other is powerful.
Connecting to each other cultivates empathy, compassion, trust, love, and happiness.
Similar ideas can be used in every day life too, they don’t just apply to a dance class.
Have you found any useful approaches to help you re-connect? If so, please do share them in the comments below as I’m sure they’ll be helpful for many of us.
The more you can spend time truly paying attention to sensation, emotion, thought, including getting moving and tuning into your physical experience, the more you’ll be able to cultivate peace, compassion, and love for yourself.
Then, if you can love yourself, everything in your life (including your whole self) will thank you for it.
