Body-Mind Healing
/Photo Credit: Kieran Osborn on Unsplash.com
The healing community has long-recognized the relationship between what we think and how we feel. Asking the question “where do you feel this in your body?’ is an obvious way to make this connection. Answering the question “what would your body like to say?” leads to a deeper conversation. When your conscious mind monitors self-talk and constructs positive visualizations, you’re doing mind-body healing. When your conscious body directs the process, it’s a slightly different approach. This is what I call body-mind healing.
Yoga, meditation, movement therapy, and hands-on bodywork present excellent opportunities for body-mind healing. Anytime your primary awareness is centered in the physical moment, you have a bridge to information and guidance directly from your feeling body. Simply noticing the relative tension/ relaxation, discomfort/ ease, and stiffness/ mobility gives you a new perspective. From your body’s point of view, you’re either relaxed, comfortable, and moving fluidly or you’re not. When you link the feeling of being stuck/ awkward/ numb/ tense with entrenched behaviors or old ways of thinking, you’ve opened the door for body-mind healing.
Addressing the body’s experience of stress and tension is vital for long-term change and integrated healing. Let me tell you why. From the very beginning, you responded to stress by tensing up to guard against physical/ emotional pain. But, if after stressful times passed, your tension held on, so did the stress. From a body-mind point of view, you’re stuck in the past.
Body-Mind Healing Exercise.
Checking in.
To experience a bit of body-mind healing right now, scan through your body and notice places of tension/no tension as you go along. Aside from what’s necessary for sitting upright, the rest of your body should feel easy and relaxed. Check your belly, forehead, and chest for likely places of residual tension. Like many people, your map of tension is probably familiar and long-standing. Could this be a template of your emotional history?
Making the link.
Now, bring your awareness to one of your favorite tension holdouts and squeeze a little more. Ask your body-mind, “What emotion does this feels like?” For instance, clenching your hands might feel like an expression of fear. Scrunching your forehead might hold a sensation of anger. Tightening your chest might tap into a well of sadness. No matter how much you think you know about this tension, resist the temptation to jump in and intellectualize. Just be with the feeling and ask your body-mind “what’s this all about?”. Letting the answer come from the body is probably a new experience. Be patient, focus on sensation, and something will pop into your mind.
Interpreting the answer.
Because the non-verbal body lives in a world of sensation and experience, don’t expect your answer to be straight-forward, rational, or intellectual. You’ll need to use your imagination to translate. Sometimes the body part itself gives you a simple language association. For instance, a tight belly could indicate “undigested ideas”; a scrunched forehead might be worried about “what’s ahead”; and a tense back probably needs more support & “back up”. Perhaps, there’s a current situation to be handled; a memory that’s heart-breaking; or a person that’s a pain in the neck.
When your body reveals what’s going on and your mind pays attention, you’re engaged in body-mind healing. Listening to your body’s experience of tension/ no tension gives you a new angle on what needs to be expressed and addressed. Trust your body. It’ll let you know if you’re on the right track. And, even if you drew a blank with the above exercise, your body-mind may still have something to say. For now, your healing may be about learning to shift focus from mind to body.
Body-mind healing is an effective therapeutic avenue for addressing old tension patterns, changing rigid behaviors, and leaving your history behind. The results speak for themselves.
If you want to learn more about the body-mind, check out my book Body Wisdom for Life- What Your Mind Needs to Know About Your Body (Llewellyn Worldwide, 2018). Introducing ways to apply body wisdom in everyday life, this book includes chapters on getting in touch, self-care, stress & relaxation, healing, the emotional body, intimacy & intuition, and spirituality.