How are You Inhabiting Your Body?

Have you ever noticed that people who feel good about themselves carry themselves such that you instantly know it?  This is so true that you can tell by watching someone how they are feeling about themselves in that moment. We all subconsciously notice people’s posture, and it influences how we respond to them.

People who are feeling good about themselves carry themselves with a lifted open chest, a ready smile, and a look in the eyes that lets you know they are present in the moment.

People who do not feel good about themselves tend to chronically carry a posture that includes sunken shoulders and chests, down cast or vacant eyes, and a non-existent smile.

Try to notice what your own habitual posture is. Not only are you unconsciously sending messages to others (through your posture) about how to respond to you, your habitual body posture is influencing as well as reflecting your mood. 

By consciously changing your posture, you can have a positive influence on your inner state.

Sitting up straight has been found to reinforce self-confidence, support the recall of positive memories, and serve as a useful coping mechanism for stress.  Slouching, on the other hand, appears to encourage the recall of negative memories, and to support feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, fear, dullness and lethargy.

Armed with this knowledge, you can “fake it until you make it” by consciously taking a posture that will improve both your mood and your self-confidence.

Practical Tip:  A trick for improving your mood 

The next time you want to shift your mood, try shifting your posture. Even if you do not want to smile, you will find that consciously putting a smile on your face, and carrying yourself with an upright open-chested, shoulders back stance will change your mood for the better. Don’t take my work for it. Try it and see for yourself!

Are You Fully Inhabiting Your Body?

Strange as it may seem, many people are living their lives not fully “grounded” and in their bodies.  By this I mean that often people have subconsciously learned to live with awareness only in certain parts of their bodies. This is a coping skill generally carried over from an earlier stressful time in life or learned in early relationships.

For example, it is not uncommon for people to operate solely from their heads, having shut out their awareness of the rest of their body.  When I ask what is going on in the rest of their body they draw a blank. They have closed themselves off from the wealth of awareness and wisdom that is potentially theirs from being fully present and aware in their whole body.

One common way of coping with life is to (subconsciously) shut out awareness of things that are uncomfortable.  This shut out awareness could be a reality or truth that is alarming, people’s feelings (or lack of feelings) towards you, a lack of safety (emotionally, sexually or physically), or feelings of helplessness or inadequacy. Psychologists call this coping mechanism “denial”.

What is not generally noticed however is how denial also shows up somatically, in terms of shutting down any body awareness of potentially disturbing information.

When you “protect” yourself from conscious awareness of information that could be disturbing, it often expresses itself through body symptoms.

How comfortably and thoroughly do you inhabit your body, listen to your body’s wisdom, and feel the inner strength and relief that comes from being able to see and hear that which you may have been avoiding?

PRACTICAL TIP

The next time you have an uncomfortable or unusual body sensation, I encourage you to take some time out to see if this sensation is your body’s way of clueing you in to certain information that you are not aware of or listening to. 

Start the process by relaxing your muscles, feeling the weight of your body being held up by your chair, and consciously bringing your awareness into your whole body (see my post on “grounding”).

Now bring your awareness in the form of a gentle curiosity to the body sensation that has caught your attention. Please try to refrain from trying to change this sensation with your mind or your will. This process involves respectful non judgmental listening and paying attention to the body sensation, as if you were sitting down with a friend to listen to her as she shares her deepest thoughts and feelings.

Your body has information that it can only share with you if you take the time to listen attentively. See if you can “see” what the shape of the sensation is.  Does it have a movement? a color? a thickness?  or a feeling associated with it?

Keep it company, so to speak, and ask it if it has anything it wants you to know.  Listen attentively. The answers may come in images, understandings, words, or inner shifts. Or there may be no answer until a later time.  This is a listening process, not a doing or fixing process.

Many of my clients find that after engaging in this process, the original sensation shifts and changes and becomes less intense. (see E. Gendlin, Focusing 1982).

With increased awareness of that which you have been avoiding you are empowered to make conscious decisions about how you want to process and respond to it. Ultimately, the releasing of this restricted awareness allows more ease and joy to flow in your life.