Re-inhabiting the body

‘Mr Duffy lived a short distance from his body’

I wonder if you’ve heard this line from a book by James Joyce?

People in my groups will often chuckle in recognition when I share this, as we can often relate to this experience of living at a ‘short distance’ from our body.

If asked to look back on a day we might see how huge swathes of it were spent lost in thought, living from the neck up in a virtual reality of stories, planning, ideas, memories and judgments.

We may on occasion get woken up out of this ‘trance’ by the warmth of the sun on our face, or a gentle breeze, the sound of a bird, but even then we rarely remain with the sensory experience long enough to fully inhabit it.

It seems it is a universal challenge to stay present in our body!

When people first embark on a mindfulness course, many participants will describe feeling very cut off from their body, saying that they don’t feel much, or they feel too much, or there’s a lot of agitation and restlessness.

And this is so normal and understandable given our conditioning.

We may have experienced developmental trauma in our past or certain injuries, that have made the body feel an ‘unsafe’ place to be.

And one of the quickest ways to escape and ‘numb’ any kind of intensity in the body, is to go up into our heads and start thinking, ruminating, obsessing and judging.

Going up into our heads isn’t wrong.

It’s not our fault.

And thinking actually isn’t the problem.

The issue is perhaps that we don’t know how, or when, to unhook from thinking and discern between a thought that will evolve us, and a thought that keeps us trapped in the same old patterns of disconnect.

The truth is that our body is wise, intelligent and like a barometer, it can help us to know ourselves more intimately and teach us how to be present and steady with our present moment experience.

Our body is communicating to us, all the time, whether we’re listening or not.

And it’s language is physical sensation.

Slowly, with the right support, we can begin to turn towards and listen to this living breathing body, and in the light of our kind attention, old tension can begin to thaw and melt.

We can begin to FEEL more. We can regain our innate sensitivity and reclaim our life and our spirit.

As we begin to re-inhabit our body wake up qualities such as empathy, compassion, joy and love.

We feel more alive.

We begin to know, at a bone deep level, our body as nature, not separate from the nature around us.

With this can come a sense of belonging, mystery and wonder.