How to listen to your body? This is one of the most important things to learn in my opinion; especially because it tells us a lot. In this post I plan on giving you tools to learn how to tune into your body more.
Let’s get started. It is always helpful to become more mindful of your internal and external environments. Our internal environments include our thoughts, emotions, feelings, and sensations within the body. Our external environments are what surround us like people, objects, organisms, and things.
The reason this is important is that they all have an impact on our psychology and biology. Now, all those things may contribute to what is going on in our body but here is a 3 step process into honing more in on your inner environment.
- Focus on your breath. Follow your breath in through your nose and out through your nose
- Notice any thoughts, feelings, and sensations that arise in the moment
- Explore what they are telling you and then come back to your breath ( maybe even ask a question and then wait in silence focusing back on your breath)
Typically, we can even ask our body a question after focusing on our breath and wait in silence for an answer. Obviously, our body isn’t going to answer us but this puts you in an outside perspective of what is going on and helps you tune into your intuition more.
There are certain feelings that arise consistently in certain situations and they are telling you either this is good, bad, or neutral based on what you have come up with on each signal.
For example, when I decided to jump into my business full time I had a coach ask me “What does your heart say about this?” As I explored more I had a weight lift off my shoulders and tingling through my body. It felt good so it was my body’s way of telling me I was doing the right thing.
When I am overwhelmed or doing too much my right shoulder aches or starts to bother me and if I am around certain people that may not have the greatest intentions I get a pit in my stomach feeling.
These are all examples of what my body tells me and they may be different for you. It took lots of repetition to find out what each one meant due to my associations with my internal and external environments. These feelings are subtle and if you practice that 3 step exercise earlier and let go of the outcome it helps. The answer may come even a week later but you’ll know when you trust it.
When we tune into our bodies this is a form of embodiment. It is a technique my life coaching certification taught me and my yoga certifications. This probably one of the most powerful tools I have used with my clients. It takes time for it to be useful because most of us are in our heads. When we start to learn to settle and tune in to our bodies, the results are spectacular.
A lot of my clients have had major breakthroughs with this technique and it is common in Therapy. In a study conducted by Röhricht, Gallagher, Geuter, & Hutto (2014) the results about embodied cognition and psychotherapy came out to conclude the following:
“Body psychotherapy can benefit from updating
its theoretical framework in line with new
developments in the philosophy and sciences of the
mind”
Essentially, using embodied cognition helps shift the individual’s perspective. It helps clarify what is going on for us by putting us in an outside perspective from ourselves. There are other ways to strengthen your embodiment and this can be done with mind-body exercises like breathwork, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, dance, and other modalities. Embodiment is coming into the body more.
The embodiment exercise mentioned earlier is known as embodiment cognition psychotherapy and is used by coaches/therapists to help the client’s go into their bodies more and get a different perspective.
Give it a try and let me know what you think. I have specific meditations for embodiment in my meditation subscription platform where you have your first 3 days free. Feel free to use that as a guide.
Check out 5 ways to connect with yourself
References
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