Category Archives: Your Body

Your Body, Trauma and Confidence

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“Research is also now starting to make clear the long term impact of early childhood trauma on people’s relationship to their own bodies (Price, 2007; Van der Kolk, 2014). Body awareness, body attitude and body satisfaction may all be negatively affected.”
(Benjamin R, Haliburn J, King S, (Ed), Humanising Mental Health Care in Australia, 2019, p253)

How is your relationship with your body? Body Mindfulness work requires you to feel into your body and accept what is there. Some areas are easier to accept than others. Others remain blind spots, numb areas that you have great difficulty accepting and allowing. As you access and delve into your body further, you will begin to learn the landscape that you have created within you. This is very significant because your body is dictating a lot of your health issues, psychological problems and limitations in life.

Those numb dissociated parts of your body are almost certainly due to a past trauma that you couldn’t assimilate at the time. You had to block off the pain and emotion to survive. That immediately cuts off part of your real self. And if the trauma was really severe and/or prolonged, you begin to live a shadow of your real self, have poorer health and limited abilities.

Past trauma, even if you don’t recall it whatsoever, will be affecting you through your body. If the trauma is deep, you will highly likely be feeling deep shame, disgust or even hatred towards your body, (very true with sexual trauma) which greatly lowers your self esteem. In the past you would have needed lots of motivation to override this lack of confidence and self esteem.

Your poor intellect revving you up to override the deep body based trauma. This as you can probably imagine, is short lived. It can help in moments where you require a boost but is difficult to work with long term if it is not eventually addressed at the body level and released and cleared permanently.

Thus a regular body mindfulness practice is essential as part of your long term mental health, physical health and personal development.

Your Second Brain

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“Your gut has capabilities that surpass all your other organs and even rival your brain. It has its own nervous system, known in scientific literature as the enteric nervous system, or ENS, and often referred to in the media as the ‘second brain’. This second brain is made up of 50-100 million nerve cells, as many as are contained in your spinal cord.”
(Emeran Mayer, MD, The Mind-Gut Connection, 2016)

Doctors have long kept the brain (the nervous system) and the gut (digestive system) completely separate from the maintenance of our overall health. Let alone even consider any connection the two systems might also have.

Medical doctors still mostly see the human body as mechanistic, largely unaffected by our thinking, our emotions, other systems and organs of the body and by us directly (our awareness). This separation of us, our brain and the body is helping to cause far more health problems than is necessary.

Your gut is like a second brain and it is strongly connected to the brain. The brain also remembers every gut feeling you have and uses this information when making decisions, not just about food but about people, work, play and life.

So it makes sense to spend some body mindfulness time regularly connecting to that gut and listening to what it has to say. It will respond in sensations, but rest assured there are also emotions there. (Your gut stores 95% of the serotonin in your body which is used to regulate your mood, anxiety, sleep, appetite, temperature, eating behaviour, sexual behaviour, movements and gastrointestinal motility). Your whole belly area is a powerful and very important brain.

Take time to connect with it in your mindfulness practice. After your brain, (which we spend a lot of awareness on,) the belly brain should always be your next port of call.

Starting the day Grounded

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In the previous post last week, I presented the five mindful questions to ask of yourself when you wake up in the morning. This week I’ll take one, the first question and expand on it further.

How grounded am I?
That is how well are you earthed to the ground? How solid do your feet feel below you when you get out of bed and start your day?
When your feet first hit the floor/carpet, how solid are they attached to the floor? Can you feel the whole sole of your foot contacting the ground? Take a second, pause and actually feel the sensation of the base of your feet.

There might be gaps were you don’t feel anything. Your feet might also not feel heavy to the floor, but very light and slippery. There may even be some pain or tension.

If your feet are not feeling grounded then chances are your legs and even pelvis may feel this lack of connection and solidity too.

With low groundedness you destabilize easily, so there can be some internal anxiety, with your body trying to find the safety in the ground. Without solid ground below your feet, you can be toppled over much easier, you won’t feel confident in your day and your head will be working hard to keep you safe in the world and that takes a lot of energy. You are likely to tire much more easily or come home after work more exhausted than you should be.

There are exercises you can do to help this of course. More next time.

The Five Checks to do Every Morning

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Starting your day with a body mindfulness connection makes a huge difference to how well your day flows and how productive you are. The core questions to ask, and areas to check each morning are (in order of importance):

How grounded am I?
That is how well are you earthed to the ground. How solid do your feet feel below you when you get out of bed and start your day?

How centered am I?
Do you feel your center of gravity in, or just under, your belly button? Or is the centre of gravity in your head, where a lot of people have it? Which leads to the next question…

How embodied am I?
That is, how fully in your body do you feel? Are you residing in all of it, or just in parts? Are there parts that feel numb or hollow? Are there parts you don’t feel or can’t feel into? Do you feel a disconnect from the neck down? that is, does your head feel separate from your body?

How connected am I to the present moment?
How much of your awareness is operating in reality right now? How much are you aware of your present moment surroundings, without past and future thought forms and memories interfering?

They are probably the top four questions to ask automatically when you wake up each morning, the top four checks. Once they are handled, you can ask the next question…

How connected am I to the Universe?
Once you are in your body, then check how connected your awareness is to the outside world around you. Your sense of connection to the spirit of all people and living things. This plugs your intuition into the flow of the world.

Do all of the above each morning and you are in for a very productive and fulfilling day!

Disconnection from your Body can cause so much Misery

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It never ceases to amaze me when a client has a problem (health/habit/phobia/limitation//trauma/psychological etc), that it can be changed rapidly just by bringing the focus into the body while the head is still trying to work it all out (the old way.)

Some words of wisdom that can save you a lot of time, drama, pain, money and effort….

In my experience, if something isn’t working in your life, chances are you have disconnected from your body and have left your poor head/intellect all on its own to try to work it all out for you.

When this intellect process tries harder – thinking more to try to solve the problem – you begin to create the racing mind phenomenon where your poor brain is overworking (thrashing) for very little result.

The more thoughts you need to solve an issue, the more stressed your system is and badly in need of a tune up. At some point, (when you are finally over it) it becomes time to clean up all the unfinished programs in your head that are still running, clogging up your ability to think in a straight line and doing so within a clear space in your head.

Thankfully body mindfulness offers a big key to be able to do this. And you can do this at home in a body mindfulness meditation practice. My body mindfulness class is designed to help you do this for yourself each day and then more intensely when you need something more focused.

I also recommend giving yourself this mind/body tune up with a therapist each year too, with a number of one-on-one private sessions. This helps to speed things up much more. Of course I practice what I preach and I do this myself every year. It makes a huge difference, as you prune all the old unfinished thoughts and issues still whizzing around in your head taking up unnecessary space and energy.

So why don’t people do this more often? One of the biggest reasons is that they think there isn’t a problem until they go inside and find just what is still running in there, subconsciously. That can be a bit of a shock to realise how much of your effort internally is inefficient and clogged with unfinished traumas which you thought you had resolved.

So I have learned over the years to never wait for a problem to surface. I do the work regularly and clear it out before it becomes a problem. You will always find things lurking in your subconscious that are building and are problems in waiting. So do this practice for yourself regularly, ideally daily, and have a series of sessions regularly each year for the deeper stuff. Do it no matter what and you will notice a big difference.

Your life will run smoother, you will feel more in the flow and present. Drama drops off. Your health improves. You age slower and you think with more peace in your head as the thrashing of your thinking clears.

Lost Connections leads to Depression

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The last class for 2018 is running tomorrow night. The Mindfulness classes will resume again on Tuesday Jan 15th 2019. So a shorter break than other years. 2019 will make it 9 consecutive years running of this class and as is tradition, the first class will be free for whoever books in until full.

I’m reading (technically listening to) a great book titled Lost Connections by Johann Hari. Where he covers the real causes of depression in most people. And the research all points to lost connections. For example, we have lost connections with:
* People – today we have fewer friends we can confide in,
* Work – more people doing less meaningful work,
* Childhood Trauma – people are not taking the time to go within and complete their past trauma to reconnect with themselves,
* Natural World – we are losing the natural organic rhythms of nature that we use to have centuries ago.

I recommend this book highly. It’s a damning indictment on trying to solve depression with prescription drugs.

A Body Mindfulness meditative practice helps you to reconnect with your real self. I’ve found that when you reconnect to yourself within – your body – you then naturally want to reconnect to other (better) people, spend more time in nature, do more meaningful work, eat better etc.

Coming home and reconnecting to you is the first biggest crucial step to eradicating depression. And this time of year is when it usually hits the hardest. I will be on leave for 2.5 weeks from Dec 21st (returning Jan 7th 2019) but I will still be able to see some people for individual sessions (in person or from anywhere in the world over Skype/Zoom) should you really need help with that inner connection over the Xmas/New Year break.

Take time to put ‘on’ your body

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We take time to put on our clothes each morning. We should also take time to put on our body.

Try not to leave home in the morning without getting into your body first. Body Mindfulness work helps you to do this. Taking a few minutes minimum everyday to actually feel into your body can make a big difference to the quality of your day and mind.

You need to settle into your body like you are putting on your clothes. As you get in, you will feel what parts are comfortable to feel into and what parts are not. What parts need more attention, what parts are numb, what parts are stiff or flexible etc.

You are basically linking your awareness/spirit to your thinking mind and body.

When you don’t do this, you are more likely to have unfinished programs from the day before still running, clouding your mind and stressing your body. Especially the ones that run on automatic pilot because you haven’t paid them enough attention to realise they need switching off.

This is an over stressed way to live each day and it doesn’t have to be that way.

That Ego Voice in your Head

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When it comes to Self Healing the bottom line – is facing the pain you have stored away in the cells of your body.

Your ego is doing a great job at keeping that pain at bay and building an identity and behaviour pattern around it all to keep you safe. Initially that’s good and you needed it under the circumstances when it first formed. But at some point if you are to progress in your life in a healthy way, that needs to be addressed.

“The remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not fully faced, accepted and then let go of, join together to form an energy field that lives in the very cells of your body.”
( Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, Page 142)

Body Mindfulness based self-healing and therapy work is very powerful in helping you heal all this old stored up pain. It’s not always easy to face, your ego will kick and scream all the way or put you to sleep. That’s the last place it wants to go. But as you face it, bit by bit and release, the ego’s strength lessens and it eventually gets easier and easier to let go.

You grow in strength and the ego diminishes. You get healthier and more alive and back in real contact and communication with your body. So as the communication with your body increases, you gain more control and know what’s going on. All this leads to a healthier more relaxed and peaceful mind and the all the great benefits that go with this.

As you learn to face what’s stored, compressed and banked up in your body, the ego voice in your head begins to diminish, it starts to take a back seat. In sessions, you will still hear it doing it’s thing, but it will more and more become a fainter voice in the background as you face the past within you and your body.

There is nothing wrong with having that ego voice assisting in your daily activities, but it becomes a problem if that’s the only voice running your life. There is another one, the one that comes from the cells in your body and, of course yours – the aware spirit you, (some people call it your heart).

Listening to the voice from your cells is what heals your physical body. Listening to your heart/spirit is what directs and heals your life.

As a child, what did you sacrifice within you, to keep the peace?

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A question I’d like to ask you…

Q. What tension did you bottle up as a child?
As a child living in the environment of your parents and siblings, what did you sacrifice within you, to keep the peace?

Whatever that is, if you haven’t done the inner work to clear it, chances are it is still there, inside you, in your body, in your cells having a hidden influence. Holding you back (making you hesitate too often) or pushing you to overdo (over react in certain situations).

With body mindfulness deep meditative work, you can access more of this backlog tension. It often feels like an area within your body that has pressure or weight. It can also feel less flexible and doesn’t move easily. Or it could be a part within you that is shaky and vulnerable if there is trauma there too.

What we humans are so good at, is suppressing this unexpressed part because it was too painful to feel at the time and/or there was no one around to help us feel it and release it safely. On top of that, we are also very good at forgetting that we are even doing this! Yet, your behaviours show it out. They hint at what you have buried and sealed deep down. Over time your work colleagues or friends will treat it as your normal behaviour. “That’s just John’s personality”. But it’s not.

I highly recommend, to give yourself space each day, to honour the bottled up parts that need a good clean out. And often all it takes is a prolonged focused attention without pushing, for those parts to begin to release. Even the ones you have completely forgotten about.

It’s a great sign when you can feel a part in you that lets go. It feels lighter, freer and when you breathe into it, it moves, where before it didn’t. There’s often a relief feeling that goes with it. That inner stress gone. That often happens after a deep release. I witness this everyday in my practice but you can also do this work at home and progress a lot faster.

Nothing is more frustrating than battling with a bad behaviour that you can’t seem to shake off, for years, decades even. With body based mindfulness work, you can move through stuck parts often very quickly. And it doesn’t require talking. In fact the less you talk the quicker it can go and the unhealthy behaviour along with it. .

Forget the Deadline – just for a short period

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At the end of last year I was very busy relocating my practice after 16 years in the one spot. It’s been a big change but a better one. It was interesting watching how I handled deadlines with renovations of the new place and the tight closing down deadlines of the old place. Without mindfulness attention it would have been more stressful than it was in the end. 

A big aspect of coping with the deadlines was the time-out periods in the day, where I would stop to re center myself, think about nothing, do something mindless or meditate and connect with my spirit in my body. Then after a period, launch into the business and action again to get the things needed done before the next approaching deadline.

It is so important to not let deadlines take you over, where you lose yourself to the ‘doing’. Even under the most stressful deadlines, always allow time to stop, pause, center, and forget the deadline – just for a short period. What I found by doing that, I was much smarter in my decision making as well as less stressed day-to-day. I wasn’t ‘running mad’ in one direction. 

By taking those regular breaks, my mind stayed sharper, I thought more intelligently, my body and muscles had time to consolidate themselves, rest and strengthen. This made me more productive when I got into action again.

This all sounds fairly basic and common sense, yet how often have you pushed and pushed and over worked at high intensity without taking that crucial mind/body break in between? Yes you can push your body and mind more, but is that the most efficient way of working? Working until you drop or your body gives way? That’s not the most highly productive way to function, especially if you want to remain healthy and sharp for a long time. Pushing your body to extremes wears your body and mind out. Short term gain for long term pain.

So the next time your boss says ‘come on let’s push this to reach the deadline!’ Make sure you plan in breaks. Every 90 minutes is the ideal, following the natural cycles of your body and mind. And if your boss thinks you are goofing off, give them my number!