The body is wise. Learn to listen to its wisdoms, and well-being options and choices open up. Resiliency increases. And, listening to the body is a constant practice.
I started this blog months ago, and didn’t post it. I’m sharing it now, as life changes quickly. What I continue to learn keeps shaping my wisdoms, resiliency and me. My heart is full of love for the people in my life that have shared their wisdom gifts with me.
Life happens, and shifts quickly. The body often tells us what’s happening in our conscious and unconscious mind, if we pay attention. Constant streams of thoughts, perceptions, beliefs, mantras, values, fears, family sayings and desires whisper and float through thoughts as mind chatter.
Our world is fast-paced with an overload of technology, information and choices. Internet abyss, endless social media and emails and 24-hour global news create a constant pull at our neuron wiring and mind-body connection (somatics). Our well-being.
Current neuroplasticity studies give insights into the science of our perceptions. Perceptions are our felt reality, often missing a lot of other perspectives and dimensions. Our reality, based on our perceptions, are influenced by conscious and unconscious emotions, past experiences and thoughts. Perceptions create our story threads, and may not accurately reflect a bigger picture that may be there.
Two recent health scares (causing amygdala hijacks) took my personal understanding and awarenesses of the mind and body connection to new and deeper levels. In those instants, my context, identity and soma changed. I changed.
Life felt more complex, and simpler, in moments. I am grateful for the tools I learned from Doug Silsbee’s complexity and Presence-Based Coaching work. Life changing tools for life navigation.
The steps below help increase witnessing, observing and responding to thought patterns that often are negative and misleading. Majority of our thoughts, some say 8 out of 10, are negative and based on misleading data (Think tigers in the driveway brush). I encourage you to practice these steps, as I encourage my coaching clients to do, and see what happens. These are resiliency and well-being tools for your toolkit:
Witness and self-observe thoughts and mind chatter. Don’t try to stop them, let them pass by.
Be self-compassionate and curious. Have no self-judgment on what comes up.
Pause to sense what your body is feeling, and where that ‘feeling’ is felt. Name the body area (shoulder, neck, head) with descriptive words. Are shoulders ‘tight’, or gut ‘achy’?
Scan your body from toes to head, feel what’s happening in your body. Start to try to visualize/ sense your internal organs and body fabric. Eastern cultures learned this thousands of years ago.
Practice shifting from a subjective perspective to an objective perspective. Hold things further from you. Try holding a thought less personally, out to a larger dimension or others perspectives. Or hold a BIG thought out, shifting it from a close subjective lens to a more distant objective lens. A BIG thought (fear, desire that’s constantly streaming) often triggers and is loud in mind chatter.
By pausing in the moment, more choice opens up to respond instead of react.
Ask, “what may I be missing in this thought or perspective”?
Practice, and practice some more. Be curious.
Whatever practice you do is good.
My health scares triggered my mind and body. A misdiagnose of a rare disease spun me and my world. My body became wired, and I practiced self-care and relaxation. Even after learning it was a misdiagnose, my body held charge for months, more charge than I realized. In the second health scare I passed out, a gift from my vagus nerve (the fight, flight or flee stimulator) deciding to react to my thoughts and fears in that moment. A gift from that experience was my pulmonary system was thoroughly checked and my heart system is fine.
These experiences were well-being gifts. Sometimes gifts do not feel pleasant in the moment. Part of my journey is to keep remembering the lessons from the triggers, valleys, peaks and still moments.
With love, Susan