Conscious Body Series Part 2 - Opening a Line of Communication and Listening

I know its a been a while since my last post about opening our conscious bodies. In fact, after writing part one, I had to sit with all the questions I posed and feel how my body wanted to proceed. One of the biggest question posed was Are you willing to open yourself up to listening more closely when your body speaks to you?  If you are, then how do you do that? In this part of the series I want to speak to exactly that; how do we listen?

Our body speaks in subtle ways and because of this, the first thing we must do is quiet our mind and external stimulation. It can be as simple as just sitting or lying in a quiet room to remove external stimulation. Quieting the mind can be a little more challenging and may take practice. One of the easiest ways I have found to do this is through the breath.

• Sit or lay in a quiet space. If it helps you can have soft, slow music playing.
  
• Take a few deep breaths. Allow the belly to fill first, then the chest.
  
• Allow your body to take over the breath and be aware of it without trying to control it.
• Feel where the breath goes, what parts of your body move with it?
• If you find thoughts or worries coming in, that's okay. Just keep bringing your self back to the awareness of your breath.

Even if you can only do this for 5 seconds at a time before the mind comes back in, it is still working. Because those 5 seconds are starting to open that line of communication. Practice this for a few minutes each day for three or four days; I promise it gets easier!

Once you are able to quiet your mind for a longer period, (a minute or longer), you can start to have more of a conversation between your body and mind. The body is constantly sending experiential information to the brain. Our senses never turn off, and yet, we allow many of these sensations to be filed under auto pilot, or worse, fall into old thinking and feeling patterns about the information being received by the mind. We try to cover up that information because we don't want to deal with it. So, the body either hides it under tension and stress, or starts screaming at us with pain or strong emotion. In doing this next exercise, you can gain a better understanding of what is hiding underneath the pain, tension, stress, or emotion.

• Once you have completed a few breaths and allowed your body to take over breathing, begin to feel into your body.
• Do you have any areas that feel tense, weak, painful or emotional? Or feel beautiful, great, strong or joyful?
  
• Keep your mind soft and let it gather information about the area.
• Without judgment and jumping to conclusions ask yourself "What is behind this?" Now, open your mind and feel into what comes up.
• Aside from the initial sensation, are there other bits of information or subtleties you can feel now?
• Breathe into the area and allow it to sink into relaxation. Does more information come to mind?
• Can you allow your mind to see another possibility than its initial conclusion? Breathe and Feel.
• Continue feeling, listening and breathing until your body relaxes into a comfortable state again and you can start to give yourself a feeling of gratitude for the information exchanged.
  

This process can take as little or as long as you like. In sessions when I walk people through this, the initial feeling passes within minutes. Depending on what comes up for you it can be a great release of emotion or feeling, or give you a sense of deep relaxation and stress relief. And know that you will only experience as much as you are willing to and can handle.

I hope that these two exercises start your process into listening to your body. If you have any questions, concerns, or need guidance through these don't hesitate to ask!