The body tries to maintain a status quo, so if you went to sleep thinking it was a scary or hostile world, the body will be expecting it to be just as scary in the morning, and your hormonal system will be ready for fight, flight or freeze. If this is your “steady state” then sooner or later it will affect your health. The body need to spend time in the rest and relaxation state in order to digest food, detoxify and to sleep. It cannot do these things well when it is preparing for action.
Probably the most important attention to give your body is to learn to breathe properly. Most of us breathe too shallowly, and often too quickly or slowly. Breathing more slowly is not necessarily what is needed. We do not notice because we are surrounded by people who also have tension in their breathing and it is natural to breathe like them, just as we copy facial expressions. When we relax the breath, this communicates itself with all the internal organs and encourages them to relax and function better. So, for a good healthy in-breath, the diaphragm should go down, as the belly relaxes outwards. The air feels cool and refreshing in your lower lungs, a bit like filling a vase with fresh water. On the out-breath, the shoulders relax downwards and let go of tension. The more you practise this, the more natural it becomes. The brain is not the only part of your body which can think. Each organ has a significant proportion of neural matter, allowing it to manage the functioning of digestion or circulation etc. Each organ has its own intelligence and sensitivity, communicating with and listening to what is happening in the rest of the mind and body. This raises the question, to what extent do the organs think for themselves? After all, we talk about knowing something in your heart, or knowing it in your guts. When you have the sense that there are deep and difficult emotions which you cannot quite name, one very helpful technique is to listen to your body. Ask yourself where in the body the feeling is strongest. Sit with the feeling for a while and try to get to know it. What is the nature of the feeling? Are there words that come to mind to describe it? It might have a colour, a shape, a texture. After a while, ask it what it wants to say. Treat it as a character with its own experiences and ideas. Finish by thanking it for trying to keep you safe and tell it that it does not need to do that on from now on, now that you are aware of the problem. It is essential to acknowledge the different layers of our thinking if we want them to calm down. Another way in which the unacknowledged aspects of ourselves can make their presence known is in little gestures, which we often do not notice ourselves making. For instance, putting a hand to your mouth might mean “I am going to keep silent about this subject” or it might be comforting like the thought of eating. If you find yourself scratching an itch on your arm it could mean you are uncomfortable about something you are thinking or a situation you are in, or perhaps you feel your attention drifting and you need to be more grounded in your body at that moment. The old clichés are often informative in interpreting these gestures, for instance “uncomfortable in her own skin”. All these gestures, if we can catch ourselves doing them, can be worth investigating further.
0 Comments
|
Author
I have written a few short articles for a local magazine about looking after your mental health, which are provided here. It seems to me that we need to pull together and share our skills and help each other. |