Body awareness, in part, means your conscious experience of body sensations, movement, and breathing, but is more than that. It is part of your experience of self. Deepening awareness of the body and integrating body awareness with other aspects of self awareness leads to a broader, deeper sense of self and the possibility of a deeper level of healing.
Thoughts, feelings, and body states are intertwined. For example, when you think a fearful thought, your shoulders may tense and your breath may become shallow. When in a meditative state, your body is relaxed. Feeling healthy, we have bodily feelings of pleasure in the body, feeling alive, whole, centered, solid, feeling sensation and emotion. Movement is relaxed, respiration is deep. If we feel stressed, anxious, or alienated, we may deaden body sensation, or react negatively to sensations, or may limit respiration or movement.
When we settle into our bodies, we can have a clearer sense of knowing who we are and what we feel. Sometimes people say “I feel more like myself.” It sometimes happens that my Shiatsu clients begin a bodywork session undecided what to do about a situation, and at the end know what they want. According to Suzanne Scurlock Durana, “core embodiment” can also include: knowing what your boundaries are, feeling what’s right and what’s not, not absorbing others’ negativity or pain.
Sometimes we deaden body sensations or freeze into body stances or limit our physical movements to help avoid stirring up awareness of unpleasant or even overwhelming emotions or memories. Many practitioners emphasize that it is important to have emotions and memories come to the surface in a way that is not overwhelming, that encourages perceiving that they are changeable and that a way forward exists. A strong sense of an embodied self or a strong bodily sense of safety can be helpful parts of this process.
So, whether for pleasure, personal growth, or resolving distress, greater body awareness, especially mindful body awareness, is a part of the picture. This is why it is so often a focus for holistic practitioners of all sorts.
Suzanne Scurlock-Durana Reclaiming Your Body—Healing From Trauma and Awakening to Your Body’s Wisdom.
There are more readings about body/mind topics at www.pauladerry.com/readings.
Paula Derry, PhD
Ruscombe Associate Practitioner, Shiatsu Practitioner