5 Steps To Get Back in Tune With Your Body
Our body makes our trauma real, it provides experiential knowledge of the trauma. Our cells remember hurt from the past. The emotional pain resides in our body memory.
When we do not listen to our body, its only option is to INCREASE the volume.
This is why we got to listen to our body, if we want to break free of past pain.
If we do not listen to our body, we become imprisoned by it. Our life playing on repeat, like a hamster on a treadmill.
So the key to break the cycle is to start being present in our body, and listening to our truth. Where we are right now.
Accepting that we are in pain, that we are acting out, numbing ourselves or whatever we are doing to avoid being in this skin we are in.
By recognizing our dysfunction we can take ownership and change.
As much as it is frustrating, and pretty painful actually, to have to realize how we have been suppressing our truth; fact is that the faster we decide to examine our patterns - we can let go of that which is not serving us.
Only then can we let go and move beyond our current self-limiting beliefs, which has body memory.
Yes, we cannot just rely on talking our way out of our dysfunction. Pain and trauma has body memory. This is also why attraction happens beyond words spoken. We pick up on people's truth and core self by their body language. Our body behavior will reflect our thought patterns: are we reserved, scared of comitting? Are we open, vulnerable and caring?
People like people who touch them - body, mind and soul.
The physical accent of touching is very primal because it literally transmits energy and information beyond our conscious control. Physical touch is a core part of recovery and re-connecting both with ourself and others.
We do not re-connect by intellectualizing and overanalyzing life.
Often intellectualizing things only further disconnects us and provides as a procrastination to take action.
We reconnect by feeling life and the shades of it.
When we touch other people (not grope them, mind you), we are showing a sense of genuine concern.
We are reaching out beyond intellectual blabber and making people FEEL heard, cared for and understood.
The more senses we activate in other people, the stronger the bond will be. And the more genuine also, because we are reading different levels of each others' truth. Who we really are - what we say being secondary.
If we only address the cognitive aspects of change, we get a limited view of emotional responding.
We end up with an overemphasis on conscious controlled cognitive thought processing with little consideration of actual interpersonal dynamics in real time.
We become that person who sounds smart, but doesn't act smart.
Where there is no relationship between what we say and what we do.
And that's just so unattractive on every level.
A key reason to why many of us fail to understand that we cannot keep faking it; people pick up on the unsaid cues too and react in a instinctive way to that, far more important than the picture being presented. Why glitter images of perfect lives often crumble: if too much effort is put on presenting shell perfection without attention to that which is core, we develop a gap between who we are and what we put on display for everyone to judge. When the gap is too big, we feel like frauds and we don't know where to take action because we get too attached to picture perection. And again, the lowest standard will always be perfection, because that is simply not attainable. Also, why perfectionism is so off-putting to others.
We are not being consistent and acting with integrity. We are not behaving in a way that is authentic. We are not relatable.
We are all talk and image with no substance.
Words are cheap, and that is why we need to SHOW our truth not say it.
Too much talking without SENSING, DOING, ACTING, FEELING does not take into consideration that which is beyond our consciousness: our deepest rooted belief-system.
This means we are only working on our shell. Like we prefer - because core work can seem like a lot of work initially. Changing your core will hurt. It will be tiring. It will be a non-linear process of ups and downs and relapses.
That is the only way to transform your life in a way that is in alignment with who you want to be.
When we refuse to change our core, we deal with a constant sensation that we are not really living our truth.
Whenever another storm hits, our card house will collapse. Once again.
So here are the 5 steps in brief that is needed to get back into our body again:
1. CONNECTION: Create opportunities for connection to the body in a safe manner. Connection to and acceptance of all parts/ emotional states, connection to sense of Self.
2. EXPRESSION: Create opportunities for safe and healthy expression through the body,
3. COGNITION: Correct cognitive distortions related to the body.
4. FUNCTION: Create increased ability to utilize self soothing and affect regulation skills
5. MINDFULNESS: Increased ability to be present in the hear and now.
Now these 5 essential steps to gain body sensation needs to be translated into action steps that are doable for your life on a daily basis RIGHT NOW.
I want you to write down next to each step what that action step would be for you.