2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
We usually pay attention to our body and bodily sensations when we experience severe pain, discomfort, or tension. And very often we miss the moment when the first harbingers of negative states begin to appear. But what if we try to notice just beginning discomfort in the body? How can this help us take care of ourselves?
For example, most often we pay attention to already very severe back pain, and only then we start to do something, change posture, move. By this point, the pain may not go away so easily and quickly. But if we paid attention to less vivid bodily sensations: slight tension, incipient discomfort, an impulse to stretch or change a posture, mild soreness, then we could help ourselves to prevent the development of severe pain.
The same thing happens at the level of emotional experiences. Our body is involved in the expression and expression of emotions and feelings. For example, when experiencing severe anxiety, you can notice that chaotic movements occur at the level of bodily manifestations, they are most often impulsive, not purposeful and inconsistent. Breathing becomes more frequent and shallow, hyperventilation and dizziness may occur. Palms sweat and / or there is a feeling of heat throughout the body, cold sweat. And if you take a couple of steps back and pay attention to the incipient anxiety, then you can feel a slight tremor in some parts of the body, an incipient anxiety, an impulse to move or do something, a change in breathing that becomes less deep. And at this stage there are more opportunities for regulating such an emotional state in order to prevent the development of the state to severe anxiety, fear or panic attacks.
This attention to bodily sensations and bodily experiences is bodily awareness. The development of this skill helps to better regulate one's state, more fully to feel and understand one's impulses, needs and desires, to understand what this or that feeling and emotional state is connected with, to make decisions more consciously, i.e. body awareness provides us with deeper contact with ourselves.
To train your body awareness, you can do the following pleasant "exercise." While taking a bath or shower, you can experiment with washcloths of different textures and textures, different smells and textures of shower gels.
Pay attention to what is pleasant and unpleasant for you. How do you feel it in your body? How do you feel pleasure in your body? And how do you feel discomfort? How does your body react to comfort-discomfort, pleasure-displeasure? Remember these bodily sensations and notice when they arise in ordinary life, at what moments? Paying attention to these feelings can help you more fully monitor the situations of comfort and discomfort that lead to certain emotional states.
As Lisbeth Marcher very succinctly and succinctly said: “Body awareness is the ability to feel ourselves in different life situations”. We wish you the development of such attention to yourself!
Yours Natalia and Aida.
The article was written in collaboration with Aida Abramova
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