Week Two: EMBODY

Video: Embodiment

Video Highlights/Summary

For a culture that’s very obsessed with the body, we are quite disconnected from our bodily awareness! Anthropologists tell us that in the years since the Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 years ago), we have become less connected to the rhythms of the natural world, and our own natural cycles, as humanity’s relationship with nature became less characterized by cooperation and accommodation, and more marked by control and domination.

Connecting with the body helps us connect to our animal aliveness, something that doesn’t often get “activated” in our sedentary lifestyles today (which often leads us to seek other, less healthful forms of stimulation). Deepening our relationship with our body can also help us cultivate visceral feelings of safety and security.

Last week we learned a lot about the “fight or flight” mode of the body — this week we’re turning to “rest and digest” with soothing body- and nature-based practices.

Practices Demonstrated in the Video:

• Check in with your posture — is there extra “efforting”? Are you working with, or against, gravity?
• During moments of overwhelm, remember you are always supported by the “Two G’s” — gravity and the ground.
• “Wake up” the body through gentle tapping or touch.
• Find “islands of safety” in the body, in parts of the body not regulated by the vagus nerve (e.g., feet, hands).
• Yawning is a pleasurable experience that wakes up the body, and promotes breathing and muscle movement.
• Put little dots or stickers around the house in places you will see them throughout the day as reminders to “come home” — check in with how you are feeling (physically and emotionally) and ask yourself if there’s anything you need.
• Throughout the week, remember to “notice that.”

Notice That

Do you ever have moments when all of sudden you realize you’ve been clenching your teeth, or wringing your hands, and you didn’t even know it until minutes later?

Stress often manifests itself physically and somatically, before we register it consciously.

This week’s lessons are all about paying greater attention to the body, so that we can listen to its signals when it’s telling us we need to slow down, to “rest and digest.” When we feel pain or tension, it is not a “problem;” it is a message that we need to take time to tend to ourselves. This may mean getting more sleep, engaging in soothing self-care activities, connecting with loved ones, taking a warm bath, drinking water or eating healthy foods, practicing mindfulness, or perhaps seeing a doctor.

In his book Body Sense, Alan Fogel suggests doing a “Body Count” by checking in with how aware we are of the body on a daily basis. Consider the following questions: (adapted from Fogel, 2009).

1. How aware are you of your body while you are at work? at home?
2. Are you aware of how you breathe throughout the day? Do you ever notice tension or restriction in your breathing?
3. Do you hold your toothbrush with greater tension than necessary? Do you “white knuckle” the steering wheel in your car even when things are safe?
4. Do you often strain your neck as you look at a computer or a phone?
5. Do you notice your legs are sometimes restless, or times when you are really fidgety during the day?
6. When you become aware of discomfort in your body during the day, do you do anything to alleviate it? Or do you just push through it?
7. Do you ever rest/nap during the day?
8. Do you notice tension in your jaw, neck, or shoulders by the end of the day?
9. Do you notice things like fatigue, headaches, or stomachaches when they begin, or do they only grab your attention when they get really bad?
10. When you feel tired or achy, do you know what happened to create that state in your body?
11. Do you ever stop during your day to check in with how your body is feeling?
12. Do you ever engage in an activity during your day that has no agenda except to relax?
13. Do you seek help when you need it?

As you consider these questions, it isn’t about judging or criticizing yourself. It’s about noticing. How aware are you of your body during the day?

Perhaps a few of these questions resonated with you, either because you realized the question referenced an ailment you suffer from, or an aspect of your body you hardly ever notice. Select a few of these to focus on as part(s) of the body you will bring greater awareness to this week.

The exercises in the remaining lessons this week will help you cultivate this greater sense of embodiment. To begin with, download the worksheet here to reflect on your body’s “stress signature” and “calm signature.”

“When we feel powerful, we feel free — in control, unthreatened, and safe.” 

“The way we carry ourselves from moment to moment blazes the trail our lives take…. Expanding your body expands your mind, which allows you to be present.”

Amy Cuddy, Presence

If your mother or grandmother was constantly telling you to “sit up straight!” … well, she was on to something!

Research now tells us that when we have “good” posture (see the video), and our body is open and expansive, we feel happier and more optimistic, we have less anxiety, we deal with stress better, we respond better to criticism, we have fewer self-critical thoughts, and we feel more energized. WOW!

Dacher Keltner, researcher at the Greater Good Science Center at UC-Berkeley, says that when we feel powerful, we are more attuned to opportunities than to threats, and we can access a greater repertoire of skillful behaviors. We feel in control, and we feel safe.

Watch the video on Posture and Power below:

Additional Findings

Amy Cuddy and her colleagues, based on their findings, were especially concerned about the devices we use throughout our days and how they change our posture, and thus our mood. In one study, they had participants use either an iPod, an iPad, a MacBook laptop, or a iMac desktop (i.e., smaller to larger devices). They then manipulated a situation that allowed them to determine how empowered and assertive participants were after just a few minutes of device usage. Sure enough, those who had been hunched over the smaller devices were less likely to advocate for themselves and were less able to handle a difficult situation than those who were on larger devices (and therefore more upright).

Their takeaway: monitor your posture and your device usage during the day!

“Our devices are already cognitively stealing our attention away from the moment, but are our devices also contorting us into physical positions that stifle our power and our ability to be present?”

Amy Cuddy

Another study compared the cortisol levels of people holding a high-power pose and people holding a low-power pose (cortisol is released when we are stressed). Those in a high-power pose had a 25% decrease in cortisol levels; those in the low-power pose had a 17% increase in cortisol levels!

You can see a cool interactive demo online showing how a person walks based on mood and stress here.

Your Assignment

• Try power posing today!
• Think of times during your day you could sneak in a quick power pose. Amy Cuddy recommends the bathroom — it’s private, and you’ll be there many times a day! Just take 10 seconds to hold your pose!
• Cuddy says even if you can’t actually pose, just imagine taking a power pose…. It works!
• Practice stretches by rolling your shoulders back and open your chest.
• Notice the times during the day when you take a contracted posture. What caused it?

“Your body is continuously and convincingly sending messages to your brain, and you get to control the content of those messages…. How you carry your body shapes how you carry out your life.”

Amy Cuddy

Video

In the video below, you’ll find a few additional body-based practices, including chest-openers, touch and massage exercises, and practices for identifying how the body feels when it is calm.

Guided Meditations

Body Awareness Meditation

This meditation (about 10 minutes) focuses on not resisting gravity and reducing the efforting and tension in the body. You’ll want to be in a lying down position — with blankets or pillows, if needed, so you can be as comfortable as possible. It — hopefully! — is a relaxing practice as you simply give your weight to the ground beneath you.

Working with Pain Meditation

Often times, stress manifests itself physically in the body as pain and tension. Use this meditation (about 8 minutes) to learn how to work with pain (instead of resisting it or tensing up even more). This session focuses on the practice of “pendulating” between areas of discomfort/pain, and areas of safety in the body.

I am so excited to have another dear friend, Christy Moe Marek, as our guest instructor this week. I like to call Christy a “bad-ass meditator” because she has meditated outdoors (in Minnesota) for nearly 700 straight days. WOW!!

Christy is a writer, story whisperer, and modern-day mystic who lives to guide people to the heart of their experience as a means of facilitating connection, healing, and wholeness within themselves and in the world.

If anyone knows how to connect us to nature, it’s Christy. I know you will enjoy this lesson she’s written for us!

Nature-Based Practice

You are a living, breathing, sacred being of Nature – of the sun and the moon and the stars. You are precious beyond your wildest dreams. Have you ever met eyes with a wild animal – even a bird or a squirrel – and took pause? That is you in different clothing. Any regard you feel for them, for Nature in any form, is an invitation to the way you can regard yourself. Do you judge any creature in Nature for “doing it wrong”? There is no wrong. That’s the beauty of this kind of practice, to me. Just show up and breathe. Your nature knows that it’s home, like recognizes like, and everything that happens energetically from there isn’t on a level we need to control or understand. Just be.

The practices I engage in and teach are focused mainly on connecting with our nature through Nature. In our world where we remain indoors most of the time, in front of a screen or other man-made devices/distractions, my practices are invitations to remember our preciousness as a being of Nature, not separate from her.

These practices involve moving our meditation and contemplative practices outdoors: meditating while sitting on or lying on the earth, sitting or standing against the trunk of a tree, bringing your bare feet in contact with the ground, digging in the dirt with your hands, even walking mindfully among hills or trees or prairie. Whatever you have access to, wherever you reside, your nature is revealed in Nature. Our job in that scenario is to show up in Nature and pay attention to what unfolds in front of our very eyes — life. Not separate from our lives, but informing them.

Another nature-based practice I teach is being conscious of the moon and seasonal cycles as a mirror to explore the cycles that move our own life. How are the tides within us affected, as the seas are, by the phases of the moon? What does that look like and feel like? How does our energy flow within a day, or within the seasons? What do our most common cycles – for example sleep, menstrual cycles, eating and digestion – and how fluidly (or not) we work with our body’s needs, tell us about how well with work with our nature? How can we work with these natural aspects of our being that we have grown so disconnected to, to reduce stress and encourage a feeling of flow and ease and well-being in our lives?

Learning to Rest

About 12 years ago, I was in a very physically demanding job (baker) and became ill with mono, which went misdiagnosed for many months. I thought it was just a bad cold and continued to work, finding myself pushing ever harder the more pain I was in. I was not at all kind or compassionate towards myself – after all, there was work to be done and I had a team to lead. There was absolutely no time to coddle myself through a cold.

Does that line of thinking sound familiar?

I was completely in my head, driven and responding only to what was in front of me – the needs of the business I managed, and of my family. My body, even though it was a core part of my ability to do my job, and do it well, was a nuisance to me with its constant needs and demands for food and rest and care, especially with an illness. Regardless of the pain I was in, I couldn’t be bothered. Until I was forced to.

It’s a common story. It sounds ridiculous to me now, but that mindset – conscious or not – is a key component of our cultural stress epidemic. Work hard, and when an obstacle is encountered, work harder, no matter what it is. This is our societal programming and the very thing we need to un-teach and un-learn to remember our body’s innate capacity for healing itself.

The irony is not lost on me that the only treatment for mono is rest. After many months of attempting to appease my body by reducing to part time work, the illness continued to get worse, finally forcing me to take a month off to do almost nothing – literally – but sleep. A few years prior I was a long-distance cyclist; during my illness, I couldn’t walk our dog a block without returning home winded and exhausted, surrendering to an hours-long nap.

When I returned to work after that month, everything changed. I could no longer work the early hours – I needed a regular 8-10 hours of sleep per night, waking naturally without an alarm. I could no longer be a baker; the detriment to my body was too severe and the job too physical, so I became a manager instead, and with it, I had less physical activity and more normal hours. I needed regular meals that worked with this new energy cycle; there was no such thing as skipping a meal because I was too busy or it wasn’t convenient.

If I stopped paying attention, if I stopped being present to the needs of my body, the system fell apart. It was amazing to witness and frustrating in turn, that my brain was now relegated to the back seat, and my body was in charge. What it needed reigned supreme.

This time in my life required me to get in touch with my body’s own cycles and honor them in order to find my center. As my healing necessitated that I slow down, I began spending much more time outdoors and paying closer attention to the parallels between Nature out there, and my nature in here. I began to recognize myself as a not only connected to Nature, but of it. And as such, I realized I had a blueprint right outside my door for how to honor the whole of me – body, mind, and spirit. I needed only to remember.

Since then, I’ve meditated regularly, and almost two years ago, I felt drawn to move my meditation practice outdoors. After only a few days of meditating while lying on the earth, resting against a tree, sitting with my bare feet on the ground, or walking mindfully in Nature, it became clear that I was being invited to let the energy of the earth support me, on all levels. It blew my mind. Nearly 700 days later, I’m still going strong.

It’s that good.

I now sit or walk daily in Nature and meditate, embracing the partnership of truly experiencing myself as a part of her. I’ve learned that the more I’m in my head, the more I forget my true self as a part of Nature. And once I lay back, settle in, or otherwise immerse myself in the natural world, my stress melts away, and I remember myself as connected to the pulse of the earth.

Stress and the Body

Working with the earth energies is all about connecting to your body as that is the physical nature of ourselves that we can directly experience as Nature. Grounding is at the core of my practice, and is at the core of body-connection, pulling our energy out of our head and back into our body. When we feel grounded, we feel safe and supported, we feel nourished and held, we have a stable foundation from which to interact fully and well with the world. Imagine a tree with weak roots – one gust of wind will blow it over. We want to plant our energetic roots firmly into the earth like the tree, so that we can reach high into the full authentic expression of who we are in the world.

Stress is caused by this false idea of separation that keeps us from feeling grounded in our lives. When we experience grounding through working with the earth and earth energies, we feel connected, we remember that we are all a part of the same source energy. It is in that remembering of connection, in the direct experience of being held and supported, that we feel safe. When we feel safe, we feel able to respond consciously with what happens in our lives, from the big events, to the little daily challenges, allowing us to let go of the need to control the people and situations around us, inviting us to go with the flow. When we show up in our lives from a strong foundation of connection, support, nourishing ease and self-love, the events we are faced with may be stressful, but we have tools that enable us to respond with ease.

Outdoor Practice for YOU

Want to try connecting to Nature with your practice?

Bring a towel or blanket out into the yard or to a park or the beach (anywhere, really) and pick a reasonably flat surface to lay it out. Lay down on your back, letting your feet fall comfortably open and rest with your hands palm down, for grounding. Honor your body’s needs; if you need something under your head, if you need something over your eyes, etc., whatever you need. Listen and respond as you get settled.

Close your eyes. Take a nice deep breath into your belly, feeling it rise on the inhale, and fall on the exhale. As you breath deeply, notice any scents on the air – flowers, green leaves or grass. Notice any sounds – cars nearby or far away, children playing, dogs barking, leaves swaying in the breeze. Notice how your body feels – is the temperature cool or warm or just right, are you laying on any bumps, is the ground soft or hard beneath your back body.

Next, notice your head and neck and shoulders and how they feel – are they tight and constricted? Is your mind racing? Breathe into your head space, into the areas around your head and neck and shoulders and imagine any worries or concerns (or grocery lists or scheduling of play dates…) melting like ice into the earth.

Next, notice the area around your heart and how it feels – is it tight and constricted, or relaxed? Breathe into your heart space and imagine any worries or concerns (or anger or grudges…) that lay upon your heart melting like ice into the earth.

Next, notice your low back and backside resting upon the earth and how they feel – are they tight and constricted, or relaxed? Breathe into your low back space and imagine any worries you have around your safety (finances, career, family, or even how weird it feels to be laying out in your yard…what if someone sees you? What will they think?) melting like ice into the earth.

Let your breath find its natural rhythm, and continue breathing, focusing your mind upon the breath. If your mind is particularly antsy, imagine any thoughts that it is coming up with melting like ice into the earth. Let the earth hold you and support your body as you lay, letting your energy equalize with the energy of Nature. This requires no efforting on your part, simply a willingness to relax into what is. Your nature will do the rest.

*****

The beautiful thing about earthing, about connecting this way with Nature is that you can do it anywhere – just step out your door and it’s available. Even if you can’t be outdoors, you can imagine yourself there dropping energetic roots from your feet through the building you’re in, into the ground, into the core of the earth, and breathe.

Probably the biggest question I get asked is, what is the strangest experience I’ve had in my outdoor meditation practice? One afternoon late last summer as I sat, a squirrel actually jumped into my lap…and then quickly out again, once realizing I was not the chair I was sitting in! It scared the crap out of both of us (not exactly stress-reducing!), but also reduced me to a fit of laughter. That’s the moment when I knew body and soul that I really AM of Nature. The squirrel confirmed it. 🙂

To me, stress reduction is just a happy byproduct of having a mind-body practice that works for you. Dabble. Explore. Take what works for you from any number of practices. In addition to outdoor meditation and earthing, I do yoga, qigong, a more typical meditation practice, even painting and writing are part of my mind-body practices. As long as you are bringing awareness to what you’re doing, to how you feel, to where your body is in space, you are in practice. Don’t think there have to be rules or only one way. Bring joy to the exploration and find what works for you.

Want to connect with Christy? You can find her on her website christymoemarek.com.

She documents her outdoor meditations on Instagram, too. Follow her here!