dear friends,
By now we’ve all heard about the importance of grounding ourselves in the present moment. And most of us are familiar with the concept of the somatic, too. (If the word is new to you, all it means is relating to the body as opposed to the mind or spirit.) But knowing that our lives would flow more smoothly if we do something is not the same as doing the thing. And, if you’re anything like me, learning to actually connect to your own somatic wisdom may not be easy.
My epiphany came when I realized that I could trust my body in a way that I could not trust my own mind. Over the course of more than five decades on this planet, the vast majority of my unskillful decisions have happened when I was entirely in my head. You know, those times when you make a mental (or literal) list of pros and cons, but ignore the knot in your stomach or the dull headache. The times that you listen to everyone else’s opinion, but ignore the tightening in your chest or that sharp pain in your jaw.
And my most skillful decisions?
Well, those happened when my mind and body agreed. Those were the decisions I made when I left myself time to digest after coming up with a solution to a problem or a plan to reach a goal. For years, this was a hit-or-miss process because I was so attached to the mind that I couldn’t see clearly. It simply did not occur to me that even though the body doesn’t communicate in words it still communicates.
Now, with nearly five years of reacquainting myself with my own somatic wisdom, I can say without a doubt that our bodies excel at calling BS when our brains spin stories that don’t reflect how things really are. Sometimes the reality-check has to do with our external world and sometimes we need a reality check with our internal perspective. Either way, when we’re not being truthful to ourselves, our body knows it. The trick is to learn to listen.
Here’s the practice I started with and come back to whenever I’m feeling a disconnect.
(1) Connect with your senses like you did when you were a kid. Before we all became thinking machines, we played. We smelled freshly-cut grass while doing a cartwheel; we felt rough bark with bare feet as we climbed a tree; we tasted the sweetness of a just-picked peach as juice ran down our chin; we saw the tiny purple violet sprouting near the rock; and heard the quiet rustle of leaves in the breeze. We all have that capacity, it’s just that for many of us it’s a long-forgotten skill. But it’s a skill that can be very fun to hone. Start with your favorite sense; we all have one or two senses that we gravitate toward. Pick one for a day and intentionally reacquaint yourself. If your happy place is tactile, pay attention to how your towel feels when you dry off after your morning shower, focus your awareness on what you like about your sheets when you climb into bed or how the bottom of your feet feel when you walk on moss. Then move on to another sense and do the same thing for a day. At the end of the week, you’ll have re-opened five new information channels between your mind and your body.
(2) Create your own somatic ritual for clear seeing. I now consciously build in some slack after making a decision and before taking action in order for my body’s wisdom to make itself known. For big life decisions, I try to build in at least three days between decision and action. For minor things, that buffer time can be as short as stepping away from an email draft for the time it takes to eat lunch. The key is to make the choice and then let it settle. Thích Nhất Hạnh told a story about a young girl at Plum Village asking for apple juice, but refusing it initially because the pulp made the juice look cloudy. Once the pulp settled to the bottom of the glass, though, she could see that the juice was good and she drank it. The truth is that we frequently don’t see things clearly at first. When we make decisions when the glass is cloudy, we may be lucky and the juice will be good. But often, its’ not. Making decisions when things are still cloudy is essentially choosing to base your decision on incomplete information. (And if you’re questioning this, think about the last time you were hit you with a hard sell. If someone else is pressuring you to make up your mind quickly, slow down. Wisdom rarely collaborates with aggressive artificial deadlines.)
(3) Test, refine, repeat. Like with everything I write about here, experiment and find what works best for you. When you have a quiet moment in your day, check in. Get to know your senses. Does your stomach feel upset every time you meet with a certain person? Explore that. Do you feel light and energetic on days when you’re working on a particular project? The more you pay attention, the more skilled you’ll become at picking up subtle nuances. Your body wants the best for you, let it help. And if you don’t pay attention, don’t worry: your body will still try to help, but the messages may get louder. For me, that loud message came one early morning when I was working as a lawyer in a steel-and-glass high rise in midtown Manhattan. My heart clenched and started beating so hard and fast that I was certain I was having a heart attack. Looking back, I understand that what for my mind was a terrifying panic attack was my body signaling to me in the only way it could that I needed to reevaluate my work life. If I had started listening to it when the migraines started or when the constant back pain made it uncomfortable to sit at my desk for ten hours, there would have been no need for a signal as dramatic as a panic attack. Which brings us back to the beginning: When we cultivate somatic wisdom, we’re able to navigate life in a more refined, nuanced and skillful way.
That’s it for this week! I hope you enjoy getting to know your senses.
warmly,
alison
