Stop Asking Why and Instead Ask…
Often times when we begin working with our bodies and focusing on physical sensations, we notice our mind get caught - it starts thinking about the sensation, wondering what caused it, narrating the story of an old injury or pain, and often then projecting into the future with the assumption that it will always be this way, or get worse. When your thoughts travel to the past or the future, it’s a good sign that we’ve left the moment and the body behind. The impulse is usually, if I can figure this out, I can fix it. And that is our mind doing what it is trained to do - find a problem and try to solve it. It’s had success in this approach before so it keeps trying it. Our mind responding to thoughts is not a problem, it is a function.
Feelings are distinct from thoughts however, and require a different approach. Feelings are meant to be felt, attended to with observation and care. If we have prioritized our mind over our body - which almost all of us have, we’re certainly encouraged to by the external world - it can be hard to try a new method. So instead of trying to ignore or turn off the brain, attempts which often leave people frustrated and believing they “can’t meditate” because they can’t clear their mind completely, we try offering the mind the option of getting curious about the other questions we could ask. “What do I feel in my body right now?” “Where in my body do I feel sensation?” “Does the sensation move or shift or change as I pay attention to it?” “How does it feel - steady or intermittent? Quiet or loud?” “ When I make small physical adjustments does the sensation change in response?” These questions keep the mind’s focus on the immediacy of feeling, rather than jumping to analyzing or processing. Analysis and process are great for after the class, and making notes for yourself about what you experienced so that you can see your bodily experience over time. But just like it is counterproductive to edit as you write, it is the same with learning from and being with the body.
So much affects our body and its experiences in the world and oftentimes even where we feel pain or concern may not be the origin point of that pain, just where the sensations arise. Our past, relationships, activities, environment, and even our thoughts all affect what we feel, emotionally and physically. Rather than trying to untangle the threads of causation, in our physical practice we can instead stay with (or more likely, keep coming back to) the feeling in the moment. When we do this, we begin to really understand that no feeling is final. Even if we approach long-standing pain we can begin to know it in a new way and feel shifts in it.
Like anything we give our attention to, the body responds - by communicating more clearly and more often. The part of us that believes we must always be in control, must always be right and certain, can soften. And this softening can change the experience we have in each moment. Rather than resisting our experience, we allow. Our body can become our ally, helping us respond to ourselves and others with the kind of care and attention that fits the moment, rather than reacting from a habit or a thought process tied to something not actually present in the moment. This is how we change our actions and behaviors to allow them the space to align with what we really value, how we actually want to participate in our lives and the world. Each time we notice our mind take over and we return our awareness to what we feel and sense in this moment, we’re building and reinforcing new neurological connections, new ways of responding.
We may not need to fix, change, or solve anything. And if there is something we need to change, it will be clearer to us from an embodied perspective - when body and mind agree.