Pause for a minute right here, right now.
Take a second and tune in. What do you notice in your body? What sensations arise as you read these words? Maybe your belly is tight or you’re holding your breath. Maybe you feel like closing your eyes. Maybe you’re thinking, You want me to do what now? Jess, stop.
We spend a lot of time in our heads, not grounded in the experience of our bodies. We went to school and were taught to *think* through the problems and *think* the solutions. Like it’s the only way.
You need to be able to read your body data, too.
We have no idea how to interpret our body intel. Some of us have been ignoring our inner HECK YES and HELL NO for so long that we don’t recognize what they feel like in the body, how to tell them apart, or what to do with the information.
Often when we’re asked how we feel, we respond with a story:
I’m really upset because last night my partner and I had a fight.
I just can’t go to another meeting where all the men talk over me.
The issue with talking about our feelings in relation to “what happened” is that it engages our Thinking Brain, rather than our Observing Brain (which connects us to what’s happening in our bodies). Thinking Brain talks over the body’s wisdom.
I wrote more about Thinking vs. Observing Brain here, and Mark Manson is wild good at his break down here, too. We have to slow down in order to pick up on our body data.
This is a job for Observing Brain, using your senses to notice. Anxiety and excitement can feel very similar in the body, but we interpret them differently. We categorize some data as good and some as bad.
The body doesn’t lie, so you gotta get curious. Get used to tuning into Observing brain to figure out what’s going on. There is no bad data. Your raw intel cannot be swayed by corporate funding. It’s your mind that might try to sway you.
The body holds immense wisdom about your next right step, your HELLZ YEAH and HECK NO.
I want to share two resources with you to build awareness AND a language..
1. A Sensations PDF to begin to use as a practice of identifying what’s in the body
2. A Meditation that grounds you in your current experience and gets you IDing sensations right NOW!
To getting present with what’s there,
JESS
Photo by juan pablo rodriguez on Unsplash
