LISTENING TO THE BODY

When I teach bodywork frequently you will hear me say "listen to your body" or "notice, feel what is happening to you" This is something that is very hard for people to do, however often they hear it. They want to look good in the class or they are so involved in the doing and the possibility of doing it wrong, that there is no attention or energy left to assimilate what is happening with the body, until it is too late. They over-stretch or over-hold the pose and then they do damage. The practice becomes counter-productive.

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Not just in bodywork is this true. No, in our daily life sometimes we become so involved, so stressed by fulfilling our or someone else's agendas, that we lose our senses. We no longer have any detachment, energy or attention left to feel and to think and to act perspicaciously. Look before you leap is a wise adage!

​We actually end up in a box of "either or" when we are closed to possibilities. It may as well be a coffin, for we have lost our freedom to act. When we have "either or" decisions we become stressed but lose the ability to change things. Best to stop and assess and ask "are these the only possibilities on offer here?"

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At this point we need to return to simple body work. Examine the body position of "resigned to something that doesn't suit me." Change the breath, breathe into the belly, relax the shoulders, tuck the pelvis in, smile. Shake the body. Reconnect with what you are.

In a few moments we are returned to the real. "I am alive. I will die and I will navigate my life according to my own light" or similar phrases become our truth. Phrases that embrace freedom are precious. Hold this knowledge in the very heart of your being. Now a rainbow of opportunities and possibilities arise. An odd comment that we now hear, pushes us in a new direction and what we imagined as a certainty that had constraints on us proves to be false.​

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