Listen to your body

We can all be guilty of ‘living in our heads’, and treating our bodies simply as the support act in our lives. I know I have definitely looked at a week before and wondered how on earth I was going to fit in a shower, eating and getting some exercise into what was already a ridiculously packed schedule.

However, real, meaningful change can come through the simply act of connecting with, and really listening to, our bodies. Dr Russell Kennedy is a neuroscientist and medical doctor, and also someone that suffered from crippling anxiety for 30 years. His view is that anxiety is something that exists both in our mind, and our bodies. His approach is that any therapy for anxiety that solely focuses on the psychological elements of anxiety is unlikely to work, as our bodies are still carrying the physical feelings of anxiety, which will in turn re-trigger our minds to look for something to feel anxious about. Instead, his view is that ‘understanding where this feeling [anxiety] lives inside your body is the key to treating anxiety’.[1]. By stopping for just a few minutes, and consciously noticing where you feel anxiety in your body, and using techniques such as breathing, to calm your body down and make it feel safe, you can start to break this cycle.

However, this approach is not new, and is not restricted to anxiety. It is often called ‘focusing’ and can be used to identify where any emotion, including stress, is located in your body, and what physical feelings are associated with it.  Focusing is defined as a ‘body orientated process of self-awareness and emotional healing. It is as simple as noticing how you feel – and then having a conversation with your feelings in which you do most of the listening. Focusing starts with the familiar experience of feeling something in your body that is about what is going on in your life’.[2]

Engaging with your body and listening to what it has to tell you about your emotional state and situation can be a vital therapeutic tool in identifying what changes you want to make in your life, what values you hold to your heart, and what direction you want to go. It can produce astonishing results.

[1] https://drchatterjee.com/a-new-model-for-solving-anxiety-with-dr-russell-kennedy/

[2] Cornell, Anne Weiser (1998) The power of focusing : a practical guide to emotional self-healing. New York: Mjf Books, pp 2-3