Align Your Body, Live In Your Body, Feel With Your Body
Baked quiche cooling on an oven in a beautiful dish
Align your body, this one is tricky or at least it was for me. I had to separate a lot of things before I could become present in my body safely, so that I could become aligned with it. This included stripping away what I had been taught to tell myself, through multiple systems of oppression, about my body, healing traumas experienced with my body, and navigating through states of crises for both my mind and body. I will write about each of these layers in the future, but in the meantime, I want you to know each had to be pulled away, examined, and dealt with in some manner before I felt safe to be present in my own body. For me, getting to that point took therapy. If any of these barriers are present for you or if you are experiencing a constant state of suffering relating to your mind or body, I strongly encourage you to seek therapy. If you are on the other side of a crisis or have made progress in your healing, let’s talk alignment.
To align your body is not about achieving some ideal that doesn’t exist. It’s about tuning into how your body feels so you can align what you do with and to your body with what leaves you feeling your best. I spent a lot of time in my head without even realizing I was doing it. There are many reasons why we might escape to our minds. Some of us have sensory issues and avoiding the body is an escape from overload and some of us have experienced trauma through our bodies and separating from that pain has allowed us to survive. Most of us retreat to our minds for a variety of reasons and I would bet all of us have at least once felt the judgmental gaze society places on us and needed a moment of reprieve. The problem arises when we don’t come back into our bodies and instead depend solely on the mind to make our choices.
A helpful first step to becoming present in my body was to pay attention to the feelings experienced by my body whenever I had a decision to make. I had to consciously force myself to become aware of the feelings in my body, to intentionally tell myself to feel, and this took some practice. I started with what would be a simple decision for me like what do I want to eat for dinner, you know what simple decisions are for you. I would answer yes and no to each choice and pay attention to how my body responded. I’m often indecisive and tuning into my body’s response helped me to not only be present, but it also made the decision more obvious to me, BONUS! This is a definite no, that’s a maybe, ok what if I say yes to this over that, what do I feel? Hesitation? That’s a no. Peace? That’s a yes. The more you practice paying attention to what your body feels, the more present you become, and the easier it is to translate these feelings into decisions about what to do WITH and TO your body.
The things I consider doing with my body are any type of physical action and action does not only include movement and exercise. Listening, reading, and communicating are all actions. All bodies are different and have differing abilities so what you do with your body depends on what kind of body you have, but if you have a body, you’re doing something with it every day. We can consider how these different activities make our bodies feel to determine what our bodies like best. There is no gold standard, and no one can tell you more about your body than you. Use how you feel to decide when and what types of activities are best for you and adjust the frequency accordingly. Your body is not just a vessel with which to do things, it also requires care.
Things that are important to do to your body include providing it with rest, nourishment, and grooming. This is where you will find what we often think of first when we think of self-care. Pay attention to how you feel after you eat different foods and eat more of what makes you feel good and less of what makes you feel less. How do you feel after different amounts of rest? How do you feel when you shower? How do you feel when you wear certain clothes? Some people may need to begin with aligning what they do to their bodies before they are comfortable moving onto aligning what they do with their bodies. And many of us may have medical issues such as diabetes or allergies that require additional considerations when making choices about what is best. If you don’t know where where to start to align your body, try asking your body and feeling the response. In summary,
Become present by noticing how your body feels when deciding
Use feeling to guide what you do with your body (how you use it)
Use feeling to guide what you do to your body (how you care for it)
Puddin knows the importance of rest
