The BOLD (Living All In)
For much of my life, I lived in my head. I relied on thoughts and words and ideas. The rest of me was this annoying place that didn’t move fast enough, that harbored aches and that needed stuff. Geez.
All that began to change a few years ago. On my journey to introduce my brain to the rest of me (and vice versa), I’ve discovered some amazing truths. My body has wisdom. It knows things that words won’t ever be able to capture. The wisdom of the body and the emotions that live there are fluid and as soon as I put words on the experiences, the experience shifts. Sometimes that’s a good outcome. Sometimes valuable data is lost that way.
By finding new ways to inhabit all of me, I’m enjoying a more coherent, integrated experience and accessing critical wisdom.
The Whisper (Living Breath)
There is no mind body connection. In order for two things to be connected they have to be distinct, separate entities. The mind and the body can’t be connected because they are all one thing. The premise is faulty because it reflects the artificial notion that they can somehow be disconnected. You brain is a function of your body. Your body includes your brain. One does not exist without the other (apologies to all 1950’s campy sci-fi movies with a disembodied genius brain trying to take over the world).
Ok, that last paragraph is a tiny bit of an over statement. One of the Prospects of Possibility™ (the theme for August, by the way) is Refresh the Body Connection. Clearly there is a need to tend to the connections between our intellectual experience and our physical experience. It just seems that we have gone too far in emphasizing the apparent difference between body and brain. They are integrated.
Our brain commands our autonomic system, pumping blood and lymph, digesting nutrients, moving oxygen, and eliminating waste without direct conscious input from us. Our brain also wanders about looking for danger, processing input, making meaning from data, establishing memories, deciding on and executing actions. Our brains are quite busy.
Our bodies are busy taking in data as well—temperature, sensation, needs. Some of our systems probably don’t even need input from our brain—cells are repaired, cilia exchange oxygen for waste gasses.
It’s almost a chicken and the egg discussion when we seek to understand who is in charge. The loop of stimulus and response is so tight, and we are learning more about how the nervous system, spread through our whole body, leads itself through responses.
We are one big ball of computing power and wisdom.
The brain and the body are seamlessly united in a system that ebbs and flows. Funny, then, that we use our brain to harbor thoughts that the brain is one thing and the body another. Sometimes our rebellious brain even suggests that our body doesn’t get a vote. (see the story of how my brain convinced me to scrub the bathtub from a wheelchair the day I was released from the hospital because, “Oh, you’re out of the hospital. You must be all better. Time to get to work.” Bad, oblivious brain.)
Living fully in every square inch of our own real estate is essential. How will be access intuition without that shiver that runs down our spine? How will we see to the needs of our biochemical system if we ignore the hollow pangs of hunger? How can we decide what to do if we don’t take in all the available information? We need the wisdom of our bodies and the computing power of our brains.
For the next few articles, we will be discussing different aspects of Refreshing the Body Connection. How can we learn to move into the attics and basements of our physical being in order to tap into all the goodies hiding there?
LEARNING THE BREATH
For a start, look to your breath. There are many great breathing exercises that can help you to be still and focus on this system. It is one of the only systems in the body that allows us to switch from automatic to conscious control and back again swiftly.
If you do nothing else, listen to your breathing for a few moments and thank it for billowing in and out all day and all night without your conscious direction. What a gift that is. Then notice that you can decide to change the rate of your breath or even hold it. Again, that control is a gift as well. Imagine how the life-giving oxygen that you are taking in is traveling through your whole system, all the way to your toes, to power all the needed processes of your life.
Just for fun, you can try square breathing. In this technique, your breath in for a count of 4-8, hold your breath for the same, let it slowly out for the same count, and then hold before taking your next breath for the same count. A few times around the square can deepen your focus, dispel the lingering effects of stress, and teach you about your own mechanical system.
If you would like to experience a guided version of this exercise, enjoy this recording from the Bold Whisper Centering Series.
LIVING ALL IN
By living all the way down to your toes, you can access wisdom, information, adventures, and experiences that your brain alone can only imagine. Live in your whole body live all in.
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