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View Full Version : Mindful Habits and Body Feedback



Korpo
9th April 2008, 02:35 PM
For years the only "communication" between me and my knees were two simple messages, coming from time to time: "I hurt" or "We hurt". In fact I have long-term problems with my knees. I was mostly aware of my knees when they hurt and then I actually didn't want to.

After having worked with the tissues of the knees, dissolving blockage, becoming aware of parts, "fixing" energy flow that run through the knees, etc., my perceptions of my knees changed. When becoming mindful of my walking habits I realised my knees tell me how they feel - most of the time. But also sometimes I became aware of something my knees want to tell me, and that makes me mindful.

Short of pain, there is still an enormous amount of information that the inner body senses send to the mind. We are not very conscious of it though. My knees tell me whether they are wobbly, how the muscles feel, if the parts work together, where tension sits, how energy flows, temperature, touch, etc. It is continuously coming as feedback against my actions and inaction.

When you start to develop mindful awareness towards the sensations of your body, you not only dissolve things within the body. You also reverse a process in which you formerly constructed filters of the "I don't want to know" kind. By looking gently at what is there more and more a new habit is created, a habit of being present to the actual sensations.

Now there is something to this which came to me a bit unexpectedly. I thought "I fix this and then I feel better". But sometimes I feel worse! The decisive difference is not that you feel better, but that you feel. Whether your body is a happy temple of health or a vehicle in need of maintenance and repairs does not matter. And even more unexpected - this stream of sensations, whether unpleasant or pleasant, is helpful. In fact - unpleasant sensations can make you aware of the moment.

Think of it: How long seems a moment you have an aching tooth? How long are the nights that you wanted to fall asleep but couldn't as something stirred within you? How long are the moments that you spend with a slight flu? Pretty darn long, eh? ;)

This is "the Now", too. It may not be what you want, but it is very precisely the now. The feedback from my knee can be low-level pain, tension, discomfort, and it is there and it takes me there - to the here and now. Every body sensation that catches our awareness has a pull towards the Now.

Now - how your mind reacts to this - *that* is an entirely different matter. Here you are, skipping back and forth over the Now because of this "awareness pull". Your mind wants to the future, because it dislikes this present. The mind is fantasizing about "as if" scenarios of a painless future, or trying to redeploy the filters that protected it. And this diminishes the presence. And - you can observe it doing it!

Aversion, else tied closely to hurtful spontaenous semi-rare events (known as acute pain ;)), is now pulled into the mind. The phenomenon of aversion can now be started to be observed more often. You can observe what is going on in your body, and the aversion that comes with it from discomforting feedback. You can observe your mind continuously trying to skip back and forth with its "Oh woe is me, I'm hurtin'!" approach to aversion. You can chose not to look away, and strengthen mindful habits, which feeds a loop.

Somewhere down the road there is a mind with more tolerance and equanimity. Some of the painful events themselves have dissolved to nothing. The feedback gets better. And you quite possibly got more healthy. But most of all you became way more mindful of what is happening in your life by anchoring your awareness in that ongoing stream of "body talk".

Oliver