HOW MUCH DO YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR BODY?
Have you ever wondered what meaning a signal that comes from your body can have?
Have you ever tried to listen to understand the message it can hide? Have you ever simply given yourself the time and space to take care of it?
The invitation I am giving you today, through these words but above all through a simple practice exercise, is taken from the book “Being Care. A gentle revolution ”(pages 56-57) and invites you to practice.
It is an exercise that I propose to my patients between a postural rebalancing meeting and the other, to maintain the benefits of the session we practice together and it is an excellent self-maintenance practice to relax the muscle chains, to release the main muscle tensions and to find a greater centering and a better inner balance.
Read the practice to the end and then experiment if you want and if you can.
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Find a comfortable position, you can sit or if you prefer to stretch out, bending your legs with the soles of your feet resting on the ground or placing them on a chair, or on an armchair so that they are supported (and in this case join the legs with a scarf or with tape so that they do not rotate outward). Give yourself time, perhaps half-closing your eyes, to get in touch with the spontaneous movement of your breath.
Be present to the sensations of comfort̀ and / or discomfort̀ of the body and then choose to contact with the breath those parts that require your attention.
Try to use your breath as if it were your hands and try to
direct him precisely to those parts, with kindness and patience, as you would do by caressing or hugging a child or a dear friend in difficulty.
Try to exercise that compassion that we are all generally more trained to address to those we love right now, through your breath and for your body.
Give yourself all the time you need for this exploration and then, with a couple of a little deeper breaths, reopen your eyes and bring your attention outward trying to observe if and what has changed, for the body and for your “feeling” globally.
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The experience you have just had is an experience of profound understanding.
I love the etymology of words, because it somehow reconnects to the depth of the roots that generated them.
The word understanding (from the Latin cum-prehendere, that is to grasp together things that are in front of me), therefore allows an inclusion in itself of all that “I am”, of all that I feel, of all that inhabits me and that includes order and disorder, “comfortable” and “uncomfortable” sensations, pleasure and pain, life flow and stagnation, memories, thoughts, emotions and feelings, dreams and intuitions, background noises and silence.
The word understanding is therefore alreadỳ relationship.
Only by understanding “everything” can I rejoin all that I am and that which I am not yet.
Only by understanding what̀ that is, and what is not yet, can I return to myself, to my deeper Self that does not judge and is not judged, that respects that is sees and therefore, sees itself.
Isn’t respect, that is, the sensation of seeing and being seen at the same time, the foundation of every relationship and of the same feeling of love?
So isn’t it just a compassionate understanding that allows me to reconnect to the unstoppable and inextinguishable flow of love, the infinite source of vitalitỳ and life?
The word compassion also has very interesting semantic roots, and we will see it shortly.
We perceive well-being and discomfort as a wave that is constantly created and recreated, just like our breath.
Good experience and good practice to everyone and everyone!
