Awakening to our body

Jefferson Breland

(9/2024) The purpose of this column is to help you reacquaint yourself with your body. Many of us only check in with it when we think there is a problem.

News Flash! Your body is with you all the time. It does whatever you ask it to do within its capability whether it’s a good idea or not. It deserves a bit more attention and respect.

In the June and August Complementary Corners, I wrote columns entitled, "Your Body Delivers the Mail" and "Emotions and Our Health." In them, I described how your body sends you messages about the state of your being on the body, mind, and spirit levels via symptoms.

I will give a brief synopsis of those articles below. If you would like to read the full articles, I suggest you visit the website, http://www.emmitsburg.net/pdfs/enj/index.htm, where you can download past editions of this paper.

According to Chinese Medicine (CM), symptoms have a root cause in an imbalance of our body’s vital energy, called Qi (pronounced "chee"). Most often the cause of this imbalance is due to the energy of an emotion that effects the flow of this energy or Qi.

Modern science has demonstrated everything of energy. So it follows logically when we are able to change our/the emotional energy moving through our body, we can change our "physical" body and begin to improve our health.

Now, how do we do this?

We begin by rediscovering the relationship between our body and how emotions affect it. Our body is a barometer of our state of being. As I asked last month, Where do you store tension in your body? Jaw, shoulders, neck, lips, tongue, head, lower back, hips, eyes, feet, hands, forearms? It can be anywhere in our body.

We have habitual patterns of responding to the slings and arrows of daily modern life. Most often in our culture we use the word "stress" to describe these influences on our emotions and body. For me, stress is too general a word. I prefer to use five basic emotional states to describe these emotional influences: fear, anger, sadness, worry, and grief.

The goal is to understand how each of these emotions affect you and which part of your body is affected. This is why I suggested doing a bodily self-inventory last month. Another word for taking this inventory is called a "body scan."

Here is one way to do a body scan.

You can sit or stand, the key is to be peaceful and as relaxed as possible. I recommend taking three to four minutes to do the scan. This may seem like a long time and the whole point is to pay attention to your body in a new way. Don’t rush the process. You may be surprised what you discover. Also, notice whatever words or stories come to mind when you get to a certain part of your body.

Start at the top of your head and pay attention to any sensations you notice as you shift your attention slowly downward. Move your attention from the top of the head to your face. Do you notice any tightness in the muscles around your eyes, ears, mouth, or jaw? Are you becoming aware of any other sensations?

If you become aware of some sensations, simply notice them. Use simple adjectives to describe what you are feeling. These words only need to make sense to you. You might use more common words like tight/loose, warm/cold, achy, relaxed, calm, shaky, or tense. You might also use words for colors or sounds. Use words that describe what you are feeling. It is very important to remain calm and not label the sensations as something being wrong or a problem.

You may not notice any sensations. Great. We are simply beginning the process of waking up to our body’s messages.

From the face shift your attention to your neck. Any tension there? Note where you feel something. Do not judge what you feel, simply notice if the sensation is sharp or dull or thick or buzzy or whatever words come to your mind. I actually prefer using non-medical words so as not to label any sensation as a problem.

Now move your attention to your shoulders. Take a deep, slow inhale of breath. As you exhale, relax the muscles in your shoulders. Do your shoulders move lower as you relax them? Repeat this process of inhalation and relaxing your shoulders on your exhalation three or four times, more if you like. What do you observe?

Shift your attention from your shoulders to your arms. What do your upper arms have to tell you? How about any messages from your elbows? Move down your forearms. Anything? Now move your attention to your wrists. Shift attention to your hands, the palms and backs of your hands. Now move down to your fingers. Are they warm? Cold?

Shift your attention to your breath. Is your breathing slow or fast? Is your breath shallow or deep? Just notice without any judgement. Imagine you can inhale through your belly button. Continue to take nice, easy breaths. Don’t force any deep breaths. Do you notice a change in your breathing? If you feel a bit light-headed or dizzy, take care and steady yourself so you don’t fall down. Sit down or lie down until your head clears and you are no longer dizzy. This is usually a sign that you are getting more oxygen than you are accustomed to.

Move your attention to your hips and buttocks. See what you notice there. Continue shifting your attention downward slowly through the thighs to the knees. What do you notice?

From the knees slowly shift your attention down your lower leg. Again, what do you notice? Something, nothing? This is all part of the process. Again, don’t rush. Think of this process as a way of tuning in to the wisdom of your body.

From the lower legs move to the ankles. From the ankles move to your feet. You might shift our weight back and forth, side to side to see what your feet have to tell you.

What do your toes have to share with you about them? Again, it is important to do this scan without judgement or looking for problems. The goal is to wake back up to the messages your body is sending you without pathologizing them. Remain neutral in your thoughts about any kinks or aches.

Now move back up to notice your breath after this journey from head to toes. Has your breathing changed? Are you aware of any other sensations in your body? Just notice what your body is communicating to you. You may even feel calmer than when you started the scan.

You may want to do this everyday as a way of calming yourself and getting a sense of how to take care of yourself over the course of the day.

In a very fundamental way, this is health care. It is listening to the earliest signals from our body that something needs attention. Once we learn our body’s language, we will know better when to go to bed earlier, when to eat certain foods, when to nap, when to go for a walk, who to be around, etc.

More generally speaking, we will begin to know what and who is best for our health.

Stay tuned for next month’s column where I will begin to describe ways to become an even better observer of oneself and our relationship to our emotions.

Jefferson Breland is a board-certified acupuncturists licensed in Pennsylvania and Maryland with offices in Gettysburg and Towson, respectively.
He can be reached at 410-336-5876.