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The fact that our culture tends to focus on what is wrong (so it can be fixed) means that the body is often simply ignored and only paid attention when it feels "bad" in some way. But actually there are always pleasant enlivened sensations occuring somewhere - the trick being simply knowing how to access them. And particularly (for our purposes here) access them in a useful way. So it should be said quite clearly right at the beginning - that the end point we are aiming at is to be able to feel (by exercising choice) the "good" and pleasant feelings that reside in the body. Feelings that I put in the general category of "comfortably and pleasantly alive".
To give one important example (that we'll come back to later), almost everyone is aware of the "glow" state that arises when we are in the presence of something beautiful - something that "touches us" (or "touches our heart"). This is not a thought or an idea or anything mental - except for the thoughts / stories that are atteched to it. This state is a feeling - a response by the whole of your layers of body-mind/being that lie below the level of thought, to something of beauty.
I guess that most people who have got this far are already comfortable to some extent with the idea of working with the body - of feeling the body - of somatic (soma=physical body) interoception (feeling sensations inside the body). But that is not necessarily where everyone is starting from.
Many people are actually comfortable-enough with their body or already enjoy it as a source of pleasant feelings. But over the years I have also come across many people who are terrified of their body ("alexithymia") - perceiving it as a store of overwhelming emotions, of pain, or simply inexplicable feelings of overwhelm. The body can hold emotions that feel like they might take over, of mind-numbing terror, murderous anger or hatred, betrayal, grief, physical pain, anxiety and distress, sexual urges and desire, anguish and angst, bottomless emptiness, overwhelm itself or siilar feelings of heaviness and burden, memories of "difficult" events or periods of life, or feelings so complex and confused that they are inexplicable and incapacitating. In addition some people suffer an excruciating thinness of psychic skin that makes them deeply and inescapably sensitive to electrical fields, other people's feelings (or even thoughts), environmental pollutants, noise, and many other unpleasant experiences. Sometimes distress also arises because the everyday sensory experiences of being alive are "missing" and the self and the world feel somehow numbed, distant or even absent.
The usual strategy employed by most people (including myself in my early years) who feel uncountenance-able feelings - is to retreat from the physical body into the vast world of mental and imaginative (or even imaginal) space. The only problem with this as a long-term strategy is that mental activity needs to be grounded by the physical. If it isn't then there is nothing to stabilise it should the difficult feelings and everything else in the subconscious burst up into the mind. Lack of somatic grounding is the start of mental instability, because the mind has nothing to hold it, contain it, or set limits to its activity - except if you can exercse a degree of wilful mental control that very few people possess. So awareness of the body is not "thinking about" the body, but is instead experiencing the body - as it actually feels.
Everyone must recognise that they (you) already employ interoception on a daily basis - feeling where your limbs are (proprioception) is a form of interoception, as is the sense of touch, of balance, of feeling "self", of physical presence, of strength (or lack of it), of feeling when you need to go to the toilet or are hungry, thirsty, satiated, warm or cold, sexually aroused, and many other things besides. So feeling (being aware of) the body is not only about "feelings" (emotions), but also about the vast array of more subtle physical sensations that give information and a sense of being alive.
So it should be said (again) here right at the beginning that the end point we are aiming at is to be able to feel (by exercising choice) the "good" and pleasant feelings that also reside in the body - the feelings that I put in the general category of "comfortably and pleasantly alive". These feelings are relatively subtle, so if you are not used to putting your attention on them, it may take a little time to trust their existence, to learn to discriminate them, move your attention between them, and trust that they have meaning.
There are many reasons why being curious and deliberately seeking out this "comfortably alive" is useful, important, and will add value to your life, including :
The end result of the practical exercises is a comfortable, energised, more present Embodiment in which there is more awareness of the strength of the body. The positive gains also include:
Clearly this is not a panacea - I have a healthy disrespect for anything that claims to be the best thing since sliced bread. But it is an extremely useful life-skill, way of seeing the world, way of inhabiting and using your body - that is a basis for pretty well everything else, to be applied and used as you see fit.
There are a few caveats. One being that - once dissociation has progressed to the level depersonalisation and derealisation or psychosis, then the exercises and suggestions here may sometimes not be of use. Another being that this is a recipe. There are many suggestions, theories, programmes and techniques in the world, and some of them can be mangled together with no particular loss or danger. The ones presented here are quite subtle and very fundamental, and do not mix well with other recipes. This is a raspberry pavlova. Some experience in cooking and eating it (and understanding the ingredients) is needed before an attempt is made to improve it by mixing it with a recipe for beef stroganoff.
