WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION - BETA VERSION, PAGES STILL MISSING!
This work is licensed under
CC BY-SA 4.0
: also see my full Copyright statement.
When you talk to your body-mind, you are also talking to your conscious self and your subconscious self. So what you say and how you say it are both very important.
Most communication with the body-mind (under the system I am teaching here) is done through choice of where your attention is placed. So these forms dialoguing are meant to enhance and supplement the use of attention - they are complementary to the use of attention (and not alternative to it).
Your body-mind is powerful but simple-minded, and is mainly iterested in "verbal" conversations around the subjects of acknowledgement and relationality. It also likes to make up its own mind about safety, and is not open to coercion or trickery.
Typical everyday social language patterns are coercive, sometimes even abusive. They also often limit choice or even place the person in a double-bind (offering two choices both of which are unhelpful). Non-Violent Communication and Ericksonian language patterns are two responses to this issue. The language patterns presented below are specifically designed to be "clean".
The body-mind is talked to from the inside, not addressed from the outside - so it doesn't matter much whether you say it silently in your mind or out loud. Talking out loud is slightly more effective (provided that it is a true conversation rather than an attempt to recite a magical spell). What does matter is that your attention is interested in the sensations in the body. The "reply" will be in the form of a change in sensation, and unless you are "listening" to the body-mind (i.e. genuinely interested in any changes in sensation in the body) it will not consider you to be engaging in a conversation!
Humans speak many different languages, but nevertheless (allowing for cultural strangenesses [1]) can convey meaning between each other and with animals. Biology has many communication universals because the biological processes "listening" are universal. So the cultural variations and specific language make absolutely no differeence because it is the emotional loading behind the words that your body feels. As such, if you speak several languages, your native language is probably the most powerful - because it will invoke somatically deeper meanings [2]. If the words are recited like a mantra with no emotional loading (i.e. they are not genuinely meant from the heart)- then so far as your body (and this exercise) is concerned, no information nas been conveyed [3].
I tend to think of myself addressing a large auditorium or ampitheater - the body-mind is after all a multiplicity.
One of the main (but not the only) effect of both the perceptual "stance"or attitude I am suggesting and the language/somatic dialoguing (see below) - is that there is a partial separation between cognitive awareness and somatic awareness/interoception. By adopting a position of observer and entering a conversation, you separate out the conscious and non-cognitive parts of your awareness (instead of the cognitive mind being in an undifferentiated state in which both thoughts and emotions occupy the same space). This is not an ideal state in everyday life, because the non-conscious potentially brings a profound richness to every experience. But the clarity this temporary separation brings allows you to exercise choice as to where - and on what - your attention rests. This in turn is the basic skill that facilitates "titation" - placing attention on only the smallest sliver of overwhelmed memories or dissociative states (whilst keeping most of your attention on resourced healthy states) so that the overwhelm does not "flood" and take over.
"Talking with the body" requires that you have already "arrived" to the space you occupy, that your attention has settled deeply enough into the body, and that everything else is in place ready to have a conversation.
All of these are meant to be applied as conversations. Meaning that it is necessary when saying them to have an open-minded awareness of the interoceptive space, because any "reply" will come in the form of a change in one or more qualitative aspects in one or more locations in that interoceptive space.
These phrases are all meant to be used within the schema provided - the audio tracks are the best initial guide.
There may be no "reply", which most often means that you still have to learn something about how to hold these conversations - maybe slowing down, or being more trusting of your perception (the replies are often quite subtle), or suspending disbelief, or being genuinely interested in the body's sensations (etc.) A "null" reply is not a failure, but rather an opportunity to learn. The people who need this the most are also the ones most likely to have a learning curve before conversations with the body begin to be possible.
If I decide to be interested in a particular part of the body or to a "reply" (or anything else in my awareness) then "...to whatever extent I can feel that..." is a useful framing, because it also allows that I do not feel anything, or that I feel something but am not sure what I am feeling.
"Could I (now) allow myself to be aware of..." is not quite as open ended but is nevertheless non-forceful. Particularly if used as a polarity, such as "Could I (now) allow myself to be as aware of my left foot as I am in this moment..." (giving enough time to actually be aware and then followed by the opposite) "Could I (now) allow myself to be as unaware of my left foot as I am in this moment..."(!!) This polarity is an incredubly useful general principle if you are struggling with general body awareness. It allows uncertainty and nothingness to be as acceptable as certainty and clarity. When we are truly wholeheartedly OK with whatever we are aware of, not expecting anything more or anything less, then it is also possible to trust the awareness as somehow reflecting reality - even if we don't understand what that might be or how that might happen. Which introduces the issue of...
"...to whatever extent..." can - in certain situations - also be very usefully directed at the opposite - so "Could I now allow myself ...to whatever extent I am aware of..." is balanced by "Could I now allow myself ...to whatever extent I am not aware of...".
There are several points at which it is useful to gently remind all loosely coupled entities of the body that they are part of a greater and whole organism, do not have to keep coping and getting by on their own, and can find support and companionship in the rest of the body.
This is an open and non-forceful invitation to the body-mind - to enter a state of greater integration and less unnecessary adaptedness. If any part of your body mind "realises" that it is unnecessarily over-adaped it will re-integrate itself. Your body mind is always seeking optimum adaptability and energy availability a simple matter of optimising its chances of survival. You have to do nothing more than assist it to have a better calibrated recognition of your present reality.
If the body-mind needs anything from you at all, it is respectful and compassionate recognition. "Yes I can feel that..." is meant to be said when you have genuinely taken at least a few seconds to be curious about what you are feeling and where it is. If you are not genuine the body-mind knows and will ignore your attempted kiddology. If the sensation is painful, then consider that the part of the body that the pain occupies is also feeling the pain - so kindness is also a useful attitude, if you can find even just a small dribble of it. We are being - as best we can - genuinely kind, respectful and attentive to the body-mind.
Very often this phrase is used (see later) when there is a sensation we find unpleasant or excessively dominant (such as pain). The point being that if you genuinely acknowledge a sensation and pay it some curious attention, it is then far easier to lift your attention up and place it elsewhere on a different, more ?"useful?" sensation (see notes on discrimination). If the sensation is not so attended to then trying to get away from it becomes an often fruitless battle. Also see notes on central sensitisation.
It is possible to over-egg the pudding ... but occasionally it is also useful to address a healthy sensation directly and then include the whole body, inviting the body-mind to join in. So in this case I might combine two phrases such as "Yes I can feel that... Here we all are together".
Almost always used after "Yes I can feel that...", this important phrase opens up the possibility that several states of emotion, sensation, or presence - might be present in the body (and discriminated between and individually identified) at the same time.
Big emotions, overwhelm, pain, any kind of activation (such as anxiety or fear) are typical of interoceptive qualities that tend to "flood" - i.e. take over and feel as if all of us is in the same state. In reality the body-mind is a collective consciousness, and so is almost never wholly in the same state - unless there is an immediate situation of life-or-death importance right now at this very moment that demands everything be in the same state. And even then, a completely coherent state of being would be unusual - unless we had already entered an extreme survival physiology. In which case it would be highly unlikely that you would be attempting this exercise!
If at least two identifiable interoceptive states can be experienced instead of one - then any state that is overwehelming or overwhelmed (or is not calibrated to the present moment) can then be put into context, is far less able to flood, and can (potentially) be separated from sufficiently that you can regain control.
This is yet another an extraordinarily useful phrase. If - when any of the exercises have reached a conclusion - you feel some part of your body to be more present, energised, awake, strong, or in any other qualitative way more available and positively engaged, then give it a smile and say "Welcome Home!". This gives huge added value to any treatment or self-managed session, and is not unlike the biblical tale of the prodigal son.
There are direct analogies between fragmented parts and Japanese soldiers still in the jungle trying to survive WW2 as late as 1972. Or to ex-Vietnam veterans. If you consider what might be necessary to re-integrate a traumatised war veteran back into society, this also applies to the dissociated overwhelmed fragmentary imprints – no matter how large or how small they might be. The soldier has to:
If you are not used to placing attention on the body in any sustained kind of way, then it might throw a few surprises! Interoceptive awareness may occasionaly make you aware of large areas of blankness or substantial differences in sensation, of limbs apparently bigger on one side of the body than the other or even the body feeling as if it is twisted or displaced when - if you look at it from the outside it obviously isn't. And many other things besides.
If you don't trust your own senses, whose do you trust?
Tad James
Please remember that these possibly strange and unfamiliar experiences actually provide useful information about the state of the body-mind, the internal sensory and autonomic nervous systems, and the relationship between layers of consciousness and layers of physical tissue. If you can be just curious and receptive, and trust your senses, then you will find that these strangenesses resolve themselves, become familiar.
Eventually you will develop a vocabulary of sensation - an increasingly broad range of interoceptive experiences that do not worry you, but rather are easy to be with, navigate through and find descriptive words for. Interestingly, the ability to find a descriptive word (which is a Left brain activity) creates more clarity about the detail, and so reinforces Right brain activity - this integrative and complementary application being the proper use of Left and Right hemisphers of the cortex.
The less you interfere by trying to make them "how they should be" (or being frightened or incredulous of them), the more quickly and completely will the re-integration take place according to the self-re-organisational intelligence of the body-mind. This kind of internal (non-cognitive) shift is often accompanied by very positive improvements in areas such as limb coordination, proprioceptive capacity or musculoskeletal balance, etc etc.
References & Notes
