Take Refuge in Your Body

When the storms of life hit, your physique could be a place of refuge and therapeutic. Cyndi Lee says it begins with making mates together with your physique.

My beagle, Little Bit, can sense a storm gathering. The rationale I do know it’s because Little Bit makes use of the language of her physique to speak her concern. From simply the slightest shift in air stress, her chunky little physique begins quivering. Then, on the first clap of thunder, she springs off her stubby legs and torpedoes herself by the air, taking intention for the acquainted safety of my arms. I’m her port in a storm.

All beings really feel a necessity for refuge or sanctuary at varied moments in our life. A few of us search for safety in materials belongings, profession status, or monetary investments, or we’d search for escape in alcohol, meals, and even over-exercising. An genuine non secular path provides a distinct sort of protected haven. As a substitute of the non permanent aid of an aspirin or a spot to cover from your self, non secular refuge provides a path towards feeling one’s personal fundamental goodness.

As a substitute of unrealistic targets that just about make failure a given, that is nearly feeling good extra typically.

However first, like Little Bit, we’ve to begin by feeling our psychological and emotional discomfort: concern, frustration, anger, hatred, jealousy, pleasure, or any sort of destructive emotion. Once we’re doing this, our personal physique is an ideal automobile by which to take refuge.

Once we people really feel an emotional storm brewing, the adrenaline rush of highly effective emotions typically renders us unable to manage our physique, speech, or thoughts. Holding our breath and quivering, we’d discover ourselves assembly warmth with anger, anger with indignant phrases.  Or we preserve our afflictive feelings inside the place they fester. Grief in our chest, anger in our jaw, concern in our knees, all ultimately reveal themselves by way of ache in our joints or diminished motion capability.

As a substitute of making an attempt to disclaim these emotions, taking refuge within the physique implies that we start to make mates with our physique. We take heed to our physique and deal with it the best way we’d deal with somebody we care about. As a substitute of pushing it too exhausting or being afraid to maneuver it in any respect, we will stroll the center path of intuiting what is suitable for our physique, which implies what is suitable for us.

Get Extra Pleasant

We’ve so many targets for our our bodies: shed extra pounds, get sculpted, be extra wholesome, extra enticing, preserve that youthful glow! Like a dysfunctional romantic relationship the place we anticipate our associate to fulfill our each want, we don’t relate to our physique as our pal, however because the agent for attaining all of our hopes and fears.

To start considering of our physique because the place the place we really feel good helps to shift our aim from wanting to leap greater and run quicker to feeling higher and residing a extra engaged, vibrant life. Do that in small bites I name “train snacks.” Rise up and transfer round for 10 minutes right here and there. Circumambulate the home or workplace, do three solar salutations, stroll your canine, activate music and play.

As a substitute of unrealistic targets that just about make failure a given, that is nearly feeling good extra typically. That is how one can slowly redefine your relationship together with your physique, from one thing exterior of your self that must be totally different, to a refuge that’s at all times there to supply you an expertise of integration and well-being.

Get Curious

We are able to take a lesson from the bodily observe of yoga. The Sanskrit phrase for “pose” is asana, which interprets as “to sit down with what comes up.” Whether or not you might be sitting, strolling, or leaping rope, discover what’s developing: pleasure, resistance, previous recollections, insights. Embrace all of it. When your thoughts strays, re-anchor it by way of the sentiments of your physique, your feelings, or your respiratory.

We are able to study to belief the refuge of our personal physique.

These sensations happen solely within the current, so the physique works as an ideal dwelling base for the wandering thoughts. Discover not simply what your physique is feeling, however how you are feeling about what you feel. You’ll uncover that whereas your physique has been altering on a regular basis, your concepts about your physique, and what it might probably or can’t do, have turn out to be frozen. That’s an attention-grabbing perception too.

Sustaining steady consciousness on this approach is named “mindfulness of physique”—an efficient observe for studying to be larger than we predict we’re, for increasing our consolation zone, and for lightening up a bit of bit by the popularity of impermanence.

Observe: Grounding Contact

Grounding contact is an easy micro-practice for taking refuge in your physique if you really feel pressured and wish a day trip. It’s a technique for connecting to your emotional state by your physique, utilizing the heat of your palms and the calmness of your breath to floor and stabilize your nervous system. You are able to do this wherever—sitting on a park bench, strolling from the elevator to your desk, within the stairwell at work, and even within the rest room.

Stand or sit upright together with your toes firmly planted. Place one hand in your chest and one on the base of your backbone. Inhale by your nostril for 4 counts, exhale by your nostril for 4 counts, and repeat. Really feel the motion of your breath beneath your palms. Let your thoughts trip on the breath, like a raft on the ocean. You may also place palms on coronary heart, stomach, brow, or thighs.

Taking refuge in your physique is self-care with a non secular twist that acknowledges we can’t turn out to be enlightened with out our physique. We should love our physique and deal with it simply as we look after our mates. Then when one thing scary or destabilizing occurs, we will take refuge in our physique as a pal, versus taking refuge in consuming, consuming, procuring, or every other avoidance method. We are able to study to belief the refuge of our personal physique as a spot of intimacy, and this permits us to be alive proper now, obtainable for no matter is required within the second.