Learning to be present through your body

When you say “I need to learn how to be present”, what does that mean? That you mentally feel scattered or fragmented? That you get distracted from overthinking about a memory, problem, situation? That you have a hard time staying still or focusing?

These are all descriptions of the same thing. And they all have the same elegant solution - learn to use your body.

Let me explain. The distractions from the present moment are not bad in and of themselves. You need to plan for the future, to remember your history, and to discover solutions to problems. However, when you do so out of distraction, compulsion, or avoidance, you are doing without using one of your greatest assets - your feeling capacity.

Feeling is the main gift of having a body. It’s the feedback system that allows us to be the observers of our experience. Being able to observe your felt experience is how we are able to choose how we experience life.

Without conscious choice, we feel frustrated or stuck, so we move away from the feeling. And we “do” without feeling. And we feel fragmented, distracted, stuck, compulsive, restless.

When I teach people how to be still in their bodies, they get better at it as they learn how to move in a way that is organic and whole.

Ironically, learning to move with feeling is one of the best pathways to stillness. Moving while feeling is the definition of somatic movement.

Over the past 20 years I have sought the most direct, effective, and lasting ways to make global changes in a body. When I started teaching classes online, I discovered that doing so through a digital medium - one that had no dimension - naturally demanded that people listen differently. When you learn embodiment online, you experiment more, you listen differently, you are naturally more self-reliant. In fact, you uncover your strength, your ease, and your resilience.

Are you ready to access more of yourself? Read an excerpt from my book to learn more.

Google Your Body: The answer to chronic discomfort

The stories you tell yourself and the stories your body tells you should sync but when they conflict, the body wins. Do you crave more ease in your daily body? Where do you start? If you have chronic pain or discomfort, if you’ve tried many modalities but keep bumping up against the same restrictions, consider learning the language of the body to discover how to change its story through the plasticity of your perception.

A body tells stories of comfort, safety, and survival. They are generic and universal. Our bodies go into survival mode when conditions seem life-threatening. On a fundamental level, your body is designed to conserve energy the best way it can. Your body will do what it can to organize you to be upright and not fall down. It’s going to make sure the images from your two eyes create one image in your brain. All these things are body functions that signal comfort, safety, survival, and they are largely unconscious.

The conscious story you tell yourself is one of self-identity, belonging, ancestry. These stories are personal and unique. The brain builds these stories through memories and meaning. When the brain can’t make sense of what happened, when you can’t tolerate or process something in the moment, the experience lives on until you are ready to unpack it. In the meantime, per trauma expert Van der Kolk, the body keeps the score.

These stories together build a narrative that you live in every day. The conversation between your body and your brain are happening whether you pay attention or not. That conversation is accessible to you through your perception. Your brains speaks in words and abstractions, but your body speaks in feelings and sensations.

Sensations are by design adaptive. They are your entry into the plasticity of your brain. Feelings are more complex, so it is easier to work with the building blocks of sensations.

How do you start? Here are two key steps to overcoming conflicting stories within you:

1. Learn to listen to your body from the inside

2. Discover your internal strengths in order to authentically experience your vulnerabilities.

The first step means bringing subtle body cues up into conscious perception. Being able to pay attention to your body signals is a learned skill. In fact, it may work best once your central nervous system is fully matured. We now know that full maturation of the pre-frontal cortex doesn’t happen until the ages of 25-30yrs.

Children speak the body story. You get better at applying the brain story when you have more years of practice digesting or integrating body signals. But the body story cannot be blocked out. Dr. John Sarno was an MD who famously relieved back pain in patients by helping them identify their repressed rage. He became so effective in his approach that people have experienced recovery from back pain by merely reading his book.

We put aside body signals all the time, and we need to in order to get through a normal day. It’s natural. But you need more tools than disconnection from, or dominance over, your body in order to manage the ups and downs of a full life.

Discovering where your brain and body are in conflict doesn’t have to be a dramatic process. We all experience some degree of it. You can try measures here and there as you try to keep stress at bay.

Or you can learn a deeper skill: to dynamically center and empower yourself. When you can experience the deep systemic strength you have within a well-organized physical system, you can untie the knots of conflicting stories within you.

I have been teaching a full body-mind awareness approach that efficiently snaps your attention into the moment. In this approach, I apply a technique to learn the skill of moving from strength to vulnerability. It’s a simple and potent approach.

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Deep brain function and daily life

What strategies do you take to get out of your own way? How can you finish that project that has been nagging you for months or years? What can you do to stay calm when faced with old triggers? Why can't you put into action ideas that are in your head?

Most people go to the mind to deal with themselves (meditation, mindfulness training) and some bring more body to the task with mind-body practices (yoga, tai chi, dance, somatic psychotherapies).

The Connectivity Project is an integration of several modalities I have worked with over the years. It's designed to get to your mind through the roots of your brain. Working on the deepest levels of brain coordination is an act of integrating the fastest functions in your brain. Balance, coordination, sound, and light processing are done at speeds beyond your cognitive control. When these systems are improved simultaneously, a synergistic improvement happens within yourself that may be hard to describe. But you feel it. It’s palpable and profound because it fine tunes the foundation you have grown used to. (content continues below video)

Big neurological shifts are experiences that are exhilarating and affect your whole being. Learning to walk on two feet, learning to ride a bike, feeling in the zone of the perfect tennis or golf swing, syncing up perfectly with your dance partner and the music. These are multi-system coordinative events that happen underneath the thinking mind. It feels like flow, it feels like action emerges out of you. It feels like you can get out of your own way.