The Body Is Always Responding to Perception.

Can you be grateful to your body? For it is your home. It is the home of your senses and therefore of your experience in this life. It is your gateway into this reality.

If you cannot, why can you not? Why do you resent it or hold a grudge towards it? Do you feel that it brings you pain and suffering? Do you feel that it gets in the way of what you want to do or achieve?

Is it perhaps that you do not understand it fully? Is it perhaps that you have not been taught yet how to listen to it and to know the messages it offers to you?

What is your relationship with your body? Do you feel separate from it? Do you live in a “you” and “it” paradigm? Your body is not separate from you. It is an integrated part of the whole of you.

Do you respect your body, value it, and nourish it? If you do not, how can you expect it to function optimally? Are you taking ownership and responsibility for your health and how you feel?

Consider that your body does not have its own mind. It only has yours. Your body is always responding to perception. That is what it does. When you perceive threat or danger your body is naturally instructed to prepare for fight or flight. Even if this perceived danger is not a physical one but a psycho-emotional one, the body’s response to perception will still be the same. It does not interpret a difference between a dog looking to attack and a crowd to whom you are speaking publicly that you fear will be judging you.

Take time to feel what your body’s response to different perceptions is. What happens in your body when you feel anxious or frustrated or upset or overwhelmed? If you feel pressure at work or are unhappy in a relationship or feel powerless in your life how does your body respond? What tension does it hold to guard or protect? In what way does it feel burdened, heavy or dragged down? In what way is it responding to your desire to run away or hide?

Much tension gets stored in the body because we don’t follow these desires for movement and expression into action. We tend not to run away when we won’t to or lash out or truly speak our mind when we feel frustrated or angry. Here, the body receives two messages: One that says: “speak up, hide, fight or run” and another that says: “Don’t do that, you’ll look silly or it won’t work, it won’t go away or it will lead to more trouble”, and so, there is an equal and opposite force in the body blocking the first desire for movement and action. Tension results: a conflict within the body, two opposing stories.

Watch your body, feel your body, learn about it and the way it responds to stress and trauma; the way it responds to perception. Change perception and you will change your body. Don’t fear your body. Come to know your body. Listen to it. It is a storehouse for your learning, a well pool of self-discovery. 

Written by Adam Cootes of Arising Self

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