20210528 - Hello Body

When we get triggered by life there will be a ton of different reactions in the body such as contraction, stress, lots of energy moving. This can be very uncomfortable and for most people, including me, the automatic way to deal with this activation in the body is to go into excessive thinking in the form of blaming, victimhood, passing judgements about others or ourselves, obsessively trying to solve the problem. This is not a conscious choice, it’s an automatic respons. When we are triggered like this it can feel like we are “caught in our mind”, the thoughts go round and round in loops and are often very repetitive and chaotic. We go into this excessive thinking believing that we can “solve the problem” by obsessing about it. “If I just repeat for myself that this should not happen enough time, maybe it will never have happened”. This is of course not what we actually believe, but from how we think and act it seems like it is. So is there a better way? Yes! Meet the emotions and sensations in the body! Practise just being present with and feeling whatever is happening in the body. “What? What good is that going to do?” Well, you know how a baby that is upset calms down when it is put on mothers chest? What happens is that the mother helps the baby regulate its nervous system by being present with the baby. The baby learns that it is safe because “mother is here”. This mechanism is in our biology. When we are present with ourselves in this way we are being our own parent and we regulate our own nervous system by being present and staying with ourself. This is one of the things we practise in body scan meditation, which is what we are doing today!