
When you have a rainforest mind, you’re a deep, fast thinker. Your mental capacity is vast. You think, worry, question, ruminate, reckon, critique, imagine, analyze, synthesize, emote, and evaluate. Most of the time. OK. All of the time.
So, I’m wondering. What about your body? Do you give your body the attention that it deserves? Do you notice your mind-body connection? Are you tuned in to what your body is telling you? Because, if you’re a highly driven creative ruminator-imaginer-analyzer, which, face it, you are, then, your body is not a passive participant. Your whole body is also ruminating, imagining and analyzing.
This may be obvious to some of you. If so, you can go back to training for that marathon. I’ll see you next time.
If it’s not obvious, listen up.
I’m very aware of my own on-again-off-again relationship with my physical self. It’s been a long-standing conundrum. For most of my life, I’ve been able to ruminate quite well without regard for what my body might be experiencing. But, over the years, I’ve learned that these bones might have something to say. This body might be a source of intuition or wisdom or, dare I say, pleasure. There might be some old trauma that has made its home in my heart that is ready to leave. Or relaxing my neck muscles after a long day of thinking, worrying and questioning could be beneficial.
Who knew?
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I awakened my mind-body through the Argentine tango. The tango has been my entry into body-ness.
And there are many other embodying methods that I’ve experienced as well: Massage. Rolfing. Breathwork. Somatic psychotherapy. Gardening. Hiking. Walking. Reiki. Energy work. Tree hugging. Meditation. Yoga. Singing. Acting. Hot showers. Salsa dancing. Other possibilities I haven’t tried: Running. Body building. Skate boarding. Bungee jumping. Hang gliding. Mountain climbing. Wingsuit flying. Volcano surfing.
You get the idea.
The more driven and mentally speedy that you are, the more you’re going to need to attend to your mind-body. Pay attention to its needs. Teach it to relax. Appreciate its wisdom. Listen to its messages.
And if you go volcano surfing, well, I don’t think I want to know about it.
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To my bloggEEs: Tell us what you do to care for your mind-body. Do you feel deeply embodied? Disconnected? How do you relax your mind-body? What are your bones telling you? (If you’ve experienced trauma in childhood, you might have a very complex mind-body experience. Here’s an introduction to that information from Maria Popova in Brain Pickings shared by Jen at Rediscovering Yourself.)
It’ll be three years this month since I started this blog! I so appreciate all of you for continuing to read, share and comment. I hope to build a page at some point so that it’ll be easier to find posts on topics of interest. For now, though, remember that you can use the search engine or the tags to find what you’re looking for.
And, I just received notice that I’ll be presenting at the SENG conference in August 2017 in Chicago, USA. I’d love to meet many of you there!
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