Listening to the Body: Overcoming Fear and Releasing Tension Through Awareness

 

Fear is a response that we need but often the danger alarm is going off for reasons that are not conscious. Even if these reasons become conscious, in dystonia and many other chronic conditions, the signal is firing at a high and often unprovoked rate setting the system into a heightened sympathetic state for much of the time. In order to enter a more balanced state, we need to feel what is going on in our body, entering into our felt sense of the world and embracing the emotions, sensations, thoughts and perceptions we are often not attuned to. As we lean in, we can learn where they came from and get to the core by feeling them without judgement or the added fear of stories to create a further response. It’s the repression of thoughts and emotions and inability to tolerate them and situations that leads to this sympathetic response in the first place. Our journey thus becomes starting to move through the emotions, sensations and thoughts rather than subverting them. This meditation takes you then into a reflection, allowing the subconscious messages of our body to become more conscious, accepted and released through gently asking them what they are trying to communicate and listening with an open and non-judgmental consciousness and then offering ourselves as well as the messages we receive compassion and gratitude. This is meant with time to allow us to enter a more parasympathetic state where we can allow all that is to enter consciousness as a kind witness so the energy and messages of our thoughts, emotions, and sensations in the body travel through us in an open awareness rather than getting stuck within our bodies. 

Open Message Meditation

“First, let’s begin with a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. And then we will do a second breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. And let’s just begin by feeling the breath coming in and out of our body naturally.

And now let’s bring our attention to our body sitting on the surface below it. And just notice what it feels like. To sit on the surface below you.

Notice the space around your body and just feel or sense into the space and the surface below you without thinking or judging. And now let’s feel what the skin feels like on our body. Just sinking into the sensations on the skin.

Next, see if you can notice what your heart feels like. And sense into it. You may notice the rhythm or nothing at all or a felt sense of beating or some emotion.

Whatever it is, let’s just let that bubble up and be with it without judging but rather as a kind witness to whatever is going on there. And then let’s see if we can notice any other emotions or sensations in the body. And just let these come to you as they are again without thinking or judging.

Next, see if you can sense into these emotions or sensations and see if they have a shape or colour or a weight or a picture or even a texture that goes along with them. Finally, let’s gently ask if these emotions or sensations in the body want to say anything to you. And if you are open and can accept the message that they may have for you, then do so and gently ask them what this might be.

Lastly, let’s place a hand over our heart and think these sensations or emotions for their message while offering them compassion. Now, let’s close our meditation by shifting our awareness back to the breath and our bottom on the chair, keeping an open awareness of the felt sense of our body, sitting here and breathing and softening into these sensations as they occur. Finally, let’s take one last deep breath in through the nose and slowly blow it out through the mouth.

And let’s place both our hands to our heart and bow our head slightly, thinking ourselves for taking this time and opening our eyes back to the world.”