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Our body is a very simple and natural being that doesn’t need a lot of intervention to regulate itself again. It is an amazing miracle that works itself out most of the time. The body knows when to be hungry, when to sleep, how to digest food, how to breathe and much more. It all happens by itself, without any conscious effort. Working with the body is much simpler than you may have thought. Even after traumatic stress the body does have the capacity to come back easily from wherever it is…that means, it can always heal with the appropriate support. The way back is very simple. Open the door a crack and the force will open the rest. Our minds try to make it so complicated.
Yet to learn to listen to the body and to our inner being is an art, that we need to exercise, practice and experience. When we learn to attentively listen and not to criticise and judge and compare, it is actually very balanced and simple.
You can keep the body in an even balance. We need to be able to balance positive and negative tendencies with an inner sense of tolerance and kindness. Life is about polarity.
So for instance you might experience emotional stress with your work or your relationship, or one of your children. And if this goes on for a long time and you don’t take care of it, it might go into autonomic stress, and might sooner or later create health issues like gastro intestinal problems or maybe even heart problems and many others. Often people try to regulate the stress by drinking alcohol, or find other ways to calm down the nervous system, like over eating, too much computer or TV, or obsessive smart phone activity.
To create the capacity and a container for the emotional stress and challenges, it is important to bring it back to the body.
So it is important to be able to pay attention to the felt sense in the body. For instance: You have a weakness in the legs, a tightness in the chest, cold feet etc. Just learning to observe any little sensation in the body with curiosity and interest. This can calm down the nerves and the Autonomic Nervous system and thus starts to create a relaxation in the body.
Then once we start to calm down, emotional understanding can follow and we can start to make meaning out of the situation and we can even have the awareness to learn something new, or to discover a possible new way of being, and how to relate with stress.