Key Takeaways
- Presence is not only mental – it’s physical. Mental focus and feeling physically in your body are two different things – and both are important for a true sense of wellbeing.
- Little and often does more than once a week, once a month or once a year. Small, repeated exercises, such as a morning stretch or simply checking in with your breath, create lasting body awareness over time.
- Breath is your highest speed reset button. In minutes, your nervous system is different, and your focus is back on your body with slow mindful breaths.
- Your 5 senses are inherent grounders. Older children and adults can find themselves in the here and now with just a flick of the senses to sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste.
- It’s okay; it’s not a failure if you feel like you have disconnections. Presence is a practice, and it is not something you get and stay with forever.
Intro
I used to live primarily in my head and make plans, worry, think back and forth on various conversations, all without ever pausing to check my car, err, I mean my body. But if you find that to be true, you are not the only one. It has transformed my experience of being in my body, from drinking my coffee to my most stressful work days.
Why We Lose Touch With Our Bodies
I believe, before getting to what worked more for me, let’s recognise why so many of us find ourselves disconnected from our physical self to begin with. Our society encourages us to work the mind continuously. We are commended for working on several things at once, for anticipating people’s needs, for holding ourselves accountable for seeking to be productive at times when we should be resting. It’s been a while since we listened to our body because our minds were occupied living three steps ahead.
This really had a big impact on me during the times when I was under a lot of stress. After a long day of work, I would look back and realise I have no recollection of eating lunch, or I would notice my shoulders rising to my ears, jaw clenched, and shallow breathing, and I wouldn’t have known how long I was like that for. This disconnect is no simple embarrassment; it has real-world consequences. When we stay too long in our head and are not living in the body we live in, the number of chronic tensions, poor digestion, disturbed sleep, and increased anxiety all increase.
The Difference Between Being Present and Being in Your Head
I believe that it’s important to make a distinction between mental presence and physical presence, as they are not the same. Mental presence is focus, it’s attention, it’s being engaged in a task or conversation without mind wandering. Physical presence (embodiment) is the embodied experiences: the weight of your feet on the floor, the rhythm of your breath, the sensation of your muscles as you move.
Simple Ways I Practise Body Awareness Daily
I didn’t change my whole lifestyle overnight. I began instead to add in little pockets of body awareness that fit into my life. These conferences throughout the years culminated in a new awareness of self and senses.
The biggest change was just checking in with myself during the day, asking myself the following: What is happening in my body now?
Not emotionally, not faithfully nor intellectually, but physically. Am I tense? Am I hungry? Is my jaw clenched? Am I sitting in a position that is causing elongation of the back? These questions only take seconds to throw out, but get me out of ‘autopilot’ almost immediately.
I also began to focus on transitions.
When one task is completed, and another one is about to start, here is a great time to reconnect with your body – even for just 10 seconds. Pauses are when you get up from your desk, head to another room, or take a break on the way to make your coffee, as these are natural breaks for a quick body check.
Morning Grounding Techniques
I invest the most time and thought in the mornings, as mornings set the tone for the rest of the day and how connected I feel with my body. Here are some tips that I use:
- Feet-first waking: I spend 30 seconds before picking up my mobile phone, touching my feet to the mattress or floor and feeling the sensation, the temperature, the pressure.
- Stretch before scroll: Slow, full body stretch, stretching arms overhead, lengthening spine, before allowing myself to check anything.
- 5 deep breaths: I sit on the bed and take 5 slow breaths, concentrating only on the movement of my chest and belly.
- Putting on the cold water: A splash of cold on the face and wrists is a simple sensory trick that awakens my nervous system and brings me rapidly back to body.
- Naming Three Physical Sensations: In my mind, I name 3 physical sensations. Example: the air is cool, shoulders feel tight, socks are soft.
It is a series of small practices that take under five minutes overall but help settle me and step into my body by the time the pressure and demands of the day tug me away.
Breathing Techniques That Bring You Back Into Your Body
Breath is likely the most immediate and effective way I’ve been able to get in touch with my body, and it can be done anytime, anywhere. When we breathe shallowly from the top part of our chest, we remain in the head; when we breathe gently down from the top of the chest, we naturally integrate the body, including the chest, abdomen, and beyond.
Diaphragmatic breathing, also known as belly breathing, is a method I use a lot. I put one hand on my chest, and one on my tummy, then take a slow breath in through my nose – I count to 10 while my tummy rises and my chest doesn’t. Then, I breathe in for a few seconds, and breathe out slowly through my mouth! I’ve tried doing this for 2 to 3 minutes, and my whole state gets changed – my heart rate slows down, my shoulders come down, and I feel more grounded for real in this way.
Box breathing is another technique that I resort to, particularly at stressful times. I breathe in for 4, 4, 4, and 4, and then I breathe out for 4, 4, 4, and 4, and so on. I feel that this organised rhythm provides a “simple thought” for my mind while I relax my body.
Using Your Five Senses to Anchor Yourself
All of our senses are physical and the most immediate way to get back in touch with the current moment. You have to involve your body to smell, taste, feel whatever you have to smell, taste, feel with your mind. This really helps me when I notice myself ‘overthinking’.
One exercise I have is the five-senses check-in. I stop and name 5 things that I can see, 4 things that I can hear, 3 things I can physically feel, 2 things I can smell, and 1 thing I can taste.
This may seem like the obvious thing, different, but by conscious “redirection” to one of my senses, it quickly (a minute or two) brings me sharply back to my body.
Texture I feel like I’ve just gotten really in tune with. Contact with various fabrics, hot mugs, cool air on my skin keeps my nervous system busy, rather than my thoughts stuck in abstract worry. Sound works similarly.
Far from throwing background noise into the white noise of ignored sound, I sometimes try to pay attention to particulars: bird songs outside, static drone of appliances, distant traffic, things like that. This type of listening is only enough to extrude me out of my head.
Movement and Presence: How Exercise Helps
I’m sure the movement has helped me more than any other practice, when it comes to the sense of embodiment. When you push your body, you can’t be stuck in your head; your body requires attention.
I don’t believe you have to do intense exercise for this, or that it helps, but it does help. As long as you do it when you consider it, walking, stretching, or yoga activities can produce it in the same way, but in a milder way. I think what I’ve found is the difference between mobility and mobilising with awareness.
I don’t really feel as though I’m feeling embodied when I am rehearsing a conversation I want to have for the 10th time, while I’m walking. When walking on the few occasions when I become aware of the sound I make with my foot, the movement of my arm, or of my breath, it’s a different walk.
Yoga is especially helpful for me as it can help me slow things down and make sure that I am focusing on breathing while I am doing the activity. Focusing upon the muscles working and others relaxing while holding the pose creates a “body literacy” that is transferred to daily life.
My attention has grown to my posture while using the computer, the stress in my neck while I drive, and that stress having a physical manifestation before I even realise that I’m experiencing stress.
Mindful Eating as a Path to Embodiment
Food is eaten several times a day – an important and often ignored chance at practising the present moment. I would eat lunch at my desk, carelessly chewing my food while responding to e-mail, nowadays eating meals with little recollection of eating them. It was easier and more helpful to change this behaviour than I thought.
So, when I take a seat to eat, I now pay attention to the colours and the scents of my food. I slow down to chew my food in small bites to savour the texture and taste.
It’s not about practising meditation at every meal of the day; sometimes I still need to hurry to eat, but building this habit of being mindful at least some of the time has helped me be more mindful of my general body experience throughout the day.
This is part of the hunger/fullness signals. Many of us will eat not when we are actually hungry, but on the hour or when we are feeling overwhelmed with emotions.
I’ve worked on learning to stop, pause, and ask myself, “Is there a real need for me to eat at this time or is it because I am bored/stressed/used to eating at that hour?”
Common Mistakes I Made When Trying to Be Present
I’ve made lots of mistakes along the way when I have been trying to be more in my body, and these have made me feel either like I am going slower or that it is more complicated in some parts. I believe it is fair to say these so that you may avoid some of my frustrations.
The most common error was the belief that presence was a feature to “get or not get”. I would be doing a good morning of body awareness, and every time I sat down to work, I would think, but I was supposed to be doing body awareness! Presence isn’t something you discover and keep on having once you’ve got it—it is something you come back to, over and over, and forgetting how to do it is a part of the learning process.
Signs You’re Disconnected From Your Body
The first step in solving a problem of disconnection is to identify it. These are some cues that I have learned to look out for with myself:
- Often forgets to eat, shower, or do simple physical things.
- Only becoming aware of tightness, such as a tight jaw or raised shoulders, after it has existed for some time.
- Being surprised that you feel tired – like your body exhaustion was “out of left field”
- Being on a lot of caffeine or stimulants to get yourself into your day.
- Being unable to fall asleep despite mental activity on thoughts that can’t stop, while feeling physical fatigue.
- Eating quickly without really tasting or noticing your food.
- As if life is happening to you instead of you going through it.
If you notice just one or two of these recurring behaviours in your life, it’s a helpful sign that perhaps it is time to take a moment to stop and fully engage.
Building a Sustainable Practice Over Time
None of these techniques was of any great benefit to me at first as trial techniques. The actual secret was making small habits of being present repeatable habits in my day, rather than a ‘special occasion’ or event that I did every so often.
I did it one at a time, not too many at once! – I tried the morning stretch for two weeks and the five-senses check-in before I tried anything else. By starting the process this way, it didn’t seem so daunting and allowed each habit to take hold before adding any additional habits.
Summary
Being present in your own body doesn’t mean that you are some kind of mystical person in the middle of some kind of perfect meditation or that you have to remove stress from your life.
It’s really more about cultivating a relationship with the real live flesh-and-blood body I inhabit every minute of my day. Little routines that I’ve begun to do regularly- mindful breathing, sensory moments, deliberate moving, and mindful eating have done more to anchor me than any drastic overhaul of my lifestyle.