remembering the body when the mind starts running
Like most of us, I tend to overthink things - it doesn’t help that I think very fast, and that I like the process of thoughts, following them, finding solutions and new problems to solve, mostly in moments where I would rather be relaxing or enjoying some nice time with people I love, instead of thinking my life over. This is exactly what happened a few days ago, I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep, and found myself landing into an existential loophole. But this time, it was different than usual: interestingly, I managed to drop my dramatic train of thoughts quite quickly, and didn’t suffer the classic insomnia I would have a few years ago. So, how did I resist the delights and temptations of anxiety ridden thoughts you ask? I used my body to tap out of the spiral.
When trying to calm down a very fast and productive mind, we usually try to control it, completely overlooking the role the body has in the thinking and panicking process. And that’s usually where I get lost - I observe my mind, and I get absorbed by it. I start spiralling, feeling guilty for spiralling, and try to rationalise my situation, to put things in perspective. To calm the mind, I want to tame it, and this doesn’t really help the feeling of tension and panic that rises. I fight and fight against the feeling that catastrophes will ensue if I fall asleep without having fixed every issues that potentially might occur in the future.
But where are the thoughts happening? In the body, in your physical head, right? So why not try to highjack your mind by working with the body? Let’s do a little experiment right now: if you think about something that is stressful for you, how is your mind? Very fast, or rather super sluggish? Do you have a specific tone that you are using when thinking about this stressful topic? And now, how about your body: is your body reacting to the thoughts, to the way you are thinking? How is your breath, how are your muscles engaging? Where in the body do you feel tension?
After only a few minutes, I fell asleep - or so I imagine, as I have no recollection of thoughts after relaxing more and more with the emotions that arose.
In the night, when I started spinning, that’s what I asked myself. And what I felt was that I was bloody tense: I stopped breathing. I tensed my chest, my toes, my eyes were squinting, even if closed. I was holding my belly, and controlling my physical body because my mind felt out of control. When I noticed all of that, I took a deep breath and chose to drop the tension in my body and feel what feeling I was trying to push away - and there it was. Fear. My old friend.
As I started to feel the fear, without trying to put words or solutions on it, just feeling it, I started to feel my mind slowing down and my body softening. Instead of getting stuck into the why and the explanations that my mind was craving (quite frankly, an endless fascinating task - why am I afraid of the future, what happened in the past for me to feel this way etc - but quite useless in the moment where I am trying to rest), I went to the physical experience of this fear and tension: how am I creating the tension? And how can I drop it in the body? I unclenched my toes, let go of my belly, and allowed myself a moment breathe, to be a body without a plan. It’s something I learned to do during my own bodywork process, and it’s what I teach my clients. Every time I practice what I teach, I am impressed at how simple yet effective it is to get in touch with what is underneath the tension.
After only a few minutes, I fell asleep - or so I imagine, as I have no recollection of thoughts after relaxing more and more with the emotions that arose.
Thinking is a physical act, and your body takes part in your thinking process, every time. it can be a wonderful tool and experience, but when we get stuck into loops, we don’t really think anymore, we repeat irrelevant patterns of thoughts that only bring us to be more and more tense. Bringing back the body has to be one of the ways out of our mind.
Curious about how to learn a method that can teach you how to work with the body to get out of the mind and in touch with what is really underneath your tensions and spiralling mind?
