The mind-body connection, I think, is fairly widely accepted now. I first stumbled on it when I was learning about Reiki in 2004, and again when I read Louise Hay’s “You can heal your life”
The three techniques I have used most and found helpful are yoga, the body scan and Alexander technique, so this chapter is about those and how I have used them, which I hope can be helpful to you.
Yoga
Back in 2008, when I restarted meditation, I also started looking at yoga. It took a while for me to find a class that felt right so at the start I was working myself with a series of asanas, which took about 20 minutes, from a magazine. I am not sure that I was doing them correctly, well I was definitely doing warrior wrongly! But there was something about the ritual of doing this each day and becoming more aware of my body. As some-one who lives a lot in their head, the poor body can get forgotten, but there is growing research that the body doesn’t lie, and we would do well to check in with it. In these early days, the act of checking in really just allowed me to still my overactive mind, and thinking processes that really weren’t helping.
There is growing research beyond the new age stuff that the body really does keep score. Medical doctors such as Bernie Siegel and Gabor Mate have written excellent books about their observations, through the course of their work as physicians, of the link between mind and body and the disease that ensues when emotional or psychosocial issues are not addressed.
A lot of the mind-body work has a strong meditative element to it, and requires that same need to be present with what is. Yoga was where I started and towards the end of that year I had found a class to join. There are so many different types of yoga. I went with hatha yoga, which wasn’t particularly spiritual in it’s approach. It was much more body focussed, but that worked fine. Moving into the asanas to the extent that I could got me checking in with my body and paying more attention to it. As some-one who was brought up to be competitive, learning that yoga is not about getting into a half pretzel and thinking wow look what I can do, so much as meeting myself in my body with acceptance of whatever it could do or not do was part of the journey. There is intelligence in the body which is often crowded out by the thinking mind. And when it comes to balances, the more in my head I am, the harder they are to do. Is there a lesson in there, that if we stop that incessant thinking for a few moments, the body actually knows what to do?
I spent a few years at the weekly yoga class, until a change of job meant I couldn’t go anymore, though I have been able to move to another class taught by another teacher teaching in a very similar style. The two teachers trained together and have worked collaboratively supporting each other, rather than as competitors, which was evidence of how much better things can be when we work together.
The body scan
Alexander technique and the body scan came to me later, but at pretty much synonymously. I had met and married my husband and we were having fertility investigations. I had received the results I was dreading, high FSH levels, which meant my more advanced maternal years were perhaps more of an issue than the optimists liked to admit. But I believed there was still hope for me. It was at this time I read Julia Indichova’s “Inconceivable”. She was older than me and her FSH levels higher, but after a journey treating herself, as the medical professionals had told her there was no hope, she conceived and birthed a healthy baby. A large part of the book focussed on issues in the tissues as she put it. Reading the book encouraged me not to give up just yet. But I was depressed. The now years of trying, and the years of social infertility and loss of my daughter were taking their emotional toll. So alongside Inconceivable, I also bought 2 books on managing depression. One I have long since forgotten, but the other really helped – The Mindful Way through Depression. And it was from this book that I first learnt about the body scan. This is a very safe way of connecting with the body, that can be done by anyone. it’s incredibly simple and can be done over a short space of time, say 5 minutes or much more slowly. You can start at the crown of the head or at the tips of the toes, and if it’s a slower session focus on each body part in turn. And this is just about being present with what is already there. So if part of the body is tense, it’s tense. Useful to know because often when we’re living frenetically in our heads we don’t notice areas of tension until they are really bad. But the beauty of the body scan is you don’t have to fight with the tension trying desperately to relax. You just breathe and acknowledge it as there at that moment. There was and still is something incredibly soothing about the body scan, and I can highly recommend it. I think it creates space for what we are feeling, which is held in the body to be. We know what’s running round our heads, but we don’t always know what our bodies are storing.
The other beauty of the body scan is that it costs nothing. No kit or class is needed.
Alexander technique
I read a book about Alexander technique at a similar time. I cannot remember who wrote it to give credit, but what I took from it was how poor posture affects so many other aspects of the body’s function. At this stage of the infertility journey I was ready to try anything. It is an ongoing education as to how the universe can guide as to where we need to be and who will help. When the teacher that I had felt drawn to asked me why I wanted to learn Alexander technique and I explained, she told me she had been pregnant nine times. My gut had led me to someone who understood pregnancy loss first hand. Similar to yoga and the body scan, Alexander technique has a meditative element to it and need for present moment awareness. The awareness of what the body is actually doing when simple day to day movements such as getting up or sitting down are done, or standing in a queue. Everything starts with allowing your neck to be free. And then I realise how tightly I am holding my neck. Until that moment the tension was below my conscious awareness.
In his book The Myth of Normal Gabor Mate talks about how we can become so used to stress and tension that we believe them to be normal and our conscious minds eventually stop registering the body’s cues. To me this makes finding a way of getting back in touch with the body crucial. Alexander technique takes many forms, but a large part of my lessons are lying on a couch, and I have to allow my legs and arms to be flexed and extended without me trying to help, or pre-empt and do it myself. It’s an eye opener for when I am trying too hard, and not prepared to let go and let God. Often joints become very resistant to allowing some-one else to move them when I am holding onto something unresolved, and if I can surrender it, the joint then gives way. Another tenet of Alexander technique is lying semi-supine, ideally for 20 minutes. Unlike the body scan, which is based very much on non-judgemental awareness, lying semi-supine involves imagining each section of the body is free. So you imagine your neck relaxing and lengthening, without actively doing it, and then the shoulders widening, the spine stretching and hips widening, all of which creates space. Lying semi-supine worked wonders for my lower back pain, and it is my go to when that flares up.
Both yoga and Alexander technique require a teacher, and costs, but the body scan can be done by anyone and needs nothing. There are lots of YouTube videos that provide the support of a voice taking you through it, but you can just set some time aside and do it yourself. I think the body often gets ignored and paying attention it is more than exercise and healthy eating (which I think are important), we need to take the time to tune in to what the body is saying, whichever technique we use.
Other techniques that I have occasionally used, that also involve working with the body are EFT and the Havening technique. I haven’t used them to the same extent, but they are worth a look.
Books mentioned in this chapter.
You can heal your life by Louise Hay
Love, Medicine and Miracles by Bernie Siegel
The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate
The Mindful Way through Depression by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal and Jon Kabat-Zinn.
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