"Being in the Present": What does this mean?

I recently had someone say to me, "what do you mean when you invite me to 'be in the present'? I'm right here, aren’t I? How can I not be in the present?"

And while it is true that your body IS always here, as a noun, a “thing”, it is not always actively present as a verb. The body is always trying to be actively present right here in this moment as a living, sensing, moving being because that is how it was designed, however, without an active practice of allowing your body to be fully living, sensing and moving (known as the act of embodiment) your mind can easily convince your body that it is NOT in the present. This is because we’ve all been deeply deeply trained to disconnect from the body and to let our Selves be led by the mind. Without practice the physical Self can lose its ability to stay connected or return to the present real experiences of this moment, and will yield to your mind’s beliefs and thoughts of the past or of the future as IF these are what is real right now, while they are not.

While this experience of feeling the past or future as if it is happening right now can be a wonderful way to relive and reconnect with the sensations of a fond memory or to anticipate a future hoped for event, it can also be the foundation for incredible unease and dis-ease in the body, especially if one’s memories or expectations are of danger and overwhelm.

As a somatic movement therapist, I believe that deepening one’s capacity to actively BE in the body as a living, breathing, sensing, moving experience with more and more ease is essential for spiritual, physical and mental health.

Because I believe this, I invite you to consider prioritizing the practice of embodiment in your life.

What does that mean, you might wonder?

Let’s explore!

if you would prefer to explore with video support, check out these videos on my Youtube channel, and if you like what you see, please subscribe!

Feeling Your Body

Checking in: Experiencing the Body in the Present Moment

Letting Go of the Hungry Mind

Otherwise, I invite you to join me now in this written guided embodiment practice:

I invite you to Pause.

Right now.

I invite you to stop reading for a moment and let yourself notice where your mind's focus is, without judgement.

And when you return to this reading, I invite you to give yourself permission to take note - was the thing your mind was focused on about you and the environment you are experiencing right in this moment or was it about something that is outside of what was actually present in the moment?

Whatever you noticed, I invite you to let go of anything the mind is focused on that is not right with now, in this moment.

I invite you to let your mind practice focusing on the experience of the breath and then let the experience of your breath soften. Let your breath go.

let your eyes gently close or rest softly on an object on the room that causes your body to feel neutral or pleasant or safe, until you are ready to return to this guided practice.

As you return to the reading, I invite you to let go of any thoughts that arose and pulled you out of this present and then return your awareness to your breath. Let it go with a gentle sigh, and perhaps a yawn

invite your focus to shift from reading at the end of this paragraph and to shift to the experience of your physical weighted body being supported right now. Feel the experience of being in contact with the bed or the couch or the chair or the floor and, ultimately, by gravity. Notice the sensations you notice. Allow yourself to soften into the support and, when ready, allow yourself to continue to feel the support when you choose to return to the reading.

As you return to the reading, I invite you to honor the sensations you are noticing, even as you read. Be curious. Again, shift your attention from this reading after this paragraph and give your sensations and all your body parts permission to move, if that is what they desire in this moment. Give them permission to breathe and sigh and sound. Give them permission to open and/or close, to stretch or to tighten. Repeat this until you feel a little bit of satisfaction, a little bit of ease, a little bit of ease, until your body is ready for your eyes to return to reading.

Give yourself permssion to let go some more.

Each time a thought comes up that is not about this moment, let it go.

Invite yourself to let go of reading to return, over and over again, to the practice being present with the sensations of the experience of your breath moving into and out of your body, and the sensations of the experience of your physical body receiving the grounded energy of the planet, and with the sensations of the experience of what you are seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching, in this present moment, even as your also focusing on reading this blog post.

I invite you to give yourself permssion to practice being present with yourSelf and your physical environment right now for as long as you desire.

And when you decide that the time to finish reading this blog post and exploring this practice with this guidance, I invite you ask yourself these questions:

”Do I feel any different - in my spirit, my body and/or in my mind?”

“Has anything changed from when I started reading this blog?”

“Did I feel any challenges?”

I’d love to hear your answers. Whatever you experienced, please know that this practice is not only valuable, but essential for spiritbodymimd health!

If you’d like more guided support in your practice of living, breathing, sensing and moving more fully and with more ease - whether as an individualize or in a group - please contact me for more information.

Love: What Do the Shoulders Have to Do with It?

People use the word “shoulder” to mean many things. Most people aren’t aware of all the body parts that make up the “shoulder” or of how the shoulder is intimately connected with and a part of our Whole Selves.

Deepened awareness and understanding of what makes up what we think of as the "shoulder" and the importance of the shoulder in all our movement: this is our focus as we explore movement together in Mindful Move Groove during this mid-winter time.

To help us have a better understanding of the bony structure of the shoulder, we recently watched: How Scapular Movement Works. I invite you to take a few moments to watch this video and explore the movement of your own scapula.

But what does this have to do with LOVE, another word people use to mean many things.

Awareness of the movement of all that is the shoulder and its relationship to the whole body is key if you desire effortless alignment. It is this awareness that allows us to move through our day with more ease in all the actions that include the shoulder (physically or mentally) such as reaching, grasping, embracing, pulling, hugging, comforting, creating, setting boundaries, starting your car and manipulating keypads and utensils!

When we allow ourselves to feel the firm structural support of the Lower Body into the Upper Body, our face, neck and shoulders can relax, and we are more able to soften and open our hearts when we desire to do so.

Wth the pelvis as our firm base of support, our upper body - chest, arms, and head - is able to suspend and lift with less effort. When our upper bodies expend less effort trying to hold ourselves upright, there is a natural opening and widening across the chest. With good structural support, we might notice that the area around our hearts is more able to radiate and expand. - Erika Berland, Sitting: the physical art of meditation

Deepening our somatic awareness of the parts of us that make up the shoulder, the ways these parts move and the ways these parts are integrated into the whole Self is just one way to cultivate our capacity to more effortlessly expand our heart energy and to radiate our love.

Remember, love is a verb, not a noun.
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And this is what Mindful Move Groove is all about! It is not just your ordinary exercise class. It is not just a dance class. Mindful movement extends way beyond the existence and movement of physical body parts!

Mindful Move Groove is:

• an opportunity to explore and learn and move

• in ways that support you in living your life more fully

• with deepened awareness of spirit, body and mind

• while also getting your groove on!

A MindBody Approach to Change: An Embodied Perspective on the Writings of Stephen Covey

In the beginning of January 2022 I expressed a desire to blog this year inspired by the writings of Stephen Covey from the perspective of an embodiment artivist. If you haven’t read that introduction to this project, I invite you to check it out here.

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Here is the next one in the series on the subject of The Process of Change: I hope you enjoy! -Vic

On pg 36 of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey says,

What happens when we attempt to shortcut a natural process in our growth and development?  If you are only an average tennis player but decide to play at a higher level in order to make a better impression, what will result?  Would positive thinking alone enable you to compete effectively against a professional?

A mindbody approach to change would say that, yes, positive thinking is what is necessary to override the limitations of the body.  Most of us have been trained to live from our minds direction and to ignore the information and experience of the body. These sorts of suggestions start in the cortex and then attempt to move downward. 

I picture it like this.  “I believe I need to play tennis at a higher level so that my friends will think more highly of me" turns into “I must play tennis better” turns into “body, are you listening?  you must do this thing my mind has decided you must do.”  And the body is doing the best it can.

I agree with Covey that this is a very ineffective approach to change.

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THE OFTEN INEFFECTIVE MINDBODY APPROACH TO CHANGE 

I invite you to consider: what is the thought you imagine that you might think when you realize that your body is not capable of playing tennis at the level your mind believes you need to play? 

What is the thought you imagine you might think when you realize you can’t do what your mind wants in order to satisfy the mind’s belief that other people’s opinions of you are important? 

Are you able to think that this is only an idea that your mind created and that this idea was in reaction to your body’s sensations?  (if you were able to honestly say “yes” to the last question, then you are on your way to a bodymind approach to change - to be shared about more in a upcoming post!)

In my experience, personally and professionally,  most people (myself included) have a pattern hardwired in our neural network to answer the first two questions with harsh thoughts about ourselves at this point in the pattern.

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If you’d like to explore this a bit more, I offer this possible choreography of the pattern where the mind directs the body:

1) your body, your nervous system, has a sensory experience in response to unknown information (of the mind or the environment).  Perhaps one of smallness or disconnection or dissatisfaction or discomfort.  I invite you to supply the sensory description of what it feels like for you when your body experiences a sense of unease.

2) your body may then have an experience that your mind recognizes as an emotional response to the sensations of unease.   Perhaps fear or sadness or anger.

3) your mind recognizes this information to mean some sort of problem exists, and possibly even something dangerous is present.  Your mind, if allowed to, runs with whatever information is available to it at the time, latches onto any pieces of story that it believes it can put together to give meaning to and to try to fix the problem that it believes is causing the sensory experience. 

In the quote by Covey, the person who is uncomfortable translates his or her discomfort to have something to do with what people think of her or him.  “If I played tennis better, person x or people xyz would think more highly of me, so I need to play tennis better.”

4) If you are this person and you direct your body from your mind, then you will take your body to the tennis courts where your mind will push it to play better.

5) And your body will play at the level the body is capable of doing so at this moment.

6) Your mind, if it is still so attached to this idea of how to fix the experience you had in step 1,  will continue on its thought pattern that this is all about playing tennis better.   You might think something like “oh my gawd, I am no good.  I am not good enough at tennis.  Those people will never like me.  All is lost.”

7) Your body and your nervous system hear this information and experience this information.  Your body will most likely experience this information as if you are in danger.  It hears “all is lost”.  And remember, you started this process with a body that was already feeling small or disconnected or dissatisfied or uncomfortable, and NOW it is having another sensory experience in response to this danger your mind is telling it exists.  Your sympathetic system will kick in to support and protect you from the danger.  When this happens, your body will most likely be flooded with cortisol, epinephrine and adrenaline, which are all chemicals which make it extremely difficult to think effectively because their purpose is to get your body to move against the danger and/or toward safety.  Except in this case, the danger is an abstract concept in your mind so the body may very well feel caught in this loop.

8) Unless you are able to step out of this mind-directed loop, you will go round and round until your body is forced, finally, to take over. There are several scenarios that I can imagine might happen:

• Perhaps your mind will keep pushing your body to try to play tennis better, possibly pushing even harder than in your first attempt, until you injure it.

• Perhaps your nervous system ramps up so high that your body experiences a panic attack and forces you to stop, until your mind picks up those persistent ideas again and you return to the cycle.  Repeat and repeat and repeat.

• Perhaps your nervous system collapses into overwhelm and your systems stay stuck in this pattern of somatic experience related to the persistent belief that you are not good enough, and your mind churns over this patterned ideas that keep you in this cycle.  Again, repeat and repeat and repeat.

• Perhaps you have the awareness that you are in a cycle and you try to reframe, to think yourself out of this situation.  You might use angry thinking, “f*(k them, I didn’t want to be their friends anyway” which gives your body the adrenal push it needs to walk away from the situation and your mind believes that all is resolved. Or perhaps you use what is often called positive thinking “It is okay.  I am a good person.  If they don’t want to be my friend, I am better off” which may soothe your nervous system just enough that your mind believes that all is well.  This sort of mindbody activity can be very helpful towards a temporary relief from the cycle, however, you have not repatterned the cycle.

You have not done anything to change the pattern of your experience and the attached cycle of mindbody reaction to your experience. 

The reality for the body remains.   The sensory pattern of smallness or disconnection or dissatisfaction or discomfort or unease that started this process in step #1 was not tended to yet.  The experience was completely ignored and the focus became the mind’s story and how the body needed to enact the mind’s solution to the problem the mind created. 

And the unfortunate reality is that this sensory experience of unease may now be even more firmly laid down into your neurocellular patterning because it has been replayed again, in yet another scenario that provides yet another and current piece of mental information that the mind can grab onto easily the next time your body feels small or disconnected or dissatisfied or uncomfortable.

Do you see the pattern?  Do you understand the ineffectualness of this pattern if what you desire is change or growth?

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Please know, the sensations you experienced in #1 are pieces of information.  

They may be information in response to the current environment.  They may be information in response to something your mind recalls as you experience the current environment.  They may be information in response to something that your mind is recalling that is taking you out of your ability to experience the current environment.  And yes, they may be a complex combination of all three, which can feel pretty uncomfortable.

Sensations of discomfort are pieces of information important to growth and learning.

Growth and learning requires a capacity to be present with our discomfort without getting overwhelmed.

To tend to our natural growth and development effectively (as is the intent of Covey’s book) we need to be able to tend to our discomfort in effective ways, and, in my experience, this requires a bodymind approach to change (with or without the support of the more mindbody approaches such as reframing, positive self-talk or affirmations). 

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In a future blog I will share more about the bodymind approach to change and possibly a bit about how I use it therapeutically with all my clients, whether they seek me out for support in their process of physical, spiritual, mental, emotional or creative change.

The First Step Towards a Year of Exploring Covey from an Embodied Perspective

I have a dream of one day offering a year-long embodied exploration of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. But not today.

Today, I am setting the intention of sharing with you thoughts, ideas, explorations prompted by my (mostly) daily reading of Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People from a somatic movement and embodiment perspective.

The January 1st quote is this:

If we want to change a situation, we first have to change ourselves. And to change ourselves effectively, we first have to change our perspectives.

My rewriting of the January 1st quote is as follows:

If we want to change a situation, we first have to change ourselves in relationship to the situation.

And to change ourselves -our actions and our thoughts - we first need to be able to observe the wealth of sensory information that our body is experiencing in response to the given situation as well as the reactions our body is experiencing to memories and unprocessed emotions of PAST situations that have had a similar resonance to this present moment situation.

These sensations are the basis of our perceptions, our thoughts and our actions.

The practice of slowing down, observing, and allowing space to be in the reality of this moment (as compared to being in reaction to things not actually in this present moment),

THIS is how we change our perceptions.

Thoughts? Comments? I would love to hear them.

Cultivating the State of BEing, an embodiment practice

My favorite line from this meme is "become, unfold, tense and unfold again". It really resonates.

For me, the juicy stuff of my life, personally and professionally, lies in my capacity to be ever more fully in the experience of the transitions. When I read this line from this meme, I don’t simply resonate with the idea of these three states of action - of Becoming, Unfolding and Tensing. I resonate with the images and sensations that arise for me as I imagine the experience of moving each one, and from one to the other.

For me, growth is about being able to notice, in deeper and deeper ways, my patterns and to explore ways to move within, around and between these patterns.

For me, learning happens when we recognize our patterns and allow ourselves to explore and play with them.

For me, doing this sort of deep play and exploration can only be done from a sense of safety. Being in my embodied sense of safety is what allows me to not only do an action with my full Self but to also to be more fully in the experience of moving, to be completely in the process of shifting from one action to another, of moving with, around and between the patterns and to never become unsafe. Because of this personal (and professional) practice of starting from a sense of safety, I'm inclined to change the language of this meme just a bit.

For me, the process of becoming, unfolding, tensing and unfolding again is more accurately described as this:

Be.

Allow movement.

Notice the edge where you begin to resist and allow yourself to be right there.

Be curious.

Notice what you can notice.

Learn what you can learn.

Be.

Once you notice that you are satisfied (or possibly bored),

change something.

Allow space and time for continued curiosity.

Repeat. Over and over again.

This, for me, is the practice of embodiment. It is the process of somatic movement therapy. It is the template for all healing. It is an invaluable practice to cultivate.

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While I was journaling and moving and exploring in the process of refining the original phrase so that it better suited me, I felt inspired to create a guided embodiment practice for myself. The result is the attached twelve minute audio recording. I appreciated this so much for myself that I wanted to share it with you.

I hope you will explore with my guidance.
I hope you will share your comments below.

And if you find this inspiring and you’d like to take your practice deeper or wider or fuller with support, I hope you will contact me about setting up a thirty minute free consultation to discuss the possibility of working together.

Regards and blessings. - Victoria
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Special thanks to my friends at Kindred Collective who originally shared this meme on their Facebook and Instagram pages.