Building body awareness

Body awareness is an effective technique for learning more about yourself. Your body holds a wealth of information that can be so easily ignored when life gets busy and mentally complicated. But when you take the time to tune into what’s happening in your body, you get to understand its signals of stress, tension, lightness, and acting with authenticity.

A gentle way to start rebuilding body awareness is by simply noticing your body.  By that I mean, observe it like you would if you were ‘people watching’ someone else.  What’s important is this is a space of not judging or criticising yourself, the purpose is simply to notice and observe.  Notice your movements as you go about routine events throughout your day such as waking in the morning, getting dressed, or eating a meal.

A good way to to practice body awareness is to be mindful about washing yourself when you’re in the shower.

Instead of going into auto-pilot and allowing your brain to run off with all its thoughts, stop.  

Turn your attention to the body you’re washing. Notice the connection between your hands and the soap, the soap and your body.  How does it feel?  

Watch how the water runs on your skin.  Become aware of the temperature of the water and where it first touches your skin and flows down your body, all the way to the tiles and drain.  Connect into the sensation of your bare feet on the tiles.  Are the tiles cool or warm, smooth or textured?  Can you feel the grout with your toes?  

As you use a wash cloth, loofah, or even when towelling off after your shower – notice how this feels on your skin.  Tune in to the contact points, the textures, the temperature.

Notice your body.

I challenge you to keep up a ‘body awareness while showering’ practise for at least 7 days.  If you can keep it going for 10-14 days, even better! 

Keep track of how long you last before you switch off and get distracted by your busy mind (where in your shower routine did you get up to?).  Note down what you noticed about yourself and your body, and how you found the experience. 

By making some notes about your experience each day, you can see how far you’ve progressed or what’s changed for you over the week or more. Give it a go - what have you got to lose?