Listen!

As a graduate student I have the tendency to run myself ragged.  There seems to be this little voice in the back of my head saying “you don’t have time to sit around!”  I come home from school or work and feel that I have to do more, clean my apartment or finish a paper.  This voice criticizes me for taking a break to watch TV or take a nap, telling me “you need to be more productive!”  Usually I can keep this up for a couple of months until the end of the semester when my body finally surrenders and I get sick.  I think this is my body’s way of forcing me to slow down. 

Lately however, I have been starting to challenge myself in this area.  Maybe it’s the fact that graduation is so near or that I’m simply tired of my scheduled colds, but I have started to practice truly listening to my body.  When I’m tired I take a nap, when I’m hungry I take a break to eat, when my body asks me to sit on the couch and watch reruns of the Brady Bunch I do it.  I have found that the more in tune I am with my body, the more I respect what it needs, and the more I respect it’s needs, the more my body is able to give back to me.  By giving my body the breaks that it needs on a regular basis, it is able to give me the energy and concentration I need to really be present at work and school. 

For me this not only applies to giving my body physical breaks, but mental ones too.  I don’t feel like it’s really a break when I go for a walk and spend the whole time stressing out about work I need to get done.  When I get back from the walk I feel no more rejuvenated or motivated than when I left.  My mind needs just as much breaks as my body, to go on Facebook or read a good book (not in the form of a textbook).  So I challenge you to take the time to listen to your own body.  You might be surprised at how much it has to say!

By: Kaitlyn Gitter

The Importance of Inquiry

I have recently finished Geneen Roth’s book Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything and it has definitely gotten my wheels turning. I particularly enjoyed her discussion of what it feels like to truly inquire about what you’re feeling- and the process of relating to your feelings, instead of from them.

Roth writes:

“Inquiry is body based; it is not a mental process. You sense what it feels like to be inside your skin, your arms, your legs. You notice the sensation and you notice the location of the sensation. Sensation, location, sensation, location. If, for instance, you are feeling sad, you ask yourself where that feeling is located in your body. You notice a gray heap of ashes in your chest, and up pops the belief that ‘love exists for other people but not for me.’ You become curious about that belief. How old were you when you first learned that? And what were your feelings at the time that never got noticed or felt or understood?

It’s good to ask some questions that allow you to focus on the sensations themselves. You can ask yourself if the feeling has a shape, a temperature, a color. You can ask yourself how it affects you to feel this. And since no feeling is static, you keep noticing the changes that occur in your body as you ask yourself these questions” (Roth, 104-105).

With the stress of everyday life: work, school, family, it is so easy to become detached from the body. We become ‘talking heads’ only thinking instead of really feeling. The exercise of reconnecting with the body and seeing what a particular part of it feels like in a stressful, sad, exciting, or joyful situation can be very eye opening. This allows for an exploration of the body that doesn’t involve food or weight, or self-criticism, simply curiosity. Curiosity that can lead to real self discovery. It also allows for small increments of success. For some, the task of focusing inward on body sensation for five minutes a day may be enough at the beginning, for others it may mean an hour long meditation on each area of the body and the feelings that may be harbored there.

I really love the steps involved the process Roth describes above. Starting with curiosity eliminates judgment; the act of exploration eliminates the ‘talking head’; and the experience of the feeling in the body allows for a refreshing openness and understanding to wash over your heart.

Women, Food and God is a wonderful book full of wisdom and I would definitely recommend it. But, if you don’t have the book, try inquiring about your body and your soul and see what it feels like to reconnect with yourself and the world around you.

Peacefully,

Claire Jolly

Claire Jolly was a summer intern at The Awakening Center. She is a student at Centre College in Ohio.