Golder Goldstein- Taking the discussion further…

What feels most significant about this experience…is that it provides an opportunity to shift the framework of our day-to-day experience.Most people, most of the time, experience life from the vantage point of being directly connected to their thoughts. We think we are our thoughts.

I’d like to dive in here by clarifying the distinction between mind and brain. We can begin by saying that mind is the flow of data moving through our brains, (ala Daniel Siegal’s Mindsight research and definition). I would expand this to say, “Mind is the flow of data moving through all of our senses and includes the workings and capacity of braincells and brain-matter”.- Amy Kosh

By shifting our perception from thinking we are our thoughts, we open up avenues to new perceptions of the world and to awareness that not only are we not our thoughts, but that our thoughts are often not our own in the first place.

Radical idea?

Not really.

Consider your beliefs. Where did they come from? What helped you form them? Some of what form our beliefs comes from whatever behaviours we have modelled for us when we are very young. The people and community around us demonstrates different beliefs through how individuals and groups act. We pick those us unconsciously and then we continue to act upon them as though they were our own thoughts.

When we stop and pay attention to what we are doing, what actions we have historically taken and look at whether they actually make sense for each of us, we often are able to see the fraying edges of an inherited belief.

Add to this, (and Golder, here’s inclusion again), our body’s ability to “tell” us what is going on in a way that is simple, direct and truthful. Bodies do not lie, mind prevaricate all the damn time. By paying attention to how our body feels, what we are experiencing physically, rather than what we think we are experiencing emotionally or mentally, we gain a true sense of whether something is helping, or hindering us.

Whether it is old science or new science or the experience itself you prefer as the gateway, the embodied experience offers, as you mentioned above, a wealth of information and practices that can help us live happier, healthier and more in collaboration with our environment.

And here’s another somatic “hack” to play with:

1. Stand still for a moment and notice your breathing.
2. Bring your attention to the top of your head and mentally scan your body for an area of tightness or tension.
3. Stop at the first area you find and note all the qualities you can about it.
4. Then ask, “What’s this about”?
5. Be playful and curious about whatever form the response takes.
6. How does it apply? How is the information helpful?

Increasing our awareness of our own body is a skill. The more we “play” in the skill, the more nuanced we become at noticing when something isn’t “right” for us. This is where we get to “shifting our experience towards the body’s knowledge allow for the inclusion of old & new, Traditional & Western frameworks within the experience itself. Here, there is no debate over which vantage point is “correct.” There is simply the ‘both and’ availability of whichever framework you prefer.”