Beating Anxiety through Accessing the Sense of the Body
The sense of the body is, in my experience, the least acknowledged aspect of day-to-day conscious awareness. It easily gets relegated beneath sensory experiences, thoughts, beliefs, concepts and feelings.
When this happens over time, we progressively lose access to our sense of the body until it becomes perhaps just a vague dull sensation in the background of our awareness. Something that we never really give attention to. And, for many people, to keep themselves feeling alive they then become progressively addicted to sensory experiences or thinking behaviours such as always trying to be positive or getting social media likes.
This is a great shame.
Because, actually, the sense of the body is an immense resource, and one that we can turn to for support in many challenging situations.
Lying in bed, desperate to sleep, but with thoughts circling round and round? If you can access enough sensation in your body, and focus on that, you will soon find yourself drifting off to sleep.
Feeling anxious about an upcoming meeting with someone? Simply sitting and feeling your body, if you can access enough sensation there, will completely calm you and leave you untroubled by circling, non-useful thoughts.
Feeling like you’re on a hamster wheel of thinking and doing, when actually you’re meant to be getting some downtime? Once again, if you can access a reasonable amount of sensation in your body, you will find yourself rapidly chilling?
I think it’s easy to see just how incredibly useful it would be to have access to a resource like this.
And the wonderful thing is, it is there. It is simply that years of not giving it much attention have temporarily marginalised it into the background.
If you are willing to invest time to make the sense of your body more a part of your life, and if you’re willing to spend perhaps twenty minutes daily doing exercises to open up your body fascia, then it will return.
We can barely feel our body because our body has become “closed” and we have become reliant on thinking to navigate our way through life. This closedness is found in our fascia - our body’s interconnecting tissue - and our muscle system. These have become either filled with holding patterns or they have lost necessary toning. This we can change.
There are two areas of the body that it is really useful to feel if you wish to beat anxiety. These are the lower back and the belly. The lower back gives us a sense of being supported. The belly gives us a sense of safety and that we can hold good boundaries.
If you have a good level of sensation in these two areas, you will not get unnecessarily anxious.
But when we don’t feel these areas, our mind inevitably tries to compensate. It hardens our upper body and keeps us on high alert for danger. This it does pretty much unconsciously, mediated by our nervous system. We don’t realise it’s happening but’s it going on pretty much continuously.
Yet, if we can restore enough sensation to our lower back and to our belly, then our nervous system will stand down and allow us to relax more and more. And we will also have access to more sensation in our body, such that we can start to take control of our life once more.
If this pathway out of anxiety interests you then here are three exercises that you can do to start to take action.
However, be aware… you will need to do them for three months minimum. And you will need to keep doing them…
regardless of whether you feel good or bad
regardless of whether you think they’re doing anything or not
regardless of whether you are feeling hopeless because nothing seems to be changing
regardless of anything your mind says about them
(unless they are causing you physical pain, in which case you should look for a way to slacken off a bit)
If you are willing to commit to this, you will begin to recapture your sense of the body and you will, over time, completely beat unnecessary anxiety. It’s important to progressively downplay your mental interpretations of the work as you go along. Mental states, especially negative ones, behave as though they have autonomy and agency (even though they don’t) and will try to remain in place. When negativity comes, as it will, spend time simply feeling the sensation of it in your body, without interpretation.
Exercise 1
5 times a week on separate days
Bow & Arch - intro video here. Perform these two postures back to back and complete three reps, using a two-minute ding. To finish off, spend two more dings lying down flat out, paying no attention to your breath but remaining feeling your body.
Time needed - 16 minutes
Top tip: make a gentle sigh on each outbreath and keep feeling your body as you breathe and stretch.
Download a 2-minute ding track here.
Exercise 2
Twice a week on separate days. Can be on the same day as Exercise 1 if you wish.
Belly-Breathing Workout (entry level version) - follow-along video here
Listen to or read the full introduction and explanation here or here before doing this workout for the first time.
Exercise 3
Five times a week, right before going to sleep.
Lying in your bed at night, spend five minutes feeling in to the sense of your body. Try to feel especially your lower back and belly area but do not become discouraged if you feel very little there. That is entirely normal when we begin this work.
Good luck and Remember that You Can Beat Anxiety