ACCESSING THE MIND THROUGH BODY AWARENESS

by Rishidev Chaudhuri

The disciplined practice of being aware of bodily sensations is common to a number of meditative and psychological techniques, ranging from mindfulness meditation to the various species of humanistic psychology (especially those influenced by Wilhem Reich). Here's an example from Perls, Hefferline and Goodman's book "Gestalt Therapy":

Concentrate on your `body' sensation as a whole. Let your attention wander through every part of your body. How much of yourself can you feel? To what degree and with what accuracy and clarity does your body—and thus you—exist? Notice pains, aches and twinges ordinarily ignored. What muscular tensions can you feel? Attending to them, permit them to continue and do not attempt prematurely to relax them. Try to shape their precise limits. Notice your skin sensations. Can you feel your body as a whole? Can you feel where your head is in relation to your torso? Where are your genitals? Where is your chest? Your limbs?

Walk, talk, or sit down; be aware of the proprioceptive details without in any way interfering with them. As you sit or lie comfortably, aware of different body-sensations and motions (breathing, clutching, contracting the stomach, etc.), see if you can notice any combinations or structures—things  that seem to go together and form a pattern—among the various tensions, aches and sensations. Notice that frequently you stop breathing and hold your breath. Do any tensions in the arm or fingers or contractions of the stomach and genitals seem to go with this? Or is there a relationships between holding your breath and straining your ears? Or between holding your breath and certain skin sensations? What combinations can you discover?

Similar exercises exist in Buddhist meditations under the framework of mindfulness of the body (considered one of the four foundations of mindfulness), and in yogic exercises. It's intriguing to try to figure out what these techniques are doing, why awareness of bodily configurations should appear in practices that are aimed at insight into the nature of one's thought and cognitive life, and whether the justification for these practices can be usefully translated into some sort of scientific framework (or at least a language that is friendly to what we know of the brain and the biology).

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