How often do you take a moment to consider how you feel? If so, how do you do it? Analysing how you feel isn’t as trivial as it sounds. There are multiple “feelings” stirring within you at any given time, and they are arising from different parts of your being. Before the heart can speak to us, it is necessary to quiet the body and the mind otherwise it cannot be heard over the clamour. In this article my aim is to show you that perhaps it’s easier to choose how you feel than you think, thus allowing the opportunity to hear what your heart has to say.
Your Thoughts Aren’t Yours
If you have ever tried to watch the contents of your mind you will have noticed how most of the thoughts that appear in your mind literally do just that; they just appear. You didn’t think them into existence; they just arrived before your mind’s eye. At this point you can either engage with them and hurtle down a rabbit hole of thinking, or you can just observe it for a moment before a different “thought” appears. If you have never performed this practice, I recommend that you try it right now. Close your eyes (preferably after you’ve finished reading these instructions) and observe your thoughts. Notice how “thoughts” – images, memories, words, sounds – spontaneously appear. This is the easy part. As they appear, allow them to pass through without engaging with them. If you are like most people, you will find this the desperately difficult part. Before you know it, you are off thinking the thoughts. There is a simple meditation practice where you try to count to ten without engaging in with any thoughts. As you take a slow breath, observe the contents of your mind. If you get to the end of the exhale without engaging with the thought that arrived, you count “one”. If you engage with the thought before you allow it to subside begin the process again. Don’t be surprised if it seems impossible to get beyond the count of two.
There are many, many meditation techniques and practices. Some are based on observing the spontaneous contents of your mind, whereas other are based upon maintaining focus on a specific thought or mantra at the exclusion of the thoughts that arrive spontaneously. All of them teach the lesson that you are not your thoughts. They also make it apparent that your consciousness is capable of observing your mind. This fact alone should make it obvious to us that our consciousness is not the exact same thing as our mind.
Your Body Generates Emotions
It is abundantly obvious to us that we experience reality through our body. Whether it be the pleasant feeling of the sun shining on our face or the pain of stubbing a toe, the body reminds us that it is right there with us. What may not be so obvious is that the body can generate emotions that can greatly affect our interpretation of situations that we are in. If it is possible to take medication to aleviate depression, is it not obvious that certain chemicals in the body can directly affect the mind? Obviously, when people consume mind altering drugs, they are intentionally changing their perceptions with the aid of chemicals.
The mechanisms by which the body affects the mind are not soley activated through the intentional consumption of drugs. The body is constantly producing chemicals to regulate biological processes including your mood. In fact, 90% of the body’s serotonin in made in the gut. Your gut itself is home to the enteric nervous system which contains more neurons than the spinal cord and communicates directly with the brain via the vagus nerve. It should be obvious that what we choose to eat and drink plays an important role in how we feel.
Our emotional state is like the lens through which we see the world. If we are feeling irritable, it would seem that the world presents us with situations that surface our anger. If we are rushing to get somewhere by car, we are all too aware of the other drivers on the road, driving poorly, making us late. I’m not talking about how your emotions are driving the manifestation of reality. What I’m saying is, you manifest your reality to yourself based on your emotional state. If you are polarised to the extent that you only see negative things in your life, that will be reinforced in you by how you perceive the world. If this is the case, could you not improve your wellbeing by conscious choice? Moreover, what if your bad mood was caused by your body and not by your conscious thoughts?
What steps can you take to improve your day-to-day life?
Listen to your body – you can hear it anyway
Whereas the mind experiences fleeting thoughts and images, the body operates in a much more pervasive fashion. This means that quieting the body cannot be done in the same way as we quiet the mind. Your body is there on alert at all times. You don’t have to think about whether to enter “fight or flight” mode. The body will occupy itself irrespective of what your mind tells it. The best you can do is get it to occupy itself with the constructive things of your choosing. When the body is happy feeling useful, it will stop trying to change your mind to convince you to make it useful. The phrase, “The Devil makes work for idle hands” could have been conceived entirely of how your body will set about creating the lens for your perception to make itself a better protector of your life. Let’s face it, if you were genuinely surrounded by danger and threats, then your body would be entirely correct to be producing cortisol (the stress hormone) 24/7.
If we occupy our body with problems that it understands and can address, then we will reap the emotional benefits.
Your body wants:
- to be tired after exertion
- to be building and healing
- to be preparing for future stresses
- to be actively regulating the metabolism
- to learn how to adapt to new physical challenges
If you give the body challenges that only the body can rise to (survival), then it will happily leave the small stuff (worry) to the mind.
Once the body is happy in its role, and you become accustomed to how it talks to you, you will have made space in your perception to hear how your heart talks to you.
Conclusion
Once you have experienced that there is a difference between your consciousness and your thoughts, you will know that you have one more element of freedom regarding how you choose to think and feel.
Once you have experienced in your body the feeling that it is content in its vital role of keeping you safe, you will be able to listen to your heart as the fulcrum balancing the body and the mind.
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