Living Inside Your Skin

By Kim Cottrell

You arrive at the gym, change into your favorite workout gear, and head off to the elliptical machine, magazines, and portable stereo to keep you company while you slog through your workout.

You force yourself out the door for a run, thinking of anything and everything but the pain from a pulled hamstring.

Maybe your best workout is when accompanied by a friend, both of you talking a mile a minute as you hammer out the miles.

Or maybe, you spend all evening at a party worrying about your stomach. You suck it in as often as you can and end up feeling fat anyway, never mind that you’re not fat, you just think you are.

These strategies work for you, or so you think. But, in fact, they are distractions from your self and they reinforce habits of dissociation. Your body might have become an object you dress and display for others to admire, or even an object you use as competition. If you live so disconnected from your physical body, your relationships with others will be less than satisfying. In addition, you will be unable to prevent yourself from injury because you are not in touch with internal sensations.

It is possible to live inside your skin every day, in every activity. To do so, you must become more awake to yourself in each moment. You must practice staying aware of what occurs. Sometimes, in order to find that awareness, you need to slow down. However, it is possible to practice awareness even while you go about living your life.

To begin, you notice, intend to notice, and find your wonder about yourself as you move through your life. It is so simple, and yet so profound. Instead of focusing attention on your thoughts, bring your attention to your body and your experience of being in your body. You knew how to do that once when you were a child learning how to sit, stand, and walk. You noticed, you learned, but you didn’t think of it much. After it became a habit, your noticing weakened.

The most direct strategy for increasing awareness of self is to ask yourself questions. These questions are asked of your thinking mind. Ask it to notice something about yourself. For example, what part of your feet touches the floor as you sit at your computer? What part of your back and neck move while you walk? Do your hips swing when you walk?

Ask your question and wait. Ask your question and direct your attention to where the answer might be. Then wait. When you’ve waited and noticed for many moments, ask the same question again in a slightly different way: if you notice that your hips don’t swing when you walk, ask if your shoulders do?

Once your thinking mind gets used to asking and answering questions, increase the pace, but just a little. Resist the urge to rush toward a goal. Instead, go about noticing. Noticing means that you’re in there, happily ensconced inside yourself. All too often, negative experiences we had as a child left us with a habit of escaping outside ourselves to ignore the pain and push on through to get the job done.

Pushing through might have worked when you were younger, but at some point you need a new strategy. You need to wake up to what is happening, realize that it’s in your best interest to remain inside your body-home and greet whoever comes to the door. If you’re not home when they come knocking, you miss out on being in your own life in a satisfying and connected way.

Kim Cottrell, author, and Feldenkrais practitioner, facilitates self- and body-image lessons that improve the quality of her clients’ lives, visit www.kimcottrell.com for more information.