Do you have a true connection to your body?

Funny, I never think about those things either. :-)

But yes. It’s odd. Oddly enough, most everything about me is odd. It’s truly odd when I’m normal. So don’t worry about it. Consider it the door-frame’s fault. They are notoriously nearsighted and often don’t even see us coming and get themselves in line with our path. Mine sleep most of the time. It’d take dynamite to wake a sleeping doorway and get the lazy bastard to move.

@ETpro I just think the obvious: Somebody has moved the door since the last time I went through it.

@Blueroses Exactly. That’s my story too. Glad to hear you’ll testify it’s true. Be assured that if the door-frames sue, I’ll testify for you.

I dunno, let me ask the wi-fi, see what she thinks…“oh sweetie!” :-)

I’m very aware of my body, and I know right away if something’s not right. This is mostly because I’m a hypochondriac and I can easily convince myself that one strange “symptom” means I’m dying of cancer, and I become hyper-aware of my body after that. So, my body awareness isn’t all that fun.

I do, actually.

“Olympism… exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body,
mind and will.”

Pierre de Coubertin (French Educator, primarily responsible for the revival of the Olympic games in 1894.)

@Blueroses I’m pretty much the same as you describe. I have actually described my body as a vehicle for my brain.

@livelaughlove21 took the words out of my mouth. I’m sort of a hypochondriac, so I’m very “tuned in” to my body. It get frustrating.

At the same time, I also sort of think of my body as a vehicle for my brain, simply allowing me to accomplish the tasks my brain wants to. It’s more of a tool than anything, I guess.

I have no choice but to perceive the sameness of ‘mind’ and ‘body’. Autoimmune endocrine disorders that affect your mood and cognition, are affected by your mood and cognition, and could kill you in the short or long term, will do that for you. I respect Descartes for a number of reasons, but the mind-body dualism that he bequeathed to us irks me to no end.

I cannot count on my body to be reliable, and am pleasantly surprised and sometimes puzzled when it is.

A few years back, I did a lot of movement work to get in touch with my body. It was really helpful. Movement therapy or authentic movement are two of the types that you could do. I have also found yoga very helpful in putting me in my body.

I came across an article when I was young about the good distance runners that discussed this. The best runners didn’t ignore their bodies, but they got in tune with their bodies. It works in so many ways.

Your “container” and “mobile unit” description reminds me of how St Francis used to call his body “Brother Ass”. He was always struggling to keep Brother Ass in line by imposing ascetic disciplines on it. It’s a compelling illusion, that feeling that there’s an “I” somehow riding around in the cockpit of this vehicle of meat and bone, but it’s so wrong.

Strict rationalists often poke fun at people who revere the Bible because it says that it is the “word of God”, but it’s hardly any better to believe that a pattern of thoughts is somehow “the real me” just because that thought pattern says, in effect, “this is the internal voice of the real me”. Really? Really?? Accept that claim as valid, and boom!, there you are riding around in your Meatmobile®.

To dispel that illusion involves more than just bringing awareness to what the body is up to, although that’s a good first step. You also have to let go of the illusion that there’s a you “in there” trying to connect to the body, observing it from the cockpit. That’s the thought pattern in operation. It interprets all experience in terms of an object of experience and an “I” who is the receiver of the experience. So when you turn your attention to the body, the body becomes just an object being experienced by some ethereal observing “me”. Boom!, Meatmobile® again.

It’s not until the thought pattern itself gets abandoned that the whole Meatmobile thing disappears. That experience isn’t so much a matter of “connection with the body” as a dropping away of “body” and “mind” altogether. That sounds weird, I know, but it’s something that most of us have already experienced in moments of complete absorption in experience. With that complete absorption, body and mind drop away, leaving just the raw experience. Top-level athletes learn that to perform at full potential, they have to get thoughts out of the way, especially the thought patterns that generate body and mind.

According to a chiropractor who specializes in the brain-body connection, my skull is sitting crooked on my first cervical vertebra (the atlas). This is why I was told that I suffer from my heart’s atrial fibrillation. The thought is that if the brain can’t communicated fully with the body then things start to go wrong and also injuries may not heal efficiently or completely. So I have an appointment to get my head adjusted so that my brain can heal my atrial fibrillation. This is no joke.

Besides that, I’m very attuned with my body. I physically work it out daily and vigorously and am constantly aware of how it responds to my commands. My body mostly communicates to me through many levels of pain and discomfort which I closely monitor. Pain is something that is frequently given a bad rap. People typically try to use drugs to hide this valuable information that their bodies are trying to coney to their brains. Pain is very important to us as we navigate our lives. If we don’t listen to pain, then we are like an ostrich sticking it’s head in a hole to hide from an attacking lion.
Also I wear a heart rate monitor, use an EKG analyzer and blood chemistry analyzer to keep track of my body.

was hoping that @thorninmud would poke his thorny muddy nose in here :D

Since I am interested in how things are put together, like car engines and bodies, I feel like I try to diagnose myself and do everything I can to prevent ‘wear and tear’.

There’s not much we can do to prevent cells from becoming cancerous unfortunately, but we certainly can make sure it’s caught early, by listening to your body and your doctors.

Early detection is the key @livelaughlove21. I used to be like you and worry all the time, but I gave that up, it was so stressful to me that it was causing harm to my body itself!!

@KNOWITALL Same here. My body is all kinds of screwed up thanks to stress.

@livelaughlove21 Believe it or not, my insurance plan suggested I drink at least one glass of red wine per day, at least. I still don’t just because I’m not a big drinker, but I try, you know, for health purposes…lol

@KNOWITALL I wish I could stand the taste of the stuff.

@livelaughlove21 Too dry for you I’m sure? The drys are an acquired taste. Great for parties though, no one will touch the stuff…ha!

There are some nice semi-sweets out now that are fabulous including St James Semi-Sweet is a really nice one, and from here in Missouri- lol

Moscato is a semi-sweet white that is really pleasant, too, and really gaining popularity.

@KNOWITALL It’s just the taste that gets me. I can’t describe it – bitter? Whatever it is, blech! I like my alcohol sweet.

“That’s because of tannins. As red wines usually aging in barrels it get it tannins from the wood.
Red wines while it is being make has contact with skin and kernels. It gives the red colour to the wine and some portion of its tannins.
White wines age in barrels rarely so less tannin.”

Oh yeah. I call it the pain connection. Generally here’s something wrong or about to be when things go off like red alert in different places. I pull over and stop and do nothing for a while, even fluther hurts sometimes.

I am in the hypochondriac club too. I wish I were not so aware of what my body is doing at all times. And the older I get and the more gliches that appear, the more aware and vigilant I become! I can be exhausting so I just try to get my mind onto something else. IT is probably why I rarely am still. I like to keep my mind and body occupied, that in turn makes me happy!

I’m also a member of the hypochondriac club, so I’m very aware of the internal goings on in my body Meatmobile®. Mostly how my heart and lungs are operating, and every bad headache I’m convinced is an aneurysm. Since I know I’ve got the hypochondriac tendency, I generally dismiss stuff so I don’t stress too much about it. I told my doctor once that I’ll probably die of something really stupid since I never go to see him unless things are really bad.

As a person with a very real chronic pain condition, I’ve had to kind of become detached from a lot of what my body is feeling, just to get through the day. Constant pain is just a fact of my life, and since there’s nothing much more I can do about it, I specifically try not to focus on what is hurting all the time, and only really pay attention when the pain is extraordinarily bad. As a person with kidney disease, I specifically try to notice when something feels off in that area. I guess I’m a mix and matcher, who also walks into doorways and desk corners with alarming frequency.

@augustlan – my best friend and I always joke that we will probably die of a heart attack because we figure it is just some sort of panic attack!

I try not to be aware. I find that being too aware of my body makes me a bit of a hypochondriac. I suddenly start to feel aches and pains that I normally would shrug off. If I give it enough time to take care of itself and pay very little attention to it, it will usually rectify itself.
I just take some pills for aches, till I forget about it and forget to take the pills. I try to take vitamins every so often to at least be sure I am getting something extra for a boost.
I learned this trick once I became a mom. The more I worried about the kids health and my husbands the healthier I seemed.
I think being too aware can create stress and that lowers your immune system.
I do occasionally become aware of when I am feeling very healthy and strong.