The epidemic of disembodiment
Have a think, for a moment, about where you direct your attention most of the time. Is it directed to worries or anticipation about the future? Or replaying a past event? Is it directed to text messages, emails, videos or scrolling through social media? During conversations, how much time do you spend anticipating your next response rather than truly listening?
How much time do you spend noticing how your body feels as you go through your day? How often do you check in with it, notice how fast your heart is beating or how you are breathing, or where there might be tension in your muscles? How much time do you spend being aware that you even have a body?
For many of us, body awareness often only shows up in the form of a symptom, or when something goes wrong in our bodies. For most of us, our body is an afterthought, we’re barely aware of it, we use it unconsciously to move us about in the world, or as Ken Robinson humorously said in his TED talk, we regard our bodies “as a form of transport for our heads. It’s a way of getting [our] heads to meetings.” In this age of zoom meetings, even this function is losing value.
Most of us spend the vast majority of our lives up in our heads, our attention scattered in countless directions, all of them away from ourselves. There is an epidemic of disembodiment; it has spread farther and wider than any infectious virus could ever do. And as with everything in the human condition, this is not random. There is a good reason for it. It has to do with survival.
Being almost exclusively in a state of distraction from our bodies and our present moment reality is in fact an adaptation, a means of managing some form of pain or suffering, usually something that happened very early in our lives. For most, if not all of us, this process started before birth. Through the emerging science of epigenetics, we now know that we arrive in the world already equipped to manage the threatening worlds of our ancestors and to defend ourselves against them. And as we grow up, we develop a means to manage and defend ourselves from our own suffering. We do this in order to survive an early environment that failed us in one way or another. These adaptations are a normal response to an abnormal environment.
And so, throughout our lives, we develop intricate and complex ways to avoid being present. We fragment and disconnect from our suffering, but in doing so, we disconnect from ourselves. We create entire worlds and identities formed of these mechanisms of distraction, they become all-consuming, and we get lost in them. We forget our bodies and we forget ourselves.
In this complex process of adaptation, the mind distracts and forgets but the body remembers. The state of our body is much closer to the truth of who we are and how we are. Whilst our minds can make up all sorts of stories, many of which are far from the truth, our bodies always tell the truth.
As long as we continue to allow our attention to be pulled away from our bodies and away from ourselves, we will stymy our ability to heal. In order to heal we need to return home - to our bodies and to everything they are holding for us.
One simple way to begin to change this pattern is to simply notice your body with friendly curiosity. Take 5 minutes out of your day to scan your body and be curious about what you find. Initially, you may find you notice very little - there may be large areas of your body where there is no noticeable sensation at all - this in itself is worth noticing. You may find that, with time, your body opens up a little more to your attention. Like any new relationship, it takes time to build trust and openness. Enjoy the process of discovery.
