Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
BODY FIRST: EVERY MOMENT IS A CHOICE POINT
It is our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
--DUMBLEDORE, IN J. K. ROWLINGS'S HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
YOUR ULTIMATE DESTINATION ON this adventure is to fully understand, learn, and practice being Whole Body Intelligent. This chapter is your first stop on the ride. You will practice the skill of shifting your attention from your thinking mind, or what is called mental cognition, to the sensations and information available from your body, i.e., embodied cognition. I call this shift body first.
The ability to direct your attention and take a body-first approach is the foundation of Whole Body Intelligence (WBI). Free will is the human ability to make choices that are not determined by external circumstances. We can increase both the reach and effectiveness of our free will when we become keenly aware of where we put our attention.
In the following exercise, you will get your first stamp on your WBI passport through a tangible experience of the body-first approach. To help you feel what I mean, let's go back to Keawakapu Beach, which you visited in the Introduction.
Imagine that you and I are sitting in a couple of comfortable pelican pouch beach chairs. We're watching the ocean waves rise and fall a few feet before us. Hear the waves as they crash on the beach and return to the ocean in a steady rhythm. Smell the salty air, feel the sweet ocean breeze on your skin, see the setting sun spray color across the sky.
Now take a minute and listen to the thoughts passing through your mind. What are they saying? The voice in your head might be comparing the weather in Hawaii to the current temperature where you live. Perhaps you are reflecting on your last vacation or musing about going back to your favorite beach. You may even find that your thoughts free-associate as you start reviewing your bucket list and begin planning that long-overdue scuba- diving trip to Belize. Next thing you know, your mind has wandered off to the other to-dos on your bucket list and you're jumping out of an airplane, living in a village helping kids, or exploring the Mayan ruins. These are typical comments I've heard from clients who came to work with me in Hawaii; these were their responses when I asked, "What are you thinking about as you look at what is in front of you?"
Now that you've witnessed your own thought stream, let's shift your attention.
Go back to the beach scene and engage all of your senses. See the ocean, hear the wind in the palm trees, feel the warmth of the setting sun. Now intentionally shift your attention from your thoughts to your body.
Take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Take another deep breath and fill your lungs from bottom to top. Place your hand on your belly; feel your belly expand as you inhale. Release the breath; your exhale will happen with no effort. Now take another deep breath and relax completely.
Continue to place your attention on your breathing and take three more full, deep belly breaths in and out. Notice anything you observe that you were not aware of a few moments ago.
Let your body move organically and do whatever it wants. If you are inclined to make a sound on the exhalation or let out a big sigh, do it. If you feel a bit of tension in your neck, follow the urge to roll your head from side to side. Shake your hands to release tension and pent-up energy, if that is your impulse.
Now take one more deep breath in through your nose and allow your jaw to loosen all the way as you exhale. Empty your face of all expression.
Next imagine you are back on the beach. Notice any body sensations that arise. Scan your body from your head to your toes. What do you sense and feel in your body right now?
You just made a fundamental attention shift from a mind-first to a body- first orientation. The focus of your attention went from thinking about the beach scene to experiencing what you feel when you imagine being on that beach. You expanded your experience by engaging with what is happening inside your body in addition to what is going on outside or floating through your mind.
It's important to note that it isn't necessary to silence the mind or stop your thoughts to broaden your attention and include what your body is feeling and telling you. Your mind may frequently wander here and there. If you continue to reorient in this body-first way on a regular basis, however, your thoughts will slow down and allow your body more bandwidth to communicate with you, to give you information, feedback, and direction.
Now that you've had an initial experience of the body-first approach, let's move deeper inside and find out what else your body is telling you.
Again allow your awareness to move inside your skin as you shift your attention away from your thinking mind and attend to the sensations and "felt sense" available when you focus on your body.
Notice what is occurring. You may realize that you are bouncing your knees up and down, tensing your jaw, gripping this book or your tablet tightly.
Next begin a conversation between your body and your mind. For instance, you might say, "I notice butterflies in my belly" or "I seem to be holding tension in my hips, and there's a restless feeling in my legs."
Now shift your attention to some detail outside of you. Perhaps you discover a large stack of papers on your desk. Observe what your body has to say about that pile of papers--you may shake your head a bit or hear a quick "tsk" come out of your mouth.
Go back and forth from your inner experience to how you mentally frame, judge, explain, or make assumptions about what you see.
What have you learned about yourself?
Did certain parts of your body talk to you when you opened your eyes and observed conditions or events outside of your body?
What is your body saying right now?
This is how you begin to have an integrative conversation between your mind and your body.
Keep practicing and noticing what you discover when you include body awareness in your internal dialogue.
When I think about ___________, I have the following thoughts: ________________________________________________________
When I think about ___________ and listen to my body, I notice: ________________________________________________________
Continue and observe any changes in your breathing, posture, body temperature, or body movements.
As you practice this exercise, your body will come alive. No matter what your opinion of your body or your complaints about how your body looks or functions, your body will respond when you shift your attention and listen to what it has to tell you.
THE SECRET TO LIFE: STICK TO ONE THING
In the movie City Slickers, 39-year-old Mitch Robbins, played by Billy Crystal, is having a midlife crisis. Robbins's antagonist in the film is the tough-as-nails trail boss, Curly. Midway through a grueling cattle drive, Curly gives Mitch some advice about life. He begins by asking Mitch, "Do you know what the secret of life is?"
ADVANTAGES OF USING THE BODY-FIRST APPROACH
• Your body readily alerts you when you fall into negative mental traps and conditioned patterns such as assumptions, comparisons, and blame. You instinctively shift your focus and call on your body's intelligence for clarity.
• You are self-aware and alert to subtle body sensations--a tightness in your jaw when not speaking up, the tension in your hand while gripping the phone tightly during a business call, or a twisting feeling in your gut that says "No!" when you are about to make a wrong decision. You know how to access and interpret the meaning of these sensations and link them back to specific life events that negatively influence your behavior.
• Negative thoughts and beliefs that live in your body do not consume or control you. You know how to stop, release, and change them before they sabotage your results.
• You are aware of nonverbal messages you communicate to others. You feel and notice when your words and body language are incongruent, and you self- correct for better results and more authentic communication.
• You detect stress in your body and manage it. You stay engaged, resilient, and present.
• You trust your instincts to inspire you, help you make the best choices, and take decisive action in any situation.
"No, what?" Mitch replies.
Curly raises his index finger in the air. "This."
"Your finger?" Mitch asks, clueless.
"One thing. Just one thing," Curly answers. "You stick to that and the rest don't mean s!*#."
Unfortunately our minds have a hard time sticking to one thing and often take us on confusing loop-the-loops that generate undesirable circumstances, behaviors, and outcomes. When we take a body-first approach, when we focus on our body as that "one thing" we stick to, we instantly upgrade our perspective and decision-making power in any situation.
You will strengthen and sharpen your body-first skills as you travel through this process. Again and again you will be asked to put your body first and discover what movement and awareness can show you that your mind cannot.
Applying your free will to inhabit your body fully may be a completely foreign experience. For most people it also feels oddly familiar--a place they once knew quite well but forgot about along the way.
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES
As babies we knew only one orientation to the world--body first. Somatic experience is the primary language of all human beings, regardless of race, culture, country, or native language. Before we started to speak, before we became identified with the thinking mind and our thoughts--with mental cognition--we were utterly dependent on sensation as our source of information. In other words, we relied entirely on embodied cognition. Our skin, our ears, our ability to sense changes in temperature, our vision, our sense of smell and taste, our kinesthetic sense, our ability to process information and transform our experience through movement--all of these are examples of embodied cognition.
I recently witnessed a startling display of this natural ability in my 3- year-old granddaughter, Eleanor.
"Mommy, I have a stomachache," Eleanor complained after coming home from preschool. Apparently there was a stomach virus spreading around.
The next morning her dad came into her room and found her smiling. He asked her, "How are you doing, sweetie? How does your tummy feel?"
Eleanor replied, "I took the tears and pain from my belly and put them in my heart, Dad, and that made it all better."
Eleanor didn't think her way through feeling sick. She was not transfixed by thoughts such as "If I get sick, I'll miss school. What if I'm contagious and make my friends sick?" Rather, she instinctively moved through her feelings and discomfort in her belly at a bodily level. Her belly hurt, so she instinctively moved the pain to her heart so it would feel better and go away. The messages from her body do not get translated into thoughts; she transmuted them in her body in her own way to ease the pain.
HOW WE GET THE MIND TO BUY IN
Before we look at the specifics of how our body intelligence gets usurped by the mind, let's consider the context in which the denial of the body occurs. Understanding the context in which embodied cognition is replaced by mental cognition is important because that context--when grasped by the mind--helps the mind buy in. This buy-in is key for the mind to become predisposed to an alliance with the body. In other words, we'd do well to satisfy the mind's need for mental cognition so it doesn't drag its heels when we cross over into embodied cognition.
That said, here's the context.
Rene Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher, largely influenced our predominant worldview in Western society. Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." Cartesian philosophy views the mind and body as dualities, separate and--at times--at odds. Rationality and reason are viewed as superior faculties to be relied on when making decisions. A well-informed mind is seen as the virtuous guide when it comes to our choices and free will.
Whole Body Intelligence and the body-first approach offer you a new definition and experience of free will. To restore the full range of your free will, to return to you what Cartesian philosophy attempted to deny you, we need to catalyze the relationship between your mind and body.
We want to become embodied individuals, to transition out of a disembodied "I think, therefore I am" position to a corporeal alignment: "I think with my body and my mind, therefore I am." This is how you can free yourself from the straitjacket of separation and the adversarial dynamic between you and your body.
A philosophical context alone cannot rob a person of the brilliance built in the human body. Philosophy can, however, recruit parents, educators-- even employers--to impose mind-over-body rule.
Sir Ken Robinson is an English author, speaker, and international advisor in education and the arts. In his 2006 TED talk, Robinson said, "As children grow up, we start to progressively educate them from the waist up." He speaks to the misguided purpose of our current education system-- teaching us how to live in our heads, disembodied. He goes on to poke fun at academics who "look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads, a way of getting their heads to meetings."
Child rearing is an equally powerful force in the lives of children. Many of our standard child-rearing practices deny the wisdom of the body and confuse our innate knowing, as the following example shows.
Cucumber Water Is Not Lemonade
Indian Springs is a natural hot springs resort in Calistoga, California. It is one of those places people go to unplug, relax, and enjoy the healing mineral waters. I was enjoying a long, hot soak in the outdoor pool when a motherly voice rippled through the silence: "Honey, you will love this, it's just like lemonade."
My body responded with a tug in the back of my throat that said, "I'm thirsty, I could use a tasty lemonade too," so I opened my eyes.
A woman with her hair wrapped in a bright green towel was signaling to her toddler, who was happily playing on the pool steps. The woman reached toward the little girl, handing her a plastic cup that looked to me to be filled with the ice water and thin slices of cucumber the resort has by the entrance.
I thought, "Hmmm. I love the cuke water they have at spas, but it definitely does not taste like sweetened lemon juice."
I watched as the little girl took a sip. She scrunched her nose and squirmed a bit as she looked up to her mom. Mom's disappointment was instant and tangible; her face fell and her body visibly collapsed-- shoulders and all.
I felt empathy for the mom; she so wanted her daughter to like the green water. But comparing it to lemonade?
