How is your body feeling right now?

The body can be a doorway into our inner world. There is no right way to feel. Each experience is unique and deserves to be met with curiosity, without judgement.

For me, little by little, bringing my attention to bodily sensations became an incredible discovery. Learning to notice and truly feel what was happening in my body gave me a new way of being in the present moment.

But something surprising happened.

The sensations that arose in the here and now sometimes began to take me to other places: memories, thoughts, colours, images, words, emotions...

What an incredible doorway.

I started by sitting down to meditate and bringing my attention to my body. I practised body scan, discovered Focusing — a practice that invites us to pay attention to bodily sensations and allow something to emerge from them — and I also began to see the practice of asanas in Yoga as a way of exploring the somatic and emotional dimensions of our experience.

Later, my journey at the Carl Rogers Institute allowed me to explore Body-Centred Psychotherapy and somatic techniques for contact, release and integration. This deepened even further my relationship with the body, experience and our inner world.

There are many ways of listening to the body.

What if you wanted to begin?

On your own, allow yourself a few minutes to pause, breathe and notice.

Ask yourself:

“How is my body feeling right now?”

What sensations do you notice?

Which part of your body does your attention move towards?

Perhaps you notice tension, warmth, cold, heaviness, lightness, tightness, movement... Or perhaps you don't notice anything particularly clear. And that's okay.

You don't need to find the “right” sensation.

If a particular sensation catches your attention, allow yourself to stay with it for a few moments. Without having to immediately create a story, find an explanation or justify what you are feeling. Simply notice.

You can place one hand over that area of your body and breathe into it, allowing yourself to be a little closer to the experience.

Try incorporating this small ritual into your daily life, not as another obligation, but as an act of self-care.

And if something emerges from this, you can write about it. You can also, if it feels right for you, share it with someone you feel safe with, in a space where there is trust.

Listening to the body can also be challenging

Our bodily sensations are often overlooked.

They can fall outside our list of priorities and, little by little, outside our awareness too. And yet, feeling the body is something deeply biological and innate.

When we are born, our experience is deeply connected to the body and its sensations. As we grow, external stimuli increase, the demands of everyday life multiply, and the space we have to notice what is happening within us can become smaller and smaller.

Sometimes, we lose the ability to pause, notice and listen.

And even when we are able to notice what is happening in our bodies, it is not always easy to stay with what emerges.

The body can bring sensations that we don't know how to describe, name or understand. It can bring something strange, uncomfortable or even frightening. It can take us to a place we don't yet know.

So listening to the body is not always simply about “stopping and relaxing”.

It can also mean meeting what has been asking for our attention.

And we don't have to take this journey alone.

We can learn, little by little, to approach the body with curiosity, respect and safety.

Noticing the body is not something new. In some way, it is a return to our roots — to a raw and deeply human part of our experience.

Perhaps you can begin with a simple question:

How is my body feeling right now?

A warm hug,

Daniela