your home on this earth

So much of the work I engage in with clients deal with thoughts. The intellectual realm is the one I — and many clients, too — tend to be the most comfortable playing in. It’s an endless source of fascination: fantasy, rumination, projecting into the future, picking over the past. One could possibly spend their whole lives living in their heads, never being fully embodied.

Embodied.

What does this word mean? We have bodies, obviously, but what’s our relationship with it? Is it merely a vehicle for your brain? An unruly and inconvenient part of us that we try to tame? Something we neglect unless it’s hurting too much to ignore, or conversely, to pick apart and fix? Whatever it is, the default in modern societies is to live in and from our heads.

I think, therefore I am.

To live in an embodied state is to start to invite other parts of you to the table. Your senses, your feelings (emotions + sensations in your body), your intuition: and to start to play with the idea that you are not your thoughts. You are only the one observing your thoughts.

Can you imagine shifting thoughts and thinking from the top of the hierarchy to more of an egalitarian relationship with the rest of you?

Overthinking as a strategy for safety

As highly sensitive people, living solely from the head can also leave one feeling particularly vulnerable and overly reactive to outer stimuli, easily swayed and destabilized.

As a defense mechanism, some HSPs tend to develop rigid thoughts and beliefs to feel safe, doubling down on overthinking when overwhelmed and feeling threatened.

The problem with using thoughts to give yourself the illusion of safety is this: that thoughts, by its very nature, can be fickle and changeable. Moreover, this is desirable! We are supposed to update our thoughts when new information comes in. We are allowed to change our minds, and flexibility of thought is a useful skill to have as an adult.

Real safety lives in the body and nervous system.

This is why having any form of movement and physical practice - from daily stretching to high intensity workouts and anything in between is essential to developing a relationship with your body. Simply moving your body daily in a way that feels good to you is a non-negotiable part of overall wellbeing.

Many mood-based issues can often be mitigated when some form of physical practice and movement is prioritized.

Invite the other parts of you home today. Befriend your body and get to know how its rhythms, tics, needs and wants are inextricably intertwined with the uniqueness of your entire being.