Why is it important to feel your body?
Here is a little challenge for you.
Read this and tell me - is this you?
Working long hours sitting, focusing intently on the tasks ahead, you tend to forget your body and physical needs.
You often find yourself absorbed by thoughts and daily tasks and forget to check in on yourself and how your body feels.
You tend to ignore signs of physical needs, such as thirst, hunger and the need for movement.
You sometimes feel pain in your body but have no idea how it happened. It just "came out of nowhere".
If you associate yourself with some of these statements, you are not alone! In fact, most people tend to forget their bodies and ignore how they feel - physically, mentally and psychologically. And no, unfortunately, the fact that most people do it does not mean it is a good idea.
But why do we care if we can feel our body? Why is that important?
Simply said - if you are not able to feel your body, then the information that reaches your brain about your body is less and of lower quality. That means that you are missing a huge potential to function much more efficiently.
Why does this happen?
Neurons are the cells in our body that send and receive information. That means that the information received from our external senses (such as sight, smell and touch) is transferred to the brain through the neurons. Also, as you read this and move your eyes accordingly, your neurons are the ones sending motor commands to your eye muscles.
As you can imagine, having active and efficient neuron pathways is highly important for the proper function of our whole body.
Now, what happens if we stop recalling a specific neuron pathway? For example, we stop feeling or noticing our pelvic floor (that's right, we do have one). In that case we will not be able to control the muscles in that area (thus the huge amount of pelvic floor dysfunctions we observe nowadays), and will have trouble with some of the functions in the area.
The body is an extremely smart system and one of its fundamental features is efficiency. Your body is not interested in supporting a system that is not in use. This is why, for example, if you stop moving in a specific way for a long time, you stop being able to move this way (this can be reversed, don't worry). The same way that if you don't use certain joints they lose their movement range, the neurons connecting to a muscle group start losing their efficiency.
I like imagining this in the following way: The neuron pathways are like a nice highway, connecting two cities. However, if you stop using the highway and supporting it, soon trees and bushes will start blocking the road, so a car (the information) has trouble reaching the next city (the muscle/brain). It is not that no information will reach at all, but it will not be of high quantity and quality.
And now you might be thinking: "Oh no! Can I reverse it?". And the good news is that YES - you absolutely can! You just need to connect and feel your body more. Even though it does sound like a cheesy line out of a commercial wellness class, this is actually the way to go…
What does it mean to feel your body?
It simply means to notice. Observe all the sensation, noticing how it feels when you sit, walk, stand or move in any other way. Another way to put it - to be present. The more you observe, the more the neuron pathways will be used and the "highways" will be renewed.
