Connecting With Your Physical Self
© 2021 Kristine Klussman, PhD
Excerpt from CONNECTION: How to Find the Life You’re Looking for in the Life You Have, by Kristine Klussman, PhD (Some portions have been omitted or edited in minor ways.)
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Reestablishing a strong connection with your body is an essential part of experiencing connection to yourself. Physical, bodily connection promotes a sense of vitality and thriving. Your body feels in balance, and you’re able to sense your muscles, joints, veins, and lungs at work. You savor the joy of subtle (or intense) movement, experiencing the wonder of flexibility, coordination, strength, power, and grace. Our bodies evolved to be able to move in a mind-boggling variety of directions and actions — unlike most other animals. We run, we walk, we lift, we climb, we jump, we swim, we twist, we pull, we push, and we press. As Dr. John Ratey and Richard Manning put it in their book, Go Wild, “Humans are the Swiss Army knives of motion.” We’re designed to move in all directions. Physical connection helps us acknowledge, honor, care for, and stay in touch with our most primal needs, and it leads to a rich and deep satisfaction. No matter what your state of body is and whether you are grossly out of shape, overweight, or ailing, we all crave and deserve to feel the powerfully connected feelings that come from experiencing our bodies in sublime motion. We honor our bodies instead of combating them. Connection of any kind begets more connection. Cultivating connection in one area of your life will trickle over and catalyze spontaneous connection in other areas of your life; unfortunately, the same is true for disconnection. There is a colloquial saying in parenting that suggests, “You are only able to be as happy as your least happy child.” That concept works similarly with connection — you are only as connected as the least connected part of yourself. It is difficult to connect deeply to yourself if you are neglecting major areas of self-care or if you ignore the self-destructive behaviors you engage in. Being attuned to your body’s needs is a critical aspect of self-care, akin to the instant gratification and responsiveness we expect from modern amenities, like a crypto casino instant withdrawal system. Just as you might check your physical needs for rest or activity, consider the seamless transactions provided by such platforms – they’re designed to meet the user’s need for efficiency and immediacy. Incorporating these checks several times a day can help lift your spirits, much like the quick access to winnings can elevate a player’s experience. Self-care doesn’t demand perfection, much like how engaging with digital platforms doesn’t require expertise in cryptocurrency. What it does require is awareness and the intent to make incremental improvements in your life. With the same gentle persistence and clarity that drives successful engagement in a fast-paced digital transaction, you can infuse connection and well-being into your daily routine, allowing the warmth of care to flood in from every angle.
SENSORY AWARENESS
As we’ve gotten more into our own heads (and our screens) as a society, we engage our bodies and senses less and less. Whether we notice it or not, all human beings yearn to feel and have their physical senses engaged. The less we experience the sensory realities of being alive, the more we experience ourselves as detached and dulled. Often people don’t realize how sensually deprived and starved they are, and they act out their need to “feel anything” in unhealthy ways, just to prove they are alive. In an extreme example, one severely depressed girl, who was hospitalized for making several knife cuts on her arm, shared with me that her cutting was not a suicidal gesture, but rather an attempt to “feel something . . . something real . . . anything . . . to prove to myself that I was alive.” It was an effort to feel something beyond the numbness she experienced day to day. Heightening your sensory awareness doesn’t require extreme or dangerous acts, however. It simply requires mindful awareness to amplify otherwise ordinary sensations so that they can become extraordinary experiences that leave you feeling vibrantly alive and connected. In many ways, sensory experience is the original source of pure connection for all living beings. Visceral experiences like goose bumps, the hair standing up on the back of your neck, and the way your stomach drops on a roller coaster are all moments when we feel intensely alive and pulled into connection with ourselves and our bodies. But you don’t have to wait for special circumstances or crises; you can intentionally seek out and use these kinds of bodily sensations to promote a more primal and deeply rooted connection to your body. What exactly is sensory awareness? Dr. Russell T. Hurlburt and his colleagues have defined it as “the direct focus on some specific sensory aspect of the body or outer or inner environment.” It’s a phenomenon of attentive experience, not mere perception. For example, if you hop absent-mindedly into a hot shower in order to get your day started, that is not sensory experience. But if you take a moment to pause and bring mindful awareness to the sensation of the warm water drenching your hair and face, noticing the pleasurable feelings and the motion of the water along your skin — that is sensory awareness. Similarly, you are not using sensory awareness if you slip under your covers and focus on getting to sleep as quickly as possible. But if you pause to appreciate the softness of your sheets on your skin and the caress of the pillow on your cheek, you are experiencing it in full. Or, if you are patting your dog’s head and saying your hellos as you come in the door, but mostly making sure he’s not jumping up and scratching you, that is not a sensory experience. But if you pause to gaze lovingly at him, intentionally stroking his head, marveling at the soft fur between your fingers and the tickle of his whiskers on your cheek as he tries to lick your face, that is a sensory experience. Mindful awareness is, once again, the key difference in all of these examples — a mindful intention to amplify your awareness of the situation. Engaging your senses boosts your sense of vitality and makes you feel exquisitely alive. It is the magic fairy dust of experiencing true connection. The sheer pleasure and joy that come from heightening and tuning in to our innate senses make this my favorite area of practice. We are so often unaware of our bodies and our senses in our modern lifestyles. The practice of intentionally heightening our awareness to all of our senses (sight, hearing, touch, sound, and taste, to name a few) helps us fully inhabit our bodies. The key is to pause and elongate the moment as much as you can in order to amplify and savor the experience. By attuning to your senses, you will notice them reawaken and become sharper. At the advanced level, you can even learn to modulate or resolve uncomfortable sensations, such as pain, by bringing a nonjudgmental, appreciative curiosity to the sensation. Another way to activate sensory awareness is to seek out enhanced experiences. The wide array of health benefits of extremely cold water, for example — which includes neural regeneration, reduced inflammation, an increase in killer T cells, increased fat burning, and a more positive mood, among other highly desirable benefits — are becoming more widely understood and are fantastic bonuses to what most people would consider just a great way to deliver a turbocharge of sensation. But jumping into any body of water, regardless of the temperature, with an intentional awareness of the tingling sensation, is an incredible way to experience yourself as completely alive. In the modern age of first-world comforts, our bodies rarely get a jolt of sensory excitement because we all live within a narrow band of ambient temperature and unvarying experiences. Try getting outside of that safe and secure band. Go for a walk in the rain without an umbrella, feeling the youthful exuberance of getting soaking wet. Experiment with heat, and try a sauna or a sweat lodge. Research shows promising health benefits for regular activities of this kind in addition to the sensory thrill we experience. Maintaining good health goes beyond sensory experiences and includes taking care of our overall well-being. Alongside seeking out enhanced sensations, it is crucial to prioritize our sexual health. One important aspect of this is undergoing regular STD testing. Located in Elmhurst, the Elmhurst STD testing center provides a confidential and supportive environment for individuals to get tested and receive necessary treatment if required. Incorporating regular STD testing into our healthcare routine ensures early detection and prevention of sexually transmitted infections, promoting both physical and emotional well-being. By taking this proactive step towards sexual health, we can enjoy the full range of sensory experiences with peace of mind, knowing that we are actively caring for ourselves and our partners.
MOVEMENT
At my connected parenting groups for mothers, I like to start by asking the moms to participate in an intensive self-care regimen for several weeks before we begin discussing parenting techniques. Mothers are notorious for sacrificing their own self-care in the service of others and, in order to be present for more closeness in any relationship, your own tank needs to be full first. The first time I started a group this way, it was striking to hear how each and every mother felt unfulfilled by, unhappy with, or out of touch with her own body. Most of them had grown to accept this condition as normal over time. Their feelings weren’t necessarily related to the size and shape of their bodies. This was more about their own physical satisfaction. Some tried to joke about it, chalking it up to age, “use it or lose it,” or having “mom-bod.” But the poignancy of the grief these moms felt around this issue struck a chord with me and inspired me to want to understand how we can become so easily disconnected from our bodies without even realizing it. It also challenged me to explore the truth of my own relationship to my body more deeply. The more I honestly reflected, the more I realized that I was also disconnected from my body and its movement; I was in no position to teach other people how to connect to their bodies until I solved my own issues first. The only intentional movement I did was some form of chore-like exercise, which I had to push myself uphill to perform and which I therefore did not do on any regular basis. There was nowhere to go but up.
Movement Versus Exercise
I titled this discussion “Movement,” rather than “Exercise,” because I don’t think exercise is necessarily the way back to connection with our bodies. While exercise certainly has its place, I would argue that movement is the better way to mediate reconnecting with our bodies. Movement can include exercise, but is much broader in its interpretation, motivations, and scope. Movement is an expression of what it means to be alive and something that we fundamentally need and crave, whether or not we are conscious of that need. Movement in some capacity is available to nearly every human being, regardless of age, weight, body type, or condition. The idea of movement fosters greater connection to our bodies, tapping into the natural joy and physical desires we have to experience our bodies as flexible, coordinated, powerful, weightless, graceful, and sensual. In contrast, we often equate exercise with extrinsic goals such as losing weight, having a better body, looking good, gaining strength and flexibility, living longer, attracting a mate, and so forth. This is why movement offers us a greater chance of success.
Finding Your Why
Tapping into your “why” reveals the intrinsic motivations to move your body — the ones that are aligned with your deepest values. Begin by asking yourself what you believe when it comes to movement. If you don’t know, then work on developing a guiding principle that is your truth, not someone else’s. Once you identify or develop your belief system, decide whether your “why” feels important and powerful enough to make you get up and move. If it’s not powerful enough, then keep digging deeper until you get to a more robust conclusion. More powerful “whys” generally sound something like: “to have some quality alone time with myself” or “in order for me to get out of my head and into my humanity” or “to celebrate my innate masculinity/femininity” or “to honor myself and my body with proper care” or “to forge physical connection with my body each day.” When the “why” is more profound, the “how” becomes much more creative and flexible. There is a wide variety of options for connecting to yourself through movement each day, from simply stretching before bed; to enjoying a slow, meditative breaststroke back and forth in a pool; to a crazy, sweaty game of racquetball with a friend. These possibilities stretch far beyond the usual narrow options for an extrinsic goal like needing to burn three hundred calories each day. A 2011 study asked a sample of university office workers why they exercised. Seventy-five percent of participants stated they did it for weight loss and/or better health; the remaining 25 percent stated they did it to enhance the quality of their daily lives. After following them for a year, the researchers found that the group intent on improving quality of life exercised 34 percent more than those who exercised to lose weight or improve their appearance and 25 percent more than those who exercised for health reasons. The authors attributed this significant result to the intrinsic-extrinsic differences between something a person does for herself (quality of life) versus something she does because her doctor or society tells her she should. Their conclusion, which I wholeheartedly agree with, is that people need to stop thinking of exercise as an extrinsic, health-related necessity and start viewing it as their ticket to a subjectively better, more personally rewarding quality of life. When you think of movement as something that enriches your life in a way you value, you’re far more likely to do it. But it’s just as critical that you choose a type of movement that works for you . . . one that you enjoy and that doesn’t feel like a chore. This might be different for each person. Don’t worry that your preferred form of movement is not “ideal” for health. The physical movement you do regularly is always more effective than the optimal exercise regimen you abandon after a week. And, more and more, research is finding that vastly different forms, types, and frequencies of exercise can have comparably positive impacts on health. Short bursts of high-intensity interval training a few times a week, for example, are now considered just as viable a form of exercise as several hours of traditional aerobic exercise like jogging. For one anxiety-prone teenaged client, movement became a daily commitment to help even out her moods, reduce some of the cortisol in her body, and improve the quality of her sleep. Those reasons were easier for her to embrace and avoided the up-and-down emotional roller coaster of trying to exercise to have the perfect body. What matters most is that you move your body regularly, in a way you enjoy, for reasons that matter to you and that align with your personal priorities.
Cultivating a Natural Love and Passion for Movement
Before I revisited movement with an eye on improving my self-connection, I couldn’t remember the last time I had experienced the joy of movement just for movement’s sake. I had no idea what kind of movement my body enjoyed or was good at. I couldn’t say for sure how much movement was too much, too little, or too intense for me. I showed up to exercise classes and let the instructors define the experience for me, while I watched the clock the whole time. I’d been relating to my body from a distance for decades and never knew any other way. I panicked a little when I realized I had no self-knowledge in this area and no idea how to turn things around. But natural wisdom exists inside of us if we ask the right questions and create the space to really listen for the answer. I decided to break out my trusty strategy of following clues with mindful awareness and begin my Easter egg hunt in the misty memories of my childhood. When I was a kid, movement came spontaneously and naturally. During elementary school, I was constantly in motion, cruising around on my Big Wheel, selling Girl Scout cookies on my roller skates, owning the four-square court, trying to master a cherry drop on the horizontal bars, climbing big trees, or playing handball by myself. Movement was a complete joy and celebration of my body back then, something that just happened naturally. I didn’t have to think about it. My body and I were in complete harmony. After reflecting on how much connection I’d lost since those happy childhood years, I dedicated an entire year to rebuilding my relationship with my own body and figuring out how to enjoy it again. My intent was to bring a beginner’s mind and curiosity to movement, to try every type of movement that seemed like it might help me rediscover myself. I suspected that my elementary school glory years were the likeliest place to offer clues and started by asking myself about the last movement activity that I had absolutely loved. The answer that came to me was ice skating — a surprise, since I’d almost forgotten I had briefly taken lessons. The moment the idea occurred to me, I felt a surge of excitement, and then the usual voices of resistance started chattering inside my head — you’re too old, it’s not real exercise, it’s too inconvenient, what’s the point, it’s for young girls, it’s a waste of time, you will fall and crack your skull. I pushed past the voices and signed up for weekly group lessons at a nearby rink. I was nervous at first, but soon the sensation of gliding and moving across the ice had me giddy and feeling like a kid again. I started hitting the rink three times a week and found that I looked forward to skating more than anything else in my week. I tried not to let myself focus on comparisons with other people or get too concerned with learning fancy moves. Instead, I allowed myself to follow what was most enjoyable to me, which was simply the feeling of gliding; using graceful, feminine movements; and experiencing my body as balanced and coordinated. So I mastered the basics of long forward and backward crossover strokes to move across the ice, paying particular attention to form and extension. This was the first time in my adult life I had allowed myself to pursue a movement experience just for the joy of it, without a particular purpose or goal in mind. I kept up my skating for the entire year, and even though tricks weren’t my goal, in that short period of time, I conquered three different jumps and even learned to spin. The learning, I noticed, happened so naturally and effortlessly because this activity was inspired from a place of joy and freedom from pressure. My ice-skating experiment spawned a wave of more experimentation. Now that I knew I was drawn to experiencing my body in a graceful and feminine way, I scanned the other options in my county that might bring the same sensation. I settled on belly dancing and hula dancing. Bullseye. I don’t think I ever broke out into a sweat during any of the classes, but I was blissful at the fluidity of movement and the feeling that I was channeling an inner goddess. Particularly in hula dancing class, I was struck by how all the women, no matter their age or size, looked so beautiful and self-possessed while engaged in this slow, deliberate, spiritual dance. I went on to explore movements that prompted different sensations, like the feelings of power (indoor rock climbing and taiko drumming) and fun — something I’d long ago abandoned as a kid. I enlisted the help of a girlfriend for the fun quest, and we replaced our usual suburban dinner and wine evenings out for playful activities — trampoline dodgeball, drop-in volleyball at the Y, competitive ping-pong, country line dancing, and fierce games of air hockey at the arcade. Our friendship bloomed with this new approach because we were sharing hilarious new experiences and laughing so hard together instead of just sitting around drinking chardonnay and kvetching about mundane life. Playful movement was addicting to me, and I started bringing it everywhere I could. I ran to grab my own swing when the kids and I hit the playground, instead of doing my usual stand-back-and-watch routine. I started cannonballing into pools and dunking myself into the ocean instead of hanging back, trying not to get my hair wet. My partner joined in on the action, and he and I started hitting dive bars on date nights to play shuffleboard and pool together — anything that involved movement and play. We dropped in on a square-dancing session at the community center and joined a co-ed softball league, which was both pathetic and hilarious at the same time. In many ways, we were reliving the wholesome aspects of our youth. I even volunteered to coach my boys’ basketball and baseball teams, though I’d never played those sports and knew nothing about them. It was good to reconnect with the simple pleasures of throwing and catching a ball or making a basket — activities I had long ago stepped away from in my serious adult mom role. Through all of this experimentation, I began to know myself physically and learned a great deal about my likes, my dislikes, my capabilities, what brings me joy, what makes me feel alive. Movement and I were back together again, as we were in my youth — full of variety and reckless abandon, anchored in fun and joy, free from pressure and goals. I had rediscovered something that left me feeling totally in tune with and connected to my body from head to toe. My friends and readers who are accomplished athletes may feel that a revival or exploration such as this isn’t necessary. But I invite you to ask yourself whether the physical track that you are on is wide enough for you and if there are any blocked areas that need unblocking. Is your repertoire of movement large enough that you are regularly exploring and discovering new capabilities? Is there enough pleasure and playfulness in your activities? Are you as physically curious and experimental as you were as a kid, or have you prematurely thrown in the towel on many activities? After my year of experimenting with motion, I realized that there is a whole other universe of physical expression and connection available to me. This process of awakening the layers of physicality within me and connecting more deeply to my body has transformed my life and my relationships more than any other aspect of my quest for authentic connection.
Tips for Connecting with Movement
The best first step is to set an intention to connect to your body more deeply before the movement. During the activity, try to bring a loving awareness to usual movements in order to notice and appreciate how it feels to move your body. Slowing down and elongating movements can turn ordinary motions (such as reaching for your toes during a stretch) into an extraordinary heart-opening experience. Try using this technique, along with sensory awareness, to appreciate tiny miracles of your body’s ability to flex, cooperate with your wishes, and breathe in the throes of vigorous exercise. Becoming curious and tuning into these ordinary sensations can bring an aliveness, meaning, and transcendence to an ordinary workout — as if you’ve just had a spiritual encounter with yourself. Suspending self-judgment, again, is essential here. Let yourself fully inhabit your physical body and savor the sensations of exertion without guilt or shame. For many people, learning to embrace the joy of movement in this way can also improve intimacy with their partners — a healthy side effect that further promotes connection. All the more reason to stop depriving ourselves of these richly rewarding, primal pleasures. A note on prolonged sedentary periods: These are often the times people abuse themselves the most, both mentally and physically. There’s an underlying assumption (based on a common cognitive error called “all-or-nothing” thinking) that goes something like, “Because I haven’t worked out in ages, I might as well not do anything else that would be healthy or physically engaging for my body.” We build up an internal resistance to movement and become more permissive about choices that are destructive to the body. This creates a powerful downward spiral, typically reinforced with self-loathing, that feels nearly impossible to break. The best way through and out of these periods, I have found, is to work on your mental attitude. First, try to normalize the experience by reminding yourself that some sedentary periods are natural, and even necessary at times. Any farmer knows the benefit of letting a field lie fallow. Sedentary periods are instinctive during various times of year such as cold winters or during times of stress, transition, or busyness. If it’s been years or even a lifetime since you were physically active, acceptance and compassionate self-talk can help to reduce feelings of shame — the nefarious force that locks us into our descending spiral. From a place of emotional neutrality, you will be able to see the possibility of reengaging physically, without all the baggage associated with your past behaviors. Having that open, non-self-critical attitude toward moving is the key to feeling and staying connected to your physical self. Even if you are not engaging in physical activity, the neutral (and therefore nonnegative) stance helps you maintain self-connection and more easily determine your body’s wants and needs. This small shift in perspective, though it may not immediately prompt action, can have a powerful impact. The key question to ask yourself in this area is about the quality of your relationship (or connection) to movement: Is it positive or negative? Do you feel guilt-ridden, pressure-filled, and perpetually inadequate, laden with unrealistic expectations and fantasies of the ideal body? Or do you have a lighthearted willingness to lean into opportunities for motion and to creatively explore ways to combine joy and fun with movement in your life, no matter the condition of your body? Do you have a commitment to let go of critical self-talk and not berate yourself, regardless of how long you go without “working out”? I would argue that the quality of your relationship to movement has a huge impact on your connection to your body overall and sense of self in general. My clients have reported that just committing to stop self-judgment and negative self-talk related to “exercising” was effective. That switch enabled them to reengage and tiptoe back into various types of movement, creating an entirely new and rewarding relationship with moving their bodies. Even if they were in a prolonged sedentary period, they were always able to work on their attitude, replacing tense insistence with a spacious, easygoing attitude toward movement. Whether you are a hard-core athlete, a couch potato, or an on-again– off-again exerciser like the majority of people, I invite you to (re)consider the nature of your relationship with movement . . . and whether that relationship could be revisited and revitalized. I think you’ll find that there are, indeed, more satisfying, meaningful ways to move and feel connected to your body.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kristine Klussman, PhD is a clinical health psychologist, researcher, author, speaker, clinical supervisor, instructor and member of the Palo Alto University faculty. After completing training at Medical College of Virginia and Harvard Medical School, she returned to her native Bay Area to found and direct California Pacific Medical Center’s Health Psychology Program, which provided behavioral and motivational counseling to seriously ill patients and their families. This experience prompted her interest in developing a new connection-based theory of well-being, and she went on to found and direct Connection Lab, a psychology research center exploring tools to help people live more meaningful, values-driven, authentic lives. Kristine has a private practice in San Francisco, and also works with the Frontline Workers Counseling Project to offer essential workers pro bono therapy during the pandemic. Her first book – Connection: How to Find the Life You’re Looking for in the Life You Have – was published in 2021 by Sounds True. For more information, visit kristineklussman.com.
Posted by mkeane on Thursday, June 10th, 2021 @ 4:08AM
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