From Mindfulness to Bodyfulness
Mindfulness’ popularity has skyrocketed in the last decade, in corporations, schools, and yoga studios. To say the least, this is wonderful.
Yet oftentimes, you don’t get the lasting results you’re looking for from mindfulness alone.
This is because you’re trying to change your mind through your mind. Poet Mark Nepo describes this as “no amount of thinking can stop thinking.”
What can we do?
One starting point is to release the stress held in the body that contributes to stressful thinking. Craniosacral therapy helps release this tension. If you’re looking for a practice that you can do on your own, I recommend bodyfulness.
What is Bodyfulness?
The term bodyfulness sounds a little silly at first. But it’s an important concept and the awkwardness of the term mostly disappears.
Bodyfulness and mindfulness have many similarities. They both invite you to bring your awareness to the present moment. Yet mindfulness does so from a perspective of focusing your mind on something, such as breathing. Bodyfulness, meanwhile, invites you to focus your awareness using your whole body rather than just your mind.
For example, as you’re breathing, you experience the sensations and emotions throughout your body moment to moment. Your mind is connected to the lived experience within your body, from the inside out.
Why is this important?
Benefits of Bodyfulness
In her book “Bodyfulness: Somatic Practices for Presence, Empowerment, and Waking Up in This Life,” author Christine Caldwell explains bodyfulness and why it’s worth embracing in your life.
“The opposite of bodyfulness, bodylessness … is a life lived at a distance from who we were, who we are, and who we will be. This distance from ourselves causes us to suffer more, feel less pleasure, treat others poorly, and experience more challenges in living a self-reflective life.”
Somatic practices shift you from bodylessness towards bodyfulness. These practices, such as embodied mindfulness, somatic coaching and craniosacral therapy, among others, help return you to your body. Christine Caldwell goes on to say,
“This issue is about coming home. The body isn’t a thing we have but an experience we are. Bodyfulness is about working toward our potential as a whole human animal that breathes as well as thinks, moves as well as sits still, takes action as well as considers, and exists not just because it thinks but because it dances, stretches, bounces, gazes, focuses and attunes to others.”
As you work toward your potential as a visionary, remember that your body plays a key role in the process. In addition to supporting your personal evolution, bodyfulness cultivates mindfulness and wellbeing along the way.
If you’d like to incorporate this perspective into your personal and leadership development, check out somatic coaching.
There are many ways to turn inward for the sake of healing and inner growth. Mindfulness, and now bodyfulness, are two approaches worth considering. Bodyfulness offers a somatic approach to mindfulness. Turning your attention to the felt sensations in your body strengthens your mind-body connection, which in turn offers myriad benefits. To explore this more, Sound Somatics offers online somatic coaching and craniosacral therapy in Mercer Island, just outside of Seattle and Bellevue.