Something I had to do out of necessity and because of years of running away from what my body was telling me, especially with big emotions, was find a way to connect to it. Last year pushed me to do that, it was time. What I started off with and what I’m primarily sharing about in this article is a five minute body scan exercise that helped me make strides in this endeavor. I emphasize five minutes because I personally struggle with patience so this was the perfect gateway for me and still helps me greatly today just as is. Just from five mins, I’ve been able to create an entire body database/emotions log in the Notes app on my phone that has helped me understand myself and emotional situations better. So if you struggle with patience and sitting still, you may be able to do this despite that and it can lead to wonderful progress where you’re gaining access to your body’s emotional language. Below is a short video of the practice.
These are the steps: I sit upright if I can, anywhere, can be at home, outside, even in my car. I set a five minute timer on my phone. I close my eyes. I start with my feet and continue up my body through each body part, taking a couple seconds each to see if there’s any sensation there. I tend to do doubles rather than one at a time, so bottom of both feet, then both ankles, then both shins/calves, then both knees, etc. (the video takes you through). If I feel a sensation in a body part, I validate it by thinking or saying I see you and breathe into it to acknowledge it, then I try to identify the emotion, or if I had any thoughts that popped in and could possibly have triggered the sensation. Then I continue the body scan (or pause timer to log). When the five minute timer goes off, I log what I discovered in my Notes app with as much description as possible. Below are some examples from my own list.
Panic
-lower back feels crushed, whole area is kind of numb
Overwhelm (general)
-chest heavy and is like a hollow piece of bone cut in half
-shoulders feel pushed down
Overwhelm (specifically from overworking)
-all over body pulsing like little sparks like mini explosions, hard to explain
-middle of back very heavy
-chest tight
-head heavy
Helpless
-left knee throbbing, dull ache all over front and back of left knee
-example trigger: thoughts raced about what I’m going to do about money, how will I continue to support myself?
-pulled a fairy card got “self-reliance”
Sometimes I do pull one card from a neutral deck so it can help me if I’m unsure of the feeling that the sensation is connected to, or if I don’t remember the thoughts I had while the sensation is occurring and there is no particular situation happening as the sensation is occurring.
What I learned from this practice is there are sensations in our body which: come out of nowhere and have to do with the present moment, there are sensations triggered by thoughts (it’s like your body talks back to you as you have these thoughts), and there are sensations that are stored trauma, which exist in the same spot of your body and show up repeatedly for a specific reason. All three scenarios can mix together or stand on their own.
The point of doing all of the above is so that in future emotional situations, if I feel a sensation which I know is on this list, I can easily pull it up to better understand what’s going on in the moment and remember examples of other times it happened to compare/contrast. There are two specific sensations that show up repeatedly for me and I have been able to benefit so much from discovering them.
1 Shame
-left arm, top half near shoulder is throbbing like I got shot near the shoulder and blood is pouring out of the wound
-shame around my emotional needs
I found out this was shame around my emotional needs because of the various scenarios in which it showed up. I felt it in the same exact spot, and it was the same exact feeling. Now whenever I feel that in my left arm, I know what’s going on and I can rely on and trust that that is my experience. Instead of spiraling like in the past, I can give myself self-compassion and tell myself it is okay to have needs and I am deserving of taking care of them.
2 Fear (general, starts with panic, see Panic above)
-right arm just above elbow is throbbing, sensation traveling up arm to shoulder like a crawling sensation, but mainly is in lower arm
-heart beating super fast
-pulled fairy card that has to do with sacral chakra and bravery
-happens a lot when I communicate my needs
-example trigger: happened after I sent that email standing up for myself, asserting my needs
***if sensations spread/progress, see: Fear (of emotionally losing something)-chest feels heavy “dense” clogged or Fear (of physical abandonment)-it’s like someone cut off my entire chest and removed my insides completely it’s so hollow — see which is being triggered, check sensation descriptions
This second one allowed me to see that when I communicate my needs I tend to feel panic, then I go into fear immediately afterward and it usually progresses into something even deeper like the two specific fears I mention above. Having written this down helps me get more specific with what kind of fear my body is so afraid of happening. It remembers losing emotional things like the love of others when I speak my truth, because that love was conditional on how I acted. It also remembers people physically leaving, so new people or situations may be about that fear. Because of what I know about my own fear I can’t be misled, sometimes the body is reacting to the past and there’s no need to worry even though it feels like there is. This entire practice helps with being able to see that.
Outside of the five minute practice
Other mysteries that have opened up from starting to do this is when I’m not distracted, like if I’m walking or driving, I will notice my body may tap on me, as if someone is tapping me. This happens if I say something aloud to myself or think it, for example: “those people were lying from the beginning” or it can happen if I am taking an action like writing an email that I’m conflicted about sending. After I speak/think or while I’m writing the email, I’ll feel a distinct tapping in my body somewhere, twice or three times. I’ve realized since it’s happened in a few different situations it’s my body’s way of affirming what I’m saying, thinking, or doing. And again I can trust and rely on this as my experience because it’s coming from inside. The only reason I’ve been able to sense this is because I have practiced with the five minutes. I’ve become accustomed to noticing when my body is reacting in moments whereas before last year I never really noticed these types of things.
I have a long history of going to readers so that they can provide answers as well as to tell me what I’m feeling. I’ve also had a bad habit of pulling cards like crazy from multiple decks when I couldn’t make a decision and then be confused because I’d be staring at an entire card spread that I’d now have to decode and fit together, meaning I have a history of not trusting myself. This practice has opened up parts of my connection to me to allow me to lean into trusting the intelligence and intuition of my body, knowing it has all the answers and no external source could give me better answers. I’d heard that for years but only did it become true for me when I started doing this and it blossomed into the results I can get today. I have more faith in myself and my abilities to take the right actions. If you feel the same I believe it’s from trauma, because I’d been gaslit for so much of my life that my truth became ashes, never to be seen or heard from again. Laid to rest underground, inaccessible by me and I would usually cry never knowing what I should do, always thinking I needed everyone to tell me what to do. It also made me feel powerless against situations that confused me, or big emotions that I didn’t understand. But with a little work this practice helped and I’m so grateful and really wanted to share it with you because you can learn to trust yourself too, we all can. We all have this built in intelligence.
I do this the most when I’m feeling big feelings. It’s not always easy though, even today. If I don’t make it through the five minutes, I just try to write down every sensation so that it can become more clear - the present and the past - because the unraveling of these emotional codes your body uses to communicate is sacred and you’re giving it room to speak. You’re finally making it safe for your body to speak instead of fighting against the sensations and feelings that come over you. There are strong messages around what you’ve been through or are going through that it wants you to hear, it’s like it wants to sit down to tell you the stories and through this practice you can give it space to do that and develop more self-acceptance in the process.
If you want to go even deeper, read about PAT (Pure Aura Time) from Christie Inge, which is another practice I’ve adopted that’s sort of a companion to this. It allows any energy you take in during the day from others to simply lift off of you without you doing a thing. About halfway through I usually start to have some experience where thoughts that never came come, or short spiritual experiences will present themselves.
Jennifer Diane is a writer, artist and intuitive based out of New Jersey. Healing with the Occult is a publication that offers insight into the psyche and other transformative knowledge through various creative mediums.