Having the ability to recognize how your body reacts to external stimuli and events (including stress) is a powerful tool. As is the case with most people, awareness is usually focused on their finances (or lack thereof), the time of day, the weather, the car that cut them off this morning, etc. The thing is, your body registers stress before the mind does. The most common way our bodies let us know we are under stress is muscle tension. Therefore, body awareness is the first step toward acknowledging and reducing stress.
Although we may not be aware of it, our bodies have a consciousness. The body has a wisdom, an awareness, and perceptions unto itself. Joseph Campbell called this, “the wisdom consciousness of the body”.
Many studies show the relationship between chronic muscle tension (body), and certain attitudes or held beliefs (mind). The problem, of course, is chronic tension held in the body can have physically damaging effects – restricted digestion, decreased energy, lowered motivation and ultimately debilitating depression.
Separating the external, “objective” world from your mental world is important. In fact, in Zen, this Mental Training is the first step toward enlightenment. In The Religion of the Samurai [1913], Kaiten Nukariya writes:
“The first step in the mental training is to become the master of external things. He who is addicted to worldly pleasures, however learned or ignorant he may be, however high or low his social position may be, is a servant to mere things. He cannot adapt the external world to his own end, but he adapts himself to it. He is constantly employed, ordered, driven by objects. Instead of taking possession of wealth, he is possessed by wealth. Instead of drinking liquors, he is swallowed up by his liquors. Balls and music bid him to run mad. Games and shows order him not to stay at home. Houses, furniture, pictures, watches, chains, rings, bracelets, shoes–in short, everything has a word to command him. How can such a person be the master of things?”
