With spiritual practices, we can develop an ongoing presence, even to the degree of a detached awareness or observer that’s with us all the time. However, habits of the mind and those around us will encourage us to dwell in the mind.
Yet the mind is never present. It’s always checking past memories or projecting the future. That’s its job, to help us stay safe and on track.
I avoid using the term “mindful” as it has such a misleading name. Being present is more about being mindless. Mind is still present but not where the attention is. We’re more in the here and now.
Unlike the mind, the body is only ever present. The fears the mind generates about what might happen are experienced by the body as happening now. It responds accordingly, going into a stress response. This is why the body can be traumatized by things that never happened, or things the mind didn’t cope with. “The body keeps the score.” The body carries the impressions of unresolved experiences.
But this also means the body is a way to be present and the key to healing trauma. Being with the sensations of the body, as in body scanning, is a great starting point for healing.
Another approach is through the senses. Our dominant sense will be more mind-entangled. For example, if you’re visual, that may be a less suitable way to be present.
I’ve found touch a great way to shift into presence and to be in the body. Unlike most of our senses, touch is all over the body and not just in the head. For example, if you practice yoga asana, we start with a body self-massage, moving the lymph. Once we’re familiar, it’s easy to do yoga mechanically, by habit. We get benefits from that. However, we’ll be more in the mind then, while the body goes through the motions. If we instead shift our attention to touch, we can be present with the body, even in the body, and in the moment. There are greater benefits then, including the meaning of asana: steady pleasantness.
Touch also has a quality of care to it, partly because of early childhood pre-conceptual memories of our mother, and partly because of its association to the heart chakra (and air).
Similarly, out walking, we can shift the attention to how the body feels, how the foot feels on the ground, etc. Thich Nhat Hahn has a slow walking meditation he teaches.
When we eat, being present to what we’re eating is easier when we focus on the smell, texture, and taste of the food. Turn off the TV, put down the cell phone or paper, and be with your present moment experience while eating. We may find our taste changes when we pay attention to our food.
Grounding techniques like feeling your feet on the ground and being held by the earth may also be helpful.
This is what is real – right here, right now.
Davidya
Hi D, very timely post, because I’ve been wondering about the statement “the body is ever present”. I don’t understand it. Like you wrote, the body keeps score or keeps impression, then isn’t all that in the past? If something is unresolved then the body experiences pain even if it’s not there. So how is it ever present? I don’t get it. Thanks
Hi Lynette
Yes, the body has impressions that originate in the past but only experiences them as being present now. It’s a trick of somatic therapy, convincing the body that a prior threat no longer exists. Then it can let go and stop the stress response. For most people, being in the body and being present is a relatively foreign experience. As a trauma response, we checked out long ago and went into the mind. But mind is always in the past or future, It’s never present.