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[Music] when I was in sixth grade I started getting irritable bowel syndrome terrible stomach cramps diarrhea having to run to the bathroom and I would get this mostly in school such that he would start to disrupt my my school days I'd have to go to the school doctor's office and oftentimes they couldn't really help me they didn't know what was wrong with me so they sent me home or called my mom or something like that and this was not just a once or twice type of thing this lasted through all of middle school and all of high school all the way to the first year of university so for over six years this lasted and sometimes it was excruciating it was very painful it was also embarrassing it was also very inconvenient having to run to the bathroom and I had no idea what was going on why this was happening was the food that I was eating or what I tried various kinds of of stomach medicines but none of them really seemed to address the root issue until one day six years later I was driving to university I remember this very vividly in my car in the morning I'm driving there and I had some big tests like I usually do because I was really into academics getting good grades and I felt nervous I felt anxious and for the first time in six years I had an insight and the insight was could it be that my stomach aches are related to how I'm thinking about this test could it be that I'm causing this rather than that is something that's happening to me and in that moment while I was driving I just kind of experimented with relaxing my mind letting go of thoughts about this test and relaxing the stomach muscles and breathing deep and slow and I just did this for a few minutes while I was driving and in those few minutes my cramping and they need to go to the bathroom it all completely resolved went away and I never had the problem ever again that's the power of body awareness and relaxation it's a very powerful thing that many of us don't really understand it took a lot of suffering for me to come to the insight that I was causing this thing because nobody taught me nobody told me that there could be a mind-body connection in my mind it seemed like my body was one thing it was like this physical thing I didn't really have control over what happens with my body when I get sick when I don't and my mind was a separate thing these are two different things until I had the insight that actually they could be connected and that's what they call the psychosomatic mind-body connection when the way that you think causes problems with what your body does so in this episode we're going to talk a lot about developing body awareness and how important it is and how to relax your body so let's start to demonstrate this because this is one of these subjects where you can't get too theoretical you need to actually feel it for yourself for it to work this is something you need to practice so there's gonna be a lot of emphasis here on practice so let's do an exercise this is just going to be about a five minute exercise so get comfy in your chair sit back and close your eyes keep them closed until I tell you to open them so as you're sitting there I want you to place your awareness on what's going on inside your body try to sit still and don't move and don't change the tension in your muscles anywhere in your body keep it as it is what I want you to do is I want you to just scan your body up and down from head to toe and get a baseline of what's going on there I want you to especially pay attention to muscle tension don't relax anything yet just pay attention for muscle tension and I want you to be particularly aware of the following areas scan your face the area around your eyes your forehead your mouth and especially your jaw notice that there's any tension there also your hands your fingers your palms keep them still and just put your awareness into them and feel for tension your arms especially your forearms your feet your legs especially your calf muscles your abdomen and stomach area your butt your sphincter and also your back and your shoulders what do you feel there there's there's no wrong way to do this just feel into it whatever's there is whatever's there just notice it notice that there's probably a significant amount of tension in your body this tension is there all the time this tension is unconscious that's your first key lesson here is that tension and unconsciousness go together and conversely relaxation and consciousness go together now what I want you to do is I want you to put your consciousness or your awareness into each part that had tension and melt that tension away relax each area and the way that you relax is by sending a signal to that area to let go let go of that area you were unconsciously holding on and just let go let go of your face let go of your hands your arms your feet your legs your belly and anywhere else let go of your entire body and in order to do this you must also let go of your mind so relax your mind it's actually impossible to relax your body if you can't relax your mind and the way to relax your mind is again just send the signal to let go this signal is not just something you do once you can keep sending that signal constantly to some part of your body or to your mind and the more you send that signal the more that part will let go and relax deeper and deeper and deeper so keep doing that right now keep sending that signal and relaxing deeper and deeper and just get very comfortable in your own body very at ease within your own body and just make a mental note of the difference of the before this exercise in the after and just to make this really stark and clear without moving your body tense all the parts of your body that I mentioned before tense them all put tension into them but don't do any jerky movements just tense tense tense tense and just keep it tense keep it tense and now just let go let everything go and just pay attention to that difference that contrast good now open your eyes so what you got there is you got a little bit of a taste just a little taste of what this work entails of course different people have different levels of tension in their body but the majority of people are very very unconscious of what's going on inside their body and this presents a big obstacle for reaching higher levels of consciousness and even just being satisfied in your own life how are you ever going to be happy in your life if you can't be comfortable in your own body I mean you're doing all this self actualization work this personal development work this enlightenment work and most of it is going on inside your head but what about the rest of the body are you bringing it along for the ride if your body is filled with tension how is that ever gonna work how are you ever gonna be satisfied in life it's not possible you see so what this reveals to us is that this this body awareness stuff is a core pillar of you being a fulfilled human being absolutely essential and the vast majority of Westerners are really really poor at this see what happens is that stress and emotions get carried in the body and people don't even know about this emotions are not just things that happen inside your mind they're not just feelings that accost you for random unknown reasons know all of this stuff is happening for a purpose and it's all carried inside it's carried in your arms in your legs in your abdomen in your shoulders in your jaw in your face it's all being carried there and it's stored there over years over years and decades it gets stored in there and locked in there such that you can't even tell what it's like to really be at ease in your own body anymore because of all the fear anxiety anger sadness and resistance that you're carrying around with you and various kinds of trauma especially if you had various kinds of physical trauma or serious emotional trauma PTSD type stuff abuse when you were younger as a child or even as a young adult this stuff gets locked in and carried in your body and it can lead to serious disorders not just mental ones physical ones because there is a real link between your mind and your body these things are not as separate as you thought or were taught in school this body tension sometimes it can be very heavy but oftentimes it can just be very subtle subtle it might just take you a few days of experimenting with feeling to your body just to start to notice that's subtle body tension that's always there that's robbing you every single second of a little bit of your energy but since this is happening at a very low grade level throughout your entire day in your entire week these little tiny amounts of energy that's being used to hold all this tension all these emotions they are draining you because a lot of us are so disconnected from the truth and from our emotions what we do is we lock them up in the body because we actually use our body as a way to deny and to resist and to repress emotions and for many people who live an unhealthy lifestyle and by unhealthy I mean of course the food you eat and how well you take care of your body physically but of course also psychologically emotionally you know what kind of work are you doing what kind of [ __ ] boss are you working for you know who are you manipulating with your work who are you hurting what kind of suffering you're causing in the world all that stuff you know your mind isn't blind to that it tends to repress it under the surface and it gets carried in your body so our job is to now start to turn that around it's gonna take some time it's going to take some practice so two really important key ideas I want you to understand I'll repeat them again is that unconsciousness equals tension to have tension in your body you must be unconscious of that tension and conversely consciousness equals relaxation so when you're maximally conscious you're going to be relaxed in your body or if you're gonna apply consciousness to some area of your body that's gonna relax that area an unconscious person is uptight anil rigid jerky Stern resistant numb high-strung maybe you know some of these types of people maybe you're one of these types of people it's actually very easy to tell the level of consciousness that a person has just based on how he moves how rigid he is all these little subtle cues when you become really good at exploring your own consciousness and you've done it for many years you do lots of meditation you do lots of this body awareness practice you start to become very sensitive to this and it's very easy then to pick out why someone has a problem and also it's very easy to pick out masters who are deeply conscious those people you can tell these people have mastered their minds and also their bodies because you can't really master your mind without mastering your body and this conscious type of person is you can tell they're loose they're relaxed they're flowing they're surrendered they're comfortable they're at ease they're not easily agitated they don't fly off the handle body awareness is not something that's taught in school in the West almost at all - almost a shocking dysfunctional neurotic degree Western culture has really been all about the mind all about the head and while rejecting and marginalizing the body but what this does is this creates a schism between the mind and the body and we see this in Western culture we have a very unholy sztyc fragmented understanding of the mind-body connection you see this within academia you see this within intellectuals you see this within science many of these academics what they've done is they they've they've cut their head off from their body so to speak such that they're only living inside their head but then they have all these disorders and conditions of the body and they don't understand that there's a connection there and they say alia well Leo you're just talking about the placebo effect just the placebo effect no no it's not just a placebo effect the placebo effect is a real serious thing the placebo effect can have a stronger effect on how you feel or whether you cure a disease more than a drug which is why they have to do very careful studies to find high quality drugs because the drug has to out-compete placebo that's not easy to do that's how strong your mind is most people in the West because we're operating under this materialist paradigm this mechanical view of the world and we have this old old old ancient Cartesian idea of the mind in the body the mind-body problem this mind-body duality there's these two substances the physical stuff and the mental stuff there's matter and then there's consciousness and that these are two totally different and we don't even know how they're connected but they must be connected somehow but well nobody knows can't figure it out and so they're just two totally separate distinct things and this is generally the view that science takes towards this stuff and it's like you have these rationalist people who say oh well Leo there's the facts and then there's just emotions and it's like I don't care about the emotions I care about the facts this whole idea this is a very neurotic and limited paradigm which causes a lot of people within Western civilization to to literally become numb to their own bodies because they're biased against feelings as though feelings are somehow the enemy feelings and emotions from how bad or wrong or they make you weak they make you like a like a girl or like a woman and you know no no man is supposed to be emotional no man is supposed to be in touch with his feelings that's whew New Age girlie stuff that's generally the attitude that Western civilization has taken towards feelings and emotions and this is really a shame really a shame because actually your emotions and your feelings drive your rationality and your interpretation of facts far more than the other way around you know in the in the late 1900s early twentieth century there was this phenomena happening in Europe called hysteria and this was a problem that that afflicted women Victorian era women who of course were so proper and so uptight that they never had sex and so they had these problems and they went to these psychologists and psychiatrists and it was just a budding field psychology and psychology psychiatry at that time Sigmund Freud and folks like that who would take care of these women and what do they do they just masturbated these women in their office that's literally their their entire practice consisted of this this is mostly what psychiatrists and psychologists that's how they made their living is masturbating Victorian uptight women who didn't get sex from their husbands and going crazy because their body craved for it all right well we're not that bad today we're a little bit better today our culture has loosened up but it's still there the remnants are that are still there spiral dynamics stage blue and spiral dynamics orange are very uptight they're very much stuck in their minds blue tends to be very puritanical and is afraid of getting in touch with their emotions and their feelings and tends to be kind of sexually repressive that's that whole Victorian hysteria thing phenomena and then orange orange tends to be so intellectual and rationalistic and so into this idea of facts over feelings that they also repress feelings and emotions and then as you evolved out of those spiral stages into stage Green Green is the first one that starts to realize the significance of the mind-body connection but of course to stage Orange a lot of times that looks like whoo New Age stuff Deepak Chopra type stuff that's just because you haven't really experienced what it's like to become conscious of your body and to integrate your mind and your body and how powerful this is how life transforming this is it really will change your whole life for some people it will literally save their life that's how important this topic is one of your goals in life one of your personal development goals with all this self-actualization work is recalling it should be to permeate your mind and also your body with consciousness that's really what all of this stuff that I'm talking about is about mostly I talk about the mind because the body is sort of its own category there's a lot that can be said about the body and you know also I have a bias because I'm very intellectual as well so I of course I I suffer from these problems myself which is why I'm speaking about them but you want to permeate your mind and your body with consciousness you want to become very comfortable in your own body ultimately as you become really conscious you will start to realize more and more that actually your body is made out of consciousness it is made out of mind there is no boundary whatsoever between mind and body there's no metaphysical difference between the thoughts and ideas that you're having inside your mind and the the substance out of which your hands my hands are made my face is made it's all exactly the same substance just manifest it in different ways that doesn't mean it can do the same stuff but but it is all made out of exactly the same stuff and you will realize this you will realize that your body is made of pure spirit as you go deeper into this work and go up the spiral stages you will realize this but it'll probably take some practice to get there so most people are walking around with very unconscious and unaware bodies very numb to their bodies and why do we make ourselves numb well it's because often times in life were faced with tough situations where we have to survive and we're put under pressure and of course that makes us fearful makes us have all sorts of negative emotions that cause us to suffer and rather than opening ourselves up to the fear into all these sorts of emotions what we do is we do the opposite the the exact opposite of what needs to be done is we we closed our self down and we try to suppress the pain and the suffering and the emotions by blocking it off ignoring it sweeping it under the rug so to speak and so for your mind to sweep an emotion or a problem or situation under the rug what it does is it actually sweeps it into the body into some part into your forearms into your hands and your shoulders into your stomach into your feet and it creates these sorts of habits these tension habits were you just every time you're working on a difficult project you're tensing your hands every time you're you know making some sort of important phone call you're scrunching your feet or your you're scrunching up your stomach muscles and you just get used to doing this and so every time you're going to work you're making these calls or you're you're on the computer you're doing whatever you're scrunching up and so your body tightens up and it closes stuff off and that creates problems and also this happens because we avoid facing tough truths truth can be difficult to stomach sometimes literally we don't develop proper conscious ways of dealing with truth and with difficult situations in life so we end up repressing in their bodies and a lot of times you know your body is a very sensitive and complex and very intelligent elegent instrument intelligence is not just something that's happening in here intelligence having all through your body your body is constantly sending you signals the problem is that most people aren't sensitive enough to those signals because they've made themselves so numb but your body is sending you signals and a lot of times your body is sending you deeply intelligent signals which are telling you that you need to stop doing something for example you're living a kind of lifestyle that is damaging to your body and your body's feeling and trying to send you those signals but because your ego just wants to keep living this unhealthy lifestyle what it does it just tells the body to shut up and just sort of cuts everything off from the bottom of the neck down and then what this does this just sweeps it under the rug it just creates a festering wound for later which will ultimately come back to bite you what do I mean by a damaging toxic lifestyle well of course the the food you eat the the stuff you smoke the stuff you drink the the kind of career you have how many hours you work what you do with your body you know physically are you over stressing yourself overworking yourself over exercising under exercising putting your body through the wringer physically emotionally you know what are you doing with your body your body is sending you all these signals but sometimes we get so attached to our lifestyle that we're forced to repress for example someone who's working on Wall Street and you know he really wants to succeed at Wall Street so he's just one of these new young guys who just got out of law school or something and he just got his university degree and now he's going to work for Goldman Sachs and they are they're making him work 80 hours a week you know to you know to get his internship and then to to get his first paid job so he's working his ass off and you know he's drinking down coffee and a bunch of diet cokes five diet cokes a day and maybe doing some drugs here and there and then going to party late at night with the with the friends and doing all this right so this this kind of toxic lifestyle will his body sending him signals that that that's not gonna fly you can't keep working 80 hours a week but of course because he's so ambitious and he needs to you know he needs to succeed at Wall Street because somehow he got programmed with that idea in his mind well um he's gonna keep pushing he's gonna push it to the limit he's gonna repress and cut off everything that's going on in the body and then that Lulla come back to haunt him of course if you had any kind of emotional trauma or physical trauma in your past that that's also there it can be a lingering problem and then that keeps a that keeps coming back up and that that trauma was never fully dealt with so there it is locked in to your body a lot of ailments come from poor body awareness including things like heart attacks stress muscle twitching twitching in your face swishing in your in various parts of your body back pain premature ejaculation shyness lay zena's OCD fatigue anxiety irritable bowel syndrome cold hands and feet cramping mmm low self-esteem low energy and mood insomnia this is just a tip of the iceberg of various kinds of conditions that can that come from poor body awareness and now of course it's very important to to qualify this I'm not saying that all of these are gonna be cured just purely through body awareness you could have one of these you know conditions and these conditions usually can have multiple factors so you know you do need to you know your heart attack is not just totally dependent on your body awareness probably your diet and exercise have important factors as well but but some of these conditions can be completely eliminated just by increasing body awareness or significantly improved here are the areas that you want to focus on relaxing as you're gonna be practicing relaxation which I'm gonna have you do as a homework assignment you're gonna be focusing on relaxing your face especially your mouth and your jaw your hands and your forearms especially your feet and your calves and your lower legs especially your stomach and your anal sphincter your neck and your back you're also going to focus on uncrossing your arms and legs what you'll notice is that when you become very conscious and you become very free and relaxed in your body your body tends to open up and it tends to go symmetrical and you tend to sit like this with open arms open legs whereas when you're tense and you're anxious and something's not right and you're a feeling quiet you start to scrunch up like this and if you're laying in your bed and you're sleeping you're kind of scrunched up you're not open and you're twisted and your legs are sort of twisted up like this and this creates tension and that tension is robbing you of energy when you're keeping that tension in there like that so you're gonna have to learn to uncross your arms and legs and practice that you're also going to work on your breathing and start to breathe deeper into your bell slow down your breathing as well although breathing breathing is such an important topic that really deserves its own episode which I will shoot in the future but but yeah breathing is something you can you can learn to be much more conscious of and that's very important if you want to get to the higher levels of of self-actualization and then of course remember to relax your mind practice relaxing your mind because you're not going to succeed at relaxing all these other parts of your body if your mind is anxious all the time and the to effect each other so it's like a two-way street by relaxing your mind you're going to relax your body and by relaxing your body that's going to help you to relax your mind also your breath plays into that so by relaxing your mind and your body you'll notice your breath will slow down and deepen or conversely if you slow down and deepen your breath that will help you to relax your body on your mind so all of these play into each other now what are the best times to practice this if you're going to be practicing this basically throughout your entire day your entire week but there are specific times where I want you to pay attention to to this body tension that you're carrying when you're in your bed sleeping or getting about to sleep notice what's your sleeping position like and how tense is your body oftentimes owners myself tensing up especially with my hands the way I'm placing my hands near my face or near my head to prop myself up almost like a pillow and then this creates tension so relaxed when you notice that in your bed you you want to relax it and kind of open your body up and you're gonna practice this and when you first start practicing this it's gonna feel uncomfortable is gonna feel weird it's gonna feel weird to uncross your arms and cross your legs if you're used to doing that for twenty or thirty years right so this is a practice you can just keep going with it also during work it's very important that you become more conscious of how you tense yourself up during work I noticed that during work I tend to tense up a lot especially my hands and feet especially when I'm working on some kind of challenging problem and I have some anxiety around that when you're sitting start to notice how you sit and where you carry tension in your legs and but when you're sitting so maybe you're sitting on a couch on a bench at some lunch table at work start to notice that even during meditation when you're meditating you might think you're relaxed when you're meditating maybe you're not double check feel into your body and especially with meditation make sure that you relax your face and your jaw super important and that's one that many meditators just simply miss also during stressful emotional times so when you're some sort of heated argument with your spouse or your family member about something and you're getting angry or upset or annoyed frustrated that's an especially important time to notice what's going on inside your body of course that's very challenging because you're getting so distracted by these external circumstances and the emotions that are coming up and the arguments but that's when you need to remember to focus inwards just to feel where am i carrying that tension that anger is it in my jaw in my face in my eyes in my arms and that can be a huge shift for you if you start doing that also during sex when you're having sex it's really important to relax a lot of guys struggle with premature ejaculation problems or difficulty getting it up a lot of women struggle with having an orgasm because they're so they're so tense and so nervous stuck in their own head when they're having sex so with sex it's actually really interesting to have really good sex you need to relax you need to be really comfortable and really kind of organic and natural and get out of your head and so the way you do that is by using that letting go technique and also just noticing how your body feels during sex you know sex is really fascinating because sex is usually very exciting so again usually when you're about to have sex all you're sort of attention your mind goes into your partner and thinking about maybe how sexy they are her attracted you are whatever and so you just get into it so quickly and so kind of like rough and dirty that you actually forget to actually feel into the best part of sex which is the feelings and the emotions of it and then it goes by way too quick and also you don't get that full satisfaction in the full release and for guys you come too fast and for girls you don't come at all you know what sex is actually interesting if you want to delay your orgasm the best way to do that is just to relax relax your groin area relax your stomach area it becomes very difficult to orgasm if you notice for your body to orgasm what has to happen is there's a sort of tension a really strong tension that builds up in your in your hips and in your stomach and groin area both for men and for women and then it finally culminates in this big climax now that that tension is is good I mean that's what you need to have a climax but if you're a guy who's trying to last longer for your girl then you got to learn to relax that all those muscles and of course for a girl that's very important as well because for a girl to to come she needs to be really fully surrendered and fully relaxed so there's really kind of two tensions that happen during sex there's there's the the important and good kind of tension which is necessary for the build-up of the climax and you free to finally come that so that that's that's important if you want to come and and then there's the bad kind of tension which is the additional tension that you add that you create that's not necessary which is actually creating resistance and distraction in your sex so start to become much more mindful of that go really slowly next time you do it maybe you can talk to your partner and actually try to do it together try to have more mindful sex and you'll see how big of a difference it makes hey I mean just when you're when you know you're getting up from work and you go to take a piss when you're standing there sitting there taking a piss relax relax your arms relax your legs relax your butt relax your face when you're eating notice the tension that's there and relax it away when you're doing public speaking or maybe you have a presentation that you need to give at work to your boss or to some team members or something like that and you're getting ready to get up on stage and deliver your PowerPoint presentation notice the tension in your body you probably have a little bit of anxiety about speaking to a group of people but it's not just anxiety in your mind of course it's a lot in your mind but also notice where it is in your hands and your feet and your stomach and so forth and relax that away if you're one of these guys who does pick up and you're chatting up girls at nightclubs and you want to be more effective at that you know most guys when they start pick up what's their biggest problem approach anxiety what is approach anxiety see pickup has you so oriented on external techniques and stuff that's going on with the girl how to trick the girl how to manipulate the girl how to say something cool to the girl or whatever to get her to sleep with you but much more importantly is actually what's going on inside your body when you're in the nightclub and the loud music is blaring and hot girls are running around everywhere and you see the one that you like and you want to go flirt with her but what are you feeling inside your body see most pas are completely disconnected from what's going on with their emotions and in their body so during those moments that's exactly where you need to put more focus into your body then relax that away and be at ease and really if you want to get the hottest girls to be attracted to you how do you do that is the girl is she gonna be attracted to a guy who's uptight and rigid and anal and stuck in his own mind or she gonna get attracted to the guy who's loose and chill and free-flowing and just spontaneous and relaxed I see consciousness is actually a strength of calm I mean a signal and on a signal of of confidence Todd isn't confident people when they're truly confidence not just a macho front that you're putting up but it's real confidence it actually comes from a sense of being at ease in the world you feel very secure you feel very grounded your feet are planted and you don't have a lot of tension you're not high strung and women can pick that off women pick that up there they're really good at reading these sort of subconscious body signals and cues from guys so that's something to work on if you're out in the field and it's also gonna make the your approaches much more enjoyable if you're standing in line at the grocery store or at the ATM or you're just waiting you got nothing to do notice the tension where it's at in your body and relax it away when you're walking walking to work walking to school walking wherever taking the trash out notice the tension relax it away when you're talking when you're in a conversation with colleagues at work by the water cooler whatever you're just talking [ __ ] are you talking to your boss notice the tension that's there and relax it away so you can find all these and many more areas in your life that happened on a habitual regular basis every day every week every month where you can practice this stuff and you will need to practice it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again this is stuff that you can't just practice once or twice like you got to pummel this thing with repeated practicing day in and day out so your practice is very simple you just feel into your body you find attention relax it away that's it it's not rocket science very simple but you're gonna do this for the next few months and really for the next few years of your life you're gonna keep doing this you're gonna remember this is gonna be in the back of your mind every night you're going back you're going to sleep you're gonna relax every time you're taking a piss you're gonna relax every time you're sitting down to work you're gonna remember to relax of course you're not gonna be perfect you're gonna forget probably 90% of the time and that's okay but that 10% of the time you will remember and that will be enough to start to give you a little bit of leverage over the tension that's in your body and you're just keep doing this and doing this and doing this and over time it's gonna transform how your entire body feels but it's gonna take you some work to build up that momentum just gotta keep applying that awareness keep relaxing and doing it over again now a really important distinction that you need to make here to do this Phillie is you need to distinguish between thinking about feeling and actually feeling those are two different things it's one thing to think about feeling your body like I could tell you right now think about feeling your hands and you can think about feeling your hands now that's very different from actually feeling your hands the feelings that are actually there right so you see that distinction so what we're doing in this practice is of course before you can relax the area you need to be able to actually feel into it and it's gonna be a little bit tricky because your mind has an image of sort of like your hands and what they feel like but your image and your memories of what your hands feel like are not what your hands actually feel like right now and also the feelings in your hands they're always changing for example if you place your feelings your the place your awareness into the feeling in your hands and you keep it there the longer you keep it there those feelings are gonna change they're not always the same you can sit there for 5-10 minutes feeling your hands and it's gonna change if you sit there for an hour straight feeling your hands that's gonna change so that's the difference being feeling and thinking about feeling that's very important get stuck in your head now you might ask Leo but how do I feel maybe there's a certain part of my body where I just can't feel it at all I feel numb or it just feels kind of empty or there's a blank there's nothing there well the reason it feels that way is simply because you don't have enough practice so there is no shortcut to feeling because feeling is already direct feeling is already immediate there's no how-to method for how to feel you just feel you just do it now of course when you first start doing it probably because you haven't done it very much in your life it's gonna feel like an atrophied muscle you're gonna feel very very weak and you might not be able to feel certain parts of your body at all and the way that's resolved is just by practicing it more placing more and more awareness and attention into that part of your body and you know at certain times certain parts of your bodies you might feel nothing at all like take your feeling right now and put it in the very back of your head do you feel something there maybe you do maybe you don't so whatever is there is what's there you don't need to make stuff up it's about just feeling what's actually there so here you're trying to be truthful and honest you're not trying to make anything up when you're just feeling just feel what's there there's no right or wrong way to feel just do it and keep redoing it now your greatest enemy to this practice is going to be forgetfulness you're going to forget to do it very very easily so the solution to that that I have for you is you need to get some sort of wristband device like this something colorful preferably something that doesn't cut off circulation to your wrist so you can wear it for a long time you're gonna actually put this on and wear it for a whole month for this homework assignment stick this on and wear it every time that you notice it let it be a reminder it's a visual cue to remind you that oh yeah let me feel for tension and let me relax it away and that's it that's gonna help you a lot without this wristband you're gonna forget really easily I mean even with the wristband you'll forget but but the wristband really helps so put that on and do that for the next 30 days and that will get the ball rolling of course 30 days is not gonna be enough to solve this problem it's just the beginning but after 30 days of doing this you will start to program your mind and your body you're gonna start to change the habits in your in your body and at that point you will just naturally start to remember doing it even without the wristband now there's also a lot of other techniques that you can use to work on this what I've talked about so far is just a very general baseline developing body awareness technique I wouldn't even call it a technique all you're doing is just you're just feeling and you're relaxing so that's sort of like the foundation of this work but then there's a lot of other stuff you can do that I want to just point out for you give you ideas here so there's hatha yoga which can be very effective at developing body awareness this is the kind of western yoga you see it everywhere in gym class is all around the United States and in Europe and so forth so these are really popular these days of course when you're doing hatha yoga it's very important that you do it very mindfully with the intention of becoming more aware of your body and relaxing your body because some people what they do is when they do hatha yoga they're just like routine monkeys so they just go there they follow the instructor like a sheep and they just go through the motions but going through the motions is not necessarily gonna mean that you're doing it mindfully and actually developing body awareness so make sure you add that intention to your hatha yoga practice if you're gonna do that another really effective technique is Tai Chi Tai Chi is this ancient Chinese method where you are doing this sort of like these flowing movements slow flowing movements with your with your hands you could do with your eyes closed or your eyes open and the idea there is that your your your focusing on how your body is moving of course Tai Chi is a whole art you can find videos on YouTube and on google for how to do Tai Chi you can find long sets short sets five minutes that's ten minute sets this is really good for starting develop body awareness there's also something called the body scan meditation technique and you can also find YouTube videos of this and audio recordings online that you can download for free and play for yourself and they can be five minutes 20 minutes 30 minutes an hour long however you want and what they do is they just they guide you through scanning through your body so usually you close your eyes and you scan from the very top of your skull all the way to the very bottom of your feet and then back up you slowly scan every vertical millimeter of your body and as you do it you become conscious of that part of your body and then you melt it away and you relax it so that can be super effective another method you could try is shamanic breathing which I've talked about in a separate episode that's a really powerful method for getting in touch with your emotions and really sort of activating and energizing your body it could be very exhilarating all sorts of interesting traumas and latent hidden emotional blockages can come up through that technique and very powerful technique so you can try that you could also do deep tissue massage and there specifically you could go and schedule a deep tissue massage once or twice a week and when you're getting it make sure that you're actually not just chatting with the masseuse or just daydreaming about stuff or flipping through your phone but that you're like you're fully feeling into that deep tissue massage and it can be very painful sometimes but also it's that that mindfulness when you get that that full mindfulness and you're feeling into your body that can be very powerful you can also try hot baths and saunas also there when you're doing it make sure that you incorporate that mindfulness component so when you're getting into that sonnet or in that hot bath take it very very slowly don't daydream but actually fully feel into how the water feels how the sauna feels and all that and the effect it has on your body another powerful method could be using psychedelics specifically with the intent of developing body awareness so this is something that probably many people who trip don't really um try but this can be really powerful especially on something like mushrooms what you could do is you could take some mushrooms with the intention to just purely work during that trip for the next four hours on body awareness and so like you can actually do Taichi on mushrooms or you could even try to do a little bit hatha yoga on mushrooms of course don't hurt yourself and you probably don't want a very high dose of mushrooms maybe just 1 or 2 grams 3 grams something like that such that you still have movement of your body and you're not just totally out in Fantasyland tripping on balls on something you know just flat on the floor but but rather you're actually able to move and just like get in touch with your body especially with mushrooms I noticed they make me feel very animalistic very monkey like in a good way so it's sort of like you feel like you're a monkey in the jungle and you get to just like explore your body and feel it it's as though you're feeling your body for the first time and you're seeing the miraculousness of your body and how intelligent it is and how amazing it is and also you realize how much you abuse it and how much you take it for granted so that can be very powerful spiritual experience that can really get you some deep insights into the power of of body awareness you can also develop self confidence in your body so if you feel like your body is sort of closed off and you're one of these shy meek type of people that stand in the corner all the time and you don't really open your body up you don't take a lot of space up with your body because you're you you just have bad self-esteem you don't like how you look whatever you know quirks and issues you've got self-image problems a lot of those just have to do because you're not you're not conscious and connected enough with your body your body is a beautiful organism really beautiful machine even if you think that you don't like your looks you have a big nose or you think you're ugly or whatever and that's that's that's mostly because you're stuck in sort of the cultural ideas of what beauty is like to really get in touch with the beauty of your body you got to take some mushrooms or some LSD and really look at your body then you see the full beauty of your body you see it as this incredible machine no matter what you look like it's still an incredible machine and it does incredible things and you start to really appreciate of course for women a really effective way to develop body awareness might be dance for men martial arts you can also use one of those vibrating massager thingies too you could buy one of those and then you can vibrate various parts of your body and and as you're doing that vibration you can you can apply mindfulness to it you can also buy a massage chair and practice getting those massage chair massages and also at the same time mindfully doing it so there's all these different methods so what I want you to do in addition to wearing the wristband you're gonna wear there's this wristband of course for the next month but I also want you to commit over the next month to trying at least two of these techniques that doesn't mean you have to do it every day just try two of these techniques that you've never tried before so if you've never tried hatha yoga go do a couple of hatha yoga very mindfully if you've never done the body scan go download a few body scan audios and do that a couple times if ever done Taichi go look up some Tai Chi videos and do that a couple times if maybe you want to do the psychedelic body awareness thing try that a few times or go get a couple of deep tissue massages mindfully a few times alright so pick your thing and then schedule it if you need to find a place that offers massage just go to Yelp comm and search there for deep tissue massage in your area and they will give you all sorts of masseuses with high 5-star ratings that you can then go set up sessions with you could also find on Yelp local yoga studios even tai chi classes and what else dance classes martial arts studios you know saunas hot baths and spas so all this stuff is available there you just got to do a little bit of research so that's basically it that's the whole idea here there's not much to say theory wise you just got to practice this and it's really important I hope I've communicated to you the importance of incorporating some of these body awareness practices into your entire self-actualization plan it's very important you have at least a couple of these because otherwise you're gonna you're gonna develop very lopsided Lee all in your head and not enough in your body and see the problem is is that when you don't develop your body that means that you can never really develop true emotional mastery because your emotions are in your body for the most part so how are you gonna develop emotional mastery if you're not conscious of your body and emotional mastery is one of the most important things that you can develop for increasing the quality of your life and reducing your suffering and making you better a better performer at whatever you do whether it's sports public speaking relationships business you know all that stuff is deeply influenced by your inability to be conscious of your emotions to to be masterful with using your emotions so it's utterly imperative that you do body awareness let me warn you against the danger of rituals rituals like yoga routines and maybe even a Tai Chi ritual where you just go through mechanically going through mechanical rituals is not the same thing as developing body awareness the only thing that builds awareness is awareness so the only way you'll develop awareness is by doing something with awareness not by doing it mechanically unconsciously if you do things unconsciously even if there supposedly powerful spiritual techniques given to you by gurus and masters who are the most enlightened but you do them mechanically they are not going to make you enlightened and they're not going to develop your consciousness so be careful with that trap especially this is a trap that religious people fall into they just go through their religious rituals mechanically and then of course they don't become more aware of anything they don't really grow and also I want to I just want to point out that there are many degrees of relaxation you can relax your body very very deeply so this little bit of relaxation that you experienced today at the beginning of this episode with the closed eyes exercise that was just a tip of the iceberg when you practice that repeatedly over and over and over again your body starts to relax more and more and more and more your entire body starts to transform that's a process that usually takes months and years but but it's very powerful and it's a little bit difficult to explain just how powerful that can be because most people don't have any experience of that all you have maybe the most you have is just an experience of letting go for five seconds but try sitting there and letting go for a full sixty minutes or two hours straight just letting go progressively just letting go and letting go and letting go and you'll see there's a very big difference between letting go for five seconds and letting go for two hours right and so and then that accumulates to the point where then you you get to a point where your entire body starts to just become very free and very open and rather than being heavy and rigid and very material feeling your body's gonna start to feel like like it's a spiritual thing it's gonna start to feel like it's consciousness like you're pure consciousness and then at one point in your development you will get to the point where you'll be able to look at your hands and you will be able to realize and be conscious that your hands are not made out of any physical material stuff that your hands just actually are pure consciousness to remain out of mind stuff they're literally mad at the exact same stuff that my thoughts are made out of right I can be conscious that right now and it's a pretty cool feeling you start to feel like you're just like getting like in this kind of like spiritual mystical space all the time and that's because as you do spiritual practice and you do consciousness work and awareness body awareness everything starts to kind of like become airy and fluid where before it was very rigid and dense and you felt like it's like you're locked in this physical box into this physical world well that starts to all change for you the more that you practice this stuff so get cracking on that all right that's it I'm done here please click that like button for me don't forget and then come check out actualize that org I've got some exclusive resources there for you my blog where I'm posting lots of exclusive videos lately and I will be in the weeks and months to come so don't miss those some of my I think some of my best insights come from my vlog videos also the the forum the life purpose course and the book list and speaking of the book list I have not that many but I do have one or two books on my book list but they're really good books that deal with body awareness there I have a little category for body awareness and I have some other books in the emotional category section where sorry in the emotional mastery section where they talk about the mind-body connection and also how emotions tie in with the body and all that so um read up on that this is a deep field and we've only scratched the surface of it here and and the last thing that I'll say is that you have to understand and actualize that org has a certain bias I'm a very intellectual and cerebral and conceptual kind of guy so most the topics I talk about they are of course very intellectual and I sometimes get criticized for that but it's not like you know I'm ignorant of of this bias there is this bias and I'm not too worried about it because actualize that org it's not supposed to be your only source you are supposed to go to other sources and I'm not an expert on body awareness you know that's a very deep field very deep topic you can spend the next 40 years of your life mastering that topic and there are other people out there who can teach that to you much better than I can so I view my job as just pointing out that this field exists it's important now go out there and find the resources you need from other people that are going to help you whether it's books or courses or classes or workshops you know it's all out there you just gotta get off your ass and do some searching and then you'll find a whole new world and that will change your life and that's something I would be focusing more on in the future because you know what I found with my own development is that when you begin development most of your development starts to happen mostly on the intellectual level because you're reading books and you're trying various techniques as you become more advanced and more advanced in your practices you start to realize just how important direct experience is direct discovery personal awareness and just how little you really get from just having beliefs and just ideas about all these things that I talk about so then to get the really powerful results you start to see that all you got actually like practice all this stuff and get a first-hand experience with it not just believe it and so therefore you're moving out of the conceptual realm and into the actual practical realm and and at that point you start to realize how important it is just to spend time feeling into your body and I'm seeing that more and more of course I have a lot of work to do on myself in terms of consciousness of my body because my greatest strength is my mind and using my mind and so I tend to of course use my greatest strength and that's what you see with actualize that org that doesn't mean that I don't have weaknesses that I need to work on see and and maybe you're like that as well maybe you're very intellectual and maybe that's why you follow me and you like this content you resonate with it but for you then especially you need to develop some of these body awareness practices otherwise you are going to kind of paint yourself into a corner and at some point you're going to hit a glass ceiling with this work because the bottleneck will be not your knowledge of spirituality or anything like that but just simply your lack of sensitivity and feeling of all the stuff that's going on in your body especially your emotions and all the the tensions and the way that you repress things so take this topic seriously and stick around for more you