Stressful experiences, both chronic and acute, can etch your inner landscape and make their presence known through anxiety, reactivity, judgment, feeling closed off/constricted, or overall feelings of disconnection. Each of these states are messengers from the past and can be felt in the present moment.
How do you receive the messages and heal your inner landscape to experience the life you desire?
Connecting within:
Sensing and inhabiting your body (interoception)
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Connecting with Nature:
Being in the present moment while experiencing nature through your senses
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healing and transformation
Just as we can heal drastically disturbed land, we can heal and healthfully integrate past experiences that have left their mark within us.
Through our natural sense of interoception, the body’s capacity to feel itself from the inside out, we can feel our way into new states of being. Interoception is how we know that we are thirsty, hungry, or in need of using the restroom. Our entire body is woven together with sensory neurons- bone-deep.
Before moving forward, let’s experience interoception:
Feeling your Feet Practice
Practice one at a time and then both simultaneously.
- With each foot, notice your heel, ball of your foot, and toes making contact with the earth or floor below you. Feel the pressure in your foot at this point of contact. Begin to feel the aliveness of your foot; this might be sensations of tingling or warmth, for example.
- Now try to inhabit your foot fully – take up your space within your foot.
- Fill your foot with your presence.
- Feel gravity anchoring you.
- Notice your breath as you feel your feet. Does your felt experience of your feet change? Can you continue to feel your feet- not being lifted by your breath?
Did you experience a break from your thoughts?
Practicing focused attention takes us out of our default mode of ruminating thoughts, past and future, and into our executive functioning. Our mind quiets down, and our body and mind synchronize, and we can experience calm and clarity. Combine connecting within while tuning into nature, and you have a powerhouse healing combination.
We can intentionally strengthen our sense of interoception through practice. With interoceptive awareness, we can activate our body’s capacity to internally self-regulate toward states of well-being. When we begin to notice the subtle stirring of emotions or agitation, we can respond with compassion rather than waiting for a panic attack to get our attention. Overtime, we sculpt a new inner landscape of calm where there was once stress and anxiety.
This is slow medicine with lasting change, not a temporary bandage. Connecting within while connecting with the natural world is the remedy we all need to heal from the challenges of the past so we can move forward free, unencumbered, with a new terrain of possibilities.
If you would like to be guided to reclaim your inner landscape, please schedule a session. It would be an honor to work with you.
