M5 : Lesson 3.2: Orienting Exercise #3: Internal Body Awareness -Touch & Felt Sense
Add to your daily “Awareness, Pattern Interrupt, Be Here” practice for 1-5 min as part of the ‘be here’ aspect.
Transcript
Less than 3.2, orienting exercise number 3, internal orienting. With internal orienting, we’re gonna do a couple of things. We’ll have a touch focus and a felt sense. So what we’re gonna do is we’ll focus on the feeling of our touch rather than thinking. We’re gonna begin doing this by stroking our body with our head, our face, our neck, and our chest.
We’ll do this for 30 seconds up to a couple of minutes. And I’ll guide you through this in a moment. And then after that, we’ll move on to our felt sense for part b of this practice. Where you’ll close your eyes and you’re just gonna notice your body. First thing that comes to mind, it’ll be anything.
Maybe it’s the feeling of your belly moving while breathing. Maybe it’s pain. Maybe it’s a weird sensation or tightness or tingling. We’re just gonna breathe into whatever we notice and notice the felt sense. And then we’ll just move our attention through our body like we’re on an inner safari.
And we’ll move through our body noticing just simply what it feels like to be you. This process is really unstructured, and it just requires a curiosity. So let’s do this together. So let’s begin with a touch focus and begin by just simply stroking your head your neck, your chest, just stroking. Finding your body.
Very simple. And then we’re gonna start stroking above our eyes and below our eyes. It can be a firm touch. Or just a light touch or even circular motions of pressure, whatever feels good. And we’re gonna be stroking our eyes first.
We’re actually stroking different vagus nerve stimulation points and meridian point. So it’s actually bagel toning as well. And then we’re gonna stroke the sides of our nose. And maybe even these little creases in our nose, these are really good bagel stimulation points. In our mouth, above and below and her jaw.
This is just loving yourself with some touch. And then we’re gonna get into our ears like this, and we’re just gonna stroke down. This actually helps with lymphatic drainage. It’s really nice for the limp. Just stroking.
The other thing you can do for some reason that just feels not right for you is simple havening. Havening means just stroking lightly your arms like this. Or stroking your face lightly like this. This also induces a parasympathetic state. You can do this for just a few moments.
Just feeling every little touch, every little touch. And after you do that, will move on to part b, which is your felt sense. So you can close your eyes. If you need to continue to stroke your arms while you do this just to help you feel safe. You can do that.
Otherwise, I would just relax your arms, close your eyes, Okay? And just notice the first thing that you feel inside of your body, it can be anything. I just felt air move through my throat and just began to really come to find its detail. What is that feeling you’re feeling? It might be hard for you.
Notice that. Notice if it’s hard for you to feel your body, that might be a weakened sense of Intersection. So it just means you gotta work on it. What do you find what are you feeling in your body? Become curious of that first sense.
And then after a moment or 2, what else do you notice in your body? What does your mind wander to next? Again, this is like an internal safari and imagine yourself inside saying, I want to know you body. Look for things that feel good, but also don’t avoid the things that don’t. Maybe the pain grabs your attention, that’s okay.
So maybe you notice pain for a moment, and then maybe you notice your foot supported on the floor after that. Just feel what’s next. I’m feeling my left thigh on the chair. I’m just feeling the softness of my chair on the left thigh. What do you notice?
Just be curious and say to your body, I wanna know you now. I wanna become present. I am here. I’m here. And just move to what’s next, what else grabs your attention.
I’m noticing my right knee. It’s kind of bent. It’s a little uncomfortable. It wants to move. It wants me to shake my knee out.
What do you notice? Maybe you noticed your chest. What does it feel like to breathe? Maybe you notice your belly? Are you hungry?
Notice for any internal cues right now, do you feel hungry or thirsty? Do you need to use the bathroom? Do you need to rest? Do you need to move your body? Maybe you’re more energetic and you wanna think of all your chakras and you go through all seven chakras, what they feel like, where maybe you wanna meet your organs and you go from one organ to another, find your liver.
Put your hands on your liver and just send some love there or maybe your kidneys, which are in your back. Spend some time with your kidneys or your bladder. Could just move from Oregon to Oregon. These are just some ideas. This is just a way to say hi to your body.
I see you. I feel you. I am here with you. You can titrate this exercise. You could do this for literally 5 seconds and just stop.
Or you could do it for several minutes just like we’ve talked through right now. And that’s how you do. Internal orienting in a nutshell. The next lesson, we’re gonna do somatic tracking, which is really great for pain reprocessing.