Check your connectedness

A new year offers an opportunity to reflect and take stock of life.  Cultivating an attitude of learning from experience makes that reflection an opportunity for growth and transformation.  Its not so much what you did but what you understand and work with, how you give it meaning and how you integrate it into you life.  In practical terms the aim is to open yourself to connections to your body and the energy that flows from it, to your gut and heart, your feelings and emotions, your mind ideas, beliefs and narratives, and your soul, your connection beyond your physical self.

In this article by Jan Day, she explored one of the most important ways people connect with each other is through touch.  It’s crucial to our sense of wellbeing, and many have experienced that loss during the pandemic.  Even a small touch can affect the way we feel and act positively. 

Physical touch also impacts our care and compassion for others.  Many people reported during the pandemic that they felt much less connected when they were kept away from others.  Getting back in touch, literally, is worth spending some time on now.  Whether we’re selecting fruit from the market, stroking a pet, walking in the woods or being intimate with a partner, it can provide a balance of energies of the body, heart and mind and you can feel the sense of being alive. 

Before we can fully reconnect with others, we need to reconnect with ourselves.  Day offered an exercise to focus on your relationship with your own body by breathing slowing as you use your hands to soothe and stroke yourself as you are cradling your arms around yourself.  Sounds a bit weird but Day said as you notice what you are feeling, opening and closing your eyes, notice any thoughts that arise and how you felt afterwards.

Once you’re ready to reconnect with others its worth thinking about how touch plays a part in relationships.  Giving and receiving touch in turns with others (probably safest to try this with your partner first) may be easier.  You can voice whether or not you want to be touched or not, but that doesn’t mean you’re bad, untrustworthy or unlikable, just that you don’t have to endure touch you don’t enjoy.

When you’re ready to move on to reconnecting with the power of your mind, Day suggested choosing a situation where you are not getting the outcome you want.  Run through it in your mind or write it down in the present tense and relive what actually happened in your perception.  Don’t worry about whether it was true or not, if you think it happened, it will be affecting you whether it happened that way or not.  Then imagine you can change it so that it happened just the way you wanted it to.  It can be helpful to image and give yourself permission to allow yourself a different experience in your mind.  Make sure you stay connected with your body and your feelings.  Notice what resources you got from reliving it differently.

In connecting with your body, feelings in your gut and heart and the stories you create in your mind, you create capacity for joy, pleasure that will expand and happiness will arise naturally, rather than simply being a goal.

I’m not a particularly touchy, feely sort but I do appreciate a sense of connectedness to those around me. C and I often hold hands on the sofa, link feet in bed, and rub each others’ shoulders as we walk past. I like to hold R tight when I do get the chance to hug her, which isn’t very often. I need to make that feeling last until the next time I get the chance.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever feel comfortable with the whole huggy, kissy thing that some families do but I can appreciate a sense of connection by being in proximity.