ABOUT STRESS AND HOW TO REGAIN YOUR SELF-ESTEEM

When you are stressed, it is easy for you to distance yourself from your own body and treat it as an object, a "machine" that should function or be driven. If this goes on for a long time, you gradually start to lose sensitivity to the body's signals and continue to push it without listening to its need for rest and recovery. We all probably knohave experienced this and can recognize ourselves in thoughts and comments like "I just need to finish this too" "I'll just get something to drink in a moment" and so on. As we ignore the body's signals, our sensitivity becomes dulled. Eventually, the body will "scream loudly" in a desperate attempt to make us understand the unsustainability of the situation. That is when pain and anxiety emerge. Pain is an alarm signal for the body, just as anxiety is an alarm signal for the soul. Sound familiar?...

You may have heard the example of the oil light in a car that starts to glow? Imagine that you have a luxury car and are driving on the highway. Suddenly, you notice that the oil light has started glowing red. How would you act in such a situation? I suppose you wouldn't choose to put masking tape over the light and continue driving as if nothing had happened, only to be surprised if the engine broke down a few kilometers down the road? That would sound absurd, wouldn't it? However, this is an attitude that many of us have towards our own body. We actually treat it much worse than we would treat a car.

When the body signals a need for rest and recovery, we put the symbolic masking tape on and continue at the same speed as before, and often we are surprised when the body can no longer keep up. Once exhaustion is a fact, it is easy to lose both self-esteem and self-confidence and hard to imagine how to find yourself again. This is where the knowledge of body awareness becomes very helpful.

Body awareness as an important foundation for good self-confidence

Body awareness is a term coined in Swedish physiotherapy. Body awareness means that the body is integrated into our total experience of identity. In other words, it means that we have a good ability to listen to the body's signals and that we perceive the body as a subject rather than an object.

Body awareness and good self-confidence are closely linked. It is difficult to have confidence in something with which we have lost touch. The way the body has started to behave can feel unfamiliar, and what you previously experienced as reliable now feels unreliable and makes you insecure. Your body has started to act like an enemy instead of being your best friend. In a way, you have to regain the lost confidence. There are various tools to do this. Regular practice of Basal body awareness or Feldenkrais exercises, where you focus on not drifting off in your thoughts while practicing, is a good way to find your way back.

THE BEST WAY TO ESTABLISH A NEW HABIT

When you are laying the foundation for a new habit, it can also be advantageous to take advantage of the inherent cyclical processes of nature. Science has found that everything in nature happens in cyclical processes, such as day and night, the changing seasons, migratory patterns of birds to southern regions in winter, and many others. You also find the same cyclical processes in your own body. Some hormones and neurotransmitters are more active in the morning, and others at night. Digestion has its own cycle, and you also know how valuable it is for your sleep cycle to function.

So when you are "establishing" your own new cycle to practice regaining sensitivity to your body's signals, it can be very helpful to choose the same time and place to do this every day. Your body will respond more quickly if you practice in a regular way. Since your body will "adjust" to the new habit quite quickly, it will also help you in your focusing process, and you will see results more quickly.

It will also help to reduce stress. When you are stressed, you know how your thoughts and attention can be scattered in an energy-consuming way. Focus through regular practice will also help gather your thoughts and emotional chaos because focusing is the opposite of scattering. So it is also a good way to prevent new stress. Therefore, the first step in Mindfulness and all meditation is learning to focus. "But," you might think, "how can I, with my scattered thoughts and emotions, learn to focus on something for an extended period of time?"

It is important to stop yourself in that thought process and start your focusing training with just a few minutes of practice at a time. Begin with a sequence of an exercise that works best for you and gradually increase the number of minutes as you feel you regain your ability to focus.

By sticking to your regular practice, you will gradually regain your sensitivity and strengthen your body awareness in a way that you carry into your daily life. You can enhance the effect of your practice by immediately responding to your body's signals for the rest of the day, such as when you feel thirsty or need rest or movement. Your body has a wonderful ability to recover if you create the right conditions for it.