I trust my body to do all kinds of things I’m not remotely qualified to supervise.
I remember learning about some of its intricate feedback loops in an advanced biology class as an undergrad considering a medical career. It took a staggering number of lectures, diagrams, and textbook chapters just to begin to appreciate how the body regulates temperature and respiration—and how its complex internal systems keep it alive.
I don’t know enough about these ancient processes to take the wheel on any of them. I’m not in a position to monitor the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in my bloodstream or manage all the chemistry involved in digesting a meal—from smelling the food and salivating to chewing, absorbing its nutrients, and eliminating what the body doesn’t need to hold onto.
I’m happy to let my body handle all of that.
This doesn’t mean leaving the body entirely to its own devices. I do what I can to pay attention to the feedback that’s available to me. If a particular food or spice doesn’t sit well with my digestive system, I can adjust what I eat in the future—or live with the consequences when I decide to override past evidence. If I repeatedly ignore my need for sleep, stop challenging my muscles, or neglect movement to maintain range of motion in my shoulders or hips, the consequences begin to show up in tangible ways I can’t completely ignore.
I can support these processes without micromanaging them. I can influence the conditions without pretending I know how to do the underlying work.
But when it comes to my mind, I find it much harder to stand back and appreciate the wonder of mental processing.
When my brain and body generate thoughts, I’ve historically assumed that my conscious participation will be a welcome contribution. I analyze, evaluate, rehearse, troubleshoot, and try to think my way through whatever uncertainty has appeared.
Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht writes:
“There are things that are true that shouldn’t be. The meat shouldn’t think. We shouldn’t die. But there it is.”1
Somehow, this “meat” manages to think, and I find it hard to leave the process alone once I become aware of it. Memories surface. Words and images appear. Associations form, triggering a series of additional associative leaps. Predictions get made. Problems continue processing outside conscious awareness. Even when I’m asleep, my mind dreams, trying to untangle it all.
Recognizing thought as something the body does doesn’t mean believing that every thought is accurate, useful, or wise. It means we don’t necessarily have to interfere with every thought for mental processing to continue.
My experience with mindfulness practice over the years has shown me how much of my intentional thinking is extraneous—how often it complicates things and keeps complicating them, despite the insights I’ve picked up along the way. Sometimes it’s a response to not knowing what will happen, or an attempt to escape the confusion, instability, and discomfort that make up a human life.
Thinking can be tremendously useful—I love thinking and don’t plan to stop—but more thinking isn’t always what a situation needs. The paradox is that cultivating mindful awareness requires resisting the temptation to make thinking its opponent.
When I practice hanging back and observing—listening, watching, feeling—I give my body and mind room to process what they’re already processing. I become a little less likely to take the bait every time a thought promises that one more round of analysis might finally resolve what’s outside my ability to resolve.
Things often go better when I see more, hear more, and feel more—while interfering less with the faculties I’ve inherited as they process it all. That can be challenging not only when discomfort and confusion are being served, but also during quiet, comfortable moments I don’t fully register because I’m too busy looking for a story problem to chew on.
This week’s attention exercise doesn’t require trying to stop thought (psst: none of them ever do). Instead, it offers a chance to bring different regions of bodily sensation into the foreground, letting other regions recede without disappearing, and then feeling the body as a whole.
We aren’t controlling what the body feels. We’re experimenting with how we relate to whatever sensations are already there.
The body is continually carrying out more processes than we could possibly track. We’re simply stepping back from the imaginary control panel long enough to take in more of what the body is already doing.
Exercise
This attention exercise invites you to bring different regions of bodily sensation into the foreground to sharpen the experience of feeling the body as a whole.
When to use this attention exercise:
While lying in bed, explore the front and back of the body—the side resting against the mattress and the side facing away.
While sitting at a desk, sense the lower body in contact with the chair and floor, then the upper body, then both together.
While standing in sunlight or near a source of warmth, notice the illuminated or warmed area against the less prominent remainder of the body.
