What to do this week
Once in the morning and once before sleep, sit still for three minutes. Not to meditate. Not to perform stillness. Only to take inventory.
- Where in the body is there tension that was never named today?
- Where is there a heaviness that got rescheduled rather than met?
- You are not solving anything. You are reading the record.
This takes less time than you think. The body has been waiting longer than you know.
Three Mirror questions to sit with this week
When did your body last stop you, not metaphorically but physically, with a symptom, a pain, an exhaustion that refused to be scheduled around? What did you do with it?
What this is listening for: whether you have a practiced habit of overriding somatic signals, and what language you use to name the override.
Your notes
Think of the last week. Where in your body did you feel something that you did not name aloud to anyone, including yourself? Describe its location and quality as precisely as you can.
What this is listening for: your interoceptive vocabulary, and whether you have permission to use the body's language at all.
Your notes
The people in your life who most depend on your performance: do they know when your body is distressed? Do you? What is the gap between those two answers?
What this is listening for: whether performance has become so naturalized that your own signal system is invisible even to you.
Your notes
"The body is the part of you that has not learned to lie. The mouth learned early."
Dr. Job Mogire, The Quiet Return, Chapter 1
What this chapter introduces
Interoception
The brain's continuous monitoring of the body's internal state, as real a sensory system as sight or touch. (A.D. Craig, 2009)
Allostatic load
The cumulative biological cost of chronic stress: elevated cortisol, disrupted sleep, accelerated cardiovascular wear. (Bruce McEwen)
The translation habit
The practiced skill of renaming the body's distress signals into something more schedulable, and what it costs over time.