How we get more present & engaged in life

Art: SP







Proactive mindfulness involves being aware of what prevents us from being present and engaged in what we do. It also takes understanding it and dealing with it.



All of this has to do with how our nervous system deals with interaction. We are wired to get a sense of whether a situation is safe or hostile. This is not an objective assessment but an automatic, unconscious reaction. We are often unconsciously triggered into a heightened sense of danger that is not warranted. That is, we are triggered into reacting to our preconceptions, our baggage, instead of the actual situation. 



Fear



In other words, fear takes over. And, often, we don’t even know that we’re afraid.  We cannot push away our reactivity through willpower. It has to do with fear, and evolution has made fear very powerful because it leads to survival. For the fear to lift, we need to sense that the situation is safe. This means we need to stay present enough to see beyond our baggage. To see the situation as it really is. 



Staying present is not an abstract concept. It means being in touch with our body. All of it.



What fear does, it disconnects us from parts of our body. Just like a circuit breaker cuts off connection when there’s too much intensity. This happens even when we are not aware of being afraid. The disconnected parts are still there. But there’s no flow of information, of energy, going through them. So they’re not available to us. As the brain keeps track of our inventory of resources, some of them have disappeared from that inventory. 



We function with diminished resources, and we’re not even aware of it. Before we can effectively engage with the situation, we need to engage with our body to recover its full resources. 



Why we need to engage with our body



It seems obvious, and yet this is so different from what we usually do. We keep trying to engage with the situation when we don’t have a full deck, when we don’t have all of our bodily resources available. Instead, what we need to do is first engage with our body to recover its full resources. 



Now, that may seem strange. For instance, if your feet are disconnected, what does this have to do with your capacity to think? Of course, there’s the phrase “thinking on your feet.” But it’s just a way of speaking, isn’t it?



Well, no, it isn’t just empty words. Our nervous system constantly scans our body. When parts are offline, it’s as if they didn’t exist, and our system is unbalanced. Think about what happens if you have a flat tire. Your car still has three functional tires. But the whole system has now become much less able to handle the road. Disproportionately so. 



So we need to engage with our body to recover the disconnected parts. To re-inflate the tire, so to speak.



How we engage with your body



Engaging with our body means switching our focus to our body. We need a roadmap. For instance, if my feet are offline at this moment, it will not occur to me to put my focus on them. But my roadmap tells me there’s such a thing as feet. So I can direct my attention toward them and do little experiments in moving them ever so slightly. I start noticing that my feet are responding, ever so slightly. It’s all very subtle. 



Being present means engaging. And engaging means being in that process that’s like attunement. It’s subtle. It’s a slow rhythm. Making a move. Taking the time to notice what happens. Adjusting based on that. Noticing. And so on.