Consapevolezza corporea per essere più efficaci

Our body is mechanically designed to gather information and send it to the most refined and evolved layers of our brain.

The ability of our brain to receive, record, and listen to these signals is called “body awareness,” a type of awareness that we all have; usually, however, we tend to use this form of listening to our bodily state when we feel pain, that is, when the body reaches a type of signaling that we can define as an “alarm.” Through training, however, we can further refine and develop this instant signaling system to ensure an optimal level of effectiveness in both professional and personal contexts.

Specifically, what is meant by body awareness?

We mean a set of bodily signaling systems that we can visualize as organized like a funnel of perceptions, from general to specific:

1.     Awareness of space: the understanding of the position of one's body in relation to other objects in space (where I am positioned in a room, sense of orientation);

2.     Proprioception: the perception of the position and movement of one's body (which muscles I move, perception developed thanks to the type of sport practiced)

3.     Interoception: the perception of the internal state of the organs and the cardiovascular system (movements of the stomach and intestines, perception of the heartbeat)

It is important to include, in this definition of systems, those that neurologist Antonio Damasio has identified as Background feelings (Damasio, 2003): the perceptions of the present state of the body (warmth, cold, itching, tension, relaxation) that are constantly present, indeed in the background, but that we tend to silence, putting in the background the message that these sensations can convey.

To intentionally act in the opposite way and increase the volume of these states of body-related awareness, it is necessary to expand one's level of attention (the ability to direct thoughts toward a specifically and intentionally chosen stimulus) and perception (the ability to expand and detail the information coming from our senses).

Applying these two levers to body awareness allows you to achieve 3 training objectives:

·       Noticing bodily sensations: bringing sensations from the body to the level of awareness, instead of remaining in a state of disconnection;

·       Listening to your body: accepting bodily sensations without judgment instead of rejecting them;

·       Responding to your body: intentionally acting in line with the information the body provides, instead of ignoring it and acting in the opposite and contrary direction. 

Developing awareness allows us to optimize functions that are crucial for professional effectiveness. In fact, it makes the decision-making process more effective, as bodily signals indicate the emotional activation linked to the choice, intervening in the selection process that takes place at the level of the brain's associative structures; emotional intelligence: bodily signals immediately indicate our emotional state in relation to someone (makes me nervous, makes me sad, makes me feel at ease) allowing us to be more empathetic and to consciously regulate our relational behaviors; professional performance: bodily signals allow us to monitor our state of wakefulness, attention, presence, energy investment; listening to them, therefore, allows us to adjust our responses promptly, compensating for shortcomings or distributing our energies better, thus avoiding entering a state of “alarm.”

As usual, it is training that allows us to master this skill at its best.

A form of intensive training can be the practice of body scan meditation in which, from a mindfulness perspective, all attention is directed to the progressive and systematic observation of the different body areas.

A daily practice can be the exercise of bringing our attention during the day to the most frequent non-emotional physical states (one's state related to sleep, food, energy level, weather) and then expanding this type of attention focus to interactions with others, reactions to contextual stimuli, and different moments of the workday. 

Happy practicing!