For the last three months, I started spending 10 minutes every morning doing an emotional check-in following the practice from Enjoy Existing.
I direct attention to my body, feeling which sensations come up, zeroing in on the most intense ones, and mapping the stimuli to areas of my life they feel associated with (this keeps being the hardest part of the practice).
Here are a six lessons I learned along the way.
Feel positive emotions in full.
This might be the biggest lesson. During the first practices, I mostly registered sensations like tension or short breath. As I became acquainted with this landscape, I was also able to notice the absence of tension, the lightness of the breath, the aliveness in the body. It became very important to feel them in full, to bathe in their light. The goal should not simply be “remove the tensions” (though it often feels that way when you first get in touch with an emotional landscape mostly filled with tension). Otherwise, you are bound to have your experience dominated by negative valence. This is terrible for the motivation system and habit creation, as the practice never gets associated with positive sensations.
Having attention shaped to look for positive sensations also has great side effects in daily life, appreciating meals more, recognizing in real time what makes you feel alive.
Attention is therapeutic.
I am allergic to pollen, dog hair, and cat hair. During spring I often have an inflamed nose, sneeze a lot, and blow my nose very regularly.
I found that directing my attention to the flow of air entering my nose and pharynx is a great way to alleviate the symptoms. It is hard to do, as the sensations are uncomfortable and my attention is pushed away. But when I am able to sit with it long enough (it requires stable attention for roughly 10 breaths), I can feel the inflammation retreating in real time.
If my attention moves away too soon, the inflammation often comes back. But if I’m able to stabilize it long enough, there have been times when it stopped the allergy crisis altogether, without any medicine.
There is a striking autobiographical account of someone using yoga to treat allergic rhinitis that inspired me to try this kind of practice. I think it has great potential for reducing unnecessary suffering. I dearly hope these practices become more mature, and taught to the 10% to 30% of adults and up to 40% of children worldwide that are impacted by allergic rhinitis.
Beyond this precise example, it shows that curious, accepting attention is therapeutic, whether directed toward parts of yourself (body parts, personality parts) or toward the people around you.
Thoughts are valid sensations to register.
Even after directing attention to the body, thoughts sometimes come up, even after having clearly felt bodily sensations. I tend to treat them as “another sensation” coming from a disembodied “cognitive body.” The fact that a thought topic arises when my attention is calm and non-verbal is a sign there might be, e.g. anxiety around it, or at least a “grasping reflex” pulling my thoughts in that direction.
I treat this the same way as a bodily sensation and try to connect it to an area of my life or a potential action. Of course, there is a failure mode here: by paying attention to thoughts, one might become disconnected from the body, but in my experience, body and thought can coexist gracefully.
Body signals are easier to move up the before/during/after chain.
I practice in the morning. I was often feeling bloated from eating too many carbs at breakfast. This was a very easy signal to feel, and very easy to trace to its cause. I could simply eat less carbs and more proteins at breakfast and have a snack at 10am.
I was able to move the signal “up” the chain: starting by noticing after eating how it felt, then noticing during breakfast how eating a piece of bread felt, to eventually sensing before eating the bread what the appropriate amount felt like.
It’s great practice, but I’m not there yet with all my sensations. Most don’t map to crisp actions or areas. For instance, recurring tension in the shoulder feels connected to a background sense of overwhelm, inner conflict, or the general intensity of life. It’s something that doesn’t come from a single source.
Do it like you were inventing it
Many times I was on the verge of dropping the habit, or I pursued it with a less sharp mind. A friend gave me this advice: “Imagine you are the first to discover this technique. How much more would you persevere if you knew no one had ever experienced this before?” This was very helpful! It is, after all, the first time this technique is being integrated into this particular body-mind. It helped redirect attention to the signals I was observing, motivated experimentation, and instilled a sense of responsibility to make sense of my current state and map the options ahead without needing to feel a reward at every step.
Feelings move slowly
Every day, I feel my thought-scape change a lot. My priorities shift, new events happen, new tasks appear on the horizon. I go through hunger, boredom, tiredness, and satisfaction. But this impression of fast-paced change doesn’t translate to the world of bodily sensations.
Yes, new sensations flare up in response to specific events like conflicts (inner or interpersonal). But in general, sensations move much more slowly than my ordinary awareness. It feels more like checking in every morning with old friends who always sit in the same chair in the same room and barely move all day (the tension in the shoulder — yes, her again). It feels more like attuning to the tree-me, growing slowly.
Closing
These ten minutes in my days are bringing every month more warmth and clarity to my life. I start to feel the practices slowly spilling over to other times of my days, without the need for conscient effort. The positive sensations I often feel during the practice are enough to naturally motivate the move.
I warmly recommend you try Enjoy Existing, and make it yours!
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