Where Are Your Feet

Our bodies are quite incredible, in them is stored our entire history. It often comes up in my work that many of my clients and myself included learned from a young age to disassociate from the body. We stopped listening to what our body needed and simply tried to survive. Unfortunately this leads to so many dysfunctional relationships with ourselves as we get older from eating disorders to addictive behaviors to being completely numb to our bodies needs. Some of us try to cover up our dysfunction with intense physical fitness or makeup or clothes. We become expert at seeming in touch with ourselves when the reality is it is just a facade, another way we are coping with whatever trauma lies beneath our surface.

Many in the mental health world will encourage those caught in this dysfunctional relationship to begin to meditate and take on different types of mindfulness. I see a lot of value in these practices, however I think for those of us that have never learned to be with our bodies we might be skipping a step. I often encourage my clients to start small and just think about their feet. It’s a small tap that refocuses their attention to where they are. Sometimes we talk about what their feet feel like in their shoes or how the ground or carpet feels, but other times we just leave it at where are your feet? 

If you were forced to be in situations growing up that left deep scars, being in your body and meditating may still feel very scary and threatening. We have to start training the brain that it has agency, your feet are in therapy, you chose to come here, you chose to work on yourself and share your feelings! A simple question, where are your feet? Leads us to start recognizing that we have agency and autonomy to be where we are and this no longer has to be dictated by unhealthy people. 

So if you are struggling and find yourself feeling disconnected most of the day, let me encourage you to ask yourself, where are my feet?