The mind-body connection is a powerful one, but whether we’re thinking about Career Success, Loving Relationships or a Happy Life, we tend to neglect the inner wisdom of the body, which is in fact profound. This has been brought home to me powerfully in the last month or so thanks to my coaching Professional Development activities.

Typically, if you go to a coach or a counsellor because you need help with an issue, you’ll focus on your thoughts. There might be the odd question like ‘where do you feel that in your body’ but this is not the commonest approach. Coaching and counselling are generally mental approaches, focussing on thought patterns and emotions. There’s a lot of value in this, and it’s an approach which helps millions of people every year. But it does tend to ignore another of our personal wisdom sources: the body.

But this may be changing.

In the last month I’ve ‘accidentally’ attended two different sessions on the wisdom of the body. (Jung would call this synchronicity, I suppose). Through my work as a hypnotherapist, I’ve known for a long time about body-language – how thoughts  like ‘my boss is a pain in the neck’ can literally transform into neck pain without the sufferer ever connecting the two. It really is worth paying attention to your own body language: the people and things which you say give you a bad feeling in some part of your body. Things that ‘stick in your throat’, give you a ‘pain in the butt’ (or anywhere else in your body). If you don’t believe that our thoughts have a direct impact on our body, have a read of Nobel-nominee Candace Pert’s book ‘The Molecules of Emotion‘ (with a foreword by Deepak Chopra) or Bruce Lipton’s ‘Biology of Belief‘.

What’s even more interesting is what happens when you start moving your body consciously and noticing where you feel discomfort. For example, let’s say you have problems being taking seriously at work. It’s a common problem for younger women in particular. How can you tap into the energy of gravitas and confidence? Think of a character from a film, book, novel, myth, fairy story or card pack like the Tarot, who embodies gravitas and confidence. Let’s say a Queen. Imagine you are that Queen. Start walking around the room like her. (Mercifully you can do this in the privacy of your own home!)

Start with the stance. How does your Queen stand and hold her head? Stand like that. How does she breathe – where in the body, how quickly? Breathe like that. How does she move (walk, move arms, head and so forth). Move like that. You may well have done an exercise like this before.

Now notice what aspects of this Queenly behaviour you find uncomfortable. Why are they uncomfortable? Is it because they are unfamiliar? Or because they somehow go against your beliefs of how a woman of gravitas and confidence would behave? How is your daily behaviour in line with, or at odds with, this Queenly behaviour? Write down any insights this exercise gives you.

Doing this exercise at a recent coaching conference really took me out of my comfort zone  and gave me some fascinating insights – and I always thought I knew about mind-body wisdom and consciousness. Highly recommended!

And finally, here is a link to the article on emotions stored in the body as pain that promoted this blog piece. It’s actually aimed at men, but it has real relevance for us women too.

Ill be posting a video in the next week or so to showing you the exercise I just described, so watch this space.