Thoughts On Thriving In A Top Heavy World
We’ve been top heavy 🧠 for too long that we’ve begun toppling over
I Try To Escape Through My Head When I’m Anxious. Literally!!!
I spent the whole day around people. Most of it, interacting with strangers.
For me, it's a recipe for a stressful day. I felt my body tense up many times.
I Noticed How I Experience Anxiety
My whole body feels drawn out.
Head feels tight.
And facial muscles rigid.
My arms feel tense, especially the fingers, wrist and forearms.
My stomach feels like I’m being drawn out of it. It’s not a painful or knotty feeling. But an experience of myself being pulled upward, out of my stomach.
I feel way less of my legs.
Once in a while, I notice my ankles tense up, but that’s it.
I was literally trying to escape my body, through my head.
This happened a good few months back. But it was such a peculiar feeling, that some awareness of it stayed with me, unraveling itself bit by bit.
It’s made me realise something unexpected:
I live in my upper body.
I spend the good part of my day in my head, neck, arms, hands. Them I can feel with ease. Torso mostly so.
Below that is a different story.
My legs feel very disembodied a lot of the time.
Even when I feel for my lower body, my awareness tapers off around mid thigh.
This is not rare
I was shocked to find this pattern in myself. But then friends, patients, colleagues, began telling me that some of them felt the same.
I dug deeper into this and found that ‘hypo awareness below the umbilicus’ - feeling less of your body below your belly button - is a common pattern.
Top Heavy Planet 🌏
We very much live in a top heavy world right now.
Our cerebral bits and our arms play the huge role in getting ahead in our present world. Our legs are way more passive compared to a cavewoman who had to sprint and kick and hunt just to get through her day.
Right from schooldays, we are trained to sit still, stand still, let our body get out of the way of our brain.
Our bodies are left behind. Our legs even more so than our arms.
Why This Needs To Change
Be top heavy for too long and we will topple.
And our world is toppling, I believe in a big part due to this.
We’ve come so far from our roots that we’ve forgotten what it means to be truly, intuitively embodied. To have our roots thriving, nourishing us.
A forest doesn’t live in its canopy. The trunks, stems and branches are equally glorious. And the roots - they are a whole world beneath the surface- in the nooks and crannies of soil that we never get to see. There roots, microbes and mycelia make an entire ecosystem growing into each other.
Our roots are no different. They need to survive and thrive. Even more so today to hold up our super heavy heads.
What can we do differently?
The easiest way to my roots is nature.
When I’m barefoot on soft earth, my legs are 100% online.
The warmth of the soil…its texture tickling my toes…weaves a thread of awareness. And I feel consistently rooted.
A long time in vast, green spaces does the same, even when I have shoes on.
But then, I spent a good part of my day walking cold, artificial floors. What helps best then is experiencing my distress.
Opening up to it, without trying to ‘fix’.
Explore it, embrace it. Go down the breadcrumb trail of sensations, even the ‘bad’ ones.
It gets me in the frame of an adventure.
Then all by itself, my head relaxes a little. I start sinking down, settling a bit better into my gut.
In a minute or so, I start filling my legs. Moving down slowly and steadily. Sometimes, I get to my feet and feel more grounded. Even when I don’t, I feel less ‘wound up’.
In time, I hope I’ll get to live in a place of bodyfulness and stay there even when I’m drawn thin. But for now, the many little moments of awareness and adventure (with a dash of curiosity 🫧) do little wonders ✨