What lies beneath our hands

There are many things I wish for the world, for the people of this world.

And one of those wishes is this:

I wish for us to understand, to feel, and to experience the magnificence of our innate, organic, embodied intelligence. When we place our hands on our bodies, what lies beneath is so deeply amazing. Awe-inspiring. These bodies beneath our hands are not separate compartments of intelligence— a mind-body split, or maybe the mind- heart-body split. There is no split. This is an idea we humans have constructed. Instead, all ‘parts’ of us are intricately intertwined, working together in ways no human could ever design. There are many facets to our intelligence.

For me, one of the gateways into this incredible system is feeling.

Firstly, feeling the physical body. Feeling the foot press into the floor and how the hip responds. Feeling the ribs against the ground. Feeling the belly as the pelvis moves. A key into this is using curiosity to explore, how is it inside ourselves? Curious, not taking anything for granted. Not assuming. But instead, with open wonder—how is it that I lift my arm? How is it that my hip swings forward? What follows when my hip swings forward? Take walking, for example. It is so complex—and yet we take it for granted every day, how would it be to feel this more, to know this more, to be fascinated by it.

The second gateway: feeling emotion in the body.

Not the stories we tell ourselves, but the direct experience—where does the emotion land? What does it feel like? Is it warm or cold? Tight or expansive? Fizzing? Heavy? Spreading. And again, curiosity: what happens if I simply watch it? If I observe it, does it change? Move? Grow? Soften? Without attachment to how it should be. Just watching, in the way a child might sit and observe an ant carrying food—without needing to interfere, control, or direct. Just: what happens next? There is so much more that can follow these processes, but even staying with these two—feeling the physical body and feeling emotion within it—begins a journey. A journey into appreciating the magnificence we so often overlook as we move through our days, lost in thought.

So I wonder: what if we lived more from this place?

Perhaps only visiting the thinking mind when needed—to plan, to organise, to strategise is optimal. Where do our best decisions come from. Is it a mind that is alone in the process or part of an intergrated system. Maybe it’s worth exploring. Maybe it isn’t. But I wonder how different life would be if we explored the feelings in the body, if we moved from this place. How would a moment be? How different would a day be? How different would our lives be… if we spent more time feeling ourselves? Would it lead to greater clarity? To a deeper knowing of who we are? Of our wishes, our longings, our needs, our desires?

And of course, this is not about choosing between body and mind. They are inseparable. Intertwoven. It is not top down nor bottom up, it is both. Many of us have heard that standing in a “Superman pose” for two minutes can influence our feeling of ourselves. Even sitting in an upright, strong position can do this. It can make us feel more powerful, more focused, more clear-headed, less afraid. As well as changing our feeling of ourselves it changes our hormones. Our testosterone goes up and cotizol (our stress hormone) goes down. They both change significatantly. Feeling inside ourselves in this way is Interoception. Interoception is the way the body-heart-mind “senses, interprets, integrates, and regulates signals from within itself.” The term "regulates" was added to the definition, reflecting a newer understanding that the brain doesn't just receive internal signals — it converses with and responds to them. It can turn up or turn down the volume on those signals — for example, calming your heart rate, dampening a pain signal, or adjusting how intensely you feel hunger. So rather than just listening to your body, your nersous system is in an ongoing conversation with it, constantly tweaking and fine-tuning what signals get through and how strongly you feel them.

It is also true in the negative. If we sit slumped, shoulders forward, chin down, contracted through the front, this too shifts our internal state. Our experience of ourself changes, our mood and self-confidence drops and our hormones change, our testosterone levels go down and the cortizol goes up, measureably. This is to say that our Brain Chemistry changes because of our posture! This is big and exciting news. It puts power in our hands. It gives us more autonomy, more access to influence our states. But how can we change our posture if we cannot feel it? As Thomas Hanna said: “If you can’t feel it, you can’t change it.”

So, one of my wishes for the humans in this world is that we feel ourselves more often. That we build a relationship with sensation—one that becomes clearer, more accessible, more alive. That we begin to fill out the picture of ourselves, lay the paths of communication more clearly between the parts of our complex and awe inspiring system.

As you may know, my way into this is through somatic movement—a space where attention can become simple, precise, and quiet. And then, perhaps, a more challenging space: bringing that awareness into the dance. Into shared environments. Into relationship. Into dance. Where we meet distraction—other people, thoughts, music, invitations. Where we choose what to let in, and what to leave out. If you’re interested in exploring this—in deepening your awareness, filling in the map of yourself, in getting to know this intelligent system of yours, please read on, check the dates, and book in.