Moving through and beyond the senses with heightened proprioception

“I believe that a heightened state of awareness is not just reserved for deep meditation and extreme sports but can be experienced in day to day life”.

I like to view proprioception as ‘a three dimensional knowing of your body as it moves through space’. But this knowing is also subtle and applies to stillness. It’s an integration of the five senses and a key factor in presence or… simply feeling alive!

A common theme has emerged from these recent write ups about the five senses and that’s about returning to nature…

• Natural tastes with whole foods verses processed foods.
• Natural smells with time outdoors and for household and personal care products to be non synthetic versions (e.g. with organic essential oils and using vinegar and bicarbonate of soda for cleaning).
• Natural vision with plenty of time viewing nature to balance out screen time/indoor lighting.
• Natural sounds - again, back to nature for outdoor time (and inner) listening.
• Natural touch with skin awareness, receiving touch and organic clothing/bedding.

If you embody just some of this, your senses will get a boost and daily life should start to feel more clear, comfortable and relaxed. During Dojiva meditations, I often call this ‘the default way to be’. That is, if you are not clear mentally and relaxed physically, then something is in the way… usually the ego that is more interested in thoughts of the past or future. But it’s also your external environment that could be over stimulating. So again, can you reduce chemicals and screens.

In meditations, I talk about the three B’s

The three things to focus on that are reliable doorways to the present are:

•  Base (the ground beneath you right now)
•  Breath (flowing gently as you read this)
•  Body (sensations - that you know you are here) 

It’s this final point that we are focusing on with this week’s write up and seven day class schedule. The technical term is proprioception which is an inner sense of touch that let’s you know your body’s position in both stillness and during movement.

Within your muscles, you have proprioceptive fibres (protein spindles) that are directly linked to the brain. They work in unison with vision, the vestibular system and receptors in other connective tissues. They let you know if a muscle has been contracted or stretched, with how much force and at what speed.

This combination of inner and outer perception helps you decide if you’ll be able to lift that heavy box, clear the ditch, be accurate in darts, catch a ball, or to successfully lift a glass of water off the table to find your mouth.

In other words, it’s a part of assessing a situation (and some of this is unconscious). The good news is that you can improve this inner knowing with many techniques that we practice throughout this week’s classes such as mindfulness, body tapping, weight transfer, eyes closed practices, room/spatial awareness, stretching and even fatigue.

And then are many benefits too

Improving your sense of proprioceptive body awareness has so many pluses. Here are 14 points:

1. Improved balance
2. Movement confidence
3. Injury reduction
4. Inner knowledge of health status 
5. Better posture
6. Grace in gait
7. Sports performance (better coordination, accuracy, focus
8. Improved dexterity for picking things up or and doing crafts/hobbies
9. Less dropping things, tripping over or walking into door frames
10. Efficiency at work (with better focus, listening skills and calmness under pressure)
11. Emotional balance (from being more present and relaxed)
12. More efficient movement in daily life 
13. Listening with an extra layer of presence and integrity Last but not least
14. More in the here and now (flow of life)

More on sport…

When proprioception is well trained, you will experience greater efficiency, a smoother game and a better sense of flow/effortless. It’s a magic combination of agility, balance, coordination and timing. And the good news is that you can enhance these qualities with the practices above (and embody them by joining in with as many of this week’s classes as you can).

Safety

I really believe that injuries and even illnesses are at least in part a result of a lack of body/moment awareness. We often trip or fall or pick up an injury when the body is doing one thing while the mind is elsewhere. Usually in the future thinking about anything other than what you are doing. 

Anytime you get a sense that something may be off, you are probably right and it might be wise to pause right then and assess the situation. From a grounded place, you can then decide if you should you move forward or back off. This is a mix of wisdom, intuition and proprioception,

Summary

Ok, there we have it for this week. As you go about the as next seven days, please enjoy a heightened sense of embodiment. And anytime you lose your sense of presence, just check in with one or more of the three B’s! 

Thanks for reading

Take care

Danny

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