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TheMindful Body What is the key


message of The Mindful Body? Becoming aware


of how we hold life experience, like stress and emotional ups and downs, in our bodies, is a valuable life skill that can offer many benefits. Benefits include building emo- tional strength, gain- ing effective tools for


managing stress and improving brain function towards clearer, more creative and open-minded thinking. The practical, accessible methods offered in The Mindful Body guide us to apply body awareness, referred to as body mindfulness, to reap these benefits. What is your background that led you to write this


book? My first passion was dancing. My first career was


as a professional ballet and contemporary dancer. This sparked my curiosity in the role of the body in psychol- ogy. I went on to study Yoga, as an approach to culti- vating wellbeing from a mind-body perspective. This led to my writing a few books on Yoga with my first book, The Yoga Handbook (2001), becoming an inter- national bestseller. I also completed a masters degree in somatic, or body-mind, psychology in 2003, through Naropa University, which is the birthplace the modern mindfulness movement. This again allowed me to com- bine my growing fascination with body awareness, psy- chology and mindfulness. Who can benefit from this book? I believe that anyone can benefit. The Mindful


Body is written for the general public with no previous knowledge required. I have attempted to keep informa- tion simple and clear and practical exercises easy to apply, potentially with immediate benefit. This book is for adults, young and more mature. There is great appli- cation of this material to children too, although this book does not focus there. How can The Mindful Body help me be to be less


stressed? Simple interventions are the key. For example, I


invite you to pause for a few moments and run your awareness from head to toe. As you go along, notice parts of your body that may be holding tension. Maybe for you it is your jaw or eyes or your neck or shoulders or back. Or perhaps you find restlessness in your legs or that you are holding your shoulders up or your head at an angle or sitting on standing more on your left side than your right, placing your body off balance to some degree. As you go along allow yourself to take a few deep breaths and adjust your posture to loosen up tight areas, finding a posture that feelsmore comfortable, and perhaps more upright and centered. Then you would carry on with whatever you are doing from this perhaps more centered, comfortable place that can naturally


increase your sense of presence and perhaps even give you a little energy boost. This is an example of a short pause, that could take


just a minute or less, in which you apply body aware- ness, in this case a simple body scan, to reduce your experience of stress. The target here is physical tension as a way that your body holds onto and actually perpet- uates your experience of stress.When physically tense, even just a little, it can also keep your brain from func- tioning as well as it could. Brain imaging can now show us how when we are feeling stressed, we aremore prone to the fight or flight response, which limits our ability to access our most mature brain regions. This means that when we are feeling stressed, we tend to have limited access to our mature ability to think clearly, rationally, creatively and compassionately. These are all cognitive abilities associated with feeling relaxed and connected with others. So a simple act like scanning your body for tension and finding a more centered, comfortable pos- ture, by helping you feel more relaxed, can also have the effect of clearing your mind to help you think more clearly, intelligently and creatively. Suddenly youmight see a bigger picture, or feel less strained about what you were thinking about.Youmight have a rush of ideas that could lead to new solutions to a challenge where before you might have been stuck on the problem. You might also find that the combination of relaxation and new perspective naturally lifts your mood, shifting your internal world from stress hormones to feel-good hor- mones in just a matter of minutes. This is what I love about this body-based focus for stress relief. It can work quite quickly and offer real, tangible results to body, mind and mood. Then, as we become skilled at taking short pauses to notice our bodies in a mindful, con- structive way, it can become a positive habit that can help us to regularly perform better under stress. How can this book help me to build emotional


strength? Through the fields of positive psychology and neu-


roscience it is becoming clearer that proactively re-edu- cating our emotional habits is an important aspect of lasting psychological change that can help us feel emo- tionally stronger and more resilient. As a practical way to support this, the short pauses now and again through the day to apply body awareness in particular ways, as I spoke of previously, also applies. In The Mindful Body, I call these short pauses, Mindful Body Moments.With practice, theseMindful BodyMoments can create lasting, positive change in your brain and help to shift even age-old habits of responding to emo- tional ups and downs. The body scan,mentioned above, for releasing tension and cultivating presence is one option. Here is another example that you can try out that has specific application to our emotional world. It can help to counteract anxiety and it can train us to experi- ence more happiness from the inside out. Place your hand over your heart area and if you feel


up for it, add a small smile. Notice the effect on your body and mind. You might find yourself taking a spon- taneous deep breath or focusing on yourself more than


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