3 ms·

Could you elaborate a bit on how you weren't allowed to listen to your body as a child, and what kind of difficult real-time decisions that meant you had to mak

by mckirk 5y ago

Could you elaborate a bit on how you weren't allowed to listen to your body as a child, and what kind of difficult real-time decisions that meant you had to make? Also, how did you work on improving that as an adult?

wpietri 5y ago
Not the poster, but it's very familiar to me. I grew up in the midwest, and a friend from there says, "In the midwest we don't have bodies or feelings." As a kid, I clearly remember having an epiphany: when people asked my how I was doing, they did not actually want to know how I was doing. There were a number of appropriate answers, "fine" first among them. If you watch the first 20 seconds of "How to Speak Minnesotan", it's this dynamic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-wx11l3nr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-wx11l3nr4 The best way to convincingly say you're fine is to not know otherwise. So by my late teens I was very good at not knowing how I was feeling. After 20 years in California, I have unlearned a lot of this. Yoga especially helped, as at least with my instructor it was basically 90 minutes of learning to pay attention to the subtle feelings in my body. Unsurprisingly, paying attention to my emotional and physical health has a lot of benefits, so I am a much happier person and would never go back.
- vinay427 5y ago
  > After 20 years in California, I have unlearned a lot of this. Hmm, I’m curious which part. If anything, I seem to notice even more of this tendency in much of Southern California compared to the upper Midwest where I also grew up. The opposite is probably the case in the SF area, however, and possibly the Bay Area in general.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Fair point. I'm in SF. Here there's a lot of focus on personal experience as primary.
mrsmee89 5y ago
@wpietri sums up what I meant very well. I’ll just add, a concrete method of improving my ability to “listen to my body” is shifting my attention to a specific part of my body especially when I feel vague discomfort. I tend to focus on my torso or chest. This really helps center my experience around noticing instead of judging. As a bonus, this shift in perspective also allows me to connect with others more authentically.

by mckirk 5y ago

wpietri 5y ago

Not the poster, but it's very familiar to me. I grew up in the midwest, and a friend from there says, "In the midwest we don't have bodies or feelings." As a kid, I clearly remember having an epiphany: when people asked my how I was doing, they did not actually want to know how I was doing. There were a number of appropriate answers, "fine" first among them. If you watch the first 20 seconds of "How to Speak Minnesotan", it's this dynamic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-wx11l3nr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-wx11l3nr4 The best way to convincingly say you're fine is to not know otherwise. So by my late teens I was very good at not knowing how I was feeling. After 20 years in California, I have unlearned a lot of this. Yoga especially helped, as at least with my instructor it was basically 90 minutes of learning to pay attention to the subtle feelings in my body. Unsurprisingly, paying attention to my emotional and physical health has a lot of benefits, so I am a much happier person and would never go back.

vinay427 5y ago
> After 20 years in California, I have unlearned a lot of this. Hmm, I’m curious which part. If anything, I seem to notice even more of this tendency in much of Southern California compared to the upper Midwest where I also grew up. The opposite is probably the case in the SF area, however, and possibly the Bay Area in general.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Fair point. I'm in SF. Here there's a lot of focus on personal experience as primary.

mrsmee89 5y ago

@wpietri sums up what I meant very well. I’ll just add, a concrete method of improving my ability to “listen to my body” is shifting my attention to a specific part of my body especially when I feel vague discomfort. I tend to focus on my torso or chest. This really helps center my experience around noticing instead of judging. As a bonus, this shift in perspective also allows me to connect with others more authentically.