22 May

THE CHECK UP We go to doctors and dentists for check ups. But this is a type of check up that's even more important, and not as common. To check up or check in on yourself. All it requires is a bit of time, where you can do one simple thing - observe yourself. NOT think about yourself, we don't need any more of that. Observe the thinking too. Just feeling what's there to be felt, emotionally and physically, and gently. Your own sort of 'scan', where you gently check back in to you for a while. If you have pains, to let them be and slowly and gently trace their extent, as you feel where they are and how far they reach within you. Often you will discover the true origin of pain in this way, but it's like birdwatching, you have to give yourself the time to gently observe, while it unfolds. Normally we crash through life at a million miles an hour for just this reason - to try to avoid feeling our actual feelings. But this sort of gentle scan of you can be the most useful and pleasurable thing you will ever do, and it will change your life. It will slow you down a little, and force you to be more gentle with yourself. Sometimes doing this will tell you better and faster than any medical test where your aches and pains are coming from, whether it's a way you've been sitting or walking, or whatever. Emotionally actually gently experiencing your emotions without trying to change them or think about them will similarly open up to you a whole continent inside you that you may have been running away from. If you have trauma in your past and meeting these emotions head on scares the shit out of you, it at least tells you maybe you need to go and see somebody to help you through that part of who you are. Thinking will likely be your greatest enemy, it's like that toddler who demands your attention every second, saying "look at me! Look at me!". Most of your problems will end up being about thinking. Thinking will make you want to react to your scan, to how you feel and what you turn up. To wallow in emotions, or sentimentalise them, or whatever. Watching your thinking in the scan will be the most important part of the scan. Just watch those thoughts pop up over and over, and after a while you realise they're not even you, even though you may think they are. This sort of self-scan can release years of neglect of yourself, years of running away from actual feelings and emotions and physically damaging behaviour. You realise how much you may have been treating your body like a bad second hand hire car, and gain new respect for what it is and what it can do. You feel yourself directly again, in everything you do, those feelings now tell a story that you slowly begin to understand, like learning to read for the first time. Make just 10 minutes a day to do this. It can change your life, make you feel a deep calm and health that no amount of traditional check ups have ever given you.