Body Scan

"Stretching and limbering up"

I learnt far too late that there is a fibrous connective tissue wrapping every organ, muscle and bone in the body, that it's called fascia, and how useful it is to wake it up and stimulate it every day! Whenever I call over a sleeping cat or dog I've spotted in the street so I can stroke it, the first thing it does after getting up is, without fail, a stretch. Mulling over why they do this almost every single time, I talked myself into a half-baked explanation: "They're probably getting more blood and oxygen flowing to their muscles and joints and waking up their bodies, their fascia." Still, after getting out of bed in the morning, and after motionless hours at the computer during the day, I jump to my feet; stretch up, sideways, forwards and backwards; crack and pop every part of me; squat down and make my knees and legs crackle. After pinching and kneading myself here and there, repeating the simple moves we did in PE at school and letting out a huge "Ahh, that's better!" of a breath, it's as if a thin curtain of dust lifts from in front of my eyes! Still, rather than this explanation, which I pulled out of my backside, you'd do better to look at the scientific research I've put under this exercise on my website, foxfulness.com.

"Emotional Freedom Technique taps (EFT tapping)"

When I first heard about it, I'll be honest, I rather sneered at the idea that tapping my upper body would do my mood any good. But something strange happened to me. One morning, in one of the morning meetings at work, a very simple question made me spot a critical bug in the code I had written, and I broke out in a cold sweat. Since all the work was held up for another day because of me, everyone's face in the meeting fell, naturally. The simplicity of the mistake made me feel like an idiot. After the meeting I got up from my desk and was standing there swearing at myself when the sentence "There was that EFT tapping thing, wasn't there." suddenly popped into my head. I'll write about the effect after I've summarised the technique. The short version goes like this:

• I name the feeling: What am I feeling right now, where in my body is it strongest, how intense is it from 0 to 10?
• I tap the side of my hand: Tapping gently on the fleshy part below my little finger, I say three times: "Even though I feel ..., I accept myself as I am."
• I go round the points: I tap gently, 7 or 10 times each, on the start of the eyebrows (the middle of my forehead), the side of the eye, under the eye, under the nose (the moustache area), between the lower lip and the chin, the collarbone, under the chest, under the arm and the top of the head. As I do this, at each point, in turn, I repeat: "My body is sounding an alarm.", "I notice the alarm.", "It doesn't have to be an alarm." (You can see all the points by searching the internet for "eft tapping points".)
• I score it again: I go back to the start, ask the same questions and score the intensity again. If it's still fairly high, I take the round from the top.

I had been left standing at my desk cradling a bouncing, 9-out-of-10 "I feel worthless, like a complete idiot." feeling in my arms like a newborn. I applied this technique, repeating the words above like a mantra, and started tapping my face and my upper body. Not 7 or 10 times each; I was tapping 15, 20 times. I managed to bring the intensity of the feeling down first to 7, then to 6, then to 4; it went no lower, but I wasn't anxious the way I had been at the start either. This technique, which I saw working and which, sadly, I had sneered at until it did, is one I started doing, if not every day then a few times a week, so that I can live through my good feelings and my bad ones without denying either.

"Disclaimer"

I don't do these techniques as a substitute for something else. I do them so that, in that moment, I can turn to my body, notice this body of flesh and bone, a part of this world and of nature, in which I am a guest for a limited time, and thank it. These techniques cannot replace a doctor or a psychologist, but here's the nice part: thanks to them I learnt to listen to my body, and through what I heard from my body I decided to put money aside for a psychologist. In the meantime I did my research and started with a psychologist I thought would be good for me. I have neither expertise nor training in any of this. So if you too need professional help, I am not that person; don't lose a moment, listen to your body's and your mind's calls for help and see a specialist. Nobody and nothing can be worth more than your own health!