How to become more aware of your body, mood and thoughts

Look. I’m not one for grandiose statements or anything but “Is x a real problem, or am I just hungry?” is one of the best questions you can ask yourself in any given moment.

(You can substitute ‘hunger’ for other sensations like pain or lack of sleep – but hungry + angry leads to the excellent “hangry” portmanteau of hangry so I’ll use it as a catch-all term.)

Unfortunately, being hangry can prevent you from noticing that you’re hangry. And someone else asking “hey, are you hangry?” while you’re hangry tends to make most people so immediately enraged that blood starts to shoot out your ears.

In their book The mindful way through depression, psychologists J. Mark G. Williams, John D. Teasdale, Zindel V Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn explain why that’s the case. They argue that “many of us have been brought up to ignore the body in the interest of achieving whatever goals we’re striving to attain.”

Today, we’re looking at why it’s important to acknowledge the body. And, to do that, we’re breaking down the three things that shape how you understand the world and how to respond to them skilfully.

The three things that shape how you understand the world

As you go about life, these three things will directly (or indirectly) change how you interpret things:

• Mood
• Thoughts
• Physical sensations

You won’t be aware of them all of the time – but they all influence the way you experience and interpret the world.

Let’s just say you’re trying to get some work done and you encounter a minor inconvenience. You don’t just respond in one set way every time that happens – you’re not a computer running a program.

If you’re in a good mood, maybe you’ll barely respond at all: you’ll just keep on keeping on. If you’re in a foul mood or you’ve been ruminating over some earlier grievance, maybe you’ll fly off the handle. If you have a splitting headache, hell, maybe it’ll just end your day right there.

The inconvenience is the same each time. Your mood, thoughts, and physical sensations change everything.

Of the three, mood and thoughts might seem obvious. The body, though, that’s a different story.

Like I said above, Williams et al. argued that we’ve been raised to ignore the body. Because of that, we miss important signals and patterns, especially when it comes to negative feelings:

It’s not just that patterns of negative thinking can affect our moods and our bodies. Feedback loops in the other direction, from the body to the mind, also play a critical role in the persistent return and deepening of unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

What makes this all this more complicated is how subtle this loop can be. According to Williams et al., “research has shown that the state of our bodies affect the state of our minds without our having any awareness of it.”

Our bodies affects “react to negative thoughts and images,” they say, and “feeds back to the mind the information that we’re threatened or upset.”

And so I ask myself: am I annoyed? Or am I just hungry?

How to respond skilfully

This gets back what we spoke about the noting practice: the act of noting what’s flowing through our awareness at any given moment.

In the process, “we can stop identifying each with individual thought and letting them control us.” We can expand this awareness out to our feelings and, of course, our bodies. By doing that consistently, we can overcome what Williams et al. describe as:

a strong aversion to any signals that our body may be putting out. Those signals may be of a constant state of tension, exhaustion, and chaos in the body. We would prefer to have nothing to do with it in the hope that this interior turbulence will subside on its own.

The noting practice is helpful for staying aware of our moods and feelings but, if you’re not already in tune with your body, it might be a tough starting point. So we’re going to start with a classic practice: the body scan meditation.

Here’s how to do a body scan:

1. Sit comfortably. Or lie down. You do you.
2. Close your eyes.
3. Take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth to settle in.
4. Bring your awareness to the top of your head. Note any feelings or sensations. From there, slowly scan down your body. I find it helpful to name the body part I’m moving to (e.g. face, calf, toes). I also break my body into chunks to move around, e.g. going from my neck, shoulders, elbow, hands, before moving back to my chest.
5. Once you reach your toes, you can head back up and see if you’re aware of any changes.
6. To finish, take another deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Open your eyes.

You can take it fast or slow. Going slow – for a few minutes or so – will help get the practice into your bones. But a quick scan is better than no scan. There are loads of guided body scans out there. Start with YouTube and find someone you gel with.

Remember: you’re bringing your awareness to your body and its myriad sensations without judgement. You’re not looking to change anything or “fix” anything. Just noting the sensation and doing its thing. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back (noticing you’ve wandered is a win).

If you’re ever feeling lost while doing a body scan, try focusing on one kind of sensation. Maybe bring your awareness to external feelings: like the air on your skin or the temperature. I like focusing in on the feeling of air coming in through my nostrils – that slight chill helps me centre my awareness.

Why this is helpful

One of goals of mindfulness (and Buddhist practice in general) is to help us respond to the present moment well. In my article about the four parts of clear thinking, I referred to it as “bare knowing”: just enough mindfulness to “observe things simply and directly, without defaulting to reactions or associations.”

Being aware of your thoughts, feelings and body is a terrific way of doing that.

Say talking to someone. They say something and I get a bit on edge. I notice a rising sense of irritation inside me. Now, that could be anything but, in the moment, maybe I jump to the conclusion that this person said something wrong. Maybe I think “this person’s an asshole”.

But I noticed the feeling and the thought. So I get to ask myself a question: “Is something here an actual problem? Or am I just hungry?”

More often that not, I’m just hungry. That physical sensation I hadn’t noticed up until now was feeding into my thoughts and my mood. If I hadn’t noticed it, maybe I would’ve blamed someone else unfairly or let my mood spiral. Now, I can get a snack instead. Everyone’s happy.

The act of being aware of your thoughts, feelings, and body help you be part of the world without making assumptions. You can act skilfully. In that example, maybe I noticed I wasn’t hungry.

Then I could take a beat and work out where the irritation came from. And, from there, I can take the right action to change things. But it all starts with awareness without judgment.

The 30-second action plan

1. Start your day with a body scan. Before you get out of bed, spend two or three minutes scanning your body. It can be guided or unguided – but having someone walk you through it via an app or YouTube vid will help build the habit.
2. Pick a daily trigger for quick check-ins. Pick something you do every day – like making a coffee, starting your commute, or eating lunch – to act as a prompt to do a quick, 30-second body scan. It’ll help cement the practice so it’s there when you need it.
3. Make it part of your bedtime routine. I’ve found body scans helpful for getting to sleep. I lie in bed, get comfy, and start at my toes. As I bring my awareness through my body, I literally ask myself to relax. Thinking my feet have worked hard today and now they should rest may feel slightly cheesy at first, but it’s astonishingly effective.

Odds are, you’ve spent a lifetime unaware of the signals your body sends you. Start simple and give yourself a chance of undoing that programming.

That way, when something in life pops and you notice yourself getting heated, you can pause and ask yourself if it’s a problem or if you’re just hungry. (If you’re not sure, eat something anyway. If your problem still exists after you’ve eaten, at least you’ll be better equipped to deal with it.)

Everything’s better with a snack.