I have just read Zen Body-Being, and it changed the way I look at the body. Do you feel your body constantly, all the time? – Peter Ralston Newsletter

Perhaps your challenge exists in an inability to focus and stay on a subject, maybe you are simply being distracted and instead of focusing on feeling your body your attention goes to a thought to the exclusion of the feeling. Yet you can have attention on a thought and feel your body at the same time. You might want to practice feeling your body, and while you do that, think about something but don’t stop feeling the body.

Also, it took me quite some time to train myself to feel every part of the body as a whole and all at once. Most people don’t. They can think about or imagine their whole body, but they don’t actually feel every part. Nor do most people feel it well, meaning the feeling they have isn’t very sensitive or finely tuned. Such sensitivity and wholeness needs to be trained. If you practice putting your attention on each square inch of your body until you can feel it, and then feel it well, you can train yourself to feel every part. Then continue that by feeling every part all at once. This may take some time and a lot of practice but it can be done, and it’s worth it.

Being able to feel the whole body with great sensitivity allows you a different relationship to your body and its movement. It also allows you greater awareness of your surroundings and so increases your ability to relate to your environment.

Peter