In my last post I introduced presencing — the practice of bringing awareness to your body and breath. This time, let’s look at some of the pitfalls.

Before we get started, I’m going to invite you to feel your feet, and then bring your awareness to your legs. Notice what you’re aware of. Your legs might feel light or heavy. You may feel like energy is streaming through them, or you might feel nothing at all. You might feel as though cool, fresh air is moving through your legs, or you might be aware of some achiness or pain. All you’re doing is bringing some awareness.

Then I’m going to invite you to bring your awareness to your seat, to your pelvis, and see what you’re aware of. You might feel the weight of your pelvis on the chair, or you might feel like there’s tension there, or you might feel like your pelvis is relaxed and at ease.

Bring your awareness into your belly, noticing what you’re aware of there. There might be some softness, some warmth, some tightness, some fullness. See what you’re aware of.

Bring your awareness to your chest. It is always really helpful to have your awareness on your breath as it comes in, particularly noticing your diaphragm. Often our diaphragms are tight; it’s a muscle, and we feel it to varying degrees of tightness or relaxedness. But mostly, our diaphragm isn’t just expanded, open, and boundless. So, noticing that.

Bring your awareness to your back, to your arms, your shoulders, and your whole body. Really invite yourself to feel what this feels like. See if you can go a little bit deeper into your body. There might be a sense of freshness, lightness, ease, or softness.

I’m going to invite you to continue to do this—just staying aware of your body as much as you can while also reading about some of the pitfalls.

When We Think We’re Presencing

One of the things that comes to mind in terms of pitfalls is that often when people are talking to me about their thoughts, their feelings, whatever is going on in their lives, I invite them to notice what is happening in their bodies. And people will tell me, Yes, I feel my body. And then they immediately say, Yes, I feel my body, and I feel a tightness here, or I feel something happening here, I feel some fear here. They mention it, and then they’re right back out of their bodies, into their thoughts, continuing to describe their thoughts or their memories or their feelings. And they’re like, Oh, I presenced.

Presencing is actually more. It’s actually really resting your awareness in your body. You’re cultivating the simplicity of presence. We’re not trying to figure anything out. We’re not trying to feel a certain way. It’s cultivating simplicity.

For example, I went out for a walk today, and it was beautiful. It was the morning time, it was sunny, it was warm, the birds were chirping. Cultivating presence is feeling my feet moving. One foot after the other. Feeling the muscles in my legs. Feeling the warmth of the sun as it kisses my skin. Feeling the gentle breeze on my skin, moving through my hair. Listening to the birds chirping.

We’re not trying to do anything. We’re not trying to figure anything out. This is what relaxes us. This relaxes the nervous system, and it unwinds the ego and its patterns as we cultivate the sense of presence. It’s a practice.

So the first pitfall, as I mentioned, is saying I feel my body and then immediately going back to our patterns of thoughts, feelings, and dissociation from what’s actually here. Presencing is a slow path. It’s not the path of driving very fast through our inner psyche. It’s slowing everything down to see what we’re cultivating, what is here. We are cultivating listening. We are cultivating being present to what wants to arise.

When We Become Our Feelings

The ego is often going in the opposite direction to presencing. For example, I’ll have people that I’m working with talk about how they are feeling their feelings, and it’s like, Oh, this is real, my feelings are real. I’ve been feeling a lot of grief. I’ve been feeling a lot of sadness. I’ve been feeling a lot of lostness. I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety. And our feelings are real—there’s certainly some reality to them, we definitely have them.

But sometimes what happens is that instead of actually feeling our feelings, we become our feelings. This is a difficult concept to describe. Say I’m feeling really lost in this world. I don’t feel like I have a sense of direction. I don’t know which way to turn. I don’t know how to make decisions in my life—I’m just lost. And then an inkling of lostness arises, and it gets co-opted by thoughts. We start to think, Oh, I’m going to figure out my lostness here. I’m going to figure out all the things I could be doing to get out of this. Maybe I can change my career, maybe I can change my relationship, maybe I can change my routine.

What that does is it winds up our systems, winds up our bodies. Our egos are winding us up into thinking. We’ve lost presence. We’re no longer aware. As I was thinking about this just now, my pelvis actually started to wind up. I didn’t even realize that I lost awareness of my breath. I just became my thoughts.

It’s a difficult thing. It’s very difficult to catch ourselves in something that we do, so we have to interrupt the process a lot of times. We have to be like, Oh, I’m trying to figure things out. I’m trying to plan. I’m trying to get the answers from my mind by tensing and winding myself up. Perhaps because we don’t have trust that if we actually just relax, maybe inspiration will arise. Maybe we’ll start to get a sense of direction internally.

Let’s look at another example with feelings, like sadness. I’m really sad, and I’m thinking about or feeling my sadness, and it just takes me down memory lane. Oh, this happened two years ago, there was a moment that I felt so alive, and now it’s missing, it’s so missing. I’m so sad, I just don’t know how to get out of it. The sadness just takes over, and I think, Oh, now I’m so hopeless, what I experienced two years ago is just not going to return, I am just doomed to be sad forever. That was a time, it’s gone.

Again, we are not in presence as we go into this whole thing about how hopeless things are, how much sadness I feel, how much grief I have. Of course there’s grief—I don’t want to say that we don’t have these feelings at all. But it’s very difficult to catch when the ego co-opts a process. It is really difficult to catch and to understand unless we deepen our practice of presencing. But I’m really hoping this is going to support you in some way.

So what do we do when we have sadness, when we have grief, when we feel a sense of hopelessness? The idea is again coming back, sensing, feeling, including yourself fully into the moment. Not just becoming the feeling, but recognizing, Yes, I’m having a feeling, and here’s my body, here is my breath.

I’m aware of my legs feeling full. I’m aware of my pelvis feeling nice and warm. I’m aware of my diaphragm feeling tight, perhaps. Just giving an example: Oh, the sadness is in my diaphragm. I’m aware of it, but I’m not focusing solely on my diaphragm. I’m focusing on all of my presence—all of it. I’m aware of the lightness in my chest.

So I’m in awareness. I’m not trying to make my sadness go away. I’m not trying to hold on to it. I’m allowing. I’m being. I’m listening.

As I stay present, maybe I start to notice more of that sadness in my chest, more of it in my throat, and I realize the tears are rising because I’m sad. I can feel the tears flowing down my face, and I can feel the experience of sadness. There is a softness in it.

Really, sadness can be so soft. Softening the body becomes almost like a sweetness of grief.

I’m not off anywhere. I’m staying with myself.

When We Spiral

Let’s look at another pitfall. Sometimes I hear people say, My heart is beating very fast, and they start to become very scared. What is wrong with my body? Is this a health issue? Is something wrong? They get very anxious or scared of the sensations they might be having in their bodies. Or, they get hyper-focused on how to do everything possible to feel comfortable in the body.

The reality is that sometimes we have experiences in our bodies that don’t shift right away. For example, somebody who might be holding their diaphragm tight might be walking around having an awareness of their whole body—all of it, including the diaphragm that’s tight—and they cultivate a sense of presence with it. Okay, this is what it is. I’m not sure exactly what the holding in my diaphragm is. But I’m also not going to become very anxious about it or think something is wrong. But they maintain a relaxed awareness, because a lot of times the patterns of holding in the body are habitual. They’ve been there for a very long time, so they don’t always release the moment we become aware of them.

How do we cultivate this awareness of, Okay, this is what it is. I’m not sure exactly what the holding in my diaphragm is. But I’m also not going to become very anxious about it or think something is wrong? Of course, it’s important to make sure everything is okay physically. But some of these are lifelong holding patterns.

How do we cultivate a sense of curiosity about the sensations in our bodies? How do we allow them? How do we allow the discomfort without the ego co-opting it again? How do we have awareness without becoming the sensations in our bodies? Without becoming the thoughts or the feelings we have?

When We Look for What’s Wrong

One of the pitfalls of presencing is looking for what’s wrong. I talked about looking for what’s wrong in terms of feelings, thoughts, and body experience. In presencing, it’s very important—in order to relax our systems and cultivate the desire to presence—to focus on positives and pleasure. It’s not about focusing on what’s wrong, what’s wrong, what’s wrong. That is a recipe for being co-opted by the ego.

It’s really about cultivating a sense of the positive and pleasure. We’re not trying to figure anything out. We’re not trying to go anywhere. We’re just being present. It can be boring—especially sometimes, it can be very boring. We’re used to moving at a fast pace in our lives, and presencing moves very slowly. You’re not going to have instant insight just because you presenced for a moment. It’s like taking your time, really taking your time.

When we first presence, it is going to release some of the heavy stuff. What we want to try to do is create ways to connect with what feels good. As I talked about earlier, when I went for a walk, the temperature felt so good on my skin, the sun, the slight breeze, listening to the birds chirping. That is pleasurable. So instead of being entangled with what’s wrong, what we’re cultivating is a sense of ease and the positive. We aren’t manipulating our thoughts or feelings or sensations; we’re just opening up to more.

Another aspect is curiosity. Curiosity is: I’m not going to dissociate from the fact that I have tightness around my diaphragm. I’m going to hold it as part of my awareness—not all of my awareness, just part of my awareness—with some curiosity. There might be times when I’m presencing and my diaphragm starts to reveal what it’s holding, what fears or sadness it might be holding. It’s only through presencing that the inner wisdom starts to reveal what’s here.

When We Use Presence to Escape

Which brings us to another pitfall: people telling me they are doing this so that everything becomes quiet, or doing meditation to get rid of whatever’s present. The idea is that we are not using presencing to get rid of our thoughts, feelings, or sensations. We’re not trying to become nothing. With presencing, what we’re doing is cultivating inner parenting. The parent is partly awareness—awareness of what’s happening inside of us, not removal or distraction. It’s trying to be present with what’s here now. It’s not getting rid of our grief; it’s bringing presence and awareness to our grief.

Be gentle with yourself as you practice. May this article support you to cultivate the habit of nurturing and nourishing yourself through presencing.

If something in this resonated — a recognition that you want to come home to yourself more fully, to be met in what’s present, to stop just getting through the day — I’m here.

I offer a free 20-minute consultation. Somatic psychotherapy for California adults. Psychospiritual integration for seekers worldwide.

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Related reflections:

If this article resonated, you may also find support in these reflections:

• How to Be There for Yourself: Reparenting Through the Body — the first presencing post, on building the practice from the ground up
• Why Does Meditation Sometimes Feel Harder? — on what gets stirred when we open to ourselves through practice
• Our Spiritual Practices Excavate Our Trauma — on why spiritual practice sometimes makes things harder before it makes them better
• Good Person Syndrome: Reclaim Your “Bad” Self — on allowing the feelings we’ve been taught to repress rather than avoid them