Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about embodied awareness in everyday life. So in 1914, James Joyce wrote a story entitled, A Painful Case. In it he wrote about a character called Mr. Duffy.

And he starts the story by saying Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body. The implication being that he was always lost in his mind, not connected really to his body at all. Joyce goes on to describe the unfortunate consequences of being so disconnected like that. And I think, you know, when I hear this story, I think Mr.

Duffy is a little bit of a caricature for how many people live their lives. The thing is, is that when we're disconnected from our bodies, that means we're disconnected from our emotions, from our senses, our intuitions and our instincts. And in a situation like this, we're disconnected from ourselves, we're disconnected from others and the world around us too. It's actually incredible how often we're disconnected from our bodies. If you think about it, when you shower, when you walk down the street, when you brush your teeth, how often do you feel like you're actually present in your body, in touch with your senses instead of being lost in your thoughts? So what does mindfulness have to do with all of this with, body awareness? Well, the core of mindfulness really is reconnecting with everything that Mr.

Duffy got disconnected from. And the body can be a doorway back to the present moment and back to ourselves. When the body and mind are in the same place at the same time, there's a feeling of integration, of wholeness of hereness. So one way of training in mindfulness is to be aware of your physical body. So we can become more aware for instance of our body sensations, right now.

The feeling of your feet touching the ground, right now. The feeling of your back or your sit bones against the seat, you're sitting on. And the feeling of clothing, touching your skin. We can also start to become more aware of emotions, the actual sensations of them in the body. We can also have a sense of really listening to our bodies needs, you know, like hunger, thirst, energy or tiredness.

Just continuously attuning ourselves to what we're feeling and what the body's needing. But however we approach it, ultimately, what we want to do is to take our attention out of always being stuck in thoughts and bring it home to the body. And this embodied awareness can be brought into lots of different parts of daily life. When walking, you could feel your feet against the ground with each step. When you're sitting, as we just did, you can feel as your body makes contact with the seat.

And as you eat, you can be mindful of that moment when the body's full. These are all opportunities to reconnect with ourselves and wake up to a greater richness of life. So that's the invitation for the week ahead and we're going to practice this more in today's meditation. As always thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.