Do I really need to be in touch with my body? Or be “mindful”? What is the point?

The only reason to practice feeling your body is so you can hear signals from your body that tell you about your needs. The reason to practice when you don’t need to is to rebuild that connection so you can feel it when you do need to.

But you can also hear those signals from other places, like your emotions, or if your thoughts keep circling around something. It’s not strictly necessary to be all that in touch with your body IMHO.

I’ve done tons of self-help stuff and I’m super happy & love my life & I still ignore my body most of the time. But what I don’t ignore is my intrinsic motivation, my interests, my desires, and my stress level. Those are all key indicators of what you need to do to be happy.

Mindfulness is a totally different thing than being in touch with your body. Mindfulness is about being aware of what is currently happening while it is happening and it is hugely important to any self-change work because it unlocks neuroplasticity.

If you imagine a gear shift, mindfulness is basically the “not in any gear” state. That makes it the only way to truly shift gears—to shift from one state to a different state. This is the #1 easiest way to become happy, just practice shifting states into happiness over and over until it becomes automatic.

I wish people would explain this instead of making it all sound like these are vaguely “good for you” things.

I have longer articles about these topics on Joy Ninja

• Mindfulness
• State Shifting

About the Author

I wrote this for autistic, AuDHD, or ADHD people who are tired of vague advice or self-help that is clearly written for neurotypical people. It is distilled from 20 years of self-help being my special interest.

If you like this, check out Self-Liberation Society, my neurodivergent personal growth community.

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