The Sophro ‘Integration Pause’- paying attention to life

‘When we were children, magic was easier than sums. It was the kind of magic children never think about; the kind that adults don’t notice’.

~ Joanne Harris (in Broken Light)

Photo credit: Anna C. Myrup

One of my most favourite discoveries within the Sophrology practice is the Integration Pause.

And I will tell you exactly why, but let me first explain what this integration pause is.

It is quite simple. After you have done any of the Sophrology exercises - whether a movement, a sound or a visualisation - you sit back, eyes closed, and gently observe what effect this exercise had on your body.

You observe any sensations (warmth, tingling, tension etc) you may feel. It’s not necessarily about feeling any specific sensations - this will vary from day to day - rather it is about paying attention to your body and learning to listen to its language.

This gentle act of staying still in a moment and paying attention, then allows for your experience (of the given exercise) to be integrated with the energy of your whole being, slowly shaping your new reality. Thus that what you pay consciously attention to will show up more consistently in your life, whether this is love, joy or clarity of mind.

I like this Sophro mini-practice for a variety of reasons.

Firstly because it is such an effective, yet gentle, way to train your mind to notice what is going on in you body (and in extension in your life, but I will come to that in a bit).

It seems obvious, that in order to notice something, we need to be able to pay attention to it. However in our fast-paced societies, where attention has become a commodity (hello social media!) our ability to pay attention, consciously and with deep awareness, is increasingly diminishing. Gently training this ability to notice, to pay attention, to focus, is a valuable asset in any life situation, be it to learn something new or solve a problem.

Paying attention to your body specifically, allows you to (re)establish the connection between your body and mind. This is something that most of us have, unfortunately, managed to lose in the process of growing up. We feel disconnected from our body in a world that mostly values our thinking mind.

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Have you heard the expression ‘the body knows’ or ‘the body never lies’?

Many people who have experienced a burn-out will tell you that, only when their health broke down to the level that they could not go on (a debilitating chronic back pain, insomnia, panic attacks or even a heart attack), they realised in what a bad work, or life, situation they found themselves in.

Our minds have the ability to override our inner knowing, or intellectually ‘justify’ a bad situation (‘it is not that bad’). However, eventually the body will tell you, that you have to stop and change track. So the sooner you are able to notice what the body is telling you - that all is not right - the sooner you can take remedial action and prevent many of the health issues we are prone to develop with our modern lifestyles.

Moreover, when we are feeling stuck in life or with a project, our body can also provide us with more profound insights on how to move forward. Rather than think your way out of an undesirable situation, you start to sense your way out of it, by tapping into the energetic information that your body holds (what we call the ‘gut feeling’ or ‘intuitive knowing'). This is unfortunately, not something that we are thought to do in our intellectually minded world.

Collectively and individually, we are however starting to realise the limitations of our minds. The mind is evolutionarily geared to ensure our immediate survival keeping us save from any physical dangers -fundamentally it is risk-averse. This is great in an acute situation - don’t get me wrong! It is however less useful when we may need to take small, creative risks in order to enable meaningful change in our professional or personal life. There our minds often keep us small and passive through a fear-based narrative, while our body energy can inform us about how we can indeed move forward and be more aligned with our own being - our unique energy.

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Increasingly I find myself applying this integration pause concept in my life at both a micro and macro level.

An integration pause after eating a meal, brings me awareness of how my body responds to the food I have just eaten, and teaches me slowly to recognise what foods are nurturing me well and which ones are maybe less beneficial for me. This helps me, even unconsciously, to choose healthy foods the next time.

An integration pause in the form of a small walk, where I consciously pay attention to my surroundings, provides me not only with a re-energised body, but a lot of new creative thoughts for the project I have been focussing on earlier.   

At the macro level, an integration pause from work, in the form of a holiday, a contract-break or a sabbatical, allows me for conscious reflection of my energy to understand, where I am in my life and career, and provides me with valuable insights about where I wish to go next.

The integration pause is more than just a break. It is a pause of conscious awareness, of mindfulness, of paying attention to what my intuition is telling me.

This is helpful, as more often than not, we find ourselves in situations where we do not have all the necessary information to make the ‘right’ decision, where we feel in control of the outcome. Being able to tap into our inner knowing we can move with more peace and confidence, in the knowledge that we are acting from the place of best intention.

The integration pause is the conscious space ‘in-between’, the space in-between ‘the doing’.

The integration pause allows me to integrate my experiences from my life into my energetic being, learning at each step of my life. This brings me both a stronger self-awareness, self-trust and an inner calmness, knowing I am living my core values.

Paying attention to life, and myself as part of that life, is what the integration pause is for me.

I invite you to try it out for yourself, either through the Sophrology practice or within the context of your own wonderful imagination.

With love and light, AnnA