How Do You Know You're Comfortable?

When I started graduate school some twenty-odd years ago, moving from South Florida to San Francisco's Bay Area was a culturally shocking experience.

I had never eaten avocados or hummus (I know, I know. The shame!!).

I had no idea how to clear the chatter of constant internal messages full of "shoulds," "coulds," "didn'ts," and "haven'ts" from my mind.

I had spent a lifetime in a people-pleasing, self-abandoning mode designed to keep the people around me happy. I was like a lightning rod for other people's moods: their upset, their annoyance, their volatility. I wasn't used to attuning to my own experience.

And I was so used to orienting myself around other people that I had no idea what I wanted.

I literally had to move across the country to reorient myself to the soft sound of my own inner voice (save for all the inner criticism).

In my first year of school, we did lots of meditation and imagery work. One of the first exercises we did came from Eugene Gendlin's Felt Sense work.

My teacher had us get quiet and comfortable over several minutes. Then, well into the meditation, she asked: "How do you know that you're comfortable?"

It was a mic-drop moment.

My internal process went something like this:

How do I know that I'm comfortable?

Wait.

I'm not comfortable.

I'm really tense.

My jaw is clenched.

My stomach is tight.

My shoulders are up.

My leg is numb.

I have to pee.

I shifted slightly in my seat and felt maybe 15% more at ease in my body. But it was the beginning of learning to trust the signals my body sends me. Realizing those signals were there to give me valuable information was huge.

I started by learning my own comfort cues. Later, I learned to read my body's signals for whether someone else felt safe or dangerous.

For me, self-trust started with tuning in to my body for signs of comfort.

Are you comfortable in your body right now? How do you know?