We Are So Much More Than Our Thinking Brains

Without thinking, as I started to write a potential subtitle for this post, I started to write, “Taking a moment to think about what else is in there.” And then, without realizing it, I wrote thinking as my second word of the post (in all honesty I just had to intentionally type “realizing it” rather than writing “thinking about it” again).

Even with the intention of sitting down to share some reflections (again had to choose another word rather than thoughts) about all the facets of us that are around and beneath our thinking brains, on autopilot, I’m anchoring what I’m writing here in thoughts and thinking…! Ah!

This is a bit humbling since my intention was to write this great post about being connected with all parts of our brain and our entire embodied being that is this mysterious interplay of physical and nonphysical wrapped up together… and instead, I’m seeing that I’m still stuck in my thoughts a little more than I might like to admit!

Alright, nice deep breath over here, let’s reset and start with this — Why do I care about this enough to toggle between eating my heated up leftovers for lunch and sharing these thoughts here? (Did it again…!)

I care because it breaks my heart to see people live under shoulds and shame that try boil our humanity down to thinking and behavior, as though we can fragment ourselves from the rest of our brain and body that senses, feels, and moves through life. And this breaks my heart because I’ve been there, and I’ve tasted the difference between living only in tune with the most doing and thinking parts of me, and living in tune with all the things that are swirling around in there — emotions, thoughts, longings, memories, body sensations and more — all wrapped up in one embodied being.

I used to think that anything beneath my brain was something to tune out, things that were distractions or irrelevant. I thought to be strong and successful meant to put mind over matter, and have my brain carry the rest of me through life toward accomplishment and achievement. And then, in a slow moving and unexpected process, strands were woven together in my life that gently opened my eyes to just how much more is happening inside beneath our thinking brains.

I’ll never forget the first time I learned that only a portion of our brains know verbal language… I was shocked! I didn’t have categories to make sense of the fact that so much of our brains and bodies function and exist apart from verbal language and “logical thought.” Those things were epicenters for what I thought was important, or maybe more accurately, what I thought made me important. How could I understand being human in myself or another person if I boiled this down to a thinking brain, and even in our brain, only a portion of it does the thinking? I had to create new categories.

Really, I didn’t create anything new. Instead, I began to connect with and remember what was already there. I started to notice what it was like to feel emotion that would move through me without tuning it out or being so distracted I didn’t realize I was shutting it off. I started to feel what would happen in my facial muscles when smiling and connecting with others, along with the pace of my heart rate and settled or unsettled sense in my gut that would rise and fall in harmony with how I experiencing the interaction or moment. I started to feel the movement of younger parts of me that still live inside, mysteriously intertwined with the depths of the soul, parts of me that sometimes cry, sometimes bounce around with joy, sometimes panic, and sometimes shut down in complete overwhelm.

I could go on and on here… but I’ve finished my lunch, so I’ll finish here as well by saying this — when we have lived most of our lives disconnected from what’s happening in, around, and beneath our thinking brains, it can be an overwhelming and even threatening process to reconnect, remember, and feel into the rest of us. This can leave us feeling stuck when we want to connect with the whole embodiment thing or enjoy deep breathing or mindfulness, but it doesn’t feel good or safe or natural. If that’s where you are, 1 - you’re not alone, and 2 - stay tuned for more. Those are the very spaces I get most excited to press into, because I know them and journey through them myself.