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The first time I walked into a pachinko parlor in Japan the experience was almost overwhelming. Colored lights were flashing everywhere. There was an incredible roar of bells and buzzers and music and the rattle of thousands of little steel balls. After I\u2019d been there for a while, though, some structure began to emerge. I started to notice the players, hunched over and mesmerized. I could pick out the electronic J-Pop melodies and bells coming from the different machine. I wouldn\u2019t say I ever felt quite comfortable, but the whole scene did seem a lot more coherent.<\/p>\n
First tuning in to interoception\u2014the subtle signals your body sends you from your muscles, organs, and connective tissue\u2014might make as much sense as walking into a pachinko parlor. There are random twinges and floods of energy, sinking and rising feelings, swirls and pirouettes of nausea and giddiness.<\/p>\n
If you keep paying attention, some order does start to emerge. But you have to hang in there with the initial confusion. Otherwise you\u2019ll just turn and run back to the comfort of your thought-stream, stay disconnected from your body, and miss some potentially important signals.<\/p>\n
Explore your physical sensations with curiosity: after all, your brain turns them into emotional meanings and those meanings can drive you to take some pretty serious actions. The decision to act in anger, or run for cover, starts with a sensation in your body. Noticing the original sensation sooner gives you more of a chance to view with clarity both the sensation and the impulse to respond, so you can make a conscious choice as to what to do about them.<\/p>\n
Try It:<\/em> Do a body scan from head to foot. Pay special attention to any feelings of discomfort: tension, nausea, pain, dizziness\u2014anything that seems a bit confused or turbulent. You don\u2019t need to draw any conclusions from what you\u2019re noticing. Just investigate the sensations in detail and with curiosity. See if you can identify what\u2019s happening with your body, right now.<\/p>\n Photo:\u00a0This\u00a0Wikipedia<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Wikimedia Commons<\/a>\u00a0image is from the user\u00a0Chris 73<\/a>\u00a0and is freely available at \/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:PachinkoPlayers.jpg under the\u00a0creative commons cc-by-sa 3.0<\/a>\u00a0license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first time I walked into a pachinko parlor in Japan the experience was almost overwhelming. Colored lights were flashing everywhere. There was an incredible roar of bells and buzzers and music and the rattle of thousands of little steel balls. After I\u2019d been there for a while, though, some structure began to emerge. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-selfawareness","category-tips-for-you"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1119"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1561,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions\/1561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}