Living From the Neck Up - How We've Lost Touch With Being Alive

Most of us are spending the majority of our lives entirely from the neck up.

Thinking, planning, analyzing, worrying, scrolling... all of it happening in the head while the body just carries us from place to place. We are moving so fast, working so hard to keep up with the pace of the world, that we are rushing right past the actual human experience. 

And somewhere in the process, we've lost touch with something really fundamental. The actual felt experience of being alive.

In this episode we're talking about your five senses — sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste — and why coming back to them might be the most underrated pathway to presence, joy, and genuine pleasure that exists.

We also get into why slowing down has started to feel dangerous. Why silence makes so many of us uncomfortable. And how the ordinary moments of daily life are holding so much more joy than most of us are actually letting in.

Plus, 3 practical exercises to start bringing you back into your body and back into your life.

This one is a warmup. The conversation goes even deeper in a few weeks.

Work with Jessica:

→ Golden Era Mentorship — My signature 1:1 mentorship for the woman ready to do the deep work.

→ Join my Weekly Newsletter

Follow along:
→ LinkedIn | Instagram

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Let's face it. You can have a life that looks successful and still feel like you're caring way too much. The pressure, the overthinking, the constant weight of holding it all together. This is Live Lighter. I'm Jessica Berg, and this show is for women who are done living like that. Each week, we'll be breaking down what's actually keeping you stuck in that pressure and how to start letting it go so that your life doesn't just look good, it actually feels good. Hello and welcome back to the Live Lighter Podcast. I am your host, Jessica Berg, and today we are going to go somewhere that I think is going to feel a little unexpected because, on the surface, what I want to talk about today sounds almost too simple, like way too easy. Like it can't possibly be the thing that I'm going to spend the entire episode talking about. But stay with me because I genuinely believe that this is one of the most underrated access points to everything that we talk about on this show. So today I want to talk about your senses, your five senses, your sight, smell, sound, touch, taste, the ones you were born with, the ones that are available to you right now in this exact moment as you are listening to me, and the ones that most of us have quietly and gradually almost completely stopped noticing in our day-to-day lives. And I also want to talk about something, and that is what it actually means to experience joy and pleasure through your body, not through your plans, not your achievements, your to-do list, through your actual lived physical sensory experiences of being alive. This is how the two go hand in hand. They're two of the most basic human experiences, your senses and pleasure. And our senses are a beautiful and powerful access point to experience pleasure in life, to experience true joy. At the end of all of this, I'm going to give you three practical exercises that you can incorporate into your day-to-day to really help you start to tap into your senses, into your presence. So stay with me to the end. All right, so let's get into it. So last week I was on a women's retreat in the Dominican Republic, and one of the things that we talked about, we did a whole heart-opening ceremony, and we really focused on just bringing our awareness and our attention into our heart space. And the woman who was leading that session on the retreat shared with us that the majority of us as human beings are living from the neck up. Now think about that for a second. Like visually picture this, where you have this energetic line that is going across your neck, and you are really only moving through your days, moving through your life above that line in your head. And so you have your entire body that is not a part of your lived experience. So the vast majority of us are actually living our life in our heads, thinking, planning, analyzing, worrying, strategizing, swirling, consuming, all of it happening from the neck up, all of it cognitive, all of it mental. And just think about how you go throughout your day. How much of your day is spent in that head space versus in the body. Now, meanwhile, the body, the thing that is actually housing all of this, the thing that is walking around, breathing, sensing, feeling, is just kind of along for the ride. That it's getting us from point A to point B, that it's something for us to manage, something for us to fuel, to optimize so that the brain can keep going. And as a result, we have become deeply, deeply disconnected from the experiences of being in the body. And I truly believe that we are dramatically underestimating what that costs us. And that is because one of the things that so many of us are wanting more of in our life is presence. And the primary way to get there is through the body. I mean, think about the body is always in the present moment. Your heart is beating, your cells are reproducing, your lungs are breathing, everything is in that very second doing what it's supposed to do to keep you alive. And our senses, all five of them, are only accessible in the present moment. You cannot smell something in the future. You cannot taste something in the past. You cannot feel the warmth of sunlight on your skin anywhere other than right now. Which means your senses are not just these nice extras. They are literally your body's built-in GPS to get you back to presence, back to the now, back to the actual experience of your own life as it is happening. And when we drop out of the head and into the body, into what we can see, hear, feel, smell, taste, something opens up inside of us. Presence becomes possible. And from presence, something also becomes possible too. Joy, pleasure, aliveness. Not the kind you are manufacturing by achieving something or checking off your to-do list. It is the kind of pleasure and joy that is available to you if you slow down enough to experience it. We live in a culture and a society that is constantly encouraging us and pushing us to move at the speed of machines. And what ends up happening as we try to keep up with this pace is we start to numb the actual human experiences that we have available to us. We start to miss out on the things that are right in front of us that give us some of the most beautiful joy that we can experience in this lifetime. Whether it's letting your eyes fall onto a sunset, whether it's letting yourself have some time to really soak in those snuggles with your kids or your husband without having your brain and your head in a completely different direction. It's letting yourself listen to music and truly just dance and let your body move, versus thinking about how you look or how you're being perceived, or whether those dance moves are actually aesthetically pleasing. Like who cares? We are so caught up in our heads so often that we are missing out on these real human experiences that truly have the ability to not only bring us joy, but also bring us into this present moment, get us out of our heads and into our body. And this used to be the exact way that I lived out all of my days. I was so caught up in the doing and the managing and the achieving that the world around me was essentially just backdrop. It was almost like I was sleepwalking through so many incredible opportunities where I could really drop into my senses, into the present moment. It wasn't until I started doing this work of nervous system regulation, of somatic expression in the body, of the inner child work where I was healing the roots of why it felt so uncomfortable to rest, why I felt like I had to prove myself, why I never felt like I was enough. So all of that helped me come back into the present moment. And now I'm at a place where when I step outside or when I am near a window in my house, I hear the birds chirping. And I know that sounds like a small thing, but I now am able to listen to it. And in that moment, when I hear them chirping, I literally can pause and just soak it in. Like how beautiful is that? Oh, good morning, birdies. Nice to hear you too. And then the more I've become present in the world around me, I get to realize that there is this whole symphony, this whole orchestra and display of sensations that I get to dive into every single day. That is available right in front of us, but that I was sleepwalking past it for years. And when I started to come back into my senses, when I started to really move throughout my days out of my head and more into my body, my capacity for joy started to expand. My capacity for pleasure started to expand. Things that were always available to me started to actually land in my system. And the beauty of an ordinary day all of a sudden became this experience that I could actually feel. So this is us really tapping into our five senses. Now, most of us, and I say this without any judgment because I absolutely have been there and I still am from time to time. The answer is that we can't really remember when we have let ourselves in it. And maybe it was a one-off time, but it's not something that we do consistently because we are so deep in our head, so consumed by the pace at which we are moving, and we are so trained to be thinking about the next thing that the actual physical experience of being alive has almost become background noise. And we are living from the neck up. How crazy is that? So, how did we end up here? So, obviously, there is the no-brainer reason that we as a society are moving at the speed of machines and we are trying to keep up with that pace with technology and just the way that the system works. It's very much masculine energy, action-oriented, doing, achieving, pushing. And because of that, something sneaky has happened. We have started to associate slowing down with something being wrong. It's almost as if we have this belief that if I'm not busy, I must be falling behind. If I have space in my day, in my in my life, something must be off. And slowing down has started to feel almost dangerous. And so what we do is we fill it. Every single gap, every moment of quiet, we scroll while we wait, we listen to something while we walk, we eat while we work. And sometimes the reason we are filling that silence, it's not just habit. Sometimes it's because we are afraid of what we might find if we stop, if we slow down. We're afraid of what feelings might surface, what we might have to actually sit with, what the quiet might ask of us. That's why a lot of us feel really uncomfortable with resting, why a lot of us feel really uncomfortable in silence. So slowing down can feel like a risk. But here's the thing: the avoidance has a cost, and that cost is presence. That cost is our joy. That cost is the full, incredible sensory experience of our own life as human beings. So, what I want to do now is I want to talk through each of the five senses and talk about ways in which we might be able to tap into these a little bit more. And maybe there's an opportunity for you to become a little bit more aware and intentional of when you are using one of these five senses, where can you be more present with them? So let's start with our site. And this is probably the sense we use the most. And I will argue it's the one that we've hijacked the most completely. And I want you to think about this for a second. If you work at a corporate job or you run your own business, you're probably spending somewhere around seven to eight hours a day staring at a computer. Then add another two hours that you probably spend on your phone, and you're at about nine or 10 hours of you're roughly 17 waking hours staring at a screen. That is more than half of your conscious life spending looking at a rectangle. That is bananas. And I'm not saying go ahead and throw your laptop into the ocean. We all have to earn a living and build our business, and I am absolutely on screens too. But what I am saying is what are we doing with the hours we're not on screens? Are we actually seeing? Are we looking at the sky? The faces of the people we love, the colors and the light and the movement that are happening all around us constantly. Sight is one of the most direct pathways to us really witnessing beauty, and beauty actually registering it and actually letting it land inside of our nervous system is one of the fastest ways to feel alive, to really feel grateful, to feel something. Think about the way that you feel in your body as you're watching a sunset. So this is the power of sight that we have available to us. Now, the next one I want to talk about is sound. This is something that can go both ways. You either have your ability to really soak in the sound that is going on around you, whether it is nature, birds chirping, hearing your little kids' laughter, hearing water running, or there's silence and allowing yourself to really see the beauty and the peace and the stillness in that silence. So, where can you allow yourself to really tap into the senses of sound? So maybe you go on a walk and instead of putting your AirPods in, you actually allow the sounds around you to be your soundtrack. Or maybe when you're making dinner, you play some music and you let the sound of the music completely change the entire experience of cooking. Or you allow yourself when the house is quiet, you allow yourself to just sit and soak that in. You can even put a timer down for five minutes to give you some peace of mind if we're starting with baby steps, but allowing yourself to really be present in the silence and the stillness and the peace that is there. So the next one is smell. And this one for me, I feel is the one that grabs your attention the quickest and the sharpest. You know, you walk into a restaurant and you immediately smell the aromas of the food. Or if you smell a certain scent, a perfume, or an aroma that reminds you of someone, it can immediately teleport you back to that person, that place, that memory. So I think for this one, it's more about when you do smell that, how long do you let yourself just really relish in it? And next we have touch. Now, we as human beings are wired for physical sensation. It is not optional, it's literally biological. And we are more touch-deprived as a society than most people even realize. Now, touch, whether that's human connection or just physical sensation, it actually has the ability to signal safety to our nervous system. So if you think about temperature, texture, the weight of a blanket, bare feet on grass or wood or sand, these are things that communicate to your body that you are here in the present moment. You are safe and they are regulating in the most literal sense. Now, the last one I'm gonna touch on is taste. And food is one of the most immediate sensory pleasures that we have available to us. And many of us have turned this sense of taste almost entirely into a transaction. It's something to check off, it's something to feel guilty about, it's something to optimize. And not only that, but as we are tasting, we become almost numb to it because we're eating while we're doing other things. We're eating while we work, we're eating while we scroll or watch TV. And by doing that, we are barely registering what we're actually eating, which means we are voluntarily depriving ourselves of the joy from one of the most universally available sources of pleasure and presence, which is enjoying the taste of a meal. So, how can we start to change this? One, please stop eating at your desk. I'm not saying I'm perfect. There are some days that I do it, but for the most part, I do like to go sit outside and really focus on each bite that I'm taking into my body. And when you do that, you also start to eat more slowly. So you're savoring it. You actually taste it, you actually are present for the meal. And this is such a beautiful way back to the body, back to a sense of pleasure that we get to have every single day, multiple times a day. How amazing is that? Okay, so I promised I would wrap you guys up with some exercises that you can then take immediately into your day-to-day to really start to become more present with your senses, with this human experience that we all get to enjoy. So I'm gonna walk you through each of these exercises one by one. The first one is going to be kind of a sensory morning ritual that you can incorporate. So this one is about intentionally stacking your senses before you reach for your phone or your screen or your to-do list. Now, I've actually incorporated this into my own morning practice. And what I do, I'll share it with you just as an example, maybe some inspiration, is I wake up an hour before my whole house wakes up. I need that because that makes me a better human being. It gives, it regulates my nervous system, and I have seen a incredible difference between when I do that for myself and when I don't. I am a I am a different wife, I am a different mom, I am a different friend, all of it. So what I do to incorporate all five senses into my morning ritual is I sit down and I get a soft blanket. So that's where I have touch. I listen because where my meditation chair is, it's right next to our back door. So I could hear the sound of the birds outside or my wind chimes, or maybe I'm listening to a meditation soundtrack on my phone, or I also listen to silence. I love meditating in silence. So that's where I have sound, right? So now we've activated touch, we've activated sound. I also dim the lights and I light a candle. So now I have sight. I literally have set the mood and the tone for the room so that what I'm looking at, it really is aesthetically pleasing. And I also, before I dive into any of my meditation, I sit there with my warm lemon water. So now I have taste. And the last one is I burn sage. So this could also be that the candle might have a scent, but sage or an incense is something that I burn. So now I've activated, activated smell. So literally in my morning ritual that I do for myself before I meditate or in my meditation is I've activated and incorporated all five senses, and I've done that intentionally. So this doesn't have to be elaborate, it doesn't have to take an hour. Even just as you're moving throughout your day, noticing when you can connect more to your senses because that's going to connect you more to presence. That's gonna connect you more to feeling alive in your human experience. Okay, so that's exercise one. Exercise two is called, this is what I'm calling it, the one thing presence practice. So I want you to pick one thing you do every single day. It can be a mundane thing, it can be something that you actually do enjoy, but I want you to pick one thing that you do every single day. It's either your shower, your commute, your lunch, or maybe you have an evening walk, right? And as you're doing that thing, I want you to consciously start to bring in the five senses. Start to be mindful of where you can bring those five senses in. If it's your shower, maybe you're you're feeling the touch of the warm water, maybe you're listening to music, maybe you're smelling the sense of the shampoo. Okay, so there's there's different ways that you can incorporate your senses in just a just a one thing, something that you do every single day. So that's exercise number two. Now, exercise number three is the pleasure audit. Now, this one is less of an exercise and more of a question that you can ask yourself and really sit with this week. And that is when was the last time you did something purely because you enjoy the way it smells, looks, sounds, feels, tastes. Not because it was productive, not because it was good for you in some optimized way, not to check something off your to-do list just because it felt good, just because the experience pleased you. And that's it. That's it. So those are the three exercises. Do a sensory, bringing in all five senses into a morning ritual or something that you do that is like a nice routine for you. Do the one thing presence practice, so something that you do every day, and where can you incorporate your five senses there? And then do a pleasure audit. What's something that you can do for yourself for the sheer joy of how it feels? So here's what I want you to carry with you from today. Presence isn't something you think your way into. It is truly something that your body already knows how to do, and it does it every single second of your life. And so, how can you bring yourself more into the body, less in the head through the five portals that are available to you right now in your five senses, in this moment always? So give this a whirl. Let me know how it goes for you. I would love to hear in the comments. You can DM me on LinkedIn or Instagram, or you can send me an email, Jess at Jessbergcoaching.com. I'd love to hear how it's going for you. Please stay tuned because in a couple of weeks I have a guest coming on who is going to take this conversation up a notch and it is going to completely shift the way that you think about sensuality and pleasure as a woman. So it is going to be a conversation you do not want to miss. So until next time, tap into those five senses and be well. All right, so that's today's podcast. Thank you for listening. If you would like to learn more about the services that I provide to women, you can check out my website at Jessberg Coaching.com. That's J E S S B E R G C O A C H I N G dot com. Until next time, be well.