Awareness of Stress in the Body
- robinpatino
- May 9
- 2 min read
Updated: May 10
Have you ever felt a weight on your shoulders, heavy-hearted, or butterflies in your stomach?
What do you do when you feel something like this? Ignore it or act upon it?
Those sensations that you feel are all examples of your body trying to tell you something. Most likely, your body is communicating the impact that stress is having on you.
If not the world, you are certainly carrying the weight of your stress. And if you don’t have a way to release that burden, it will likely keep feeling heavier until your experience of life suffers – in large ways and small.

Unfortunately, many of us spend so much time in our minds that we only pay attention to the parts of our body when they speak loudly to us, usually with pain.
A body scan meditation helps you to develop skill in listening to your body – learning from the intelligence it offers in term of your own needs from a more fundamental perspective.
This practice not only helps you become aware of the excess baggage you are carrying, it offers two other benefits:
by noticing of where stress is being held, you begin the process of releasing it
since the body lives in the present moment, it is a powerful anchor for focusing attention for clarity and calm
When encountering stressful situations in everyday life:
🍃 STOP (stop, take a breath, observe, proceed)
🍃 Take a moment to feel the sensations in your body (your jaw, shoulders, stomach, heart or some other place)
🍃 Explore just being with it (instead of wanting it gone) and notice the way sensation changes
Wishing you a week of listening to your body’s intelligence.
Let your wisdom lead,
Robin Patino
P.S.
Find out more about attending live or receiving the replays by email after each of the Friday Stress Buster Series.
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