Navigating Life with Your Wise Body Compass - Sas Petherick

1. Navigating Life with your
Wise Body Compass
A practical tool for accessing the hidden
intelligence of your body.

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Is your body just a transportation system for your brain?
You have probably been trained to use your intellect to make every
decision and life plan, and to solve any problem.
That’s what we learn in school, it’s what our parents learned, and they
passed it down to us. It’s how our world works.
The only problem is, it isn’t really working!
We’re more addicted, stressed, medicated,
obese, over-worked and in-debt and than ever.
Our intellect is extraordinary. But it’s not
meant to make all the big decisions.
And by ignoring the immense intelligence of
our body, we are missing out on a powerful
source of information about ourselves.
Your body is not a
machine, rather a
wonderfully intricate
interaction with
everything around you,
which is why it ‘knows’
so much.
~ Gendlin
Consider this…
Your conscious mind (your intellect) can process approximately 40-50
bits of information per second.
Your unconscious mind (sometimes called the Body-Mind or even the
Intuitive Mind) processes approximately 11 million bits of information per
second.
Imagine you’re a baseball player up to bat. You can’t consciously analyze all
the little details you need to understand to hit the incoming pitch. You can’t
consciously see the pitcher making all the little, specific body adjustments
that signal the type of pitch. You can’t judge the wind speed and direction,
and how it’s going to affect the ball as it heads your way. It’s exhausting to
think of having to consciously figure out all those little details just to hit one
pitch. Yet – that’s how most of us our running our lives.

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Whether you even trust it or not, your intuitive mind is
already running most of your life.
It’s sorting through tonnes of data and then sending that information to
you. And this is super useful information!
So while we value, trust and prize our intellects, our minds cannot
actually gather and analyse enough data to help us create success and
happiness in our lives.
The role of the Unconscious Mind
Our intuitive body mind has a really important job. Its there to collect
all the information we can’t consciously process, and deliver whatever
we need to know to thrive in our lives.
And its there as an internal alarm system whenever we are out of
balance.
We’ll are continuously receiving messages from our body but we ignore
this information, mostly because we don’t understand the language our
body speaks – which is sensations.
When we begin to trust this wiser part of ourselves, we start to live
from a place of real wisdom.

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Your Body Compass
I’m so happy to share with you how you can open up the
communication channel with your Body Mind – we are going to find
your Body Compass Readings.
Your Body Compass is exactly what it says on the tin– your body can tell
you if you really feel a yes or a no – just like the game getting hotter,
getting colder.
Your compass readings are completely unique to you and they are
always correct (even if you maybe don’t get the answer you want or
think you ‘should’ have).
Learning how to read your Body Compass is the easiest and most
effective way I know for bringing your body, mind and spirit into
alignment.
This is a practical, daily life tool that is only right one hundred percent
of the time.
You can use this for any decision in your life: should I buy the one way
ticket to France? Do I have the fish or the chicken?
This very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now…with its aches
and its pleasures…is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully
alive ~ Pema Chodron

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How to find your Body Compass Readings
What does your NO feel like?
When you think about your unhappy or painful memory, notice how just
thinking about this experience is producing specific physical sensations in your
body. Take your time to experience these sensations and just record the
information below:
1. Where in your body are you experiencing the physical sensations?
2. Describe the physical sensations (you might experience a heaviness or a tightness,
your body temperature might be colder or warmer):
3. How big are the physical sensations?
4. Do they have a pace to them? (are they moving fast or slow, are they shrinking or
growing?)
5. Do the physical sensations have a colour?
6. If you could reach into your body and touch the sensations, what would they
feel like?
7. Think of a name for this group of sensations (eg: the green slime, the burning
belly, the dementors etc).
8. Thinking about the painful memory, assign a score of between 0 to -10,
where -10 is the greatest expression of this feeling.

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Great work. When you are done, just shake that feeling off. Take a few
deep breaths. Give yourself a few minutes to let that memory pass and
maybe drink some water.
Now we’re going to find your ‘Yes’.
What does your YES feel like?
This time think about a happy memory. Again, this will produce physical
sensations in your body. Take your time to really tune into and experience
these sensations and just record the information below:
1. Where in your body are you experiencing the physical sensations?
2. Describe the physical sensations (you might experience a lightness or a sense of
expansion, your body temperature might be colder or warmer):
3. How big are the physical sensations?
4. Do they have a pace to them? (are they moving fast or slow, are they shrinking or
growing?)
5. Do the physical sensations have a colour?
6. If you could reach into your body and touch the sensations, what would they
feel like?
7. Think of a name for this group of sensations (eg: flying arms, the expansion, the
light bubbles etc)

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8. Thinking about your joyful memory, assign a score of between 0 to -10 to
reflect how pronounced this experience is (where -10 is the greatest expression of this
feeling).
Fantastic work!
You now have a visceral experience of Yes and No, and you have a sense
of how pronounced the physical sensations are, relative to your
memory.
Your Yes and No are very specific to you – I’ve coached with hundreds
of people to find theirs and they are completely unique.
By giving these two groups of physical sensations a name, you are
deepening your experience and giving yourself an easy way of
interpreting these sensations in the future.

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How to use your Body Compass…
Experiment!
• Practice using your Body Compass whenever you have a choice to
make. Keep it SUPER simple – when you are choosing a route
home, what to have for lunch.
• Imagine yourself choosing option A and tune into how that feels –
what rating do you get from -10 to +10? Then do the same for
option B.
• After a few days you will begin to notice that the process of
tuning in becomes easier.
• Give yourself permission to make choices based on your readings
– say yes or no on the basis of what your intuition tells you.
• Notice how you feel when you follow your Body Compass.
• Notice what happens when you override it.
• Try and do this a few times a day for a week.
Practical use of your Yes & No:
• Make a list of all the things you have to do over the next week –
include a mix of things you have to do at work, at home, for
yourself, for others. Include things you like to do too!
• Take each item one by one and picture yourself doing the thing
you have to do. Imagine yourself actually doing the thing.
• Notice your physical reactions. What is your Body Compass
telling you about this thing? Are you experiencing more of the
NO sensations or more of the YES feeling?
• Rate each item with a score from -10 - +10.

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Advanced Action Step for Master Ninja’s:
• Notice how much of your to do list is on the negative side of the
scale from 0 to -10.
• Get curious about those negative readings – do they have
anything in common? What are the situations, people, places that
involve the negative readings?
• Do you HAVE to do these things? Really? What is the story you
are telling yourself about these things?
Recommended further reading:
Beck, M. (2012) Finding your way in a wild new world. Piatkus, UK.
Domasio, A. (2000) The feeling of what happens: body, emotion and the
making of consciousness. Vintage Books: London.
Gendlin, E. (1981) Focussing: how to gain direct access to your body’s
knowledge. Random House: London
www.focusing.org

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Sas Petherick is an in-demand, big-hearted cognitive coach. Trained by
the Coached Training Institute, Sas is also a Martha Beck Certified Coach
and is completing an MA in Coaching & Mentoring at Oxford Brookes
University.
Sas shows you how to experience a life of love, meaning and joy by
thinking on purpose.
Find out how to amplify your life with curiosity and kindness at
www.saspetherick.com

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Copyright 2015 Sas Petherick
Feel free to re-publish any aspect of this information, or if you are a
coach – go ahead and use this tool with your clients!
Please do credit my work with use of my name and link back to my
website: www.saspetherick.com
Arohanui,