Verified by 
Most of us in Western industrialized cultures talk about the body as thing that we have or own. This puts the body at a distance from our sense of self. People with migraines, to take one example, may refer to the headache as "it." "Why is it happening now." Research shows that accepting the migraines as part of one's self and learning to pay attention to the muscle tension in the neck and shoulders that precedes the onset of an attack can lead to reduction of pain and stress . Migraine savvy individuals do not have migraines, they are migraine people.
In the case of pregnancy, the language is more favorable to body sense acceptance. People say "I am pregnant," rather than "I have a pregnancy." That changes when it comes around to giving birth. Researchers compared a group of women during childbirth who were instructed to feel the sensations of each contraction as it came and went with a group who were given methods to distract themselves from the sensations. The women who were asked to attend to the sensations using their body sense had less self-reported pain than the women in the distraction group. Are you "in labor" or are you "laboring?" It makes a difference.
Long term denial of one's embodied being and the consequent suppression of body sense is risky, leading to habitual activation of judgmental and negative thought patterns, over-activation of the hypothalamus leading to high sympathetic arousal and tension in smooth muscles of the internal organs, and suppression of urges leading to persistent tension and pain in skeletal muscles and thus higher levels of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, gastrointestinal diseases such as colitis and ulcers, persistent muscle pain, and respiratory diseases such as asthma. This is serious: Suppression of the body sense is bad for your health.
Wait. It gets worse. The psycho-physiological processes related to long-term body sense suppression may eventually impact immune system function and may lead to autoimmune disorders such as neoplastic diseases (the growth of some types of nonmalignant and malignant tumors) and rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic inflammation of the joints.
A study of women with fibromyalgia showed that they were considerably higher on measures of avoiding emotional feelings and expression than women without the disease. The women with fibromyalgia were more likely to endorse statements such as, "I do not take the time to figure out what I am feeling," or "I do not usually let my feelings come out," or "If I think I'm going to feel sad, I change what I'm thinking about." It's hard to know from this research whether the pain and discomfort of fibromyalgia creates the desire to suppress body sesnations or the other way around. But if there is even a small chance that enhancing your body sense awaress would improve the condition, why not give it a try?
As if all this were not enough, people who habitually suppress their emotions and feelings report less satisfying interpersonal relationships including less rapport with others and reduced ability to form lasting partnerships. Premature ejaculation in males and orgasmic dysfunction in females is related to restricted expression of emotion and reduced body sense awareness, suggesting that open and healthy sexual communication requires awareness of and emotional engagement with one's own, and one's partner's, body sensations. Is the language of the sexual encounter "Let's do it," (there's that depersonalizing it, again) or "Let's be together?"
As might be expected from this discussion, feeling, expressing and disclosing emotions and body sensations have long-term benefits. Although the suppressor believes that holding onto emotions can reduce their intensity, in fact, the opposite is true. Opening up our emotions with others yields a sense of relief and relaxation. With repeated experiences of communicating with others what one is feeling, it becomes easier over time to tolerate negative emotions and pain. Instead of trying to rid oneself of a physical pain or a bad mood by suppression, one can actually "enjoy" it by probing deeper for what might have caused it, ultimately bringing its regulation under self-control. Being able to "stay with" emotional states in the subjective emotional present expands the body sense.
In the subjective emotional present of body sense awareness, I do not have a body. I AM a body.
