What your body knows about boundaries: A practical exercise

Boundaries are difficult to define, and even harder to communicate.

I’ve invited several clients recently to capture their bodily experiences of ‘Yes’, ‘Maybe’ and ‘No’ in haiku form, or less than 10 words.

So I decided to give it a try for myself.

The haikus below captures a personal flavour of what my ‘yes’, ‘maybe’ and ‘no’ responses feel like in my own body. As my clients do, I’ve since used them to help me respond to opportunities more authentically and realistically with respect for my limits.

If you feel inspired, check out the Practical Exercise below to help you develop your own authentic boundary responses. No poetry-writing experience necessary!

A Practical Exercise:

Discover Your Boundaries

What does a ‘yes’ feel like in your body? Not a dutiful ‘yes’ or a resentful ‘yes.’

A full-bodied ‘yes!’

How does your body tell you ‘maybe’, or that you need to be cautions?

How do you know when your body is saying ‘no’?

(And how often do you override those sensations with a ‘yes’ through gritted teeth?)

These are ‘body questions’ I ask when supporting clients who are navigating periods of intense professional and personal flux.

They tend to inhabit environments where they feel obliged to override their natural limits every day.

So much so that when asked, they can’t tell you where their red lines are. Or don’t want to admit they have them for fear it will make them seem lazy, weak or unlikeable.

All they know is that they feel exhausted, overstretched, resentful and even burnt out.

It’s natural. The world isn’t designed to respect our boundaries.

But all of our resources - our time, energy, attention - are finite. Recognising our boundaries is a brave and authentic kind of honesty about where our limits lie.

Time and again, my clients discover that recognising and respecting your boundaries allows you to:

Get clear on what’s really important to you, and what’s not (i.e. what you need to let go of)
Make more aligned, realistic decisions about where to spend your time and energy
Communicate your boundaries more authentically with others, instead of harbouring resentment or worrying you’re letting them down

Here’s an exercise you can do alone or with a trusted advisor to harness your body’s intuition, and capture what you learn so that you can set stronger boundaries.

Instructions:

1) Settle yourself in a quiet place. Read just the first haiku. Allow it to make an impression on you. How is your experience of ‘Yes’ similar? How is it different?

2) Take a breath and bring to mind times in your life when you’ve most clearly experienced a ‘Yes’ response. Notice what you remember, and what happens in your body here and now.

3) Write down a few words - in note form, or in haiku if you like - that capture your experience of ‘Yes’. Try to capture physical clues, e.g. ‘twitchy eye’, rather than emotions or beliefs e.g. ‘that annoys me.’

4) Do steps 1-3 for the other two haikus, ‘Maybe’ and ‘No.’

5) What are you noticing about your boundaries? Does anything surprise you?

6) Stow your insights in a safe place - in your wallet, or typed in your phone notes. Return to them when you feel uneasy or overwhelmed by a decision. See if this helps you recognise where your true boundaries lie, and therefore what response feels most authentic.