How to Turn Up the Light

How to Turn Up the Light

How do you feel light inside? What activities do you enjoy? How do you play? What do you do for fun?

Just thinking about playing can make me feel light inside.

One of my favorite games is Let’s Pretend. I know, I think it’s funny, too, a grown woman playing Let’s Pretend, but I will tell you this, pretending can make lots of things fun.

For example, I used to hate cleaning the house. Then I started to pretend I was my own housekeeper, and I worked here. I would put on my little white sneakers, and goofy music that I would never really listen to, and clean away. Amazing. Pretending I was someone who got paid to clean made it fast, and easy, and fun. I’ve made up a whole story about the young woman who cleans my house. Now if I could just get her to run errands for me when I’m at work.

Playing Let’s Pretend reminds me that “reality” is really weird and fluid. I have a tendency, maybe you do, too, to think that the way things seem to be is the way things actually are. Boy, there is just no way that is true. Weird. Like when you’ve been feeling blue, and the world seems kind of grey, and then something shifts and abruptly, you feel cheery, and the world seems shiny again, even though nothing really has changed.

I can feel playful in lots of situations when I relax into my experience without judgment. Things that would have been uncomfortable or icky become interesting instead. There is a degree of detachment that is really freeing, and that’s a huge part of playing; exploring new outcomes, trying on new behaviors, or ideas, or things, just for the fun of it.

Relaxing into our experience is a multi-level kind of thing. It helps if I relax my muscles. but it really helps when I relax my emotions, and my mind.

What’s that you say? Relax my mind? What on earth do you mean? How do I relax my mind?

I love this analogy: Imagine floating down a river. Your thoughts are on the banks of the river. When we relax our minds, we notice the thoughts on the banks, but we don’t go to them, we don’t follow them, we just let them drift past us. Relaxed. When I notice that I’ve followed a thought somewhere, I just come back to my nice little boat, floating down the river. Ahhh.

A Let’s Pretend game I like a lot that really draws on the whole relaxing thing, is Being On Vacation. I love to play this when I’m driving. Just changing my insides from, I have to be driving in all this traffic, oh me, oh my. (Can you hear the moaning in that?) to, Hooray! I’m going on vacation! I am free! Happy holiday on the highway! How do I feel when I am on vacation? I also like to play it grocery shopping. I will hit a grocery store I don’t usually go to, sometimes a supermarket, sometimes a mom and pop. I love to see the products they choose to carry, and the different brands, and to try something new. I often tell an employee that I am on vacation and ask for recommendations. And I come away with new experiences, an expanded reality, and a feeling of refreshment.

How do you play? What do you do to refresh your spirit? How do you lighten up when you start to buy into feeling heavy or dark inside?

How have I changed from being so serious to feeling playful?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 06082013