Making Body Magic

Making Body Magic

I drew the “Why am I right?” card this morning. We’ve had it come up a bunch of times lately, so I was letting the question roll around in my head, and noticed that I really feel it in my body.

How do I feel when I feel wrong? Ask it, let it sink in, notice. Where do you feel “wrong” most vividly? My middle back folds in, my shoulders droop, and my breathing gets small.

And now, shake it off!

How do I feel when I feel right? Ask it, let this sink in. notice. Where do you feel “right” most vividly? Basically, my posture and breathing improve.

How about you? In your body?

This is useful information. It works surprisingly well for a number of things.

Twelve step programs use a phrase to help in the transition from what-I-was-like to what-I’m-like-now. They say, “act as if.”

If I want more confidence, it will help me to act as if I am confident. If I want to feel right more, it will help if I know how I feel when I am right. Same with positive, same with creative. Same with healthy. When I have bad headache, or cold, sometimes it helps to change my posture. Weird.

So one thing that will help me feel better is to be in my body with more awareness. My tendency is to get up in my brain, all thinking and intellectualizing. You know, philosopher and all that. Plus, my body hurt back in the day. A lot. All the time. So hightailing it into my thinky stuff helped distract me.

I started changing that by noticing my emotions, and learning to be aware of how I was feeling in the moment. That one took me a long time, lots of practice. But, as I learned to acknowledge my emotions at the time I was having them, I also started to feel better in my body. How curious.

And I learned that, while emotions lead to feelings which can lead to body postures, muscle tension, aches and pains, changing my body postures, relaxing muscles and so forth, can also have a big impact on my feelings and emotions.

Smiling with eye-crinkles and holding it for a minute or so actually causes a nice release of serotonin. An upright posture will help us feel more uplifted, and then we can put confidence, or being right, or creative, or positive on top of that.

And when we notice that we are literally in a slump (notice that we use that word for that thing) we can help ourselves out from it by not slumping in our bodies. It’s almost magical.

If I am feeling blue, I need to get up and dressed, and at least go out for a walk. If it’s grey outside, I will feel better if I can wear some light yellow lensed glasses. If I am seeing red, it will help if I can keep my breath deep, but slow it way down, the way it is when I am deeply relaxed. And so on. Putting my body into the postures and patterns of my goal-feeling is a wonderful, quick, and easy way to get where I wanna be.

How have I changed from feeling bad to being the boss of my thoughts, emotions, and feelings?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 11272013