Declenchifying

Declenchifying

We are so good at so many things. Each of us has our own set of skills, talents, gifts, and blessings. Is relaxation on your list? Is that one of your skills?

There is so much more to relaxing than flopping down on the couch to watch TV.

When we relax our bodies, we let our muscles soften. Sometimes we may find that relaxing our muscles lets our joints self-adjust. Relaxing our bodies allows all of our body-systems to flow freely.

Why do I relax?

When we relax our minds, our thoughts flow past our awareness, like floating down a river. We aren’t thinking, but observing thought. And when we catch ourselves thinking a thought, we bring ourselves back to the river. This is meditation, like a reset for our minds.

Why am I centered?

When we relax our spirit, we stop striving for holiness, or enlightenment, or whatever our preferred spiritual pinnacle, and are able to be fully present. We experience bliss and joy. We see the beauty of the world. We feel compassion, generosity, peace. Gratitude and appreciation flow.

Why am I serene?

When we let our emotions relax, anger relaxes, fear relaxes. Anger takes resentments with it. We may find that we are more tolerant, kinder. Fear takes worry with it. And as we continue to relax, we find that we feel vulnerable, but we also find that we trust we will be okay. We are safe to acknowledge our feelings, we recognize the feelings we have that can make trouble for us, own them, let them go. We recognize the feelings that support us, own them, and nurture them.

Why am I calm?

I used to have the idea that if I was going to nurture my passions, I would have to sacrifice peace. I was used to seeing people I thought were passionate all churned up, temperamental, moody and self-absorbed. That part of following one’s passion was very unappealing to me. Turned out it wasn’t about following their passion, but about their not having chosen to grow up yet.

Why do I choose to choose?

When we decide to let life flow, everything relaxes. When change happens, which it always does, we can reacquire our equilibrium more readily when we choose to let life flow. When we choose to say “yes” to life, to relinquish our imagined control, our grip on the status quo, everything gets easier. I don’t know about you, but I sure like easier. This allows me another crazy freedom, namely, I get to be more fully me, expand my personality, so to speak. I am more flexible, so my world can expand, too. I have more options, I have more resources, and because I am relaxed, I have a lot more energy. I sure like that, too.

How have I changed from being good at clenched to being good at relaxed?

(c) Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02222014

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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