Gaining back your ease and joy - dropping old burdens

Do you find yourself at times feeling as if you are carrying an unexplained heaviness around with you? Or do you maybe feel that there is a scent of a constant background sadness you carry with you?

Or do you feel as if you tend to get foggy in your head and lose your clarity easily?

And just maybe you find yourself behaving and feeling like one of your parents even if you try soooo much to be different….?

It might be the indication that you are unknowingly carrying a burden that is not yours.

We are caring and compassionate creatures ,who are able to feel and perceive others on so many levels that our logical language cannot often describe.

With this ability we tend to try and “help” others by taking their difficulty. Their pain, their frustration, their fear and so on.

We do it as children and we do it as adults.

The part that stays with us as a burden, that takes away our joy, our well-being and lightness, is often due to an old childhood experience (even baby one) when we were able to set boundaries and dependent.

This is when we have adapted inner structures that were aimed to “carry” the burden of others, so that we and they can survive better and together. We did that out of need to mend a “broken” situation. To create connection where there was none offered us. We did that to try and create ease for others.

We did that instinctively.

This became the “way we are”. The way we relate or dissociate.

BUT - Today we have the ability to set boundaries. Today we are not dependent like we were. Today we have the power to influence what happens around us.

And today we have the capacity to endure and deal with difficulties and emotional intensities without being so threated by it.

Would you like to get your joy back, your lightness, your ease and clarity and natural unburdened compassion?

And how about getting back more of your connection to yourself and to the simple ability to notice when something is not well with you and act upon it?

To assist you with that, I would like to offer you a simple exercise of unburdening yourself.

It is a simple exercise in which you will be needing to be ready to allow also some of the old emotions you were trying to block or “master”, so that you can truly let go.

There are 2 parts for this exercise.

To do it you will need to be wearing comfortable cloths.

It will be great if you can use some oil for your face as we are going to use touch and creating hear through it.

I will give you a short description of what to do. When you then do it yourself, take the time with each part so that you are able to move through the frozen effort you hold.

Doing so you may truly have the chance then to let go.

Part I

1. Start by simply closing your eyes and breathing deeply into your chest for a few minutes. When you do that bring your attention to the sensations in your chest, shoulders, neck and head (of course the rest of the body as well if available to you). Move your shoulders (including the upper back and chest), face and neck to create a flow of energy while moving away from the frozen tension you may be carrying in those areas.

2. While you breath and move say out loud few times: “I don’t need to carry it”

3. Now start to massage your chest with the knuckles of your hand- make a fist and with your bent fingers massage the chest. Do that again with breath, allowing movement and with saying out loud: “I do not need to carry it anymore”.

Don’t worry of you do not know what are you focusing on with this sentence. As the carrying maybe deeply hidden and became so “normal”, we are trying to call it up to the surface. Without needing to immediately know what it is. Try to take time with this massage. Move over the painful areas until you feel relief as well as warmth starting to arise.

4. Take a moment to breath and notice the sensations

5. Start now with massaging your face (if you want and it is better to do so with some little oil). While continuously breathing and saying out loud: “That is it, I do not need to carry it anymore”. Start to massage your face, ears, scalp even, with your fingers, and with the palms of your hands. You may even use your knuckles. Move between soft strokes to ones that go deeper into the muscles. Take the time to do that again until the painful stressed areas can relax as well until you are able to create heat and warmth in your face and head.

6. Drop your arms and take the time with closed eyes to feel all of yourself. Especially the areas you were working with. You can repeat still the sentence: “I do no need to carry it anymore”. Let the sentence linger and allow whatever sensation and emotion to expand and move within you. You might be clear about what is it you are letting go of or it might be just an emotion and a memory that can be now fully experienced without interference or fear.

Part II

1. Take a moment and put your hands on your belly. Start breathing to the belly and allow movements in it as well as in the lower back, legs and pelvis. For many of us the belly is a no-go-area. An area that we tend to look at as too soft or fat. An area we tend to disconnect from. Knowing that, take your time to move through that disconnect and rejection, for you to get o feel and know that area better. Give yourself the time to feel what it provokes, knowing that you are choosing to feel. Remind yourself that choice through your breath, so that you can stop being trapped in those feelings or afraid of them.

2. Start to massage your belly. You can do it in circular motions. Then strokes from the upper part of the belly, down towards the pelvis. Breath while you do that and dare to go deeper into the different layers with your touch.

3. After a while start adding the sentence: “It is ok. I can stop holding it. It is over”. Repeat it for a few minutes while breathing and massaging.

4. After minimum 3 min. stop, breath into the belly. Repeat that sentence few times again. Pay attention to the experience, the space that opens up. Allow any memory or emotions to move through you, without trying to control it or resist it.

Take a moment to rest, integrate and feel what happens.

You can repeat this few day in a row to deepen the experience and to make sure you are getting free of every piece of that burden.

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash