The key to ease and confidence away from being guarded.

We need people in our lives. Friendships and humane interactions infuse us with health, joy, and inspiration. Just remember the last three years, in which our interactions were restricted by the pandemic. How much then we realized what tr meant for us. It showed us how much our health and well-being are connected. Through that magnifying glass, We experienced the weak areas of our relationships: what we have been avoiding, overlooking, and suppressing. For some, it exploded with no mercy, accompanied by a roar for attention.

The echo of past hurts, judgments, oppressive power structures, or learned mistrust is held by a protection shield we may carry in our chest, shoulders, neck, and face.

With that layer of protection, we tend to focus on the signs we interpret as “dangerous”. It reduces our ability to connect and feel safe in different interactions. It makes no real difference if we either tend to be distant, arrogant, and “the strong one”, or the shy, held back, ready to give in. Both, of us, is tied to an old effort to stay unhurt.

In both, we are unable to taste the sweetness of true connection, of feeling seen, heard, and appreciated. In both, we cannot move through conflicts to achieve growth.

In both, we lose that which our hearts so many needs.

One of the main disturbances, to us being able to feel at ease and safe within an interaction, is the way we experienced refusal inside a close relationship.

Not being able to refuse and express our “NO” without “being punished for that”, is often a scar that either made us fear refusing, or overuse the power of refusing, resisting, and rejecting.

We need to create a new balance within us. A state in which we can meet others and what they bring while trusting and feeling our ability to refuse when we would need to.

Having that balance would allow us to be open, vulnerable, and at the same time confident and carry a sense of safety or potency.

Each one of us has that imbalance in different aspects of interactions, or with different kinds of people and situations.

In some, we are at ease, and in some not.

I want to offer you an idea to train with to achieve ease, confidence, clarity, and a better way of connecting when engaging with people.

The following attention exercise may help you to reduce any guardedness, and other efforts to perform, that arise without your conscious control.

It is an easy exercise, so try to give it a go.

Think of these interactions and situations where you feel more guarded or insecure.

These can be the places where you may use this exercise, but also the ones where you tend to feel at ease. It may give you a deeper layer of connection and might refresh some aspects of your relationship, that you forgot about.

When you are with people, try to pay attention to your chest and shoulders and breathe into the chest to soften it.

Then bring attention to your legs and pelvis. Breathe to your belly and feel the heaviness and stability of that area, you can try to pay attention to the bones in the lower part of your body, making sure you remember that your legs are strong and able to move.

Once you can feel the lower part of your body, stay connected to it, and be aware of how then naturally there is an increased sense of ease in the upper part of the body.

The refusal has to do with the ability to walk away. Once that was blocked in the past, we had to create armor to defend ourselves. But when the legs are waking up and with them that ability, then that armor is not needed anymore in the same way.

Then try to feel and move your feet and at the same time be aware of the ears and jaw. Try to soften your jaw, and create an opening in your ears.

When your ears are open and are not blocked by an old stress-defense mode, then whatever resonates and vibrates can touch you and allow your intuition and your belly to react adequately.

You are then able to interpret the situation from the “is” and not from the past. You are even then able to perceive the “truth” or the message that is behind the words.

And when you are connected to your ability to walk away, your freedom, and at the same time your heart is open, not only can you then respond with clarity and express what you need or disagree with, you are better able to create connection and trust that will allow you to maintain deeper friendships and allies in all of your collaborations.

Try and allow yourself to be surprised.

Anna

P.s

remember that this training demands repetition and the courage to move through, stay in, and let all of what you experience be.

Foto von Markus Winkler auf Unsplash