Why the body? I thought I dealt with it….

Do you know these moments where you think: “... I thought I already dealt with it… how come it is still an issue? why do I react so strongly?”

Often times when we “fall” into these kinds of situations, when old issues pop up again, we do not understand why it is still an issue.

It might very well be that we have taken the time to understand what was bothering us, why we react and act as we do and even what we have to change…. but it may very well be that have never touched the fullness of the experience that is still active in us.

To resolve old fears, hurts, traumas and past difficulties that have influenced and blocked us, we need to release and move through those old experience which are still held in the body.

When we go through the process of undoing those old structures, we tend to believe that with understanding them, knowing about them and being able to talk about them, we are undoing them.

Although this is a wonderful first step in the process, it is not sufficient.

What we want to undo is what we had to become in those moments of our lives.

How we used all of ourselves to manage with difficult situations.

A shift is allowing new to be experienced also if it reminds us “the old”.

Our mind wants us not to forget. It wants to help us to remember and manage.

But we learn with an experience. Our minds just structure it later on.

If we grew up bullied, our mind remembered this time, this threat and in the intention to learn and be prepared, it stored all the ways we had to manage with the humiliation, the hurt and the helplessness. In an attempt to make sure we are “safe”, when we meet people today, our minds bring the memory and all that it learned to the surface and the “program” of how to defend ourselves from a possible bullying/humiliation is on.

We act as if that humiliation is already happening, we search for every clue that may resemble it. Not only that, we also become that person /child of the past.

The controlling part of our mind cannot realize that we are different. It does not see change. It aims to hold on and control.

Change, shift, transformation and learning is based on being open. In that sense having no control. On being able to meet something unknown. With that we also discover parts of ourselves that were unknown to us as much until now.

This is growth.

To meet the unknown, we have to find the way to let go. To allow the experience of what is, to touch us, move us, flow through us, without us immediately reacting to it.

This is the capacity we naturally have. This is what we are able and “built” to do.

This is what can happen when we manage to move away from the controlling mind.

This is possible when we connect to the experience in our body.

When we agree to feel it. When we are able to be with it.

Breath with it.

Stay vital and alive with it.

The controlling mind is a sneaky one.

It lures us into its cold observant and frozen world very easily.

It seems to give us a strange kind of comfort in moments when our feelings, some uncomfortable sensations or pains become intense.

It asks us to push against them and fight them.

It convinces us that things will never change.

For a moment it seems like a relief to listen to it and how it tells us to run away from it, but it traps us in despair, in helplessness or in a feeling of a dead end.

It makes us become the worst of ourselves.

It takes away the trust.

But when we manage to reconnect to the whole experience, to the whole of ourselves (to the body), we are able to create true change.

To recover. To heal. To expand. To see and be new.

Let’s try something:

Think of a situation, in which you do not like how you act.

A way of handling things you would like to change.

Remember a situation from the recent days and give yourself a moment to immerse in it.

Now pay attention to how you are pulled into the upper part of your body, and into your head.

Pay attention to how you become an observer.

Notice what are the judgements, sentences, images, convictions that come to the forefront of your mind.

Pay attention to the way you hold your body and the way you hold your head and your eyes.

Try to identify the effort in the eyes and how they are “held captive” in a certain point of view.

The eyes are holding the memory. And we are as if hypnotized and mesmerized by it.

In this way, we are viewing the current moment out of that perspective.

Out of that window of time.

No matter how correct it may seem what you are telling yourself. No matter how true these judgements may be, they are not relevant to what is actually needed from you. They try to convince you to stay held in those past structures.

This effort to keep you hypnotized, has no malice intentions.

It is simply the “over protective” part in you that cannot deal with new and unknown.

Sadly, it misleads you today.

It does not allow you to connect to other abilities you have that may have been unavailable in the past. It wants to keep you with old knowledge.

It is now your choice that we need to activate to move away from that mind controlling place.

To connect to the sensations. To have life be felt. To breath and expand. To activate aspects of yourself that were unused till now.

To do so, start to move your eyes away from that place they are being pulled towards.

When you do so, make sure you are breathing.

Do it slowly and feel the change and the shift.

Move them back to the “hypnotizing place” and sense what it does. Move them away again.

Do that couple of times slowly. Doing it slow will allow you to register the change. To deal with the intensity and the fear of letting go better.

Now start to move your eyes quickly in different directions while you breath.

Then start to move your neck and spine out of the fixation they kept.

Breathe and feel what starts to move and expand in your body.

Make sure that your pelvis and legs are moving and are not frozen.

After a while put your hands on your eyes, when they are closed, using the weight of your hands to relief the eyes.

Breathe deeply while trying to better let go of any effort in your head, your spine and your eyes.

Take the time to simply feel your body and the space around you.

And each time you are tempted to fixate in the same old way, find the movement in you away from it.

When you do that, pay attention what happens with the way you perceive that initial situation?

What was your mind trying to protect you from?

What options open up for you? How can you be now in that situation that was not available to you?

Breathe and allow the “undefined, unknown” experience to flow in your body. Let it move and show itself. Let it reveal the new you and the new life around you.

You can complete the exercise by thanking that part of your mind which was trying to protect you.

You can “tell it” you are now releasing it from its “job”.

Each time you find yourself holding yourself in the same way; Fixating your eyes in the same way and feeling and thinking out of that place, take a breath and move your attention from that “old window”. Look somewhere else, and open your body to a different part of the space.

Remember novelty in life and within yourself, can be met when you agree to be fully present in your body.

When you are able and wishing to meet the unknown. When you learn to breathe and let go. Relax into fear or anything else that feels overwhelming. When you move away from the controlling part of your mind and literally chose to shift physically your eyes, body and attention.

Enjoy being you. Enjoying being your body,

Anna

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash