You don’t need to bite – free from unwanted inner dynamics

Many of your uncontrolled and unwanted reactions

may be a result of some feeling, a belief, interpretations, or expectations you tend to bite on again and again.

It is a reflex driven by a memory we unknowingly keep, which holds us with the leash of having no choice.

This leash keeps our ability to approach the situation freely very restricted. It holds us to the position of being dependent, unable to be ourselves, afraid of what we may meet.

Being held by that leash and driven to bite again and again onto that hard old bone of the past, we either succumb or immediately resist.

Life is abundant with a vast number of options and truths.

It is us who tend to bite on specific offerings, as if we are forced by an unseen force to do so.

When we bite it is when we react aggressively (imploding or exploding) to a comment we hear.

When we feel personally attacked needing to defend and explain ourselves.

Or we find ourselves feeling overly guilty, taking responsibility over things that are not ours to carry or “correct”.

In those moments it is as if we start to “run around our own tails”. We keep on running in an inner circle in which we return again and again to some old dynamics. We are taken by automatic (re)actions with which we dig ourselves a hole of no choice.

A hole we then fall into. The hole of the unresolved hurt, old sense of lack, we may carry.

What if we could find a way not to automatically bite into those parts of the situation.

What if we would be able not to immediately draw them in as though we have no other choice?

Not take them personally. Not feel obliged to act or respond.

Not need to be busy with inner judgements and defenses hours on end after an encounter?

What are relief.

Wouldn’t you call it conscious control? Or having a choice and being free?

I would like to offer you a simple way to start, with which you could stop being that pavlovian biting dog.

It is something you can try and see if it may take you out of that hole, cut that leash and bring some sense of feeling OK with who you are.

It is a simple attention exercise that may enable you to stop biting onto those triggers.

It may free you from that no-choice actions, thoughts and feelings. Instead of that leashed hurting interpretation, a horizon of clarity and freedom will open up.

So what do you say? Why eat those old dry bones, when there are so many luscious new foods to taste?

It may sound simple, but I promise you this is the gate to that freedom and control.

That gate lies, in part, in the area that is the back of your jaw. If you follow the line from the jaw all the way across to the neck and the base of the head where there is a soft place - you will be finding that area I am talking about.

The area of the jaw and the back of the neck are the place where we were conditioned to have no choice- just like the ring that holds the leash of the dog.

Today the efforts and pressures we hold in that area (the whole ring) are the ones that block fullness of our energy and being.

We cut off the flow between our mind holding the memory and the fuller experience in our body. Our bodies are in a way better equipped (if we learn to let it) to meet life without being attached to restrictions of social fear or conditioning.

We all experienced situations where we were ordered to be different.

Where we learned to twist, change and control ourselves in order to get along in the conditions we lived in: to get love, to reduce danger or hurt.

So now start by taking the time to pay attention to your jaw and the parallel area in your neck- the area at the base of the skull. It is the area where your head meets the spine.

This area is where we tend to bite on all those old bones, on those memories and the way we create that No-choice-leash.

The jaw / mouth and the back of the head, is where we bite into those poisonous commands, that if we manage not to, they would transform instead into offerings we can gently and gracefully refuse.

This is how we can stop cutting away parts of ourselves, so that we can be more equipped, able and out of that free to respond differently.

This is how we can easily refuse to past dynamics with in us and by that, around us.

The biting happens so quickly, that we often do not feel it. We may feel it later in forms of headache, neck pain or back pain. It may feel as heaviness or sense of stress, unexplained agitation or a vague confusion.

Now to the full exercise:

If you like take 5 –7 min. to consciously explore this area of your body.

Sit comfortably, with the option of supporting your back.

Start to shift your attention to your breath and the area of the jaw and upper neck.

At the beginning just breath in and out , exploring the way you inhale and exhale. The way you take in and give out.

After a while feel how this attention starts to affect the way you hold /relax your jaw and neck.

Try to be aware of how you tend to hold that area and with very gentle and slow movement of some circles or curvy motions try to let go of those efforts.

All that whole you are still breathing with attention.

Now interlace you fingers and use your hands to support your neck and base of the head.

Start to slowly use the weight of your hands and arms to bend you head forward and softly pull the neck.

Let gravity pull your head down and jaw drop.

Allow your shoulders to move with your neck forwards as well.

Breath throughout this movement.

Stay for few moments bent and sense the stretching and pulling of the muscles and try to soften any resistance you might discover.

Now slowly start to move your head to an upright position, breathing still with attention, and keeping your hands behind the head/neck.

Fell the soft holding and resistance of your hands, and use that to let go of efforts you might be keeping in your neck and jaw.

There is no need to hold that area, as your hands do that.

You can keep moving your head and neck very slowly also to the back, still using your hands for support.

When your head is tilted backwards, stay in that position for a moment, and try to relax that area of jaw and upper neck even more.

Now bring your head to an upright position and let go of your arms and hands.

Think of a situation you tend to react with no choice, and with breath and attention to that area of the jaw and neck, try to refuse contracting that area.

Breathe, let go and remember that situation.

Try to keep on remembering the situation and your reaction, but insist within yourself to continuously soften the jaw, mouth and neck.

How does the situation feel to you now?

With freed neck, with the refusal of that no-choice-leash and the not-biting, what can you now see, feel and realize in this situation?

Letting go, you are able not to bite on that offered bone. Suddenly the other person is not anymore the one to dominate the situation.

Are you able not to bite and take responsibility, not to prove yourself or angerly resist to what seemed pressure before?

Give yourself time to keep on doing that gentle refusing of letting go, and see what is revealed to you, what options and what shift in your experience of the situations and options?

If you take those 5-7 min. daily for a while ( let’s say a week) and be aware of that area, and train not to bite, you will feel the new freedom from old dynamics magically appear.

Yours

Anna

Photo by okeykat on Unsplash