Tag: feeling

• Neglecting None

  In last nights role play at Dial Help, we learned about depression, or experienced what it feels like to answer the calls…or even more important, how it feels to sit in the emotion with them or 'try and fix things'.

  In my first attempt, I ignored his feelings and worked to solve the situation that circled him like a noose.  While dodging how he felt, I focused on the outliers in his life. Leaving him once again totally alone.

  It wasn't intentional, but since he was a 'stranger' I didn't want to get personal and jump feet first into how he felt…instead I was working on the outside structure, that would circuitously lead to reducing his stressful feelings.  Exploring the things that were giving him stress and not his stress, if that makes sense.

  The second caller, I jumped in feet first and ignored our strangeness.  And oddly, this call went much better.  I wasn't perfect, but I was perfectly with her feelings. Together we swam and explored the heavy grey, that clouded her world, the juxtaposition about her outer life and how she truly feels inside. 

  What I learned is that emotions is our common denominator, we all feel emotions the same way.  Overwhelm is overwhelm…no matter the cause that creates it.

  And, that most will not look directly at the pain and stress, but rather the structures that create it…asking the one in pain to see things differently or focus outside instead of inside.

  It is so revealing when you sit with emotions, like coming face to face with the truth. And if you worry about the causes, you miss the opportunity to see the person.

  What most callers need is for you to see them…and how they feel.  

  In our society, or at least the environment that I was raised in, you did whatever you could as to NoT feel.  Or certainly change the negative feelings, by relabeling the outer source or finding excuses, or the favorite, Blessing away the sins that cause you pain.

  We become strangers to our emotions…uncomfortable with them.  

  I believe that all the emotions we have ignored are not gone away, we didn't miss the opportunity to sit with them awhile, they are all there inside of us, waiting to flow forth.

  What I also believe, in some situtations, you get an overwhelming feeling, for behind the emotion file named sadness, you may have 45 years worth of pain to feel…and that is what weighs you down.

  Going into the pain, voicing it, feeling it; expressing it….is for the pain to be heard and validated, and that is its purpose.

  The purpose of emotions is not to ignore them…but to hear what they are telling you.

  I know, for myself, I didn't know my own emotions, I had pushed them down and back for 46 years.  So, when I opened the door, an avalanche of feelings poured out.

  I was overwrought with emotions.  And had to teach myself how to deal with them, I literally had to tell myself, "Feel This."  And I wrote about my feelings and emotions.

  I stopped looking outside at the circumference of my life, and instead began living from the center.  But first, I had to go back and relive my first 46 years…

  Living hand to heart with my emotions. Where in the past, I did everything and anything to not have to feel.  My emotions were bottled up inside, shoved into tight balled fists…resentment, anger, injustice, to name a few…all kept far away from mind and mouth.

  When I began to live my center…I had years and years worth to feel, express and voice.  My truth was just waiting for me to see it, hear it and feel it.  I validated me by standing face to face with how I felt.  Even in the darkest emotions, I stood and let the waves of sorrow drip.

  Being alive is dancing with each emotion, neglecting none.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  May 23, 2012

  emotions, feeling, validating

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• Energy and Feeling Good

  Slowly but surely my physical body has been pushed to the far reaches of my life, again.  Well, I notice it when it creaks and aches and feels ouchy, when my neck and jaw are tense and in pain, when my middle is so expanded that I feel bundled up in a winter coat…and there is a faint feeble calling of the yoga mat.
  I am not sure why I wait for physical discomfort, for loathing and self recriminations, but that seems to be the way. That when I am on a winning streak, like 340 plus days of yoga, I lose the 'desire' or whatever that is.
  It seems like all kinds of things came rushing in or crowding over My Time…that while  tended this or that, I forgot to leave time, space, energy, Or I forgot to say no more than yes and slowly 'other' things overwhelmed my space.
  I have spent tons of hours on my inner awareness and self control, self freedom, etc. But I keep a healthy distance from the body's needs.
  My mind and soul feel at peace in a very open liberal place….and yet my body still feels in prison at times.  
  Over-run by old habits.  
  Habits that seem not of mind or spirit, but just residual affects from my old life.
  In fact my outside (body) where my spirit and mind live needs to catch up with the inner work.
  Maybe it is time to put the same intensity and focus on flipping my body.
  My body is the odd man out. 
  It is not free.
  It is not at peace.
  My body can't do a thing without me setting the intentions, putting IT on the list, at the top and finding ways to serve it and give it the same sacred intensity that I gave my inner landscape.
  Time to clean up my outer body act…finding new alternate habits that will bring in energy instead of lowering it.
  I un-naturally turn  away from my body.
  Somehow I can do this when forced, but it isn't natural for me to be kind and desire good things and wanting to serve my body energy lifters…but I am more natural at neglect.
  It is like I am in control of neglect and out of control for goodness.
  And my body still tries its best to deliver all that I ask of it, but with hurdles and speed bumps…. with me fighting it each step of the way.
  I fight doing yoga and eating foods that deliver good energy and instead dump in sweets and foods that drain me.  
  Maybe it is time to switch the fight around.
  To fight for energy and feeling good.

  October 19, 2011

  bad, energy, feeling, good, habits, Yoga

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• A Course In Weight Loss

  I am browsing through “A Course in Weight Loss” by Marianne Williamson, some parts I gloss over, and others parts catch my attention.

  This book and Geneen Roth’s “Woman, Food, and God” both are searching beneath the food and looking at the root cause, understanding that the food is a cover-up.

  We all know less food equals weight loss, but it also is removing the cotton between feelings and us.

  We fear feelings.

  We fear feeling feelings.

  Marianne writes,

  “ With any spiritual journey – and the journey to conscious weight loss is a spiritual journey – things often seem to get worse before they get better. Love’s light is being shined on many places heretofore not visible to your conscious mind, revealing toxic feelings that were there already but cleverly hidden.

  It’s all right if this part of your journey is not pleasant. Parts of your repatterning is learning to be with unpleasantness in a healthy way. The mature and sober person knows that on some days things simply feel rotten, and that is okay. You are learning to move through distress by simply being with it, without the need to overeat or to act out in any other way.

  How could it not be unpleasant, having to refeel feelings that you’ve been eating for years? Now having to confront them, deal with them, and ultimately accept them feels like a fever within your soul.

  But a spiritual fever, like a physical fever, actually has a productive function: it burns disease. Think of your pain as a feverish burning up of fear. As you heal physically, extreme fever can lead to delirium. And as you know heal spiritually, your fever can lead to delirium as well – a quiet delirium of the soul. This too shall pass.

  This lesson concerns itself with the human despair and the consistency of the body’s cells. Man has looked beneath the surface of the skin for centuries, probing the internal workings of the human body. During the last century, science has developed the ability to view even the tiniest of cells that make up our physical tissue. Yet science has not yet discovered an explanation for how emotional change produces physical change, and it is particularly blind to the malleability of fat.
  In fact, there are many levels of understanding – even of our physical selves – that science has not yet penetrated. An electron microscope reveals the entire picture of our cellular system, but within the cells themselves, there are storehouses of information not yet understood.

  For instance, there are tears and then there are tears. Some varieties are toxic to the body, while others healing. The distinction between the two is not just an emotional difference but a physical one as well. Even materially, there are aspects to tears – including functions that affect the workings of the brain – that have not yet been scientifically identified.

  Sometimes it’s only through crying tears that need to be shed that we dissolve the unhappiness that caused them. That is why suppressing unhappiness doesn’t tend to end it. How many times have we said that someone ‘needs a good cry.” Indeed. Toxicity is often released through tear ducts as part of the body’s natural genius of flushing itself out. Casual use of antidepressants is unwise for just this reason- feeling the full extent of your sadness is sometimes the only way to heal it. In the absence of the feeling, you miss out on the healing. The body does not make distinctions among physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual stresses. It is equipped with the natural intelligence to address them all.

  You are mistaken if you think that you can fundamentally and permanently change bodily symptoms by physical means alone. Problems must leave through the same door they came in. If mistaken thoughts have created a problem, then righting those thoughts is essential for healing it. And if toxic feelings created a problem, they can only leave through a detox process by which they come up again in order to be released.

  Fat is not just inert cellular tissue. It is a repository of twisted, distorted thoughts and feelings that didn’t have anywhere else to go. If you remove the fat tissue but do not remove the psychic cause, the fat might go but the causal imprint remains. And the imprint, in time, will attract more substance with which to materially express itself.

  It’s not enough to just “lose the weight.” You must lose the emotional weight that lurks behind it. This you have already begun to do. Remember that your food compulsion is a way to cope with painful feelings. As you begin to heal from those feelings –removing their “imprint” from your consciousness – they are necessarily refelt on their way out.

  Problems that seem to have nothing to do with your weight issues might rise up and in particularly challenging forms. You might doubt yourself in ways you have not done before, or have not done for a very long time. But this part of the process is not a bad period; it is actually a good one, for it is necessary. There is no spiritual rehabilitation without this kind of detoxification.

  When any pain, difficulty, frustration, or challenge emerges, try to see it, honor it, bear witness to it and receive it as part of your healing. The situation carries within it important information for you. It is not just randomly happening at this time. It presents the opportunity to examine critically important issues in your life. Looking at your pain, feeling the feelings, learning whatever lessons are being brought up for review – these are ultimately the only ways to get the pain to burn away.

  The Universe will never leave you alone at such a time as this. Angels are all around you, as they gather without fail whenever a soul is seeking its wholeness. This absolutely not the time to isolate; rather despite whatever resistance you feel, allow yourself to join with at least one other human being who might possibly be able to help you. You will learn the serious value of sacred friendship and/or professional counseling.

  Sometimes you just need to make space for sadness. You do not need an excuse for why you feel sad; you do not need to ‘fix’ it; and, most important, you do not need to run from it. What you need is to let it come up and simply be with it.

  Your task with this lesson is to make space in your life, just as you make space in your heart, for any sadness you need to honor. Perhaps take a walk each evening, or a stroll on the beach each morning. Allow yourself to grieve.

  You will learn in time to be with the void, addressing it with a bubble bath rather than with a sandwich, and with prayer time rather than a candy bar. Your task is to inhabit the emptiness, breathe through it, learn its lessons, and hear the message it conveys. There is no hole for you to try and fill with food or anything else; there is only the primal void within every human being when we feel we cannot find God.
  Marianne

  January 14, 2011

  A course in weight loss, being, cover-up, feeling, Geneen, journey, lessons, Marianne Williamson, pain, Roth, sadness, Spiritual, void, Woman food and God

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• Dance Going On Inside!

  Sight challenged isn’t just for those whose physical eyes have technical problems and hearing challenged isn’t for those who can’t hear sounds.

   

  I am thinking there is a much larger Sense Challenge going on, where most are not connected to their own bodies.

   

  It is amazing when you are connected to your senses how much there is to feel, see and hear.

   

  As I did my yoga on the river yesterday my senses were overrun with sensations a feast so large that you can only sample a little at a time.

   

  My eyes were witness to wildlife along the river banks, to the flies dancing on the river, to those buzzing and landing nearby, to clouds slowly making their way across the sky adjusting their formations as they move along, to floating butterflies coming by to see how my poses were going.

   

  My body felt the heat of the noonday sun, the relief of the gentle breeze, the coolness of the water I sipped, to the uneven ground I stepped upon, to the stretching muscles, the concentrated balance, to aches and sharp pains of a body unaligned, to the relaxed breath in between poses.

   

  My ears picked up the concert of birds singing loudly competing with Bikram’s voice, the distant sound of cars, the loud splashes of the beaver delightfully playing, the wind in the leaves…

   

  And behind all of the senses is a feeling of awareness.

   

  It is the awareness that makes the other senses come alive.

   

  Without awareness the whole orchestration of the Universe goes unnoticed.

   

  The more you see the more you see.

  The more you hear the more you hear.

  The more you feel the more you feel.

   

  Our bodies are used to appreciate the Universe and I believe there is a whole other Universe inside of us.

   

  There is an echoing dance going on inside!

  
  

   

  June 4, 2010

  challenged, echo, feeling, hearing, Inner, senses, sight, Universe

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