Will You Even Have Time to Read This?

Recently, a client shared with me this theory about time speeding up as we approach 2012...how 24 hours is now equivalent to 18, and is to continue on this diminishing trend.

Besides the experience of always feeling behind, I wasn't quite sure what to make of this - beyond my belief that maybe it's more of an internal experience than an external one.

Think about it. We already know that we have way-too-long to-do lists and agendas. The multitasking gadgetry marketed to make this more manageable has only served to fill up every nook and cranny of our wakeful awareness. We carry around access to the world wherever we go...ever-available to phone calls, text messages, email ... some form of stimulation disguised as productivity.

They say that time flies when you're having fun, but I'm not sure we're finding enjoyment so much as avoidance. Time also flies when we're sound asleep.

Do you know what makes time seem immeasurably long? Pain. Discomfort. Waiting. Longing. Silence. Boredom. These are all experiences we rarely allow ourselves anymore. Stores are open 24/7. Just when we thought instant gratification couldn't get any instanter, we have automatic downloads, overnight delivery, and virtual connection to anyone at anytime. And even then, it's not just one experience at a time. We gather with friends and family, only to divide our attention between them and a screen.

The paradox is fascinating... filling our awareness with so many things at once is almost like being unconscious. Not to mention the perpetual drain on our nervous systems.

We're leaving ourselves no white space, no room to breathe. No permission to feel uncomfortable. Not only do we grow more numb, but as our attention is drawn further outside of ourselves, we lose touch with our centers... the sweet disquiet of being in our own skin, with all its sensory pricklings ... pleasure, pain, and more. I'll be the first to admit that I'm guilty of succumbing to the allure and entitlement of the convenient and accessible (google is god, after all), and feeling somehow gypped and whiny when it's not available.

This is why I love attending Quaker Meeting. A blessed but brief hour of silence, or at least just only my own noisy thoughts, except for those rare occasions when I'm able to reach the pool of deep silence within me. It's also why I love a good snowstorm. Everything shuts down, nowhere to go and no choice but to hunker down and just be ... (hopefully with the internet connection still available... :).

We won't ever get more time to accommodate all the things we keep filling it up with. We can, however, reclaim a little of it. If you must be doing something, do just one thing. Feel the angst of sitting in traffic. Write a letter (one that requires a stamp) to someone and wait for the reply. Leave the phone home when you visit a friend. Sit in a doctor's office without picking up something to read or type. Allow yourself to just wait for something, and find joy in the anticipation.

Resist the urge to fill the white space with something outside of yourself. Feel the discomfort of being inside your own skin ... allow it to eventually make way for an experience of presence and of 'coming home'... and of having just enough time for everything.

Long Overdue

"Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It's been three and a half years since my last shiatsu treatment...."

I know what you're saying .... what's wrong with me? And then I expect my clients to be more regular visitors? I mean, I know how great this stuff is... what's my excuse?

Whatever.

Point is, I finally went yesterday to see my friend and lifesaver, Diane .. she of the contagious laugh and the listening hands. She who can make me cry before she even touches me, because she has a way of nailing me on whatever mind games I'm laying on myself.

In a compassionate way, of course.

A lovely little lesson I learned, for example, was the profound connection between "But I HAVE to..." and chronic physical contraction.

As in, "But I HAVE to.... (make this much income; drink less; exercise more; eat better; become a superior mom, shiatsu person, human being) ... and if I don't... well, you know....

The "Have To's" had taken up residence in my left shoulder and neck, and my lower back. The "I'll Never Be Good Enough's" were lodged in my chest and digestive system. "This World Is Too Much" was sitting on my lungs and crouched just behind my eyes, ready to let loose with the tears at any moment.

Diane reminded me how the "Have To's" were driving me the last time I had visited her, and how well that was (not!) working out for me.

Oh, and hey, guess what?

When the body contracts around the mind's imperatives to push push push, the horizons of possibilities narrows, the mind gets more frantic, the body contracts further, and so on and so on and shooby-dooby-dooby.

And while it would seem that meeting pressure with pressure would be the obvious way to address this (oh pleasepleaseplease just dig your elbow in under my shoulderblade...!) I was again blown away at how a simple holding of points in strategic locations freed up my back, my neck, my breathing, my mind.

Her fingertips just outside my ankles relaxed my lower lumbar and sacrum. Her fingers in my ears (!) caused my shoulders to drop. "Ah!" she exclaimed. "You have a neck again."

Indeed. (Deep breath....)

Oh, shiatsu. I will never again foresake you.

Forgive me?

Your Body: Temple or Junk Drawer?

I've been playing around with the 'body-as-home' analogy, seeing how far I can stretch it.

We live in our bodies. (Well, most of us.) And, while we don't always follow through here, we have a pretty good sense that it needs continual upkeep if we wanna live in it comfortably for a long time.

We also have a fairly good idea of what proper maintenance is: regular water intake, fresh air, exercise, healthy food. But fewer of us are aware that we use our bodies as emotional dumping grounds. The junk drawers that hold the odds and ends we just don't want to deal with at the moment.

You know ... those slights we thought we blew off. Those hurts and stressors and traumas both real and imagined that we shoved under, or 'got over'. The fears we're not facing, the inner conflicts we're not owning up to, the voices we're not expressing -  they're all stashed in the various pockets and crannies and hiding places and junk drawers of our physical beings.

Domestic management goddess, Marla Cilley (aka: Flylady) has helped many thousands of people rescue their homes from utter chaos. She knows better than anyone that this is not a one shot deal... it requires vigilance and daily maintanence to keep an orderly and peaceful house. (Heck, even she gets the home/body analogy, as evidenced by her book, Body Clutter!)

One of her tips involves managing the hot spots (Fire Drills!)... those surfaces in our homes that just magnetically seem to collect crap: the nightstand, the countertop, the table in the hallway, the chair in the bedroom.

These areas are referred to as hot spots, because like a carelessly tossed match, once one thing is left there, it quickly becomes a raging fire... a surface re-buried under a pile that spreads to the rest of the house. Back to chaos.

Our bodies are no different.

Say some small un-dealt-with stressor causes a tension in your shoulder. No big. Maybe even hardly noticeable.

Then you wake one morning with a crick in your neck. Going about your day, probably with more reinforcing triggers, you have to manipulate your body in some kind of odd way to accommodate the stiff neck, now causing tension in your low back.

Still not enough crisis to address it directly, some time goes by and you develop digestive troubles, or painful menstrual cramps. But you don't put it together that restricted back muscles can create a ripple effect in the connective tissue in the low abdomen which can impede internal organ function. So, if and when this gets bad enough, you finally seek help and quite possibly medication... all because of some unreleased tension stuck in your shoulder.

An overly dramatic and simplistic scenario? Perhaps.

But I think it's safe to say that we do have chronic areas of tension. Our junk drawers. (How many times have I heard you say, "I keep all of my tension here....") I do it too. And it occurred to me yesterday that this may never change.

It becomes habit, and it requires constant awareness to empty out and release those places before it becomes chronic pain as well as a spreading wildfire.

I was noticing my left shoulder yesterday, and how it actually wasn't hurting or tense. How free and open and relaxed it felt. And odd. :) But I knew it was only a matter of time. (Hence the inspiration for this post.)

And here's another obvious thing: it's not the shoulder's fault, any more than it's the junk drawer's fault.

It's the crap (clutter) that we keep laying on it. Regular clutter-reduction and awareness is the key,... another self-evident maintenance tip from Flylady. And me.

(How, you may ask, do I reduce the clutter that causes chronic tension? Oh my, well, regular bodywork that addresses both emotions and body can help. I would also recommend mindfulness meditation, and other such 'story-releasing' techniques, like Michael Brown's book,  "The Presence Process", or Byron Katie's "Loving What Is" for starters. Or talk therapy, if that's your thing. PS: Both books mentioned here are affiliate links)

***************************************

(In the Chester County, Pennsylvania area and looking to learn more about shiatsu? Register now for my Hands-On Intro to Shiatsu class, January 25th at Creative Healing Arts in West Chester.)

Brace Yourselves

I've been thinking about you, and about the many of you who have in come in seeking relief from those places where you hold all your tension.

I have those places too. Neck, shoulders, sometimes my stomach.

And so my question is, if we weren't holding it there, or anywhere, what might that feel like?

I'm guessing the first response would be, "Well, it'd feel great! Duh.."

But here's the thing. There's a reason why we do that. Why we tense up, clench up, brace parts of our body.

It feels safer. Yeah, I know. Weird. This has been referred to as 'body armoring', and without going into huge detail here, the term was coined by controversial psychotherapist, Wilhelm Reich, to describe conditions in the physical body where repressed childhood memories are chronically held.

Psychological trauma aside, I have also read that we tend to tense up as a means of creating a sense of stability in our bodies when faced with difficult situations. Like someone yelling at us. Or driving. Or dealing with any kind of stress, until this becomes an automatic and ingrained response and condition. It's as if in response to the external chaos we're facing, we create solidity in our bodies so as not to feel blown over or swept away.

While we can imagine experiencing tremendous relief in having those tension-holding muscles released, we may also feel strangely vulnerable and insecure. Especially if we were to be in those trigger situations again, without the response of bracing ourselves.

So, again, what might that feel like?

Maybe it's helpful to remember that our nervous systems and bodies are responding to every day situations as though they're more threatening than they are, because they remind that deeper part of our selves that feels like something life threatening. Being yelled at as a kid was scary. Seeing adults out of control was terrifying. Overstimulation and invisible monsters under the bed can still affect us as adults.

What might it be like to pay attention to the breath and the body and maintain a state of relaxation in the face of stress (provided it wasn't endangering), and fully felt the emotions that arose, no matter how uncomfortable?

Maybe it would help to remember that we're adults now. Maybe it would take some practice in bringing awareness to the situation and directing your focus in a different direction.

Like on your feet. Feeling yourself rooted in the earth. Gracefully poised and relaxed, but stable and secure.

Or on your core and center. Secure in the unshakable truth of who you Really are.

Both of these require some practice and mastery outside of stressful situations so that they can be called upon easily in times of need. And like with anything, awareness is the key. Notice when your shoulders tense up, your jaw clenches. Breathe into those places and let go.

So, now let me ask, where do you hold your peace?

Like this? You may also dig:

Under Pressure - Turtle Syndrome

How Does Your Life Feel?

Under Pressure - Grounding

The Fifth Element

Making Peace (on Earth) with the To-Do List

Another reminder of the message I've repeated for the last couple of years regarding this time of year...

Winter is traditionally a time for slowing down, regrouping and restoring. The activity and growth of the warmer seasons is meant to provide us with the means to survive through the cold with as little activity as possible. Obviously, this is not really our experience in modern times; in fact, the holidays tend to be the most frantic time of the year.

 

I suppose unless mass cultural agreement happens around reducing the unnatural pace, we will have to make more deliberate individual choices around finding spaces of peace and reflection in order to be more harmonized with the natural world.

 

If you find this time of year stressful, may I make a suggestion?

 

It's been my experience (and maybe yours as well) that a good deal of stress comes from the added things on our 'to-do' list that we feel obligated to do. What is we took a moment (and a very deep breath) to look at some of those items, and asked, 'what could be the worst that will happen if I don't do this?' Who will be unhappy? Who will think less of me? Who won't understand? What part of my self-image will have to change or be sacrificed in order to have a little more peace this season? Who will go hungry as a result of not getting my Christmas cookies this year? (Side note: our old mailman used to pass along to our family pounds of cookies he received from our neighbors, because he always got just too darn much.. just a thought..).

 

And lastly, what truly meaningful 'to-do's' are suffering as a result of being lost in the shuffle?

 

So, if you can, give yourself a break. Enjoy the season. Get in touch with the stillness. Feel it in yourself. Your body and soul will thank you for it.

Radical Honesty

What does honesty have to do with health?

click the image to buy!Brad Blanton, Ph.D, psychotherapist and author of the book, "Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth," maintains that 'lying is the major source of all (non-environmentally induced) human stress." And stress, as it manifests in the physical body, which it always does, can be bad for your health.

I first read this book about 12 years ago. The title is compelling, to be sure. My first reaction was, "Oh, yeah. Well, I consider myself to be a pretty honest person, but sure, I'm willing to see how much better I can do.".

As I began reading through the introduction and then even only the first chapter, I came to see that I may have underestimated what Blanton meant by "radical", and what he was suggesting was leaping way out of the comfort zone, almost into the realm of, "Are you kidding me? You want me to do what???"

But like many things that are self-evident, I was then left with the undeniable realization that to not be honest in the ways he suggested would leave me with at best, a substandard, disconnected life; at worst, a slow and painful self-destruction.

So, what are we talking about?

This is not about huge lies and cover-ups like non-existent WMD's, though that can be seen as the fruit of the seeds planted in a million little ways by a culture that values appearances over truth. This is about releasing ourselves from the fabricated personalities we've taken on, first in early childhood to 'be good' and ensure the love of our caregivers, and then the posturing of adolescence as we are trying to individuate and create a self-identity.

Blanton says that maturity, the process of becoming a grown-up, is about relinquishing the attachment to that adolescent identity, and all of the dishonest and withholding tactics that go into protecting that identity at all costs. We are a society of lying, posturing adolescents. True intimacy and connection can only come from revealing the truth about who we really are... what we feel... our judgments, our ugliness, our warts and all... otherwise we are trapped in a hell of our own creation. And the immense energy required to maintain these precious illusions most definitely takes a toll on our health and well-being.

It's not easy, and it's not a one-time event. It's a life-long process requiring vigilance, mindfulness, and a willingness to have the illusion of 'self' destroyed over and over again. But the rewards are feeling alive and walking with the earth with a sense of lightness and freedom... and real connection with other human beings.

Brad Blanton is on a mission, you could say. Not just for the liberation of the individual, but of civilization.. which he believes to be based on a foundation of lies. Indeed, he sees the very act of truth-telling to be the only thing that will save us from our own extinction.

Want to learn more? Check out Brad's website.... not for the faint of heart, I'll warn you now.. :)

Like this post? Please,

Monday Meditation - Progressive Relaxation for Stress

I have to say I questioned whether promoting such a degree of relaxation is always a good thing, especially if you're reading this at work.

If that's the case, I'd say, save this for either a time when some stress relief would be really useful in your busy routine, or when you are done for the day.

Also, if you have favorite meditations of your own, feel free to share them!

Enjoy, and have an easy-flowing Monday!