This is a summary of some of the concepts I work through with clients. I will touch on Emotion; Reflection; Stories; Pain; Breath, and the respective parts they will play in your personal evolution.
Emotion
The reason I continually return to emotion is because I've found that emotion is the key to shifting energy. When energy shifts, emotion moves; and when emotions move, energy shifts.
Many of us live in just a few primary emotions, and so our lives become limited. Using a broader vocabulary of emotion, necessarily expands the life experience.
Carl Jung said it well:
“Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.”
Reflection
As you continue to refine your process of living, I suggest building in time for reflection. The session casts a light on the seeds of memories, which blossom when you put your focus on them. Through this work, you've been supplied with a lot fuel for healing.
We may do more work together in the future, as needed, however the ultimate goal is that we each become more and more self reliant, so that we can move through our deepest healing on our own, and reach out for support as needed.
Reflect on the moments of your life that seem to be significant and or symbolic; they are continually looping in your experience, because something is incomplete around them. Sometimes the subtlest clue provides the completion, and the healing happens.
Many have success in practicing what we do in sessions by themselves. It is difficult to do the entirety of it, but you can begin to ask yourself questions, and answer from the instinctual center, to see what lurks in the unconscious, and what is ready to be brought to light. 'What are you noticing?' Questioning thoughts. Is that REALLY true? etc.
Take this moment to reflect on the most powerful moments in the sessions, or the flow you felt afterward.
We mostly live mired in programs, without really standing back, objectively, and deciding what we truly desire. For instance, in the classic example, many people pine for a relationship, and almost as soon as they're in one, they're caught in a pattern of suffering.
From my perspective, romantic intimacy is not the answer; it is one of the questions. We do so much for this notion of love, often at the expense of our soul's desire. Instead, if we 'follow our bliss', love rises up to greet us.
Happiness is not dependent upon external circumstances, but upon cultivating a rich, inner landscape.
You might enjoy this book:
Happiness; a Guide to Developing Life's most Important Skill
The Stories We Carry
We need to continue to experience and sweep out unconscious stories, so that the healing can continue to unfold.
What stories are you carrying about your body?
Here are a few examples:
My legs are x.
My arms are x.
I feel X when I showcase my chest / buttocks.
My belly is x.
I’m too x.
The underside of my arms is x.
My face is x.
My eyes are x.
My hair is x.
I look x.
Etc, etc.
Sometimes it takes reflection (often literally, via a mirror), to bring these stories to the surface. Sometimes they are obvious, and there are stories running beneath them.
People who are experiencing symptoms relating to reproductive organs are often carrying stories about parenting, birth, childhood, nurturing, etc. The story creates a weak point in the organ, and lifestyle often supplies the catalyst to create the disturbance.
It is important to heal these, because whatever the story is, it’s impacted your physiology. When we don’t fully ‘accept’ a piece of ourself, we literally cut off energy to that part. You can’t feel that part anymore, and it can become disconnected and become the seat of physical dis-ease.
Whenever you catch a glimpse of your body in the mirror, catch the concurrent story and reframe it. Become a guardian for your core self; let no disempowering stories make it through unchallenged. Replace them with empowering stories. Hit the story with it's opposite. You're beautiful. You're sexy. You are glowing today. You look full of vitality. Close the gap between the truth and the untruth.
The suggested affirmation:
I approve of myself, exactly as I am. (Listen to the mind chatter make exceptions, and then repeat). Exactly as I am.
Pain.
I tend to reframe pain as the 'sacred message from the body.' In self-help workshops, they often refer to pain as an acronym for Pay Attention Inside Now. In Non-violent Communication model, pain points to the presence of an unmet need. Pain is distinct from suffering. Pain is not optional, whereas suffering is a choice.
During painful somatic points, many experience one of the critical FLOW epiphanies:
The fear of the pain is worse than the pain itself.
As you tighten, convulse, try to wriggle out of it, it seems to expand and take over your whole body and life. If you can surrender into it, and just see it for what it is without trying to escape it, you’ll discover that what you’ve labeled ‘pain’ isn’t necessarily ‘negative’. It is just your body sending you a message, or energy that is anxious to move from one place inside of you to another.
Breath is life.
Breath is a way to know where we are stuck and how to feel into what we may be holding on to. Shallow breath = emotional constipation, and emotional constipation = unconscious repression. Repression = suffering and disease. So the simplest solution to many of life's ills is taking in nourishment from the air via deep, abdominal breathing.
Standing in Flow
Why do we do the standing work? (related post: Holistic Postural Analysis)
The floor work is ambitious, and can be intense. We can gain deeper and deeper levels of awareness about ourselves and our world. The problem is, we don’t live much of our life on a table, supine, with our eyes closed.
The standing work is designed to invite more and more of that flow into the waking life. After all, we're not spending the majority of our life lying flat on our back.
We spend much of our time sitting, standing, and lying down. Each one is an opportunity to cultivate presence. Presence not for the sake of presence, but because it is a healing force; perhaps it is the healing force. When the flow moves through our bodies, healing happens. What no longer serves is flushed out, and what we need to face comes to the surface. It is a beautiful process; it can be intense.
The toes ground us to the earth. The way the bones interact will determine how we feel. How we feel will determine how we act. At first, this is all happening on an unconscious level.
Eventually, it becomes more and more conscious, so that we are able take more responsibility for our thoughts and feelings, and so that we can recognize the ones that our ‘ours’ and distinguish them from the ones that are just passing through; someone else’s energy or a fleeting glimpse into the collective consciousness.
Reminder.
Place the feet solidly on the ground and take a deep breath into your belly. Meet each moment with your whole body... welcome to the beauty of moving forward.
In Truth,
Steven Budden
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