Hiya. Care to get a little curious?
Where are you breathing right now? Is the air coming in through your nose or your mouth? What is the temperature of the air? Where do you feel your body move with the inhale and the exhale – your shoulders, your ribcage, your shoulders, all of the above? What happens if you just notice? Just notice the breath coming in and going out, like ocean waves sliding up a sandy beach and slowly retreating back to the deep. Perhaps you would like to start to slow down the breath, taking looooong sloooow sips of air. What do you notice next?
I’m curious about your eyes. What happens if you take a pause from reading this, look up, and let your eyes gaze on something in the far distance – the furthest thing you can see without straining. How does that feel? If you invite your eyes to take in more of your surroundings – start to notice what arrives at your eyes from the periphery, how does that change your experience of your eyes?
And what about that belly? I invite you to take a moment and just notice if you are holding your breath, holding your belly, bracing. What shifts within you, if you allow yourself to soften in this area, maybe even inviting the breath to sink down low and expand the low belly? How does that feel?
And the hands, and the fingers – are they clenched tightly around your phone as you read this, are they resting in little tight fists on your lap? What if you tried to hold your phone with just the SKIN of your fingertips? What would it be like to slowly uncurl each little bone of each long elegant finger and allow the fingers and palms to rest with ease on your thighs? What is it like if you imagine bringing more space into the INSIDE of your hand, like inside the fingers and inside the palms?
How do you feel after a few minutes of exploring your inner world? Did you notice a shift in your overall tension? Your mood? The pace of the hamster wheel of thought-generation?
We’ve been taught, since the time of Rene Descartes, that “I think, therefore I am,” insinuating that there is some sort of separateness between the mind and the rest of us. We now know due to reams of research that the mind and body are not separate. As human beings, we are a mindbody. Our thoughts effect changes in our body, and our body effects changes in our thoughts. Perhaps you noticed how your thoughts helped your body feel more calm, ease, and expansiveness?
Our minds have a documented “negativity bias” which means we are always scanning for the bad, what could go wrong, how things could fail. This has kept humans alive so far, so it’s a vital predisposition, but it can make for a shitty lived experience! We can consciously work with this negativity bias, by inviting in the opposite thought – give equal airtime (or maybe even MORE – research recommends a 3:1 ratio) to scanning for the good, thinking about what could go right, how things could succeed.
How are your thoughts contributing to your tension? How could they contribute to more ease, flow, and space instead? Just some food for thought on this day of Rebirth. Maybe we could give birth to a mindset that helps us find more Space to be Human.
Space to be Human Lab (where we invite in an attitude of exploration, experimentation, and curiosity)
- NEW FACE CRADLE: The reviews are in “It’s so soft!” “It’s so comfortable!” “My face isn’t smushed.” Yay for the new cradle!
- NEW LTAP ASSESSMENTS: I am taking a 6 week online class on Locator Test Assessment Protocols (LTAP) to learn how to listen to the body and use its wisdom to guide treatment. If this piques your interest, let me know. During April I’ll add 10 minutes to your session at no charge, and we’ll see what the Assessments tell us about what your body needs.
And with that we are heading off to Armored Gardens for some lunchy poo. Also, if you don’t currently get the Tap On It texts, I highly recommend it. This week we got a coupon for BOGO draft beers at Armored Gardens. I mean, I don’t drink beer (Hellllooo bloated belly), but that’s a really good coupon. J
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