Embodying presence

Being present is a practice that takes practice. I believe it is the most valuable practice we can have, because when we're present to ourself and others, we're showing love. Thich Nhat Hanh writes about the practice of mindful breathing to bring our mind and body together in his book, True Love. When you're breathing in say, “I know that I am breathing in” when you're breathing out, say, “I know that I am breathing out.” Constricted breathing technique

Our minds are often daydreaming or in a completely different place to our bodies. By practicing this simple exercise every day, as often as we can, we can bring our body and minds back together again. When we're in our bodies, or embodied and associated, we can feel, which is often the reason why we don't want to be in our bodies. It can feel too painful and we'll find numerous ways to distract our self. If we practice being present even for a few minutes every day, it gets easier and easier to be in our bodies. Very often when we suffer from anxiety and all the forms that anxiety takes, it is exactly because we can't stand to be in our bodies. We live in our heads where we try to control our thoughts so we don't feel so afraid and out of control. But thoughts will never change how we feel, only feeling can do that.

The capacity to self-regulate is another priceless benefit from practicing mindfulness and presence. Peter Levine writes, In An Unspoken Voice:

"In mammals, this capacity for self-regulation is essential. It endows the animal with the capability to make fluid shifts in internal bodily states to meet changes in the external environment. Animals with developed orbitofrontal systems have evolved the capacity to switch between different emotional states. This ability (known as affect regulation) allows animals to vary their emotions to appropriately match environmental demands. In humans, this highly evolved adaptive function, according to Schore and others, is the basis for the core sense of self. These same circuits in the orbitofrontal cortex receive inputs from the muscles, joints and viscera. The sensations that form the inner landscape of the body are mapped in the orbitofrontal portions of the brain. Hence, as we are able to change our body sensations, we change the highest function of our brains. Emotional regulation, our rudder through life, comes about through embodiment."

When we learn to be present with our self, we start to become friends with our sensations, emotions and feelings. We become less afraid of feeling uncomfortable and difficult sensations and emotions and as a direct result our resistance lessens. The amount of resistance is always in proportion to the amount of fear. Peter Levine calls this rocking back and forth between contraction and expansion, pendulation. He writes:

"I have named this shift from the feelings of dread, rage or whatever one likes to avoid toward “befriending” one's internal sensations pendulation, the intrinsic rhythm pulsing between the experienced polarities of contraction and expansion/openness."

Expanding ...

If your everyday practice is to open to your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that - then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you'll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught ~ Pema Chödrön

I have gotten to the stage where the meaning of letting go, vulnerability, powerlessness, helplessness and surrender feel the same for me. What they all amount to is an acceptance of how I'm feeling. Knowing you can enter and exit these difficult states by pendulating (see last week's post) will give you the courage to feel and even embrace difficult feelings. By experiencing pendulation we become less afraid and are able to dissolve any overwhelm, which so often keeps us trapped in the cycle of repetition and re-enactment. There is an important distinction between feeling an emotion, expressing (acting out) an emotion and wallowing in an emotion. When we don't fight and resist how we feel, we can move through the most uncomfortable and difficult emotions. It's not always easy, but it is necessary if we want to move forward. The following phrases are probably going to bring up a lot of great stuff to tap on. Take as long as you need to on each statement. EFT short cut diagram and procedure.

 

I can let go/accept

I can feel vulnerable

I can feel powerless

I can feel helpless

I can surrender

I am willing to let go/accept

I am willing to feel vulnerable

I am willing to feel powerless

I am willing to feel helpless

I am willing to surrender

It is safe to let go/accept

It is safe to feel vulnerable

It is safe to feel powerless

It is safe to feel helpless

It is safe to surrender

When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something. We might realize that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality ~  Pema Chödrön

Pendulation

I've been reading In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, by Peter Levine. It is an excellent book. The lasting impression this book has made on me is one of hope. There is a way out of trauma and our own body has the innate capacity to transform it. What really got me excited about this book was how he described pendulation*. Pendulation “is about the innate organismic rhythm of contraction and expansion. It is, in other words, about getting unstuck by knowing (sensing from the inside), perhaps for the first time, that no matter how horrible one is feeling, those feelings can and will change. Without this (experienced) knowledge, a person in a state of “stuckness” does not want to inhabit his or her body.”

Therein, lies the hope and potential that trauma and its effects can and will change. We can find our way out of the (seemingly) never ending, cyclical, closed loop of repetition and re-enactment which inevitably leads to overwhelm and hopelessness. I have heard the same information in a million different ways, but it was the concept of pendulation that I really “got”. While reading about pendulation an image came to me of being on a swing, swinging back and forth between helplessness, dread, paralysis and rage and no matter how high I swung or how out of control I might feel, the swing eventually comes to a natural stop when we don't push, fight or resist it.

Entering immobility can feel excruciating, unbearably vulnerable, helpless and can fill us with the most awful dread. It can feel as if we're going to die if we allow ourself to enter this “collapsed” state. It's no wonder we avoid it and find ways to sedate the pain. Then, as we exit immobility, it can feel like we have an enormous volcano of rage inside. We're afraid of this powerful rage erupting, sometimes that fear can help dampen the rage, but other times we act on it, which can make us feel deep shame. Both entering and exiting immobility can feel like the proverbial black hole which could annihilate us if we were to go anywhere near it, so we stay away from these unbelievably difficult feelings. And we stay away and we stay away, until we can't any more. Our bodies and minds won't and can't carry any more pain and they start to buckle under the weight of trauma. Who actually wants to experience these feelings? None of us do. But that's exactly what we need to do. Peter Levine writes:

"Successful trauma therapy helps people resolve trauma symptoms. The feedback loop is broken by uncoupling fear from immobility. Effective therapy breaks, or depotentiates, this trauma-fear feedback loop by helping a person safely learn to “contain” his or her powerful sensations, emotions and impulses without becoming overwhelmed.

In the short run, the suppression of immobility sensations appears (to our denial-biased mind) to keep the paralysis and helplessness at bay. However, in time, it becomes apparent that evasive maneuvers are an abject failure. This “sweeping under the rug” not only prolongs the inevitable, it often makes the eventual encounter with immobility even more frightening. It is as if the mind recognizes the extent of our resistance and in response interprets it as further evidence of peril. If, on the other hand, one is able to utilize the vital assistance of titration [small doses] and pendulation, one can touch gently and briefly into that deathlike void without coming undone. Hence the immobility response can move ahead in time toward its natural conclusion, self-paced termination."

Uncoupling the fear from immobility is absolutely necessary because unless and until we do that, we will not enter immobility because it's too frightening and consequently the likelihood of being flooded, overwhelmed and even retraumatised is very high. We get tastes of what it's like when we're triggered, we'll feel some of the fear or dread, get scared and then feel rage that we can't escape our situation, which leads to hopelessness which can then descend into blaming and shaming our self for not being able to help our self. And so we push our pain down as much as possible, until the next time. It is the experience of pendulation, the rocking back and forth between contraction (fear, collapse, rage etc) and expansion (feeling empowered, calm etc) that gives us hope, and resiliency. It breaks the closed loop of feeling trapped and we can move forward. He writes:

"The shifting (between the fear/resistance and the unadulterated physical sensations of immobility) evokes one of the most important reconnections to the body's innate wisdom: the experience of pendulation, the body's natural restorative rhythm of contraction and expansion that tells us whatever is felt is time-limited ... that suffering will not last forever. Pendulation carries all living creatures through difficult sensations and emotions."

* He describes the same process in the brilliant Waking the Tiger, but does not call it pendulation.

It is the first purpose of hope to make hopelessness bearable ~ Robert Brault

Dr Gabrielle Rutten on chronic health issues

Dr Gabrielle Rutten on using Emotional Freedom Techniques for unresolved stress and emotions, often the cause for chronic health issues. Personal peace procedure and EFT short cut diagram and procedure.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself ~ Marcus Tullio Cicero

Uncomfortable emotions

Emotions have evolved over millions of years, we could never have survived without them. Emotions enable us to assess situations and people and act accordingly, acting as guides and maps for surviving and thriving. I believe our relationship with emotions in general could be healthier, particularly emotions widely considered to be “negative” such as fear, anger, rage or guilt. The only reason we refer to these emotions as “negative” is because we don't know how to feel them and as a result they feel uncomfortable.

When we're able to allow emotions, though they may feel very powerful and scary, to move through our bodies, we're fully feeling our emotions. It's when we half feel emotions that they become an issue, they get stuck and start short circuiting in our system. This can happen if we become frightened of the enormous power and energy that emotions such as fear and rage carry, energies that power us to deal with certain situations and people. We can freeze feeling these emotions if we are unable or unresourced to take any action. The resulting short circuit or incomplete response can then be triggered every time we feel the same emotion in the future. If not released and resolved these short circuits contribute to an increasing build up of stress, which puts enormous pressure on our whole system.

Another reason for labeling certain emotions as “negative” is early conditioning. Take anger as an example, many adults believe children don't have the right to feel, never mind express, anger. It is possibly one of the most derided emotions in our “civilised” society, but anger is a very normal and appropriate response when our sense of self is being threatened. If a child is abused, not listened to, not taken seriously or not respected, anger arises in an effort to re-establish and reset their personal boundaries. But if a person's sense of self worth has been eroded, they will have problems feeling and expressing anger when it arises to protect them, because they don't feel worthy of protection. If they do manage to feel or express some of their anger they can be shamed for having the audacity to assert their sense of self worth and personal boundaries. A parent who allows and encourages their child to feel and express their anger, cultivates the child's self worth and personal freedom to define what behaviour they will or will not accept from others. Problems with feeling and expressing anger are related at the deepest level to self worth.

Anger, when unfelt and unexpressed can lead to rage. Rage is an enormously powerful energy that alerts us to the fact that we have been severely wounded and need protection from further hurt. It really is a cry for help. It is very very difficult not to act out from unfelt emotions. Unfelt emotions such as rage carry a huge energetic charge that propels us to discharge it, and unless we know of healthy ways, we'll discharge the energy in any way we can, often hurting our self and others. We'll take whatever temporary relief we can get. A felt emotion does not carry the same charge, so emotions are not the problem, not feeling emotions is the problem. We need to remember that what we don't feel, we act out, not the other way round. Many of us need to heal our relationship with anger and let this beautiful protective emotion serve us.

Anger is one of the sinews of the soul ~ Thomas Fuller 

Stay on one point

Until you yawn, sigh, burp … whatever your sign is for releasing tension, keep tapping on one point until it happens. As in SLOW EFT start on the karate chop point or the sore spot and pick a word or phrase that describes how you feel, or a word that holds a charge for you about something or someone. Let's say for example that the phrase “it's hopeless” describes how you're feeling about a situation or person, start tapping at the karate chop point and keep saying “it's hopeless” until you release stress in your unique way. Then move on to the top of the head until you hear another sigh or yawn. Be aware that each time you sigh, yawn, burp, hear gurgling in your gut, feel jerks in your legs or arms, your nervous system is releasing tension. It feels good to know that your stress levels are coming down and your body is giving you very real convincing physical signs that stress is being discharged from your system. EFT short cut diagram and procedure.

Freedom to feel

Emotional Freedom Techniques helps us process and feel uncomfortable emotions. As we learn to be comfortable with feeling our emotions, our capacity to allow any emotion move through our energy system grows. What this means in a practical way is we can process an emotion, no matter what it is, without having to dissociate from it or distract our self from feeling it. Feeling helps the emotion or energy move freely through our system so it doesn't short circuit. Emotional freedom is the freedom to feel any feeling, it doesn't mean freedom from feeling.

What causes a short circuit in our energy system? It seems that anything other than experiencing love and acceptance carries with it the potential for short circuiting our energy system. Love and acceptance feel good and flow through our system uninterrupted. Unless of course we are shut down to love because of being hurt or if we have not experienced love right from the beginning of life. Because if we can't allow our self to feel love, the experience of love can short circuit in our energy system. We can construct walls for protection, but the walls we build cut off this vital nourishment and our system atrophies. Love nourishes us in every way that we can be nourished.

Hurt, guilt, shame, anger, fear carry huge potential for short circuiting our systems, that is, until we learn how to feel or process these emotions. It's the reason why these emotions are often referred to as “negative” and why they can instil so much fear. This fear propels us with an urgency to tap the emotion away, get rid of it and avoid it so we don't have to feel it. When we can fully feel uncomfortable emotions, our resilience grows, we become stronger and our energy system evolves. All emotions are ultimately good for us when they are felt.

What helps us feel uncomfortable emotions? It appears that feeling loved right from the start of life gives us a head start in handling emotions. Feeling loved gives us resiliency, security and a strong foundation from which we can bend when the wind blows and not snap and break into pieces. When the having and the expression of different emotions are accepted and even encouraged, a sense of esteem and self worth blossoms. Feelings and the person who is having them, are taken seriously and respected which leads to self trust.

Learning how to feel our emotions as early as possible can save us from a lot of heartache later in life, but we can always choose to feel at any stage of our life. It takes courage to feel and EFT can help us accept, sit with and feel our emotions.

Connecting the dots

In the theatre of the body, trauma can be transformed. The fragmented elements that perpetuate traumatic emotion and behaviour can be completed, integrated, and made whole again. Along with this wholeness comes a sense of mastery and resolution ~ Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences

If you have ever questioned how you feel, or if others have ever questioned how you feel, and as a result you have wondered whether you're imagining your feelings, dramatising them, maximising them, taking them too seriously, going around the twist, have completely lost the plot, have just not gotten over them and you feel you “should have” at this stage, or you feel the pressure of others thinking that you're a broken record, take a moment and listen to your body. Do you have any chronic health issues that have not responded to allopathic medical treatment?

Our body is a container, and its symptoms are windows into our unconscious, all we need do is look and listen. The next time you or another question the validity of your feelings, or you feel like beating your self up for where you are, listen to your body's symptoms, they never lie. You can always, always trust your body. Your body is showing you, in every way that it can, how to take your self and your feelings seriously. If you choose not to listen or don't hear, your symptoms will scream as loud as they have to until you do hear what they're saying.

The majority of us would agree that stress is one of the main causes of disease. Stress, or more specifically, undischarged stress, can cause havoc with our health, it can contribute to heart disease, strokes, inflammation, insulin resistance, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue syndrome, the list goes on. The presence of chronic symptoms in our body is our evidence of a cause, evidence that we're not stark raving mad. And so often that cause is the early imprint of feeling unloved which puts extreme stress on our system from the beginning. The stress and pain of not being loved has to go somewhere and so often our body absorbs it because we just don't have the resources to feel that kind of pain when we are babies and children and we often lack the resources as adults as well.

When we are not loved and wanted, there's no safe haven where we can be our self, have our needs met or thrive, so, we do our best to adapt and survive, we contort our true self in order to try and get the love that we need. The operative word being “get”. This relentless search for getting love changes who we are, and it can be a long road back to our true self. If the trauma of feeling unloved remains undischarged, it causes absolute mayhem in our bodies and lives. Until we can fully connect to that pain, we will continue to re-enact the trauma and/or manifest its effects in our body in order to find resolution.

We seek not rest but transformation. We are dancing through each other as doorways ~ Marge Piercy