Trust Your Chair

Funny how life throws me opportunities to practice what I preach...

Yesterday, while in the ER and holding my little boy "E" who had taken a nasty spill from a bike, I was reminded of a practice called "Trust Your Chair" taught by healer Thea Elijah.  So, there I sat doing my best to comfort E and realized my whole body was stiff.  Seriously, what child is going to feel comforted in the arms of a parent that is tense and stressed?  Certainly not mine.  Here's what I noticed: Only the tips of my toes were touching ground.  My leg muscles were wound up,  shoulders contorted, and my breathing was shallow.  I was in a total panic that my baby was in pain.  He was bleeding.  He was crying.  I was crying.  My heart was breaking that I couldn't seem to help him feel better.

And then I took a breath.

Somehow in becoming aware of the tension in my body, I also became aware that if I wasn't able to find comfort in my own body, I couldn't help E find comfort in his.  I softened.  I breathed again.  I placed my feet flat on the floor, shifted my tone of voice from "worried" to "you are going to be ok".  My shoulders dropped and I allowed my body to surrender to the chair.  Completely.  E snuggled into my arms, stopped crying, and settled.  We both stopped crying.  We found a way to reverse the upward spiral of anxiety that we had found ourselves in just moments earlier.

Whatever your body position right now, pause for a moment and observe how you are using your body while looking at this screen.  In this moment, are your shoulders up by your ears? Are your feet tightly tucked under your chair, with your upper body craned toward the screen as if you are about to spring into action? Are you slumped over, chest caved? Which of your muscles are tight and which are loose?  The way in which we hold our physical body has everything to do with how we hold our emotions and thoughts.  Create ease in your body and observe what happens to the rest of you.

Experiment now with softening your belly, your shoulders, your lower back, your jaw.  Give yourself permission to trust the furniture that you are sitting on.  Give it the weight of your entire body and allow yourself to be supported.  From this place of physical softness and surrender, you may find your thoughts flowing more easily, or your breath deepen.  In letting go of muscle tension, you can find yourself deeply grounded and rooted. 

The more you practice this relaxed body, the easier it will be to find it when you are tightly wound in the opposite direction.  You can practice "trusting your chair" while holding your child, listening to a friend, sitting in traffic, or if you are having difficulty falling asleep.  Here's the guarantee: when you soften and create ease in your physical body, the rest of the world will go easier with you.

Ease is contagious.  Spread it generously.

Where's the Cheese?

As humans, we can easily find ourselves blaming others for creating upset in our lives.  We look at our family members, co-workers, and even complete strangers as the cause of our suffering.  When we believe we have been wronged, our capacity for feeling offended, hurt, violated, and disrespected is seemingly endless. Our feelings may indeed be justified, and by all means we are entitled to feel them, however, there is no cheese at the end of the maze. 

There is no cheese because in the process of pointing the finger, we give away our power to shift a situation.  If we could unclench our jaws, fists, and hearts for even a few moments, maybe we could move beyond the maze of thoughts that keep us in victimhood...stuck in the conversation that we have been wronged.  Maybe we could begin to see that what we detest in others is what we ultimately detest in ourselves.  We can open our hearts to our perceived enemy and know that whether we want to admit it, or believe it, or like it, we are all doing the best we can.  From this place of understanding, suddenly a small opening appears, and there it is...the cheese that we have been looking for.  

Take a moment to digest this quote by Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh.  He offers a brilliant alternative to finger pointing and inspires me to think a larger thought when I find myself blaming.

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change. - 

Thích Nhat Hanh

Today, choose one person that will be on the receiving end of your ability and willingness to understand.  This may be a gift that you offer to yourself first and then extend to someone you love, or a stranger who cuts you off in traffic.  Observe what your body feels like when you are blaming vs. understanding.  Larger thoughts bring physical ease and expansion.  Allow your body lead you through the maze.  It always knows how to get to the cheese.

Peace to you,
Dawn

First day jitters

photo by Leo Reynolds

What might we create for ourselves, our children, and our planet if we remembered to breathe? What if we stopped running our old stories about ourselves long enough to take just one deep breath?

As humans, our negative commentaries (I'm not good enough, no one will like me, I'm a bad parent, I'm a better parent, etc.) take us away from noticing what is real, true, and tangible.  They keep us flailing helplessly in a sea of I can'ts, I'm nots, and I shoulds that are hardly ever based in reality.  A few deep breaths - I'm talking so deep that you feel them in your pelvis - can bring you from the land of make believe right to this very moment.  While the breath may not get rid of your fears, worries, frustrations, or your neighbor's barking dog, it will bring you to this moment where you can create another possibility for yourself - a new commentary.

For example, my daughter and I both have the first day jitters.  I am feeling terrified of what you all will think of my first blog entry...the what-ifs that are coursing through my brain and body have kept me from starting this project for months.  Similarly, my daughter is so nervous to meet her new teacher and see old classmates that she is visibly pale and expressionless.

Pause. Breathe.

photo by Marco Bellucci

What changes after I breathe is that I become aware that really, I am a human being sitting at a computer and typing some words.  Really, I am none of the things I fear, and none of you have thrown virtual rotten tomatoes at me.  It's all made up.

For me, the breath in this moment reminds me that I have courage.  For my daughter, her breath brought pink back into her cheeks and allowed her to put one foot in front of the other.

Fear + breath = courage. What gift will your breath bring you?

With Courage,
Dawn

My Why

Choosing to become a blogger wasn't necessarily what I ever imagined for myself.  However, when it was suggested to me, I found myself getting excited about sharing what I have learned over the last several years while studying acupuncture and what I continue to learn while living life.

Many teachers at Tai Sophia Institute, including founders Bob Duggan and Dianne Connelly, have helped me to open my heart and mind and take on practices that have immensely shifted my way of being in the world.  They encourage all students to take the wisdom that is taught and "give it away", creating as large of a ripple effect as possible.  My purpose in blogging is to share those practices with you, reinforce them for myself, as well as offer other thoughts on how to live well physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Similar to my intention when I offer acupuncture needles to my patients, my hope is that the words you read in this blog will bring peace and ease into your life wherever there may be suffering.  I welcome you, as you are.

Peace to you,
Dawn

Acknowledgement

Have you paid attention to what your response is when someone offers you a compliment? What does your body do?  Where do your thoughts take you?

Maybe you openly disagree with the person offering the acknowledgement - your eyes cast downward, chest sunken.  Maybe you politely say thank you and act as if you are taking it in, however, your mind takes you running in the opposite direction.  Do you feel compelled to tell the person something negative about yourself in order to sabotage the moment?

These ways of reacting are not good or bad.  And you don't have to give them up.  You may have more practice with bashing yourself and that's ok.  However, violence against yourself is always optional and there are other possibilities.  First....

Allow yourself to be a beginner.

What might shift if you were to begin to allow yourself to receive acknowledgement without attaching a negative label to it or the person offering it? If you are going to label it, you might as well give it a label that serves you.  For example, you can imagine the kind words of others as nourishment.  Much like the food we take in, the water we drink, the rest we give our bodies, the air we breathe, we need to receive kindness to be well.  When we close our hearts to this nourishment, we are missing an opportunity to quench the need that we all have as humans to feel recognized and loved.

The next time you hear genuine acknowledgement come your way, have courage to pause, and experiment with the following steps:

1. Feel your feet on the ground.
2. Imagine the words, just like your breath, filling your chest.
3. Allow yourself to be moved.

You can reinforce this new way of being by asking the person to repeat their words until you have fully taken them in. This may seem uncomfortable and strange, however, when you are a beginner at anything, repetition is necessary.  Another option is to apply these steps while imagining a time when someone offered you acknowledgement and you didn't take the time to receive it fully.

Remember that kindness is a gift, pure and simple.  Taking it in may inspire you to more readily give it away.

With a deep bow of acknowledgement,
Dawn