Here’s a good question: What does it look like when your mind and body are working in sync?

We spend a lot of time talking about having an ideal mind-body relationship, but what does that actually mean? For a long time, I simply wanted health and emotional well-being. That seemed like a good enough definition! It was the goal, right?

Wrong!

Actually, health and emotional (and spiritual, and mental) well-being are side-effects of an optimal mind-body relationship. In fact, the more you focus on trying to achieve those things, the harder it is to have them. If you focus on having a great mind-body connection, you’ll start feeling really, really good even before you arrive at your health goals.

I see the mind and body working in sync like this:

1)     You are able to feel the body’s guidance from moment to moment as it gives you sensory clues to lead you to well-being.

2)     You are inspired to follow that guidance – it feels right, fun, good, and on target.

3)     The mind agrees with what the body wants, and when it doesn’t, you are able to use your tools to help the mind relax its desire to control.

4)     The mind translates many of the sensory clues into verbal insight, giving you clearer direction in your daily life.

5)     You feel creative, inspired, and alive, and when you don’t, you realize your body needs rest and stillness.

6)     You embrace the cyclical nature of daily life – you don’t let the mind push past the body’s guidance or override it. And when you do, you notice, practice self-kindness, and address your needs. You allow the in-sync moments and the out-of-sync moments, because they are all valid.

7)     You tune in to listen to your body’s needs, your emotional needs, your spiritual needs, and your mental needs.

8)     You trust the guidance you hear from your inner intuitive voice.

9)     You let emotions flow, let yourself express them (to yourself and to trusted friends), and you get clarity around how to both communicate your needs and take care of your needs.

10)  You observe the mind and gently release identification with it so that you can hear the intuitive guidance more clearly.

I was pondering all of this today as I headed out the door for a walk/run combo. My body said it wanted to move, and it felt like doing bursts of jogging interspersed in a walk. My mind said, “Totally! That feels so great!” They were on the same page. My mind didn’t say, “You should run more/longer/faster/harder/etc.” I felt relaxed and in-sync with myself. I knew my need was to feel my body move, to drink some water, and to feel the fresh air outside as I took in the view of the mountains.

As I jogged, I checked in with my body. I noticed I was not hungry. In the past, I’ve had much trouble with over-eating. Recently, during my daily mind-body practice, my stomach explained just how much it hates being over-stuffed. Strangely, I had never understood that simple message from my body. My mind was too busy thinking, “I shouldn’t be eating this/that, but I want to eat this/that, OMG, I need to eat this RIGHT NOW, and A LOT OF IT. I had a hard day, I need a treat. I should get to eat tons of food. It’s not fair. I just want to enjoy food! What is wrong with me that I can’t just have a good relationship with food? I look terrible. Oh God, I’m getting fatter!” And on and on.

Ever since that message from my stomach, I’ve noticed my mind has quieted a great deal around food. It’s very aware now of how my stomach feels when I eat, and it’s taken to slowing down at meals and really loving the taste of every bite. It knows I can eat whatever, but it’s also really aware of what my body wants to eat. There’s just no…argument.

Today’s run/walk was so simple and straightforward. I moved because it was what my body wanted. I didn’t have a snack when I got home, because I wasn’t hungry. I was still digesting my delicious breakfast, which my mind and body had enjoyed immensely. I drank water because I was thirsty.

I came back home to write this blog post, because it was what my inner guidance was asking me to do. When I’m hungry again, I’ll eat lunch. I’ll ask my body what it wants. I can already feel how much my body and mind want to play with my daughter when I’m done writing. If I have a strong emotion arise today, I’ll allow it to be here and let it inform me.

Not every day is like this, of course. I still have days when the mind tries to take control and it ignores my body. Or when it argues ferociously with my inner truth. Or it actively obscures my inner truth. But I find that my years of mind-body practice are really starting to add up to a lot of in-sync moments, now. And when I’m out of sync, I know I have the tools to return to myself.

The side-effects – health, well-being, and spiritual growth – are really fabulous. But this in-sync feeling? It’s where it’s at.

Stay tuned for the next post, where I’ll talk about HOW to get in-sync!

Hello my name is Amy and I’m an “approval addict,” recovering with the occasional relapse.

Confessions of a Gold Star Chaser

I’m a Performer.

What this means is that for most of my adult life, I’ve been chasing “gold stars” to get other people to approve of me.

Not just approve, actually, to adore me. I wanted people to see me walking down the street and say, “there goes Amy. Did you know she solved the hunger problem? How does she do it all and stay so thin?”

If I could get the Entire Known Universe to like me, I figured I’d be invited to the best parties, make great money at a job I loved… I thought my life would feel as sparkly and shiny as it looked on the outside.

Wrong.

The Hamster Wheel

My life was a hamster wheel of constant striving — seeking out one accomplishment after another (and I had to look perfect doing it.) There was always another ten pounds to lose, another person to impress, another incomplete task on my enormous to do list.

I didn’t know it at the time but I was living in a self-imposed prison. I was trying to be someone I wasn’t which is why anxiety was my only real companion.

The gold stars I was chasing were leading me further and further away from the life I really wanted. I was trying to win over people I didn’t like. I was in a prestigious job for the prestige, nothing else. I was letting a hunk of metal dictate my self worth and I was racking up more and more credit card debt trying to look perfect.

My Life Didn’t “Fit In” with Me

I had created a life that didn’t fit me at all, just to feel a sense of belonging, to fit in. I was maintaining a persona that wasn’t me, so I could feel good about myself. But it wasn’t working and I couldn’t figure out why. I thought the solution was to achieve more, lose more weight, do better, be better.

Sound familiar?

The Mind Body Connection

Martha Beck says, “Pain is like a life coach in your body. It’s what made me a life coach because I started paying a lot of attention to what made me hurt and what didn’t. It turned out my body was trying to steer me away from a life that was absolutely wrong for me and into a life that was absolutely wonderful.”

You see, we humans aren’t meant to walk around in a constant state of flight or fight. But when you are addicted to approval, that’s exactly what happens.

Approval addicts, no matter what your approval seeking personality type, have an irrational fear that survival = “fitting in.” Fitting in takes many different forms; for some it means not doing anything to rock the boat, for others it means being all things to all people, still others think it means to never ask for help. For me, it meant being the “best” at everything (which by the way is impossible).

The bottom line is that when you have an irrational fear that your survival depends on external approval or at the very least not making people mad, bored or annoyed, you see other people as threats. You perceive social interactions as threatening and that sends the body into a near constant state of fight or flight.

Your boss looks at you funny? You think, “I’m going to get fired!”

Your friend doesn’t call you back? You think, “I’ll die alone!”

You’re in the middle of a presentation? You think, “They’re laughing at me!”

There’s a name for this phenomenon. Psychologists call it rejection sensitivity. In a nutshell, people who experience rejection become more sensitive to it. They’re more likely to interpret an ambiguous social exchange as rejection. It’s a tendency to feel deep anxiety in social situations that develops into a kind of paranoia about rejection.

The whole thing sparks a physiological response that changes the body’s biochemistry so it can be ready to deal with the “threat” – the body releases adrenaline and hormones into the bloodstream (to run faster or fight better), the immune system and the digestive systems shut down (it’s not efficient to be expending energy trying to repair tissue or digest food) and the brain switches into a hyper alert state releasing endorphins, our natural pain killers into the bloodstream (to blunt the pain of all those battle wounds of course).

Our bodies are not set up to cope with chronic exposure to this biochemical process.  

Dis-ease

And this leads to “dis-ease” in the body. For some, like me, it might mean a near constant state of anxiety compounded by the occasional panic attack mixed with a diagnosis of “unexplained infertility.” For others it might mean chronic back pain that “flares up” after a particularly stressful day. I’ve seen diverticulitis, all kinds of bladder problems, strange infections in every part of the body, and complete adrenal burnout.

Ongoing exposure to stress is responsible for contributing to about 80 percent of chronic health problems –from the obscure to the biggies: heart disease, hypertension and even cancer.

A Hidden Epidemic

Approval addiction is a hidden epidemic. Most people have no idea it’s a problem. If you think about it, it makes sense. After all, alcoholics have hangovers when they drink too much. Compulsive gamblers face mountains of debt. Smokers smell bad. But people who compulsively seek approval or avoid rejection? Most of the time, they get praise.

Flash forward six years. I’m happy to report that after six long years of infertility hell, I’m now mama of 3 kids (all under the age of six no less!). I’m still a complete gold star chaser. But I achieve because it feels good to me, not because of how I think it looks to the outside world. And I’m not going to lie, I still love me some approval. I just don’t need approval (yours or anyone else’s) to do my thing in the world. That old anxiety comes back from time to time but I know what to do to get back to my baseline emotion these days which is peace.

If you suspect that, like me, you have a problem with approval addiction, take the approval quiz here to learn your unique approval seeking personality type.

Amy Pearson, founder of LiveBrazen.com, is a master certified Martha Beck life coach, a coach mentor and instructor for Martha Beck’s life coach training. She’s a teacher, coach, writer and speaker. A former approval addict (with the occasional relapse), she’s now addicted to success. Her mission is nothing short of world peace by empowering every heart-centered entrepreneur to magnify their tribe, make great money and an epic impact while doing their unique thing in the world.

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Equus Workshop: Listening for Truth

May 4-6, 2014 2 1/2 Day Equus Workshop
Facilitated by Koelle Simpson, Diane Hunter, and Abigail Steidley
North Star Ranch in San Luis Obispo, CA

Let horses and the inherent wisdom of our very own bodies place a spotlight on your inner critic. These both of these teachers placed a spotlight on our inner critics. The direct and transparent feedback from horses and profound messages from our physical bodies gave us powerful insights that allowed us to transform our deep-seated doubts into thriving relationships and successful businesses.

Find Out More & Register>

“Claim my space,” is what my soul wisdom recently told me when I checked in.  So much of my life has been spent putting aside who I really am to make space for whom or what other people need me to be or do.  When I do that, part of me gets lost.  When I do that, I feel like I’m not good enough, there’s something wrong with me, I don’t deserve to have a life that validates me.  I might as well give up now because it’s too hard to shine the light of my soul.  Then I stuff my emotions, get depressed, and my body responds with pain.  When I stifle the feminine power of my soul the pain can show up in my pelvic area (chronic pelvic pain syndrome, vaginal pain, low back pain, side pain) and in tightness in my chest and throat.

When I check in with my soul and the path I have taken on my life’s journey, I keep coming back to this:  The pain is a spiritual journey calling me home to my soul so that I claim all of who I truly am through mind, body and emotions to be fully integrated, aligned with my feminine power, and present in each moment.

Wow.  How do I live up to that? How can I be brave enough to have just me be enough, to allow my light to shine through, to be fully loving and kind, first to myself and then to others?  Who am I to carry this message?  This has been my life lesson.

I live up to it by continually coming back to my wholeness every time I stray from it.  I live up to it by recognizing it in my spiritual teachers and feeling it within myself.  I have so many shining examples from powerful teachers in my life.  The best teachers are the ones who see me, really see me, as my whole and divine soul.  My lesson is to continue to see it in myself and to recognize and validate other women in the wholeness of themselves.  My lesson is to believe it and to live it.  My lesson is to stop hiding and taking the easy way out, to remember that the easy way, in reality, is stuck and miserable.

Several teachers have told me “Once you ‘wake up’ your soul won’t let you fall back to sleep.  You can’t go back to your old ways, because they no longer work.”  Life wants me to keep stretching out and shining my light brighter and clearer.  It wants me to push the edge, to fully step into all the colors of the beauty of my true self.  I do this by paying attention to what my soul is telling me through getting quiet and focusing within my body to access my emotions, the fractured bits of myself, my inner wisdom, my worth, my value.  I do it by moving my body and speaking my truth.  I do it by deliberately inhabiting my body, by taking charge of my life, by being a soul in a body rather than a body with a soul.

I practice and I practice and I practice and I keep opening and going deeper and learning my power, aligning with it, claiming it, burning through old emotional pain and protections, believing in myself.  I do it by looking in the mirror of the souls of my great teachers and seeing myself reflected there, seeing the beauty, the possibility of the greatness of what I truly and deeply can experience in this phenomenon called life.  I do this by feeling it in my body, feeling my body open, feeling my emotions release, by claiming my space.

I reflect my wholeness back to you.  From here I see your beauty, I see your power.  I see you.  Can you see it?  Can you see it reflected in my eyes, my voice, my heart?  Can you connect with and claim your own inner beauty?  Can you claim your space?  Come with me.  I’ll show you how.

A smart and hardworking client who is a full-time student and almost full-time employee shared this thought recently. A cause of her angst? She took a nap after getting more done in a morning than I do some weeks. It got me thinking about this particularly sneaky form of perfectionism and self-criticism. It’s a crazy-making Catch 22: I’m not doing enough, so I better do more, which still won’t be enough, so I can either continue doing more in an increasing frenzy or get stuck and avoid thinking, feeling, and acting because it all seems like just too much – at the same time it’s not enough. Just perfect. (Pardon the expression).

When I think I’m not doing enough, I often do less. When I believe I’m not doing enough volunteering/donating/ paperwork/exercising/de-cluttering/flossing/?, I can become immobilized or unmotivated. Or I do the opposite: way too much. I overhelp from an anxious, pleaser place, which doesn’t feel good. It’s also annoying to most and under-appreciated by the rest…of those whom I am trying to do more for.

Why do we do this? In my case, I think it goes back to basic human fears: I am not safe; I am not enough. The irony is that self-judgment and perfectionism create conditions for the perfect (!) storm of the fight/flight/freeze response. This creates feelings of being even less safe and less adequate. Closely related to its cousins, “I should be doing more,” “I should be doing it better,” and “I’m not doing it right,” it’s also a setup for distraction and procrastination. Nothing happens, except we get to beat ourselves up for not doing enough (or anything.) Those of us who experience mind/body pain, anxiety, emotional eating, and other symptoms courtesy of the stress trifecta also get an excuse to view our disconnection through the same self-critical lens, and the “beat” goes on.

How to free one’s self from this loop? Here’s the thought I am playing with: maybe it’s all true. Rationally, I know that sometimes what I’m doing is enough and I just need to hold that thought. It may also be true that sometimes doing more would be better, and I’m not doing as much as I could be doing and it’s still enough. It might be what my body, energy, time, and sanity have to give right now, so it’s actually perfect. And some days, doing more is taking a nap.

Wishing you sweet days and dreams,
Ann

Years ago I received this excellent advice from one of the wisest and most practical people I know. At the time I was attempting some version of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, relying on my mechanical style statement of jamming the stubborn item (drawer, door, key, trunk lid, you name it) into its “proper” place.

His advice, that the most important information was 1)not that it didn’t fit, but 2)why and how it didn’t, and 3) how to make it work with ease, it was a lightbulb moment for me. It led to noticing what what was stuck – and to non-violent household solutions.

For awhile “Don’t Force It” was my DIY mantra. Eventually I realized its truth as a more global philosophy. Force leads to struggle, which leads to a fight/flight/flee stress response, which leads to a host of mind/body pain, from IC, back pain, and fibromyalgia, to weight gain, anxiety and beyond. When I started listening to my body, it all fell into place.“Don’t Force It” replaced my previous all-purpose motto, the old Nike slogan, “Just Do It.”

One of my “do’s” had been to drag myself to the running trail whether it sounded like fun or flogging. I eventually started to notice that when my body’s need was to heal, my muscles and joints weren’t happy, the endorphins didn’t kick in, and the experience was more ordeal than exercise. Coincidentally (or not), I started reading about the concept of over-training, which provided scientific evidence for what I was experiencing. The gods of “should,” OCD, and habit didn’t strike me down for taking a day or week off. My physical being thanked me with energy and lifted spirits. I began to focus on my body’s messages and expanded my awareness to other areas of my life.

Additionally, as I played with listening to my body, I realized that at times she wanted something (physical activity, completion of a task, protein) and had difficulty being heard because of whiny thoughts: “It’s too much work, I don’t feel like it, I deserve six cookies.” That’s when my logic mind and my meta-consciousness (Compassionate Witness, Wise Guide) entered my awareness as helpful detective and observer. They have also become guides to what my being really desires: whether it’s doing, not doing, doing something else, or choosing to do/not do it this time, or file the info for the future.

My To-Do or Not To-Do Steps:

1) Notice the physical sensations and emotions from a situation/decision, especially heavy or light

2) Notice thoughts attached to emotions/sensations, if thoughts arise

3) Ask yourself what message is being sent

4) Act accordingly

5) When values, uncertain boundaries, or practicalities lead to actions that don’t feel body-centered (i.e. attend the meeting, change the litter box, pay the bills) give self a hug for awareness and file as “good to know for the future/what did I learn from this?”

The Quick Version:

I encourage you to experiment with ways of hearing what your body is telling you. I’m still learning and I would love to hear your own listening techniques. There are multiple benefits and no down side to getting your body’s opinion – and letting go of unaware force.

May the Ease be with you!

Ann

Have you ever felt like your body was filled with lead and actually doing the items on your list was harder than pushing a boulder uphill?

Have you ever forced yourself to do them all anyway, and ended up feeling exhausted, doing less-than-awesome work, and feeling downright horrible?

Nah. That’s probably never happened to you.

It has, however, happened to me! At least a few times each month, I experience this phenomenon we call resistance.

I used to beat myself up and feel guilt for even experiencing it, and then push myself through to the finish line with dogged determination. I used to think that if I forced myself to work through resistance, I’d get over it. I used to completely ignore my body whenever it had the lead-filled feeling.

It’s REALLY hard to ignore your body when your hoo-ha is on fire, your bladder is spasming, you have terrible gas all the time, and your knees throb.

Which is, of course, the point.

My body got seriously tired of me ignoring it. And after several years of learning how to listen to it, I now have a different reaction to the lead-filled feeling. I realize it means I need to stop. Now. Check-in. Breathe. Ask my body what it needs. Listen. Obey.

Resistance tells us to stop. If we honor that, we learn something important.

Like: It’s time to rest. I need more singing in my life. My body wants to sleep more this week. I feel like taking up dancing. I never did write that book I meant to write. I need to connect with a friend. This project is big, and I need help. I need to learn to delegate. That idea isn’t right for this project/moment/year. I need a date with my spouse. I need to play in the park with my kids. Time to shift my priorities. Today is not a creative day. Today is not a working day. I need to breathe deeply more often. Etc.

Whatever the message is, it’s something we need to hear. So resistance comes up to make us stop, listen, and learn. Which is why overriding the resistance is not helpful. It’s okay if it doesn’t all get done today. It’s okay if it’s not perfect. It’s just plain okay.

Stop.

About an hour before the call I noticed a stabbing pain in my stomach.  Twenty minutes before the call, my older son’s caregiver told me she wasn’t feeling well and asked to go home.  At the precise time the call was scheduled to begin, my sister rang to ask when she could drop off my younger son.  My thoughts drifted to the tower of projects perched on my desk.  I asked myself, might it be better to reschedule (for the third time?)

The scenario above provides a perfect example of when my mind does it’s very best to distract me from doing my work.  It really “thinks” it’s doing the right thing by throwing in the stomach pain or the phone call from the sister – anything to keep the decoy strategy alive.

The initial purpose for the call was to find the reason for my late night eating when I wasn’t hungry.  I had ten extra pounds of suppressed emotions camping out on my hips and I was ready to find out why.  All the little distractions that led up to the call were my mind’s way of avoiding the examination of some painful thoughts.

So, I climbed into bed, took a deep breath and made the call.  The “Whys” were ready to surface.

I looked myself directly in the mind and answered my coach’s questions honestly, openly and without judgment.  Bottom line, I was in attack and judgment mode and felt crappy.  All the while I rubbed my stomach trying to ease the painful cramping.

Thirty minutes into the call I made a break through.  I took a deep breath and laughed and in that moment noticed the stabbing pain in my stomach was completely gone.  My body knew I was believing a lie and when I let go of the belief that anything had to be different than it was, my body relaxed and said thank you.  When I’m in a state of loving what is, everything around me and in my mind is full of love.

What’s cool is that when I “fall out of love”, I have this reference to return to at any time.  My body is there to gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) get my attention to let me know I’m believing a painful story that’s untrue.

Do you remember a time when you experienced physical pain that seemed to appear with no explanation?  Do you recall what was happening in your life at that moment in time?  What was your emotional state?  Were you stressed, anxious, fearful, or sad?  Can you recall if you wanted something to be different?

When your body starts to hurt in all kinds of interesting ways including pelvic pain, a migraine, back pain, Interstitial Cystitis, or IBS to name a few, it’s doing the very best it can to show you, teach you, let you know there’s a valuable message for you to discover.  Start asking yourself questions to discover the truth.  When you do, you’ll be delighted to find the pain dissipate and crawl back into the recesses of your body and wait to serve as a messenger when you get distracted.  And maybe next time you’ll notice it just a little bit earlier until it only needs to be a whisper instead of loud, chronic pain.

If you’d like help with the questions, I’d love to support you through your discovery.

Cheers to 2011 and to listening to the wisdom of your body.  It never lies.

This week I’d like to share a post with you from my good friend and fellow coach Bridgette Boudreau.  As soon as I read this, I realized I couldn’t say it better, so I’m bringing her words directly to you.  Bridgette and I have been coaching each other recently on allowing emotions, and I think you’ll benefit from her excellent summary of this important life skill.  Enjoy!

I’ve been at war with my emotions. I’ve spent my whole life trying to stuff them down, or my more recent nuance, trying to shift the bad ones away and create the good ones. I didn’t want to feel negative emotions because I believed I’m supposed to feel good–that feeling happy was the end goal–and if I wasn’t happy I should be actively finding my way back to happy. What I ended up believing was that something was wrong with me. And thinking something is wrong with me–which creates alternating feelings of anger, fear and sadness–was not something I wanted to think or feel either. So I distracted myself with overeating, over-Facebooking, overanalyzing, overtv-ing, over-you-name-it. This was not happening in the distant past, I was doing all these things NOW. And sometimes still do.

While I intellectually understand the concept of feeling my feelings, I didn’t understand the true nature of my emotions and how to feel them. I remember asking my coach years ago how to feel my feelings and she said just lean into them. That sounded sage and true, but it took me a year of practicing feeling my feelings before I deeply understood what she meant. This instruction was not specific enough for me to understand how to feel my emotions. I always say the weight loss gurus tell us to “eat less and move more” and that if it were that simple to put those concepts into practice, I would be out of business. The same applies for “Feel your feelings!” Sure! I’ll just feel my feelings after spending my whole life reflexively repressing them. I’ll get right on that. I needed more specifics on how this whole feelings-thing works.

I’ve been looking back over my blog posts for the last year and seeing how most of them are about some flavor of how to feel, live with or shift your feelings. Basically it’s been me trying to figure out my own emotional life. In the background I continued to struggle with allowing my own emotions to flow. I didn’t tune out emotionally anymore only to check back in six months later, but I still beat myself up for not being a happier person. (Which is funny since I’m a pretty happy person–I didn’t say my beliefs were logical!) I didn’t fog out by eating whole plates of nachos anymore, but I would eat just a little bit too much at dinner to try to keep that fear of uncertainty at bay. Things began to shift for me as I became willing to delve deeply into my emotional life. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

It’s not about Fun, Happiness or even Delight
Yeek! Did you think I just took a Debbie Downer pill? Fear not my friends for I am a big fan of fun, hilarity, and happiness in all its forms. I’m just going to stop chasing it. Happiness in its healthy state is a passing emotion. Its role is to show us when a particular thing or event is joyful and then it passes. Happiness is not intended to be a static state. Shifting my emotional quest from fun to delight as I talked about in this blog post was getting warmer, but what I’m really looking for is the state of peace. And this to me is great news. I no longer have to try to create an emotional state I’m not experiencing.

I can feel fearful and peaceful.
I can feel insecure and peaceful.
I can feel resistant and peaceful.
I can feel decidedly unpeaceful and peaceful.
I can feel angry and peaceful.
And, oddly enough, I can feel happy and peaceful.

Because now I know if I’m not feeling HAPPY! or JOYFUL! or GRATEFUL!, there’s nothing wrong with me. When I feel happy or joyful, I can relish that moment, knowing it too shall pass and that I don’t have to freak out and chase it when it does. Each of my emotions (even the “negative” ones) are here to help me. All I have to do is listen.

(Hang in there, I’ll tell you how to listen below.)

It IS about Peace, Groundedness and Flow
I now have a deeper understanding of The River of Your (and My) Emotional Life. I still think of our emotions as a river, and now I know that underlying that river is the foundation of peace and groundedness. Our emotional river is meant to flow, yet we try to dam it up by repressing our emotions and/or expressing our emotions in unhealthy ways. When the river is backed up, it floods over our peace and groundedness, making our foundation hard to perceive. The foundation is still there–it always is, we just have this little flood situation to deal with now. In my previous blog post I said it was things like overeating, overshooting, over-anything that causes the river to dam up. This is true, but we distract ourselves with these things because we are resisting some emotion. The other thing we do is try to constrict the river when we feel strong emotions–we try to squish our anger, fear or sadness into the narrowest stream possible in hopes it will go away. But you’ve seen what happens to large volume of water in a tight channel right? Raging rapids and flooding! The counterintuitive thing to do is to make your channel wider–allow more room for those swift emotional waters to flow.

Emotions are Here to Help
I thought I understood how emotions are here to help, but I was missing the boat. I understood that our “negative” emotions alert us to something that needs to be attended to. But REALLY deep inside I believed they were something to be banished as soon as possible and preferably avoided. After all, they don’t call them negative emotions for nothing. Except they aren’t negative. Again, I probably read that in some self-help book somewhere and said to myself, “Yeah, yeah, nothing’s negative, it’s all for the good. Blah, blah blah.” But I didn’t really get it. Now I look it is this way–strong emotions are there to get my attention, and each emotion has a specific useful purpose that helps me deal. I’ve been reading a book recommended to me by my fabulous friend and fellow coach, Abigail Steidley, called “The Language of Emotions” by Karla McLaren. I’m not sure I buy everything McLaren says, but she sure knows her shit when it comes to emotions. Here’s what she says about the so-called “negative” ones:

“I can also see quite clearly that happiness and joy can become dangerous if they are trumpeted as the only emotions any of us should ever feel. I’ve seen so many people whole lives imploded after they disallowed the protection of anger, the intuition of fear, the rejuvenation of sadness, and the ingenuity of depression in order to feel only joy. In short, throughout my life I’ve found that what we’re taught about emotions is not only wrong, it’s often dead wrong.”

She goes on to explain how anger allows us to determine what is acceptable to us and what is not.
Fear activates your focus and intuition.
Sadness allows us to release that which isn’t serving us.

Pretty frickin’ cool.

When you allow these emotions to free-flow, they deliver important messages into your consciousness and move on.

How to Feel Your Feelings
Here’s where we get down to it.

I was onto it with this blog post, but I’ve got better tools now.

Use the below questions to keep your emotional river flowing–check in with yourself several times a day. (Another shout-out to Abigail for sharing these great questions!) This allows you to build your emotional-acceptance muscles and create that feeling of any-emotion+ peace. I’ve been keeping an emotion journal to help me keep close to my emotional ebbs and flows. I’ve noticed that by doing this I don’t feel the need to overindulge in food or engage in as many distractions.

Question 1: What emotion am I feeling right now?
Build the habit of naming it. I like to try to boil it down to one of these four basic emotions: mad, glad, sad or scared. Don’t get all rule-bound about it, but see if you can capture it in one word. Then write down anything else that occurs to you about this emotion such as:
Where you feel it in your body
Details on what it feels like (hot/cold, spiky/smooth, dull/sharp, etc…)
Ranting about the emotion or the circumstance (It’s ok to rant! Ranting helps the emotions to flow.)
Thoughts related to the emotion

Writing anything beyond the emotion is optional, the main thing is to keep this simple so you keep doing it. If you forget to do it, no problem, don’t make it a thing–that only causes more resistance.

2. Can I accept whatever I’m feeling right now without judgment?
The answer is yes or no, but either answer is correct. The idea is to explore why you can’t accept the emotion and find out what you can accept about it.
If you can’t accept it, can you accept your resistance of it? Great! Start there.
Can you accept that you’re pissed that you’re angry? Awesome.
Can you accept that you’re sad that you’re afraid? Excellent.
Can you accept that you can’t accept any of it? Aha! That’s perfect too.

Here’s another little tool to use here. I want you to try it on yourself real quick:
– Think back to the last time you felt anger, anxiety or fear.
– Notice if there’s any tightening in your body. Usually there is because we’re taught to try to suppress the emotion, hence the tightening.
– Imagine a container around the emotion.
– Now make that container bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.
Did the sensation of the emotion change?
Most people report still feeling the emotion, but that it is more manageable. This is the sensation of allowing the emotion to flow. It’s still there, but now you can again sense the peace and groundedness underneath.

Neat, huh?

3. Ask the emotion what message it has for you.
Seriously. Say, “<Emotion name here> what message do you have for me?”
Then listen.
The message will be in the small quiet voice that speaks to you right before your mind tells you what you should think about this emotion and a few other things while it has your attention.
Tune out the mind and put down whatever pops into your head from the small voice no matter how trivial, weird, ridiculous it seems.

That’s it.

There’s nothing to resolve, nothing to “work” on. This is simply you feeling your feelings, creating peace and accepting your full human nature.

I can tell you that I feel much more peaceful now that I’ve let myself off the hook for being happy all the time.

“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” G. K. Chesterton

“Once you accept the fact that you’re not perfect, then you develop some confidence.” Rosalyn Carter

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” Anna Quindlen

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen

“Breathe.” Abigail Steidley

I  love pearls of wisdom and have never met a pun that I didn’t like, so it was natural to be thinking of favorite adages as I looked for inspiration for this week’s blog.  The sayings above, which came immediately to mind, share a common theme: living in self-acceptance, ease, and authenticity.

At the same time, the painful condition of anxiety was popping up in various aspects of my personal life like mushrooms in my yard after a rainy week.

A coincidence?  I think not.  My Inner Wisdom was tapping me on the shoulder, helping me notice that my intention of living in that place of ease, lightness, and love was being undermined by anxiety.  Interestingly, the usual suspects of fear, anger, or shame, which usually disguise themselves as anxiety, were fueled this time by a deeper layer of pain in the form of perfectionism. (Me?! A perfectionist?! The woman with the cozily messy desk, the person who suffers no embarrassment when obviously directionally challenged in exercise classes, the book group member comfortable having literally lost the plot and her words in discussions?)

Well, yes. My thoughts had started to skew towards unconscious perfectionism. I was laughing less and obsessing more. I realized that I was attacking myself with “shoulds” disguised as “wants”.  Wanting not to worry, to finish a project, to generally “get it”, to be a better coach/student/teacher/family member, to be understood and loved, were actually self-judgments. I was coming up short and it was bringing me down.

This friction between these edicts and my essential self is a setup for anxiety and a ticket into fight or flight. The accompanying freeze results in procrastination and the exhaustion of being revved up with the mental brakes on, particularly unpleasant to someone who is a doer by nature.

It’s not fun and definitely not peaceful, as anyone who experiences this cycle of spinning thoughts and feelings on a regular basis knows. Right now I am consciously embracing my messy learning curve of life as, dare I say,  “perfect”, and questioning what I can learn, why I have to get it right, who I need to be perfect for, and what the heck is perfect and who made that rule, anyhow?

Since anxiety is a common factor in the physical pain of mind/body syndrome, emotional eating, and the straight-up, free-floating , whack-a-mole variety of suppressive suffering, I offer the specifics of the practice that I am playing with as return to living light, with hopes that parts might be useful to you, whether or not perfectionism appears when anxiety rears it’s unpleasant and informative little head:

1) Breathe – mindfully, slowly, often (being present and in fight/flight/freeze are mutually exclusive)

2) Notice the feeling of “anxious” and lovingly, gently, and thoroughly dig beneath it.  Find and greet the underlying emotions and experience them as physical sensations.  Or just choose to notice those feelings instead of focusing on Anxiety. Breathe. If thoughts or other feelings arise, notice them and work them if it feels right. Or just be aware of them as thoughts and feelings – not The Truth or the Essential Me – or You.

3) Practice taking a bird’s eye or long view.  Notice that what is a world of pain to you about your perceived inadequacies or less than perfect (fill in the blank) is just a blip on the radar of others’ awareness – they are busy worrying about how they appear or what is going on in their own worlds. (It’s not about you, even when it seems to be, which is great news unless you are a flaming narcissist.  Which you are not. If you were, you wouldn’t be anxious.)

4) If others do judge, in the grand scheme of things, who cares?!  Why do you?? Seriously.  Who made them emperor?

5) If you still care, go back to 2) and practice taking the long view. Another term that’s a useful reminder for me is “perspective” – like zooming out on Google maps – where did those houses go, anyway?

6) Practice smiling (the action affects your brain in a good way) and laughing gently at the “Wow” aspects of the world, yourself, others, or at a bad pun or funny story. (It’s impossible to sincerely laugh and be in anxious fight/flight/freeze mode simultaneously – see #1.)

7) Decide to lightly jump (or take little steps) back into living your life in the moment for just this moment.

8) And finally, here’s my not totally enlightened but sometimes helpful starter thought to get out of my lizardy and self-critical be-more/better mindset, courtesy of Bette Midler:

“_____ ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”

If your thoughts are a little higher on the food chain of empowerment, “Hug ‘em” might feel good and true, too.

May your heart and flight be light,

Ann

What comes to mind when you think about emotional suppression?

Being a mind body coach trained by our very own Abigail Steidley and a long-time master at emotional suppression*, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, discussing and experiencing emotional suppression. But I didn’t realize until today that when I think about emotional suppression, I only think about suppressing the…shall we say, slightly less comfortable emotions…

I’m guessing you know exactly what I mean by slightly less comfortable emotions, but just in case you need to be hit on the head (gently, of course, with a silk pillow or an oh so soft stuffed pig named Twinkletoes), here’s what I mean:

Slightly less comfortable emotions = anger, sadness, rage, frustration, shame, irritability, fear, boredom, anxiety, desperation, loneliness, fill in your favorite here ___________

While you may derive a sort of dark pleasure from referring to these emotions as crappy, yucky, sucky, or anything your creative self wants to dream up, they in fact, like all emotions, are energy in the body and are inherently neither positive nor negative. However, the story we tell about our emotions and the way that we express them will create experiences that may feel pleasurable, highly unpleasant, and anything in between.

Most of us come to mind body healing not purely for the joy of feeling emotions that we may have worked hard (albeit subconsciously) to suppress since Lincoln was in office, but rather to find relief from our pain. We embark on this journey with the hope that if we do this challenging, unappealing (at least at first), often unfamiliar work, we’ll get a result we dearly want.

If we stay with the work—which may involve stopping and starting, moving forward and backward, and innumerable retreats into the comfort of our familiar patterns and habits—we eventually find what we’ve really been looking for all along. We find ourselves.

If you’d told me a few years ago—heck, maybe even a few months ago—that taking this path would lead me to more of the self I already was, I might have run screaming in the other direction. I didn’t want to be more of myself unless it involved being a happier, fitter, more together, cellulite free, incredibly stylish, and professionally successful version of me (just for starters).

But along the way something started to change. I’m still undergoing this process, but I’m at the point where more of me doesn’t sound like such a bad idea anymore, and I can definitely see how more of you would definitely be a welcome addition to this world. I used to hate it when other people wrote things like that. How could they know that I had a light inside me if I sure as heck couldn’t see it? They didn’t know me. And I may or may not have met you. But I do know that everyone, including you, whether you believe me or not, is welcome and wanted in this world. And I’m talking about the you that you are today—high energy or low energy, natural weight or more or less, disconnected or connected—you name it.

So what does this have to do with emotional suppression?

As my coach friend lovingly helped me to realize yesterday, when we suppress, it’s not only the so-called negative emotions that we’re suppressing. We suppress the whole kit and caboodle, including laughter, playfulness, joy, power and more. Our emotions come as a package deal.

And when we suppress emotion, we’re containing the expression of ourselves: our innate wisdom, energy, vitality, the expression of our individual uniqueness and brilliance and so much more. Whether we know it consciously or not, there is something within all of us that’s yearning to be expressed. As we learn to allow our emotions to move through us in the moment, we learn to experience and express the grace of who we are.

Suppression is most definitely not “bad”—we learn to contain our emotions as a creative response to what’s happening in our environment. And unlearning suppression, if we choose to do so, takes time and commitment. But if you ever need some extra motivation or inspiration when you’re feeling discouraged, remember that when you’re ready, in your time, the universe is waiting with open arms for more you.

* Here’s the short story of emotional suppression in case you’re new to mind body healing…because you’re human (at least I’m assuming you are if you’re reading this), you feel. It just happens, the way rain falls and the wind blows. But sometimes for a wide variety of reasons, we learn that some, or even most, emotions are not okay to feel. So we work very hard to keep from feeling these emotions—or even knowing that we have them at all—by tensing our muscles and creating distractions in our minds and in our lives. This is the short story of emotional suppression—if you’d like to learn more, you’ll find lots of great tools and resources on Abigail’s blog.