Category Archives: Body

Start Where You Are

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Beginners to meditation often lament that just the thought of sitting still is too much for them. “I can’t sit still!” I have often heard new meditators say. “Meditation is not for me.”

When someone says, “I can’t sit still,” it may be that in that moment they can’t and that’s OK. One of the beautiful things about meditation is that you start where you are. 

If when you sit down to meditate, you feel jittery, antsy, nervous, scratchy, or fidgety, then that’s the place to start. Often, bringing your awareness to your breath brings a sense of calm with it and the jitters dissipate. But, sometimes the fidgeting lingers or even gets stronger. 

Trying to push a nervous jittery feeling away won’t work. What meditation teaches us is that the way to relieve suffering is by going into it and through it.  You might say, “Oh, but it is just the jitters. I am not suffering.” Then also notice if you also feel spacious, calm, and open. If you don’t then the jitters is holding tension. Be willing to hold the disquiet. Something is not right. There is suffering under the surface. It may not be ready to show itself fully. But, it is inviting you to notice. 

Notice it and acknowledge it. “Fidgeting is here,” you might say to yourself. Don’t judge it or make excuses for it. Be friendly and neutral. Feel what you are feeling (to quote Mark Epstein). Allow it to be there without pushing it away. Just let it be. 

Notice where in your body you feel it. Perhaps in the shoulders, arms, or hands. Maybe in the torso or legs. Perhaps in the mind. When you invite yourself to notice where you feel it, gently acknowledge that too, bringing your full attention to it and its bodily place. “Fidgeting is here in the shoulders.” 

Sometimes, just by bringing our full attention to it and holding it in this neutral and friendly way, it softens and dissipates. If it does, then return your full attention to the breath. If it doesn’t, then be curious. 

Yes, open your curiosity. Be interested in it. Invite it to let you know something about it. You might say to yourself, “What is this fidgeting?” Or “I’m inviting this fidgeting to let me know how it is for it.” And, then just wait. Don’t try to find an answer. Just drop your invitation into your inner space and wait. Something may come or unfold. Whatever comes is OK. If something comes, stay with it in the same neutral and friendly way. If nothing comes, then return your attention to the breath.

When I first began meditating, a sharp pain in my back between my ribs would arise. I remember trying to hold my back straighter and stretching the space between my ribs. I also remember trying to do this in the background like some kind of clandestine operation while settling my attention on the breath. The more I would try to outmaneuver the pain between my ribs, the stronger it would become. I noticed how it made me feel anxious and angry. I was at a loss. I didn’t know what to do. 

The teacher had kindly invited us to sit with our backs straight, to sit like a mountain, upright and relaxed. She had instructed us how to bring our awareness to our breath and how to return our attention to the breath when thoughts would arise. I tried over and over again to bring my attention to my breath, but after a breath or two the pain intruded. 

I was too shy to ask her for advice, so I struggled with it for a quite a while, for several months actually. Then it came to me. I am at battle with this pain. It is going no where until I acknowledge it without judging it and hold it fully in a neutral way. 

This was a big aha and opened up a whole path of enquiry for me. I was so afraid of doing the meditation wrong, of not getting it right, of being inadequate. Memories of childhood incidents sprung to the surface as did their accompanying feelings. I learned to sit with what came in this new neutral way. To allow them their life. And though it seems strange, even as I write this, by allowing them to be with me fully without my interceding in any way, their energy released opening me more and more. 

This is important. Allow what is here for you right now to be here. Be with it fully. Start where you are.

Busy. Crazy Busy.

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Crazy Busy Effect

“I’m Busy. Crazy Busy. And, how are you?”

Is this you? This used to be me; I remember a time when I was “busy, so busy, too busy, crazy busy.”  Too busy to notice the morning . Too busy to sit down for lunch. Too busy to see friends. Too busy to take a walk. Too busy to get needed sleep. Always too busy. Even when doing things like playing with kids or exercising which might have been relaxing, I felt so busy!

For a time, busy felt OK, like I was in the groove. Then slowly I sensed something off-kilter. Busy wasn’t feeling good. It kept feeling worse and worse.

Now, I see it’s not just us adults, it’s kids, too, college students, teens, even pre-schoolers. We schedule ourselves from early morning to evening. And, when asked, “How are you?” We reply, “Busy, crazy busy.” and how that is for us shows in our body language and facial expressions. We’re exhausted.

So, what’s going on here?

This busy-ness is our culture at work. Being busy is what we do to belong; to be part of our community. Imagine saying in the middle of the day at work, “I’m wanting some rest. I’m going to take a walk.” Most of us wouldn’t do it, or we wouldn’t say it even if that’s what we were going to do. Why? Because, “being busy” and “not taking time to rest in the middle of a busy day,” is our culture in play. I like this definition of culture that Mary Hendricks-Gendlin gives us. “Culture is the routine actions and feelings which a situation consists of.” And, “culture belongs ‘to all of us within the community.'”

It doesn’t have to be this way. Imagine feeling the rightness of taking some time every day to separate yourself from all the routine actions and feelings associated with ‘I’m busy.’ Imagine using that pause to sense the whole of your situation at that moment in order to feel the rightness of your action knowing and accepting that your right action may not be one prescribed by your culture. To be truly creative, innovative, open, and alive, we first need to pause the routine button.

Here’s how to pause.

  • Sitting comfortably let your body take its most comfortable position.  Any place where your body can be quiet for a few minutes is fine.
  • Close your eyes or lower your gaze, if that feels right.
  • Feel your hands, your fingers and fingertips and what they are touching. Now feel your feet. Perhaps wiggle your toes and feel how your feet feel alive.
  • Feel the contact of your body with the support beneath you. Maybe it is the chair you are sitting on. Notice how the support holds you. And, if it feels right rest into that support.
  • Sense your breathing, just the way it is. And, if it feels right take some deeper breaths.
  • Now bring your attention inside to your inner body. That’s right. Inside. Sense your throat. Sense your chest. Sense your stomach and belly. Sensing each inner place for how it is right now.
  • Now remember that whole thing of being so busy. That’s right the whole busy-ness situation. Now offer it an invitation, inviting it to come into your awareness. And sense how that whole busy-ness situation is right now in your body, probably in those places you were sensing before the throat, the chest, the stomach and belly.
  • Maybe something is there for your right now. If there is say “hello” to it and notice what happens.
  • Maybe you sense something but are unsure of what it is. Maybe you’re unsure anything is there.  That’s good, too. Just wait. Something will come. When it does sense if it would like a “hello” or maybe it would like some company, like you’d give a good friend. Hang out with it. It has something to share with you.

Joy and Sadness

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Previously, we have explored the emotions of anger, fear, worry, and grief. Today, our topic is joy and sadness. Joy and sadness are about caring. When we get something we care about we experience joy. It may be a beautiful sunset, a longed-for treasure, a long-awaited goal, or a blossoming of heart-felt relationship. Joy resonates in the body as a twinkle in the eye, a blush upon the cheek, a smile on the lips. When we lose something we care about, something dear to us or our community, we experience sadness: The loss of friendship, opportunity, or treasures-of-the heart. Sadness resonates as a tear in the eye, a pallor to the cheek, down-turned lips.

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In traditional Chinese Five Element Theory, joy and sadness are the emotions related to the fire element which is expansive, upward in motion, and relates to heart energy.  Fire, symbolic of combustion, represents that fleeting moment of maximum activity followed by its falling away. From a physiological perspective, all emotions are electro-chemical signals that flow through us in an unending cycle. Every emotion is a specific signal asking us to focus, to collect information, and then to act accordingly.

Joy and sadness are related to heart. We talk about the joy in our hearts and our hearts breaking with sadness. Joy manifests in us as love, laughter, and enthusiasm and when balanced, we are able to give as well as receive warmth and delight in the company of others. Sadness manifests as a fall in energy, a momentary melancholy, and withdrawal away from others. Often when we are sad, a whimper or tears come.

In both the ancient and the modern Western traditions, when we are balanced, emotions move. So, too with joy and sadness. If stuck, too much joy manifests as always joking, laughing, and talking–always on without pause. And, when there is too much sadness we are in a state of helplessness and despair; continuously drained, down, melancholy, depressed.

Joy and sadness are associated with compassion. When we see suffering, we experience a twinge of sadness, a feeling of concern and connection, just before we feel a willingness to act. When suffering has been relieved we then experience a moment of joy. Often, sadness can get stuck in caregivers and others in the healing and humanitarian professions. This is because instead of letting go of the concern and connection they feel towards those they are helping, they get stuck in sadness; leading them to take on more responsibility than is reasonably theirs to bear. Sometimes, unable to shake their sadness, they opt instead instead to leave a profession they love. Seeing thousands of starving many children, they miss the joy of the ones whom they have fed and rather, focus on those they have been unable to reach.

What can we do when joy or sadness gets stuck? We can notice. Turning inward to our bodies, we can invite the whole thing about the joy or the sadness to come forward. We can make contact, acknowledge, and listen deeply as we keep whatever comes company. Just as clouds cannot be chased away; stuck joy or sadness can’t either. It is only by turning our attention to it, by saying “hello,” and by actively listening that we can once more live our life forward.

Healthy joy and sadness are like the clouds in the sky; they pass through leaving not a trace, and always there are more another day.

Danger! Threat! Fear!

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Did you know that fear keeps us alive? It is essential to our survival. In the face of danger, we become afraid and parts of the brain activate the fight flight reaction.

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Both western science and ancient Chinese Five Element theory recognize fear as that emotion that helps keep us alive. In Five Element theory fear is associated with kidney energy or qi. Kidney qi is of a special type. It supports the body in reproducing, growing, and developing–the bodily life cycle. So, it is not surprising that fear works with kidney qi to keep us alive.

From a western scientific perspective, fear arises from a perceived threat and we experience the physiological response called fight flight or the stress response. Fear is an important element of fight flight because when we feel fear that’s a signal to us that we need to pay attention, not just react but really pay attention.  Here’s why. So important to our survival is fight flight that when a threat stimulus reaches the thalamus, its first processing point in the brain, the same stimulus takes two different processing paths. The short route is rough and fast. The long route brings in higher processing and is much more precise but is also slower.

The short and long processing works like this. Suppose we’re hiking through the woods and just up ahead, we see something. It looks like a long narrow shape coiled up on the path. The short route says, “Must be a snake!” “Snake,” says the amygdala, “I’ll tell the hypothalamus to turn on the stress response!” At the same time, the long route sends the information to the cortex for higher processing, “Wait a minute. It kind of looks like a snake but is it really?  No, it isn’t. It’s twisted woody vine.” But, let’s check in with explicit memory.” The explicit memory is consulted through the hippocampus. “This is twisted woody vine. I’ve seen this before.” Word is sent to the amygdala. “No snake! Just twisty woody vine.”  The message is received and more messages tell the nervous system to reset.

The fight flight response causes physiological changes in our body via the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. These include elevations in perspiration and heart and respiratory rates. It makes sense. If we’re going fight or flee, we need muscle power and that means we’d better have oxygen and blood flow going to the muscles so we can punch harder or run faster. “Snake! Run!”

At the same time that the sympathetic nervous system is ramping up glucose production, it is also making other less noticeable but just as important physiological changes in the body. The pupils dilate, blood is drawn away from the skin to the muscles alas the saying, “white as a sheet,” when someone is really afraid. Parasympathetic modulated responses such as digestion and large intestine and bladder functions cease. The body is so focused on fight or flight that the bowel and bladder may even empty spontaneously.

When  a threat presents itself, fear arises and the stress response system turns on. When the danger passes, our fear evaporates and the nervous system shakes off the stress response by re-balancing its sympathetic and para-sympathetic branches. Animals in the wild literally shake all over once danger has passed.

But what happens when our nervous system isn’t able to shake it off? This happens when one perceived threat is followed by another one before the nervous system has had time to reset. This is the dilemma of our modern life. The dangers and threats we face are not tigers looking for their next meal and usually, not even snakes in our path. We face a plethora of perceived dangers often driven by our own thoughts. We are afraid of not having enough of what it takes to meet the challenge that lies ahead. Perhaps we are afraid we can’t complete or achieve that which we aspire to or that we are inadequately prepared for what we might be asked to do. “Will I get laid off?” “Is this relationship going to fall apart?” ” What’s going to happen at work today? Will my project get approved?” “Do I have enough money to pay the mortgage this month?”  These are all survival fears! And, one after another they arise without ever giving our bodies time to reset. The result? We live in a state of fear and physiological stress. It takes its toll on our health and well-being. Our kidney qi gets zapped.

If we don’t do something non-stop fight flight or stress response can turn from something that saves us into something that kills us. What can we do?

We can pause. Remember that when  a threat appears, we feel fear and the brain processes it both on a short,  fast track and on a long, slow tract. The fast track processing gives a quick and rough appraisal to the amygdala, “Ah, it looks like a threat. Better to act now than be sorry.”  But, if we pause, we allow the long tract enough time to process. The higher processing of the cortex and explicit memory via the hippocampus can weigh in. Is this really a threat? No, it isn’t. The body can relax.

Our fear is a signal. It is a signal to pause and bring our awareness inside to the whole thing about the perceived threat.  We can make contact with it by saying, I’m sensing something in me that’s really afraid … .” We can acknowledge it by saying, “Hello, I see you’re there.” We can keep it company with interested curiosity and when it is ready to tell us something, we can listen mindfully, with our full attention, non-judgementally and with compassion.  We can ask, “What is this wanting to happen?” or “What is this not wanting to happen?” This practice of pausing with awareness can save our lives. It can keep the fight flight, stress response at an appropriate level. Turned on when necessary; turned off when not. It can keep our body mind in balance, healthy and well.

Transformative Grief

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Grief is our natural emotional response to a loss of something or someone with which or with whom we had a bond. We grieve when someone we love passes. We grieve when we are separated from someone important to us or from a job that is no longer ours or from a lifestyle in which we can no longer participate perhaps due to illness or misfortune.

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Grief is one of the five emotions (the others being joy/sadness, worry, fear, and anger) described by the ancient Chinese Five Element Theory. Grieving is a process; it moves like the seasons, like summer into autumn. Summer’s creative action culminates with the harvest while autumn’s energy strips the leaves from the trees and makes everything bare. The leaves fall to the earth giving nourishment for new growth in the spring. Grief moves like the active energy of summer falling away into the inward-turning and letting go of autumn.

Grief’s living forward energy cleanses and purifies as it distills creative, active bonds into their essence, this most precious thing that carries us forward with natural resilience to new creative action. Just like the resilience of nature as it sprouts, blooms, and withers in continuous cycle. S. A. Berger, in his 2009 book Five Ways We Grieve, identifies four paths of creative action which may come from grieving.  These include preserving the memory of the loved one or lost thing, recreating a sense of family or community, helping others dealing with the same illness or issue of the loved one or lost bond, and creating meaning through religion, philosophy, or spiritual quest. In each of these there is a life-forward movement. Think of the grieving parents of a young Leland Stanford Jr. who after losing him to typhoid fever when he was only 15 decided that because they could not do any longer for their own son that they would do for the children of California. Out of this they built Stanford University, now one of the world’s most prestigious. Think of those who have rebuilt families after losing one of their own to war, illness or accident or towns that after losing many of their inhabitants to earthquake, tornado, or flood have built again never losing the memory from which they have come. Think of those who through the grieving process have given themselves to healing others, providing solace, or seeking the spiritual–reaching out, touching, transforming suffering into the sweetness of the moment.

Grieving is not all sadness. It can also bring forth moments of delight and laughter when we remember something joyous, something funny, something wonderful about our loved one or loss. I remember a family story about my father’s remembering his Aunt Bertha after her death.  The story goes that Aunt Bertha was a no nonsense women, who worked in an airplane factory as a welder during the war. Once at the dinner table, and much to my father’s delight, she took a big piece of cherry pie even though she had not yet finished her meal.  When my grandmother, her sister, admonished her  she matter-of-factly said, “You never know if there will be any left the next time round. I’ll just have mine now.” The story then goes that my father, grieving the loss of his dear aunt, laughed so hard telling this story that tears came to his eyes, happy tears for his Aunt Bertha.

What happens when grief gets stuck? Unable to process, to transform, it hunkers down. Its energy unable to move becomes oppressive rendering us unable to function. We may become lost in sadness or depressed for a prolonged period of time. Or, we may disassociate from our grief. Unable to sense it in our bodies we think it isn’t there. Perhaps we hold a belief that grieving is just something we don’t do, that we just have to get on with life, so we push it away.  Or, we exile it because another part of us thinks that it’s too much to bear. But, it isn’t. There is room for all to come.

When we allow our grief to come to us like autumn comes in nature, when we are present with it, acknowledge it, keep it company, and sit with it with interest and curiosity, it will show us its life-forward energy and we will be transformed.

Worried Sick?

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Worry, like anger, joy/sadness, grief, and fear is a natural emotion. For thousands of years, we have recognized the energy of worry as that energy which triggers thinking. The feelings of worry–uneasiness and concern– move us to think how to satisfy the worry.

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In its natural form, worry is healthy. And like all healthy emotions worry moves.  Worry moves us to think. Thinking moves us to a solution. Then worry releases leaving as naturally as it arrived in us. This movement from worry to thinking to solution is something we do every day.

Suppose that we live by a river. In the spring, we notice that the rains swell the river.  Sometimes the river becomes so full, it overflows its banks. Our house is right there and we notice that when the river overflows, the water approaches our house. We notice that it comes close, just to the border of our garden.

Now, worry arises in us. We worry that the water could flood the house! So what happens? Our worry leads us to think how to protect our house. “What can we do to protect the house from being flooded by the river’s waters?” We ask ourselves. “Ah, we can bring sand bags to protect the house; or we can put the house on stilts; or we can work with others in the community to build a higher levee to protect our homes.”

Our thinking gives us options;  we have three here already. It also helps us to see which one fits best. Ah, sandbags seem best. We discover that the city stocks them every year for residents just like us. We make note of where the city stockpiles are and how to get there on several different routes. We note that the sandbags are within five minutes of our house. Deep breath. We have a solution and a plan to implement it. No more worry.

But suppose instead of leading us to this kind of constructive thinking, our worry leads us into a negative kind of thinking–a circular and repetitive thinking that feeds upon itself. If instead of problem-solving thinking, we careen off into this negative kind of rumination, we might think like this.

“There’s nothing I can do to stop the river from flooding. This is futile. What do I do if the water starts rising. What if I can’t get away from the water. What if the water ruins all my belongings. I have no place to go. I am alone. What do I do if the river floods? I can’t stop it. I’m alone. What do I do? I’ll lose everything.”

And, so on and on in a circle that traps the worry and gives rise to a sense of hopelessness and isolation. We become depressed; everything seems dark and flat and negative. No matter which way we turn we end up in the same place, in the same circular pattern.

From time to time, we all may find ourselves slipping into negative rumination. Then we catch it!  But, if we don’t it becomes oppressive. We feel trapped. Worry is now a concern because it leads not to problem solving but to negative, circular thinking that makes us sick.

The expression, “I’m worried sick,” comes from our collective human experience of worry gone awry. We become anxious, depressed, isolated. We stop caring about our lives; we refuse to see our friends. Stuck worry makes us sick and we suffer.

So what can we do? We can bring awareness to our worry and then turn to our body, sensing and accepting what comes. We can acknowledge it, keep it company and listen compassionately without judging.

“How does one do this?” We may be asking. Mindfulness meditation, BodyTalk, and Focusing  are three practices that help us to do this. In all three  we focus our attention, receive what comes compassionately, and acknowledge non-judgmentally.

More On The Body

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Last week, we talked about people feeling in their body and offered a definition of body as interconnected process, interacting with the environment, sharing wisdom with us all the time. We talked about our bodily process of experiencing the world, the environment in which we live and how we describe that. We gave some common examples. The stomach tied in knots. The queasy feeling in the abdomen. The tightness in the chest. The clenching in the throat. Now, what happens when we don’t feel in our body? When there is no stomach tied in knots?  Does this mean that there is something wrong with us? Or that our definition of body as process isn’t holding up?

Not at all. Because the life process that is body is not necessarily felt by the individual in the physical body, we don’t have to feel physical destinations or associate a feeling with a physical thing such as “a knot in my stomach.”Kreuzknoten-slip_2

For some of us, we experience our bodies simply through an inner knowing. Our experiencing will lead us to say, “I have an inner knowing.” “I just know it.” “It feels right.” We have a sense of something and whether something fits because it feels right. What we don’t have is a subtle somatic experience. We are still sensing without bodily destinations and things we can describe.

In my personal experience when something is tenuous, not quite formed, or afraid of coming forward, I feel and know it is there but don’t have a place or name for it. Over time, as it develops it may feel like it is just there, in that space outside my head or beyond my shoulder, but not in any way associated with head or shoulder. Interestingly, it gives me information all along the way from the time when I just sense something to the time when I sense something over there. I don’t have to experience it as “a knot in the stomach” to listen to what it wants to tell me.

Another example of someone who doesn’t sense things in his body is someone very close to me who is a mathematician. He’ll say, “I don’t feel anything in my body,” but he’s a keen listener and will often say, I just know this; it feels right.” He’s very accustomed to thinking precisely, abstractly and intuitively; it’s in his training, so it makes sense that his bodily experiencing is abstract without place names like “stomach” and things like “knots.”

It isn’t how felt senses manifest themselves, it is whether we listen and how we listen. If we don’t listen with distance, connection, and respect or we don’t listen at all we won’t get a sense of how it is for us right now.

I invite you to sense how you, yourself, experience the body as interconnected process, interacting with the environment, and sharing wisdom. Listen and share how it is for you right now.

The Body — A Different View

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In my professional healing and wellness work, I use body-based modalities. But what do we mean when we say body? Do we share a common definition? Experience tells us that we do not.

To some the body is just a thing, “an object in a world of objects.” (Cornell, 2005, p. 221) It is that physical structure, the bones, flesh, and organs. Others acknowledge that the body is alive; it has processes, but it is not all of us. They acknowledge that the body breathes, taking in air containing oxygen and exhaling air containing carbon dioxide; that cells divide and create new cells through meiosis and mitosis; that cells and organs make new substances from other substances through chemical reactions; and that sensory information from the environment is captured and transmitted to the brain where it is assembled into an experience or a situation. But, they maintain the mind, the Self, memory, emotions, knowledge and wisdom is somehow separate from the body.

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At the same time, most of us would acknowledge that we have experienced a bodily sensation that carries with it meaning. We say things like, “I had a gut feeling this would work out.” Or, ,”I had a gut feeling to stay away from that.” Or, ” My stomach is tied in knots; I’m so worried.” No one asks, “How did the gut know?” “How did the stomach know about worry?” By which mechanism does the gut and stomach have this knowledge?

When questioned the response might be, “It’s just a saying.” But is it? We’ve felt something.  The stomach tied in knots. The queasy feeling in the abdomen. The tightness in the chest. The clenching in the throat. We have felt it. Then we let it go.

Something in the consciousness of our culture keeps us from talking about something so natural. Perhaps because the process is not analytical or rational, we shy away. And yet, we acknowledge these feelings in our everyday communication, “Something in my gut told me to call you.”  And, we make good use of what they tells us.

This is our body talking; not in a physical but in a subtle way, delicately yet precisely. This body, this interconnected process, interacting with the environment, has wisdom that it shares with us all the time. We can learn to pay attention to it in a special way so that we can fully partake of what it has to share.

When we pay attention with focused yet open awareness, moment to moment, and non-judgmentally, we are in Presence. When we are present the whole of us, the whole the body, can sense what wants our attention now. We make contact; we say hello. We listen and acknowledge from that neutral but compassionate Presence. We feel a body sensation, sense an emotional quality or mood, see imagery, and connect to a story.  By doing so, by entering into this respectful relationship with our body, we can heal, grow, and receive that life-forward energy that allows us to achieve that which we desire.

Reference: The Radical Acceptance of Everything by Ann Weiser Cornell
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Venus de Milo, The Louvre, Jastrow 2007

The Body Knows

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The body knows. Walking into a room of strangers, the body senses the situation directly. We don’t think, “I need to check this out.”  The body automatically scans the situation; and sensing the situation knows how it feels about it.

As it happens, we often don’t pay attention to the information our bodies relay to us. Perhaps this is so because the information comes in what we think is a messy way. The stomach feels queasy. There is a tightness in the throat. A pressure in the ears. Or perhaps we sigh, take a deep breath, or feel the heart beating faster or slower or feel our whole insides opening up!

The information comes about the situation and about what we feel about the situation. Walk into a room of strangers and what happens? The body scans the room noticing who is at the center and who is at the periphery. It notices who is at ease, who is tense, and who is shy; and who is smiling, laughing, or frowning. It senses who makes it feel uneasy, or worried, or scared. And, it senses who is welcoming. The body responds with a tightness in the chest, a queasiness in the stomach, or a jumping heart beat, or a turning in, a rolling, or a stammer and there is always something more, something that we can’t quite put into words but is there.

We may say, “I had a hunch about that situation,” or, “I had a feeling about that person.” Indeed, we did and our body let us know. We can’t say how we know. We just know.

When we are in touch with our bodies, we can respectfully connect with our bodily sensing and use the information it gives us to help us navigate situations, keep us safe and at ease, create new ideas, and even dive into new ventures. To gain benefit from the information, we notice what comes forth with interested curiosity. For example, suppose I walk into a room and notice everyone crowding around someone talking about her latest project. I can’t hear what she is saying but I notice that there is a little queasiness in my stomach and I notice that I don’t like that and that there is something about the person’s energy that doesn’t sit right but can’t be put into words. In this moment, something is coming with which I can have a relationship and which I can explore with interested curiosity. I can find out more about the person, the situation, and about myself by listening to what these somethings, this queasiness in my stomach AND this energy that doesn’t sit right, say or show me about the person, situation and myself.

Getting in touch with the body in this way can be enlightening, empowering, and freeing. Try this. The next time you enter a place full of people (it can at work, at the supermarket, or on the bus), take in the space around you and then bring your awareness inside to that middle space in your body–the throat, the chest, the diaphragm, the stomach, the belly. Allowing your awareness to rest there gently invite what wants your awareness now to come. Just sense what’s there. And when something comes, say” Hello, I see you are there.” And notice how it feels when you say that.

This is a first step of getting to know these fluid, life forward processes that have so much to share with us and help us in so many ways.

Crowd San Francisco

Grounding with Our Mother Earth

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How often do you walk on the earth barefoot? Once a day? Once a month? Once a year? Perhaps you can’t remember the last time you walked barefoot on the ground.

Perhaps, you ask, “Why should I?” Or, maybe you recall your mother’s admonitions to put your shoes on. Or, could it be that your feet having been too long encased in shoes of sundry sorts are now very tender making you squeamish?

Walking or standing barefoot on the ground is good for us; it’s good for our health. Our earth is an electron dispenser, sending out a steady flow of electrons which help our bodies’ antioxidant scavenging process by supplying additional electrons from the unlimited reservoir on the earth’s surface. These neutralize the harmful effects of environmental 50-60 Hz electromagnetic fields and free radicals arising from faulty metabolic processes in our bodies.

Regular contact with the earth can help us :

  • lower harmful cortisol levels
  • reduce inflammation
  • sleep better
  • improve chronic illnesses such as diabetes
  • improve blood circulation
  • alleviate PMS, aches and pains
  • feel good

The flow of electrons encompassing the surface of our entire planet Earth, also exists on the surface of all conductive things in contact with it including people, plants, and animals. Pulsating at approximately 10 Hz which is similar to the brain’s alpha waves, characteristic of the calm, restful yet alert state of meditation and following a rhythmic 24-hour circadian rise and fall in amplitude, this healthy electron flow is always available to us as long as we are in contact with it. When we insulate ourselves by always wearing plastic and rubber-soled shoes; living and working in buildings where our feet don’t touch the ground; traveling about in cars, buses, planes, trains, and bikes; and surrounding ourselves with all varieties of electrical equipment in our homes and places of work, we can’t partake of Mother Earth’s bounty of healing electron flow.

What to do?

  • Take your shoes off. Sitting down or walking around, plant your bare feet on the ground in a park or your backyard. Wriggle your toes. Have some fun.
  • Toss a blanket on the ground on the grass, in a field or woods, on the beach. Lie down. Watch the clouds pass by.
  • Walk barefoot in your house if it is built on a slab.
  • Walk barefoot at the beach. Walk barefoot in your garden. Walk barefoot anywhere you can.
  • Eat outside and let your bare feet enjoy the fresh air, too. Even at a sidewalk cafe, slip your feet out of your shoes to feel the ground beneath them.

Find any excuse to walk, sit, or lie on Mother Earth. Do often. Daily, if possible.