Befriend your body Podcast

In today’s podcast we use a classic story from Taoism to illustrate the content from the previous 3 podcasts. They say a picture is worth a 1000 words, so I use this story picture in hopes it will help my listeners feel more ease and comfort with shifting their own physiology

Tigers of the past and fears of the future can make us miserable and take all of our focus away from the goodness and safety of our daily life. Focusing on the tigers causes us to live in chronic anxiety because of our ANS.  Conversely, living in mindfulness, being right here in the present moment is the antidote to that anxiety. 

Mindfulness calms the mind, body and soul. It allows us to see reality more clearly, stripped of the fear based overlays that anxiety puts on our eyes. When we are anxious it is like we are wearing a pair of “danger glasses” and everything we see feels dangerous to us. We want to live in relation to what is actually occurring, not the fears from the past or future.

For more information on Taoism and mindfulness go to www.ibreafoundation.org/    and www.tao.org

To pick up where we left off in the last podcast, ‘what must we do to get out of threat/stress physiology?’ Here are some tools that tune our bodies back into the other side of the “coin,” out of threat physiology, back to calm sense of safety. The podcast will share four tools today. Just for fun and for ease of memorizing, they will all begin with an S.

The 4 tools are; Slow down, Silence, Shift focus and Self-Awareness. Listen to the podcast to learn how these simple tools can help you flip your body and physiology quickly out of Stress and Threat mode.

Using these and many other tools, millions of people have learned how to move from threat physiology back into a sense of grounded safety, our Autonomic Nervous System at rest. Rest and Digest is actually the term used of this state, to denote that the major systems of our body are at rest and we are able to digest our food, liquids and solids. This of course is the opposite of the Fight or Flight system, another term for stress physiology, which stops digestion and puts stress on most of the major systems of the body and impacts, metabolism, respiration, blood flow, heart rate variability, stress hormones, and our muscle/skeletal system as we brace and tense our muscles in preparation for danger.

For more information about REST & DIGEST go to https://adrenalfatiguesolution.com/fight-or-flight-vs-rest-and-digest/

Does life sometimes feel too heavy and overwhelming? Can you relate to the feeling that there is just so much going on you are about to combust with stress? Have you been there, recently?

In today’s podcast we talk about Stress and Threat physiology, a somatic state our bodies go into outside of our conscious awareness and choice. Another words, our bodies go to a scary place and we don’t have any say in the matter.

The metaphor of a coin helps explain this phenomena of our ANS. Like a coin, our physiology has two sides or modes and they are mutually exclusive of each other. So when we are stressed and anxious our ANS drops into Stress physiology.

Like you, when my body is in this state of fear and overwhelm, when the heavy dread feels all consuming, like a dense fog taking over a previously sunny day, I am unable to experience all the good that is still in my life, such as friends, love, health, work, clean water, safety, etc.

Listen to the podcast to learn more about Stress physiology and how to feel more in control of your life and body messages.  https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response

 A great article from Harvard Medical school about the power of stress.

THE "FELT SENSE PRAYER"

I am flying solo in today’s podcast as my interviewer  and dear Friend Giovana is out of town sailing in the Caribbean! I bet her felt sense is more enjoyable than mine right now. 

Today’s podcast is about the Felt Sense, a term coined by Eugene Gendlin years ago when studying successful therapy outcomes. He found certain clients were able to connect to and speak from a non-conceptual, bodily felt experience of the issues that troubled them. These clients reached their goals more quickly. The Felt Sense is a non-verbal inner source of knowing the bodily experience and sometimes cannot be put into words.

To help make this tricky concept a bit easier to grasp I will read the FELT SENSE prayer today. The author is unknown so I cannot give credit where it is due. But it is so helpful I want to share it with all my listeners.

As you listen, try to notice your body responses and if you feel a resonance with this “prayer”. This week I challenge you to really notice your Felt Sense in the different situations in which you find yourself and see how this impacts your choices and also sense of inner safety.

For a short helpful article on the Felt Sense go to:

https://mindfulfocusing.com/new-blog/2017/9/26/the-felt-sense-what-it-is-and-why-its-important

Yesterday at the beach, I saw imprinted in the sand many different bird tracks. Just by looking at the unique shape of each track, I could tell what species of bird left them behind. This visual stimulated some thoughts about how things other than birds can leave tracks in the “sand” of my life. Even “intangibles" like Love and Anxiety, or especially these two.

When I am deeply loved by another human, it leaves a tangible imprint on my heart and in my life. It helps shape my sense of identity and increases self-love and a sense of safety internally.

Unfortunately at times I fail to see the tracks of love in my life, because the tracks fear and anxiety leave seem bigger and more relevant. Anxiety leaves tangible tracks as well as love does. These can include: fear, worry, a self protective stance, doubting my decisions, selfishness, and anger. Because anxiety/fear screams at me internally, it is so easy to only notice the anxiety tracks and move into worry or panic mode.

So listen today to learn more about your life and the tracks that may be imprinted in your heart and body.

Check out this link for a great article about the power of live to impact our lives. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/love-and-relationships_b_4300010

Last podcast we talked about feeling gratitude for our humanness.  Being grateful that we are not perfect, but messy and beautiful all at once. Today’s podcast ups the ante! We suggest taking a BIG step forward from just plain gratitude into Self Love. Today we talk about loving ourselves!

For some of you this is a big duh and not an issue at all. But I know there are plenty of you out there that may find this suggestion too challenging or even offensive.  Some of us have been programed wrongly and get selfishness and self-love confused. We may have grown up with a narcissist or two and any talk of self-love brings that person to mind. 

But self-love is a healthy balanced stance to have in life. Even Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  The golden rule is ‘do unto others as you would have them do for you’. So a healthy kind of love is balanced by having love for self and love for others. The Buddhists have specific meditations for increasing our self and other love, a loving kindness meditation and it is very powerful.

Some of us have been brainwashed to only love and care for others so we may have a bit of a harder row to hoe when it comes to self-love. But life is so much better and there is much less anxiety and stress when we treat ourselves like we would treat our best friend,  with kindness and respect.

Where do you fall in the spectrum? Do you love self and others, or just self, or just others? Check out today’s podcast for more info.

GRATITUDE FOR OUR HUMANNESS

Are you grateful to be a human being? That may sound like an odd question since it seems to be our only option. But what I am really referring to is gratitude for our human messiness and imperfections. Some of us would perhaps prefer to be a perfect, limitless, robot.  Someone who is always efficient, effective and never makes an error.

STORIES HELP US CHANGE

I am reading Barbara Brown Taylor's book "Leaving Church: A memoir of faith." It is a great book about being human, struggling, growing, and accepting with gratitude the messiness of life. Some of the stories she tells remind me of this long and painful journey I have walking in learning to acknowledge and accept my human status.

BENEFITS OF HUMANNESS

Today’s podcast is about being grateful for our humanness and the benefits that come from this attitude. One is that we usually have more realistic expectations for ourselves and others. And, another benefit is greatly reduced stress and anxiety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=450p7goxZqg

A great song by J. Legend celebrating our humanness including our "perfect imperfections."

BB Taylor, "Leaving Church" on Amazon www.amazon.com

Christmas is a time for happiness and joy, or is it? It should be but sometimes we are not joyful, we are not even content with our lives, much less this holiday season.

There is much talks bout mindfulness but very little about contentment. Are we a contented culture? I would say not so much.

What blocks us from contentment? Some people fear being contented will cause them to stagnate but contentment and stagnation are very different states of being.

Listen to the podcast and learn more about contentment, and benefits of practicing this state of being.

For more information here is a good website

https://zenhabits.net/the-incredible-power-of-contentment/

What is the first thought you have when you hear the word poetry?  What do you think about poetry? Do you read it, write it, enjoy it? 

Some people think poetry is so "last century", while others deeply appreciate it. My perspective is that Poetry is a gift and a wonderful means to connect our awareness to deep and powerful emotional experiences.  Sometimes a poem allows you to really feel the depth of your feelings in a way that help you make sense of them. Not an intellectual sense, but true knowing and understanding of what is going on inside of you at that moment.

Poetry uses metaphor and word pictures to help the reader really understand what the poet is conveying. I am a therapist and I work with many clients who have survived unspeakable horrors. I hear stories at times that make me want to burst with sorrow, rage and confusion. I can't believe how people can be so damaging to members of their own families. I have some of my own hard early memories so I have great empathy and compassion. Sometimes the only way I can let go of huge emotions that I feel after hearing horror stories, especially from teenagers, is to write it down. I use poetry to connect internally to my deep feelings and then release them onto the paper using words as containers for the affect.

I will share a few poems here to demonstrate ways to connect to unpleasant and intense emotions. The first is more playful, but the second is full or rage and despair for my young clients that suffer from their own parents. Writing these words down helped me have hope for healing and to keep working with these children without falling into a deep dark depression.

I encourage you to give poetry a try. It only has to make sense to you. The words are for you after all, and not for anyone else. Let me know how it goes. Thank you for listening.

Today's podcast is an example of how the principles we have been sharing, stress management, anxiety reduction and listening to your body, actually work in the real world.

Gio and I have been podcasting about these and other subjects for a while now and last month brave Gio overcame her fears and got certified to scuba dive and went on 10 dives in the Caymans.  She is claustrophobic, and had panic attacks at the thought of being trapped somewhere, including underwater. 

But by connecting with her heart, and her courage, and using some of the tools we have been sharing, she was able to overcome this fear and have a wonderful, meaningful new life experience. Now she loves scuba diving, which is why I call her the scuba princess.

Listen to hear her experience and hear what allowed her to make this major change and reduce her anxiety about something she had feared for years.

For more information here is a good article from very well mind.

https://www.verywellmind.com/healthy-ways-to-face-your-fears-4165487