I’m feeling waves of an old wound today, an old terror resurfacing today. It’s an old issue in my life which has not been fully resolved – the details are unimportant right now. I notice, each time it pops back into my head today, that familiar contraction and wave of fear and anxiety go through me – just the image of that person’s face arising in my mind’s eye sends a wave of tension through me. This time I am using it to dissolve the tension that arises in my body. Each time it arises I breathe and focus on the exact sensation it throws up. I’m NOT trying to solve the situation or run the details round in my head again or ‘work out’ what I’m going to say or do. That would have been my old pattern. I am living a new life now where I am disciplining myself to feel it in my body first, not attach to the storyline and events of the actual issue (which can go round and round forever).
I believe these challenges are an opportunity for me to feel my body more, breathe into the place where it feels stuck and uncomfortable, and keep dissolving it, keep feeling it physically as deeply and fully as possible. When you look at it a certain way it can be experienced as just a physical sensation. THIS is self love to me. To feel the yucky stuckness even more deeply, to go into it, to be fascinated by it instead of rejecting it and trying to control this discomfort by finding mental solutions.
The specific issue is very seductive. It cries out for a solution to make it go away. And yes, it will need to be attended to. BUT I want to attend to it with the person it concerns only AFTER I have moved the blocked feeling in me, NOT as a reaction to the feeling, NOT as a way to escape or get away from the feeling.
When I do my feeling and breathing and dissolving as much as possible first then the actions I take later to address this issue in my life will be rooted in equanimity and good sense, not reactive fear. However, when I take actions before having done some inner dissolving and attending to these feelings in me peacefully I am in escape and fear and my actions will likely perpetuate the problem in the World.
This practice takes discipline because the ‘problem’ is so seductive and I really don’t want it in my life any more. I’m scared of how it might turn out. I know though that being a willing participant to this challenge and feeling deeply into how this hurts in me, into how my body is using it to dissolve something old and scared and stuck, is the route to my freedom, both from the literal issue itself and from the age old pattern of resistance in me that it is a signpost for.
There it goes again. A fear wave. The scary problem reminds me it’s still not resolved. I feel the tightness in my solar plexus. I feel something I used to call ‘fear’, something I used to call ‘anxiety’.
Maybe those words have stopped being useful.
Please try this with me. Meet the feelings of ‘fear’, or ‘powerlessness’ as a way to dissolve blocked areas of the body. Breathe into them, dissolve them, feel love for yourself as you do this, compassion for yourself and all beings who have this challenge. We are all challenged this way – it’s not so personal.
This practice is a game changer. It empowers us. It can magically have unexpected effects out in the World with the issue itself.
This is how I am learning about self love in a practical way
Have you tried it?
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Great post and great advice Jamie. Love it! š
Yeah Jamie, just been getting seriously into breathing over the last few months. Seems to be the way to go. Before, I was doing the ‘ bring awareness to it and name it’ thing, now, yeah just feeling it, breathing into it, with it, and giving it space to have its own energy and work organically through my system. Feels deeply … I’m struggling to find a word…connecting and liberating at the same time. True love for sure.
really useful thing to do š
i still do my work, and organise to receive a energy/imprint etc clearing session, but while i’m waiting for someone to be available….then this is beautiful š
i often still have had to remind myself to have that time, love and compassion for myself though š
the reminder to be with the body is a big one for me too…. how come the more deep into this ‘spiritual’ (for want of a better word), the more into my body i get? and the more into my body i get, the more insights, gifts, self-healing and more š
Love it. Me too. It’s an integral part of the Presence Process which I am in the middle of and highly recommend.
love this article. I have been practicing this, in fact, tonight. I like the part about not trying to figure it out. I have been practicing “not thinking”. Letting the feelings come and not focusing on anything.
Yes to it all and yes to holding space for it all in this way! š xx
Yes! It’s good to get outta your head. š
You know I think I am finally starting to get the business of self love, in my bones. Its been a rather abstract understanding till now. The process continues !!
Love the picture of the child. It brought up sentiment for me with the question of “When did I last feel this way ?” and I can relate to the struggle with just ‘sitting with it’.
Reading that made me ouch and sigh, like I was ouching and sighing with you. x
Beautifully written Jamie. It is difficult to find the words and explain to people how amazing it feels to love and feel an old painful stuck feeling dissolve. To feel the release and live that follows it addictive and the more I honour my hurt feelings and sit beside them rather than react to them the more I feel my soul and love for myself. Wonderful.
I feel compelled to write a response as I sense you are stuck. I am wondering why you are putting yourself through this reliving of an old issue? At some level I sense that is a kind of self-torture. I find when I focus on the past the time has gone and the feelings stay attached to it, and that can’t be changed in the present unless a rewriting of the script is occurring, which distorts memory. When past memories occur the feelings associated with it are never as intense as when it did occur and I can’t change a response that occurred in the past. The only way I found to move beyond fear and anxiety was to confront it as it occurred in the present moment, by being open to put myself in those situations that give me rise to fear and anxiety and stay with it and experience it to it’s fullest, once the most intense point had been reached it moved all by itself and I was still ok and felt liberated in the now, not by thinking backwards, because that moment is gone and by working through the bodily sensations afterwards that creates a new imprinting to the initial issue and so intensifies the initial issue. I need to be aware of the feeling as it occurs to be able to cope in a different way each time. As feelings arise, they are never as painful as the first experiencing of pain – and that can be embarrassment, shame, guilt, hatred, anger etc and more so when those feelings turned to the self because the self doesn’t like to feel that way and thus berates itself.
thanks for writing, i think you’ve missed the point of the post, it’s about letting go of the events and stories and focusing on the physical sensations as the body’s genius discharges them
It is cliche but the challenges in life are the doors to personal growth. If the challenges you face assist you in discovering yourself, whether your physical being, your spiritual being etc, then you are gaining from them.
The OT of the Bible referred to men being put in the “Refiner’s Fire” and I have begun to use this as an analogy for my own challenges. It burns, it is painful, it can take away your focus and it can seem to be all you can see, but when the fires of the challenge finally do pass (and they always do eventually) you are a stronger, purer man.
In an odd way, once one gains this perspective, one learns to embrace challenges and while dealing with the pain, discouragement and negativity that can come with them, one also feels a little excitement to see who they will be once the challenge has passed.
I know that your post is more about discovering the physiological sensations of your body that come with stress and letting it go – but I felt this sort of went hand in hand with that.
As you use these challenges to discover new things about you. Keep in mind that with each challenge faced, you will (often imperceptibly) be a new man each time. This in itself will alter how your physical body reacts.
What comes up for me and as a reminder to myself is the notion of immunisation, when babies are immunised they are injected with a virus that bypasses all the bodies natural defence and the body has to go at it like crazy to put in place a healing strategy, therefore I remind myself that to look at something out of context ie :- not in the time it’s really happening is like this.
I could look instead at how did I get into this with this person or accept accept that some people can just get to places in us ( like a needle ) that we would really like them not to and accept that thats part of them and see them again.
Maybe if something feels seductive your body is suggesting to you to meet the situation with a seductive character, and go at letting it go with a different kind of energy, your body your drug store, step back and let your body do it with you as witness, maybe there are new ways to let something go.
It is already dissolved it has gone so whats in the loop that plays it again, why put that record on again.
I tried it after reading a book about it and it made sense..then forgot..i tried it last night after listening to you on you tube, at my weekly drum group…before i read this particular blog..and it worked…thankyou i really get that..i do practice going inside but had not figured the link between conciously dissolving the monster as an extra practice