Mom, Sherry and me.

The Cold Aftermath of Rage

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Mom, Sherry and me.Most people believe that the mind body connection affects the quality of their life beyond basic survival. But they don’t necessarily understand how it works?

In my experience, mind body awareness hasn’t always stopped the ill-affects that their misalignment causes. Life happens, pressures mount and boundaries are crossed. But mind body awareness does offer a healing path back into alignment.

It’s been a year since my sister died and my mother’s care has been fully under my charge. And mom’s like a big dog. You know the type, they lean on you when they feel comfortable with you. But if you’re not careful, the dog will literally knock you over!

Enraged one night by mom’s constant interruptions, to help with things that she was completely capable of doing herself, I snapped at her! Then, I vented some more to a friend, went on a power-walk, and wrote my last blog on entitlement.

All in the effort to channel my rage constructively!

Yet, I woke up the next morning and couldn’t step onto my left leg. It just buckled under my weight. Rage had thrown my sacrum out of alignment!

An undeniable misaligned force created an annihilating internal twister that literally dropped me to my knees.

The chiropractor put my skeleton back into place, but the pain has taken weeks of TLC to diminish. Weeks of quiet contemplation were needed to thaw the ice storm of rage that left me frozen.

Let me explain the mind body connections here…

The sacrum’s fused vertebrae creates tremendous support for the body. No surprise that the lack of support in my life landed there. But here’s where it gets interesting. The left side of the body reflects our relationship with our self. Opposite the right side, where we shake hands, reflects our relationship with the outside world.

What this means is, I wasn’t supporting myself in the situation.
And, I was blaming mom for my own short comings.

Mom’s not going to change. I have to change!

I have to say “no,” with no apologies, when l feel leaned on unnecessarily.
I have to say “no,” no excuses necessary, when I can’t support her weight.
I have to say “no,” in the name of self-love, before I get knocked over.

It is said that, under mad is sad; under anger is grief.

I grieve the loss of my sister. No doubt, this adds to my situation.
But more in the spotlight here is, I grieve the absence of a tender-hearted, self-reflective mother.

The hard truth is, I don’t WANT the mother I have. And this has made me sad my whole life, and mad when pushed to look at it. But I now realize, I have the mother I NEED. And this newfound understanding makes me glad to call her my mom.

My aversion to say “no” to people, in fear of disappointing them, outing them, or losing them, has enslaved me since… forever. I need my mom, this particular mom, more than I have ever realized. To learn to say “no.”

Thanks mom.

Practice Comfort

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Doubts, about our future, tug at everyone’s nerves. But there is no room for self-doubt when so many of us need to create new avenues of income, and new avenues for connection.

Some of you may feel no purpose to guide you; some of you live with no human, animal or plant that affirms your value.

What were once low-grade self-doubts can become booming self-limiting judgments.

Self-doubt is where your resistance to self-care and personal comfort lie. Care and comfort, however, are day-to-day core conditions that maintain immune strength, emotional resilience and mental clarity.

Care and comfort are not luxuries, they are essentials, when facing the atmosphere that this viral pandemic has commanded––a sudden divorce from belonging in, and unexpected isolation from, the world.

Delight lifts you out of the self-doubt that interferes with self-care and comfort. But it’s very hard to be delighted by what you’re actively judging as limited.

So, we need to learn and practice self-acceptance to realize personal potential.

To delight in self-acceptance is to enjoy: yourself, your body, and your unique way of seeing life. This authentic experience of yourself is what makes you one of a kind and elevates you to realizing the Divine in you. This best-self experience keeps you inspired to develop and share your gifts in the world, even if it must be through a computer screen during these times.

So how do you recognize your best-self?

Start by identifying something you really like about yourself. Like for me, I really like that my hair turned white rather than gray. I can count on this being a feel-good statement about myself no matter what else is happening.

Practice staying in alignment with a feel-good statement of your own. Experience self-acceptance, rather than self-judgment, when thinking about your feel-good statement.

Once you can maintain this vibration of self-acceptance, you can respond mindfully, rather than react angrily when challenged, and be your best-self.

When triggered into self-doubt, rather than succumbing to your habitual tension template, think about that feel-good statement to flip your alignment back to self-acceptance. It may have nothing to do with what’s going on, but it snaps you out of engaging with the trigger’s self-damning attack. It snaps you back into being nice to yourself.

Self-acceptance starts at home with your habits, and in your body-mind awareness. Practice makes comfort!

 

1:1 FaceTime Personal Training Available. Exercise is an immune system builder––your first priority during a viral pandemic! mindthebody@bodylogos.com

 

 

 

Workout Warriors Take Warning

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Motivation Question

7AM fitness clients are high achievers! We’re warming up in the dark and seeing our day take shape before the sun comes up.

Holiday socializing may have overflowed into the work week and made these early workouts painful. One of my high achiever’s responded to feeling over-done by over-doing some more!

Did she believe that overriding her body’s exhaustion would make her stronger?

As her trainer, I had to help her decelerate and work with willingness rather than will. The willingness to listen rather than demand; and recognize that muscle failure is not the same thing as physical exhaustion. Muscle failure challenges a restored muscle to full capacity—till it fails. Physical exhaustion is an unrestored muscle.

Fitness resolutions need to abide by the same willingness; listen and discern between physical exhaustion and muscle failure!

Meet limitations anew each day by being present. Presence offers truth to your strength training that is both empowering and humbling.

Empowering because you experience your limitations from a place of respect. Meeting your limits, not beating your last performance, is the definition of self-love. Overriding your limits is the definition of self-betrayal.

Humbling because it’s a “real” exchange. Not with what you can and can’t do, but with what you’re willing or not willing to do.

My client was willing to exhaust herself further, escalate her body’s tension and beat up her self-worth over how heavy a dumbbell was and how hard she could drive herself. The question becomes, are you willing to sacrifice yourself—your wellbeing—to feed what you think “should be” versus what actually is.

Stop thinking and feel! Train for relaxed strength, and leave the tension of self-betrayal in 2019!

Woman Lying Supine

Find Your Natural Posture

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Woman Lying Supine

While learning posture’s subtle balance between surrendering and aligning, a student questioned, “shouldn’t good posture be natural––balancing attention between tension and strength is hard?!”

I felt that his sentiment should be true, but my experience working with bodies showed otherwise. So I slept on it. (My go-to place when stumped!) As I laid down that evening and felt my spine unfurl into its rightness and enjoyed my muscles’ surrender from a day’s work, it struck me. He’s right!

The precision of posture is natural—when horizontal!

Since then, whenever a client expresses uncertainty about what is correct posture, I lay them horizontal and help them answer the question from a supine position.

Gravity is a blanket that guides you to your best self.