Love is so pure, so simple, so elemental. How can we grow more?
The simplest and most exquisite act of love is attention.
If you want to receive or give love, you need to attend, to notice and to connect. We do this with our families, our pets, our homes, hobbies, the earth. But we live in a BUSY BUSY world – we attend our texts and emails and…. there are so many demands on our attention.
What about to you? How do you attend to yourself? To your own needs and desires?
In other words how do you grow in love for yourself?
I know you’ve heard a lot form me about paying attention to the rubs, to what is not working or hurts. But I don’t want you to stop there…never;-) Because it is no fun – and it is not the point of living at all;-)
We want our lives to be as full of love and happiness and growth as possible. Right? I only ask you to do pay attention to what hurts because it can serve as an entrance to deliver you to more satisfaction, greater happiness and yes, more love.
When I teach, I’m asking people to focus on their pleasure. They’re encouraged to avoid any action that causes them to feel a stretch or any pain at all. Because of the culture we live in – it takes lots of reminding and encouragement to stay in a movement zone where it is easy.
But we learn it. And it becomes a habit that does not stay in the classroom. It starts to grow through our whole lives.
I teach that way for many reasons having to do with how we learn and how we create new habits. I won’t explain it all here – but let’s just say that to learn from and transform the pain in your life, first you must detect unneeded effort you are making – you have to really dial it down to be able to sense the small and subtle patterns that are making things harder in your day-to-day life.
The unnecessary effort is what is causing and contributing to the pain. It is the unnecessary effort that you have control over. In order to sense and feel what is causing you pain and to be able to get to what is easier, more functional, you have to slow down and do less.
During a lesson you’re asked toattend to your own sensation and your own satisfaction + your own true sense of pleasure. When you feel like resting, you rest whether anyone else is or not.
Students learn to take their cues from themselves – not from me. That is tru love. That allows students to deeply connect to their own sense of what is enough, satisfying and desirable.
We can feel these things clearly if we just slow down and turn down the volume enough to notice. When we notice, we begin to have choice – and therein lies your chance to build new habits that cause less pain and create more satisfaction.
Lately, I have been adding a little bit of dance during my workshops. When we dance – it is never for how it looks. It is all for how it feels to the dancer. Just like everything we do. Don’t want to dance? No problem. I love and honor each student attending to what they need and want.
This is something you could use all the time in your life. How does what you are doing feel for you? It’s just simply paying attention to what gives you pleasure. Can you slow down enough to feel that?
Take for example how you brush your teeth…
I had a student who after her first class, emailed me to tell me what had happened that night. When she brushed her teeth (nope the lesson I had taught had nothing to do with tooth brushing!) She could so clearly see how much unnecessary effort she was making. She had been making it for years. She just had not noticed!
What she got from our hour together was just how much effort she was making in her day-to-day life that was totally unneeded. Tooth brushing was just a portal – she noticed she was clenching her teeth and gripping the brush harder than necessary and tightening her belly and holding her breath just a little. She realized she was doing this in all sorts of things in her life. (Psssstttt – most of us are) 😇
When she took the time to slow down and attend to herself – she noticed all the unnecessary things she was doing that were making her life harder.
A while later she wrote this to me – I was blown away! https://astracoyle.com/success-stories/
After years of studying and doing Awareness Through Movement I too began to understand how much more I could do an accomplish when it came form a place of embracing pleasure. Why be so Puritanical? And why was I so puritanical anyway?
Like many people I work with – I was worried I would do nothing if I started only doing what was pleasurable. I thought I would never get off the couch. Many worry that if they do this , they will end up eating the whole bag of chips or never wanting to go to work or fill in the blank that they won’t do anything for the world and will become selfish.
This is cultural brainwashing! Society wants to keep you in its grip instead of you being in your own power. It is easier to get you to follow their lead their directions if you do not pay attention to your own needs right?!
You can break these bonds simply by attending to yourself – bit by bit as you build that ability, you build you love for yourself, you have more choice, and you have more freedom.
And you know what? You don’t get more selfish – as a matter of fact – because you are taking care of yourself, you have cleaner and clearer relationships to yourself and to the people in your life. You learn how to ask for what you want without expecting to get it. Brilliant! You understand (and hope) that the other person is doing the same – attend to their needs and ask for what they want. And you all know that no one owes you anything 💜.What an adult relationship;-) So self-love and self-care really leads to more love all around.
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Just think what it would be like to live in a world of empowered independent people? Try to picture it….our relationships would look so very different. So very healthy and fulfilling. 👯♀️
I think it sounds DREAMY, but it wouldn’t sell as much and there would not be as much hierarchal power structure. And you can imagine – not everyone would like the sound if this would they?
I sure do, and I hope you do too.
As soon as you turn to notice yourself – you stand in your own power just a little more.
Be still a moment and ask – how do I feel? Is there a way that what I am doing right now could be easier? Am I making an effort in my belly, my jaw, my hands, my shoulders? Could I notice my breath? First, just notice. No judgement needed. No story needed. Just the facts;-)
Then ask, is there one thing I can consciously do less of just for a moment? In my jaw or wherever you noticed the tension?
The truth is we are so hungry for attention to ourselves we are so ready for attention to our bodies into what gives us happiness and pleasure that we have started to think it is outside of us. It’s not. It’s right there waiting for you and for your attention.
Pleasure can = not rushing in the shower. It can be brushing your teeth with ease;-) Pleasure can be allowing enough time for unexpected things to happen during your commute. Pleasure can be a dressy outfit or sweats. Pleasure can be a really intense work out. Pleasures can be tackling a massive project at work or having a big dream. Pleasure can also be a bubble bath with Epson salts. Pleasure can be rest.
You get to decide. You get to choose.
If we can grow our ability to attend, we can grow love. ❤️
There is a sweet song we sing before we eat sometimes. It goes like this…More love, more love,
Alone by its power
The world we will conquer…
When we give attention to ourselves, when we really take care of ourselves, that is when we have the most to give to anyone in the world. It can seem counterintuitive – the whole ‘put on your oxygen mask before you put it on anyone else’.” But the journey of independence into adulthood is the slow separation of oneself from one’s caretakers and culture. And the journey or growth does not have to end just because we move out of our family homes or gain financial independence. It happens with attention. And therein lies the key for greater and greater satisfaction.
Much love,
Astra
