What will you allow to spill out into the world?

Last week I was talking about learning how to regulate your nervous system at any given moment. While it is true that that is possible, one may have thought from the way I wrote it that I think I have mastered it and I am all done. Ha! 😇😇😇

 
We are never ‘done’ because there is no end. There is no perfect. There is only the process. There  is only practice.


It was a day I had deadlines to meet, and a kiddo home with a head cold, acting really lumpy and in need of emotional support. Earlier in the week before I knew what was ahead, I’d promised my Mom I would call her to chat about my son’s birthday plans.
 
I was juggling a bunch – and it seemed to me like I needed to multi-task – pop popcorn while I called my Mom, while my son was resting on the couch. I touched a hot handle and…

it all spilled on the floor.
 
I was pushing myself in that moment. I was aware that I did not want to get on the phone, but I had made a promise, so I was trying to squeeze it in. I was aware multitasking was not what I wanted, but I did not change the choice I made. I made an old habit choice – to push instead of doing less.
 
Our relationships to ourselves – think self-talk etc.– is based on our experience and RELATIONSHIP to the world, and the people in our lives.  Like we’ve chatted about before – we have a long dependency period, and we are social animals/mammals. This shapes our idea of who we are and what we are or are not capable of. It is based on our relationships, the feedback we get and what is valued in our greater culture that we internalize.
 
I grew up being taught to push. I got good at it.  I was praised for it. But it is not really what I want all the time, I want to be able to switch gears and rest and have more ease.
 
The hard part of becoming who we want to be? It is not in changing the world around us. We can only do that in limited ways anyway – so why chase that? To make real change, we need to look inward and find out what we are really doing, saying, thinking etc. What are the patterns? What are the habits? What are you saying on repeat to yourself again and again?
 
When we can discover what we are actually practicing, what we are saying to ourselves and doing – and when we tell the truth about it without blame or judgment of ourselves or anyone – then we can redefine our futures through new practices.
 
The practice is – becoming aware of my habits, what I am actually doing and being, to accept them and not add any evaluation, no story, nada, and then to explore new possibilities. And those new possibilities and try them out.
 
But here’s the thing the new practices – they do not happen in a fishbowl. They happen in relationship to others and to the world. Yes first we give them to ourselves, but then we practice taking it into relationship and building new habits, a new self-image, a new relationship to ourselves, through a new practice with others.
 
I didn’t want to tell my Mom I couldn’t talk. For no urgent reason, I pushed my own boundary, and   got stressed out. If I had been willing to do what I knew I needed, I would have taken one more step in building and practicing the way I want to grow in my relationships in the world.

It is a practice… knowing we are not getting to perfection because there is nothing about us that needs to be fixed.
 
If you want to fix who you are – forget it. Trust me, I have tried in the past. It only leads to heartache because it assumes that there is something wrong. And there is nothing wrong. You are human.
 
We are dynamic humans alive and well and always adapting and possibly evolving and  growing. When we focus our attention more on the process of living and less on the outcome – which is precisely what happens in every Feldenkrais lesson – we get better and better and BEING human. What could be better?
 
Happy Friday,
Astra