Yes I am considering doing movement a few times a week. Some weeks I actually am moving to my funky walk and a few others. It does help my legs feel better.
My reasons for moving myself.
Moving my legs to help them stop aching.
Move my lymph to help the swelling in my legs.
Staying mobile at my age.
Enjoying dancing once I get started.
Loosen tensions in my body.
Help lower my blood sugar
Getting stronger and have more balance
Staying stronger and more balanced to prevent falls.
My resistance is that
I get involved in stuff and don’t want to get up and move.
My legs ache and I will baby them instead of getting up and moving.
Only #4 is really activating of emotional energy. The others are primarily “survival” feeling and “maintenance.”
How about something like, “I get to experience being ALIVE in ways that other activities don’t offer.” ?
“There’s a part of me that longs to express Herself, and I want to give Her some playtime and art, too!”
“30-seconds of dance a day… makes me a Dancer! I want to activate that aspect of my identity because I’ll move through my entire life with more of that identity when I do.”
This morning I needed to walk. I needed to go someplace I knew well, close by, no chance of it being blocked by a barricade.
I’m not sure what emotions got clogged or activated in my tissues overnight. But I awoke with my energy unstable, ungrounded, and unable to focus (even on my breathing).
If there’s a long term advantage to having multiple practices, it’s that when one “doesn’t do it” the body-mind-spirit can offer another on the menu. Meditation failed. Coffee failed! Can you believe it?!?
After 100 days of Morning Miles, my body “knows” what it can do. It has experienced different weather, different trails, difference paces and distances. I could feel my inner wisdom rising, “We got options, buddy!”
Out on the trail, my energy moving, heart pumping harder than it would sitting on my tush… yes, my energy started to change. It sorta… HAD to. And as it moved, the options kicked in. Unwinding was happening. Releasing was happening.
And then came the nourishment
Near the end of the 1.1 miles, the sun started shining through the trees. Interestingly, it was around the same rise in the trail where I had noticed the pine cone that my shadow was seen on a large tree…
In this simple reflection, I remembered about simple uplifts. The key to a simple uplift is to ALLOW it to influence you.
I paused. I took the picture to both remember and to share with friends here. And then I leaned against the tree and allowed the sun and morning and my beating heart to influence me.
Later… holding Adira
When I returned home, Adira woke soon after and was fed. The next hour it was her and me while @Jem rested.
What I know for sure is that having listened to my body and having a selection of practices I could draw from, the Morning Mile put me in a place where I could really savor being Daddy, too. We had smiles, quiet explorations, a massive poopy diaper… even the espresso fascinated us both.
Yes, I needed to move my body and energy this morning – for me. My Me-Space was chaotic. Leaving it that way without support would have been painful.
Also YES, tending to my Me-Space puts me in a much more potent place when it comes to my We-Spaces.
When I initially read your quote I read ‘princess emotions’…ha! I definitely have some of those that clog my tissues at times, for sure!! “Can’t someone else do it?!” “I don’t feeeeeel like it!” “This is stoooopid!” “This is haaaaard!”…(all said in a whiny, nasally tone for proper effect),
When I wake up feeling similar to what you’ve described it can be really hard for me to change that experience…to alter that course that was set while sleeping and unaware of the mutiny. That’s been a real problem for me over the years…having the agency to change my state rather than succumbing to it…collapsing into it. I’m reminded of our Tapping Circle yesterday and the discussion around altering our course by just a fraction of a degree and what a difference that can/will make. A small re(fine)ment of the (coarse) course will take us to new inner and outer landscapes. And most certainly there will be challenges there as well. That’s the nature of this adventure. If the journey is devoid of challenges then it is not an adventure. This all sounds pretty good to me as I type it out but I still have a hell of a lot of this to put into practice and fill my tissues with before I can say I’m wholeheartedly on this adventure.
This idea of the importance of having the agency to change our course, to “captain our own ship” by learning better skills for sailing skillfully (rather than being tossed about on the stormy seas of life without a rudder) is precisely the process of Daoist Alchemy!
When I do Inner Alchemy work with people, the first thing we discuss is that we are no longer looking at things in terms of “pathology”, but of Potential.
Each challenge that shows up allows us to transform, to learn new skills, to become better captains of our own ship… working with what arises in that way feels so much better than simply suffering through hardships! Having the perspective of being on an adventure makes it more fun! And that, in my experience tends to make it easier to shift.
(Of course, there’s also likely to be Resistance and “rebellious qi”, as we say, but working with that is part of the Alchemy too!)
Yes…the ‘pathology approach’ is something I’ve given a lot of thought to and I’m not the only one who thinks it may not be the best, most effective approach to healing…constantly trying to heal our past history. That is a bottomless well for most of us. In fact I was watching a video this morning, an interview with a gentleman named Peter Crone, who used the analogy of driving a car while only looking in the rear view mirror and wondering why you’re always bumping into things. Of course difficult events of the past aren’t to be ignored or made light of but if we’re primarily looking to them (in the rear view mirror) as the place to find a new and more thriving way forward it’s problematic I think.
Indeed! And that’s why I focus on helping people learn more powerful energetic skills to work with the past experiences and emotions that get held in the body, so we can use the body’s wisdom to help resolve what’s been stored there, so that we don’t keep “bumping into things”.
It can be a tricky balance to give those issues the proper attention in a way that doesn’t keep us stuck in the story we see in the rear view mirror. When we work with how things are held in the body, it can be so much more freeing!
Then we open up space to move into our deeper Potential, rather than getting stuck in pathology. But first, the feelings and needs have to be compassionately met, so they can flow through, and then create the space we need for something new to arise.
Like the Morning Mile: I can see clearly how much it helps @RickThrivingNow’s energy to have this practice, and I love how much spaciousness it opens up for him and for our We-Space. It’s physically moving his body, and is re-writing old stories and patterns such that he’s opening up even more room for Presence, Love, growth, creativity, and joy! It’s really beautiful to witness.
Likewise, with EFT and qigong, as well as with dance and other movement practices (but even more so with extra consciousness about them!), we have myriad opportunities to meet our feelings and process what’s held in the body, and then to tap into our embodied wisdom more deeply — so that rather than being stuck in “pathology” or pain, we can open into the next unfolding Potential. (Which is always unfolding — there’s no arrival, just continuing alchemy, which is part of the beauty of it!)
Thank you Jem!! Some very potent and beautiful thoughts…I appreciate that.
Yes…and it’s been my tendency to either want to ignore and disregard through all manner of distractions those feelings and needs or to pathologize them and make them the only story. But there is of course a middle road as you point out so beautifully. There isn’t always just a fork in the road…an ‘either/or’…there is often a middle road… perhaps hidden by leaves and branches from lack of use but there it is inviting us to an ‘all inclusive’ adventure.
If there was only one lesson to practice this would be it I think. The ‘drive to arrive’ (hey, I like that! Did I just coin that? lol) I’m thinking is a primitive brain impulse. It speaks powerfully to the pursuit of safety and survival and certainty. And we do need to have those places to arrive at in order to have those experiences of certainty. And from those safe places thriving calls out for something different…some more vulnerability…a bit more embrace of uncertainty…of adventure into the unknown, not recklessly but with respect and acknowledgement of our needs and often with respect and recognition of the needs of our ‘we-space’ as well.
Thanks for offering me the opportunity to think Jem…
Google found others using that expression, but not the way you did here! And yeah, it does feel primitive brain to me. The Drive to Arrive also feel like the “I need to fix my dis-ease!!!” more than the development of inspired and grounded practices that are restorative and promote our thriving.
This is exactly why I don’t Google all my amazing ‘original’ thoughts…
From within my survival imagination it’s such a compelling drive to want to take. I feel it in me as being related to the ‘magic pill’ fantasy fix…no requirement for my participation on any meaningful level…it’s just a short and pleasant drive to my destination…no one cuts me off…no red lights…no construction crews…oh look, I’m home!
Removing it from self-negotiation! Ahhh… so much easier.
It’s true I can not take the morning mile. It’s true it can become an Afternoon Adventure or an Evening Exploration.
What is also true is that if I decide NOT to walk a specific day AT ALL – that’s what I refer to as a Sacred Decision.
The Morning Mile is more than a habit. It goes to a core aspect of what contributes to my thriving lifestyle – especially my sense of wonder, connection to nature and weather, my territory and what’s happening with it, and it’s immense positive benefit to my energy flow and physical and emotional health.
By making it “matter to me” on many levels, it becomes something that if I were to not do it, it would need to be something I reflect on. It would need to be a response to what else was happening that made it clearly not the right day. That could be physical, weather, or we-space.
On day 171 straight, there have been a handful for days where I did deeply reflect and get guidance on if today was a day to rest and use my energy for other things – including replenishment. In each of those cases, what I got was that there was definitely a need on those days to be “more mindful” – meaning to not be on autopilot.
Pick the path that is really right.
Allow for turning back at any time, even short of the 1 mile.
Be at a pace that is allowed to vary, slow, pause, stretch, breathe, savor.
See, a “habit” does have an automatic aspect. Emotional Freedom adds the layer of mindful consideration to it – removing the obligation while supporting that it MATTERS. Yes, healthful habits MATTER across my entire emotional world.
Love to you in your habits, and exploring what new ones you might add to your thriving life experience.
What you wrote really resonated with me and is timely beyond belief! I don’t have anywhere near the “bandwidth” to say much more than, I appreciate your thoughts and thoughtfulness, always.
“Can’t someone else do it?!” “I don’t feeeeeel like it!” “This is stoooopid!” “This is haaaaard!”…(all said in a whiny, nasally tone for proper effect),
