Mind - Body Thoughts: disconnect

Showing posts with label disconnect. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Pain Opened My Eyes

https://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2017/09/when-pain-gets-your-attention.html

Here are my observations about my experiences right now, and I'm recording them to help myself not to forget as well as hopefully help others by sharing what I've been through. This is not an easy experience dealing with dental pain, but I am trying to learn as much as I can as I go through it on my open. The pain is opening my eyes.

While I know that pain will get your attention and will increase until it does, sometimes I know we (and this includes myself) numb and disconnect from it so much that it takes a baseball bat to wake us up. I know that, and I'm sure most people do, but somehow we still numb and disconnect from the pain.

I've realized that the dental pain I'm dealing with is something I've been living with for some time now. I've altered so many things unconsciously just to deal with the pain and numb it. In fact, I didn't realize I had even done this.

For example, when eating, I have learned to eat on the side of my mouth to avoid the pain. Another example is we have learned to eat things I can eat, so I didn't have to experience the pain. I've learned to just live with it because the fear of dealing with the pain was so great that I just numbed my conscious thought to it.

That's the thing we humans do. We numb and disconnect our conscious thought and awareness to the pain. We do it without realizing that we do. We do it automatically. As much healing work as I've done on my mind and body with respect to trauma, I still do this. It is an unconscious behavior.

Pain is there, and even if we feel some pain in our body, our unconscious behavior can minimize it or alter how we see it. It can keep us from truly seeing all aspects of it. More importantly, it prevents us from seeing beyond it and framing our mindset and perspective about the bigger picture in life in a way that opens up to possibility not restricts us from being more than we are.

As I write this, I feel like

Pain is exhausting.
Pain takes over my life.
It feels heavy.
It prevents me from seeing things in clearness and reality.
Often I don't completely know it is there.
Often I disconnect from it.
Pain increased to the point of getting my attention.
I sometimes close my eyes to the pain.
I numb myself to the pain without being aware of it
I find ways to disconnect from the pain automatically.

One thing the dentist said that was like a big ah-ha moment for me was that "I deserved to live a life without this pain." While that may be one of those statements that sound so simple, it was anything but that to me. I sometimes see the wounded part of my life that doesn't deserve to live a life differently than the trauma and abuse that was done to me.

I record these things as part of my own processing of the events that are unfolding. It is my way of making sense of all that is happening in my life at this moment.

As I go through this process and learn more about my life, I realize that all this time I've been trying to numb and disconnect from it, that it was taking far more energy than if I would have just got it treated.

Yes, I know it is easier to write those words than to put them into practice, but I can't help but think, "I should have taken care of this a couple of years ago because it might not have been as bad." Hopefully I've learned from this and my intent is to not let myself forget the ways that pain has opened my eyes.

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Friday, July 7, 2017

But Come Here Fear

These days, my heart goes out to every human. It is so easy to get wrapped up in the fears that are a part of everything we do. It is so insidious that we don't even see it.

That's the tricky part about fear. It blinds you to its existence while taking over everything you think, do, say, and how you act. Most of the time you're not aware of it, even if you know it exists.

Fear is a good thing when being chased by a tiger in the jungle. Fear is a good thing at night when you're being stalked. Fear of failing can be good as well as many other fears. However, fear is meant as a temporary moment, not a life long relationship.

Unfortunately, far too many in our world have experienced a not so safe childhood. We've either gone through trauma and abuse, witnessed domestic violence in our homes, suffered at the hands of a bully, or gone through other things. They all produce fear that resides within us and alters who we truly are.

Maybe it's a parent that does not instill a sense of safety in you as a child. Maybe you're a witness to horrific acts of violence or bombs dropping. Maybe you saw or were in a car accident as a child and so your sense of safety was taken away.

There are many experiences in life that leave us feeling unsafe. In these current days we are in, fear is getting pushed to the limit, whether it is on the news we consume or in social media or just in the water-cooler talk among friends. It is everywhere.

Even if you do like we do and turn the news off and try to mute all the political stuff of the day, you can still feel fear. It is everywhere. It permeates every bit and piece of our society these days and that is so sad. My heart breaks when I see it.

These days, you can barely say anything or write anything that doesn't invoke fear's response into a statement that is twisted from your intent. Fear keeps us blind to this practice. Fear does not allow us to see things in clarity and with the awareness and consciousness we think we have.

I don't think numbing and disconnecting completely from the fears that are alive is necessarily the right course of action. However, I believe that if you're watching the news and engaged in the fear rhetoric of the day, you're harming yourself and the world.

You have to make the choices for yourself about what you let into your life and what you feast on in a day. You have to be willing to open your eyes as far open as you can, so you can see what fear has done to you. It is not easy to do this. It goes against every fiber and ounce of energy fear can muster up, but in order to reclaim your life, you have to take back the power from fear.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2011/05/loved-by-your-enemy.html

I know from experience that fear waits in the tall grass to pounce upon you in every moment. It takes strength and courage to stand up to fear.

In the words of Joy Harjo from her "Fear Poem" come these are two lines that I just love.

Oh you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
But come here, fear. I am alive and you are so afraid of dying. - Joy Harjo

May we stop allowing fear to choke us, by not giving it the leash so easily. May we remember to tell fear that we are alive and it is so afraid of dying.

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Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Asleep To Feeling Pain In Our Body

Let's all go down to the river and party the night away. Okay, I'm not sure why I wrote that this, but maybe it is more telling then I am aware of in this moment. If you read the blog post on June 13, 2017, Are You Asleep?, you will see that Donnie struggles with this one.

Here's a part from Donnie's statement on the blog post Are You Asleep: After all, he doesn't have time to deal with pains in his body. There is just too much too accomplish. His body is 100% pain free. Unfortunately, that's a good sign of how asleep Donnie is.

We are so oblivious to pain in our bodies that even saying we are asleep is not a strong enough statement. Of course, I'm sure you're probably eye-rolling me right now, wondering if I just fell off my rocker and hit my head on the floor.

Safe to say, I'm okay. I didn't hit my head on the floor.

For a long time I was traveling every week and going almost nonstop. I hardly felt pain in my body. There was no time to feel it and if I felt it, it had to disappear because I could not function and do what was required of me. Pain relievers were the go-to if that happened.

However, most of the time I didn't feel pain. In fact, that's how most of us are. We are oblivious to pain in our bodies, even though it is there. Yes, even if you don't notice it, it is there.

How do I know this? Well, when I finally get myself to stop or I go in for a deep healing session with Dr. Paul Canali, the first thing I'm asked to do is feel what is going on in my body. Of course, one thinks that we know what is going on, but until you do this - much of it is hidden. Let me repeat that - much of it is hidden.

The more you stop and notice, the more you'll exclaim like I do in a session, "Oh, I didn't know that was there." We are so unconscious and disconnected that most of the time the pain (and the warning signs of the mind and body) go undetected. We just fail to hear them because we are asleep.

They keep ratcheting up the alarm, and we keep dousing them with unconsciousness and other substances in our day. Then when the alarm has gone as far as it can, the body gets our attention. Usually by that point, things aren't good and require much more medical intervention than we would have had to do if we'd listened to the pain in the first place.

I had someone once tell me that they were sorry to hear I had pain. I'm like, but everyone does - they just don't listen to it. It is messages our bodies are trying to get through our asleep thick skulls.

Pain can be good if we do something conscious with it. If we hide it, then we've inflicted a world of hurt on ourselves. Rather than hiding it, the better thing to do is to go in and feel the pain. Yep, I know - you've probably thought I've fallen again from my rocking chair. Rest assured, I have not.

If pain is overwhelming, we want it gone. That's human nature. However, if you can find body work like what Dr. Paul Canali does, then you learn that by going into the pain, you take control of it and transform it. When you do, a whole new world opens up.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/asleep-by-smartphones.html

Is that easy? NO IT IS NOT! Is it good in the long run? YES IT IS. Being asleep so much that you don't feel the pain is not a recipe for health and wellness. Too much in our society is built around numbing the pain, rather than going in and interacting with the pain. Too many health conditions are a result of not feeling the pain.

It is past time our world wakes up and begins to deal with pain in the right way. First, we have to recognize it is there and feel it. Once we've made it that far, then we need to go in and have a conversation with it through not only the mind, but through the felt sense of the body. When we learn to interact with it in the body, that's when pain becomes our friend, rather than our foe.

Make sure you check out the next part in this 11 part series

Part 11 is "Asleep By Happy Thoughts"

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/asleep-and-numb-by-happy-thoughts.html

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Saturday, June 24, 2017

Truth Or Disconnect

We face ourselves in truth or in disconnect.

Friday, June 9, 2017

The Best Part of Dealing With Stress

This is the continuation in a series on allostatic load. In part 4, we discussed the stress set point in the emergency danger zone.

If you haven't seen Part 4, go there first.

In Part 5, we will be discussing the best part of dealing with stress.

The best part about the process of dropping the allostatic load is that you get your life back. You become more acquainted with who you truly are. As you find healing, you also find peace and joy that you most likely have never experienced to that point. You find rest for your soul and a purpose more connected with the greater good of humanity. You end up discovering that there are more ways to keep your mind and body healthy that you never knew existed.

Of course, it is all up to the individual in how far they are willing to go and how much they want to change their life. I am reminded of the saying that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make the horse drink. The same holds true for healing allostatic load. If you don't wish to change your ways and if you continue to ignore the messages of your body, you will be like the horse led to the water that won't drink. There's not much anyone can do for you, and you will end up jumping from one procedure or medication to another with little to show for it.

The one sad part about healing this way is that I know of very few people who are equipped to do this work, and who have done the necessary work on themselves to be there for others. There are many that pride themselves having on these skills, but when the going gets beyond difficult it matters if you truly know what you're doing or not. I'm sorry if that offends anyone, but I can think of no better line than "healer heal thyself".

True healing in someone is not about getting rid of the pain or difficulty. Instead, it is transforming that pain and difficulty into something that will bring about awareness and a stronger connection into the body.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/stress-setpoint-in-emergency-danger-zone.html

Focusing only on getting rid of the pain is a form of disconnection that takes you to the edge of the cliff. It is through feeling the connection deep within that you begin to interact and experience the body in ways you could never imagine. It is through those connections that you begin to see a life beyond what you think is possible. That's healing, and that results from dumping the allostatic load.

Make sure you check out the first part in this 5 part series.

Part 1 is "Allostatic Load With Dr. Don Bosch"

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/allostatic-load-with-dr-don-bosch.html

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Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Disconnected From Allostatic Load & Stress

This is the continuation in a series on allostatic load. In part 2, we discussed if you don't deal with stress, it will deal with you.

If you haven't seen Part 2, go there first.

In Part 3, we will be discussing being disconnected from allostatic load and stress.

At first, we find some over the counter meds to take that disconnect us a little more from what is going on. Our body is trying to get our attention with the pain or physical issue we are experiencing, but we ignore it. We've got no time for it. There are work deadlines to meet, travel and meetings to take place, kids to take care of, bills to pay and so on and so forth. There are a million reasons we come up with, and we say that tomorrow we will take a few hours and stop to rest. Tomorrow comes and goes, but we keep pushing on so that we can get caught up. Unfortunately we never catch up.

The body tires to hang on. It tries hard not to adjust the set point of allostatic load, but it has no choice. We keep pushing and pushing. The body continues to degrade and wear down. Our mind becomes more disconnected to what reality is and our perception becomes our new reality.

We then turn to doctors and their procedures, demanding they find the label for the condition we have. We demand that the doctor cure us and we ignore and fail to listen to what the doctor is trying to tell us. Often, doctors and other health practitioners don't have a good handle on how to deal with allostatic load, so in frustration and despair in between seeing many patients, they give us a prescription and a diagnosis.

We get our prescription filled and we exclaim to our friends, this label is what we have. Our friends show sympathy and gasp at the difficulty we face. We feel supported, and we temporarily feel like we've found help and we'll get better. The prescription, of course, reinforces that it is best to disconnect from reality, and it reinforces what our perception is, even if it is misguided.

The body however has still not won. It has tried to get our attention and tell us that our set point is way out of the range of normal. It begs us to take a good hard look at our life, but we're too busy for that. We've got too much to do. There is just no time for self evaluation and besides, doing something like that is for those new age people, not for serious people. That's what we tell ourselves and that's what we make ourselves believe, but there is no truth to it.

Our body continues to stay on alert because we've never allowed it to come to any other conclusion. We've revved up the motor and kept it in neutral. Our allostatic load continues to increase into further degradation of the mind and body, taking us dangerously close to the point of no return. We continue to ignore it, knowing that we've got the diagnosis and prescription. What else do we need, we ask ourselves amusingly. There is nothing. We've got this, we exclaim.

We interject some happy memes and positive thoughts. We say some extra prayers. We project to the world around us that all is okay and we're managing this. To be strong is what this life requires us to be, we are taught. We can't show weakness. We must show we're strong and in control. Again, we are feeding ourselves a false perception in life, not the reality that actually exists.

At some point, our body will get our attention. It may be pain that is so great we can not take it any longer. It may be some physical ailment that demands emergency care. It may be anxiety and depression that disorients our life to the point of not being sure which way is up or down. If we continue to ignore it, our body and our mind will keep throwing up the flares in the hope that we listen.

Picture it like a spring getting wound up more and more, tighter and tighter. At some point, there is no more winding left. The only thing remaining is that the spring has to unwind. It has so much kinetic energy locked in waiting to bombard its way out.

When you get to this point, the only hope is that you'll not be past the point of no return. Unfortunately with the health issues we are facing today, it is more common for people to push allostatic load to the outer edge of possible limits.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2017/06/if-you-dont-deal-with-stress.html

Most doctor visits are related to stress and studies have been done to prove that. Doctors know it, but patients demand they help feed the disconnect between reality and perception.

There is so much more that interconnects with allostatic load, and while I'm trying to simplify it into something that's easy to understand, I know that it is more complex than this. Yet, I know it can be as simple as what I describe. I've been there. I've pushed my own body past its limits and you can read more about that in my book, Hope and Possibility Through Trauma.

Make sure you check out the next part in this 5 part series.

Part 4 is "Stress Setpoint In The Emergency Danger Zone"

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Friday, June 2, 2017

Impacting Body Systems By Suppression

Humans are peculiar in how they treat themselves. We often negate the power we have inside of us to heal our mind and body. We too easily give our power up to others, rather than going in and doing the hard work to heal.

Yes, I know - It isn't easy to heal. It is pretty tough work and very hard. Whether it is mental struggles, child sexual abuse, or physical illness - it just is not an easy moment in our life.

Please know, I'm not going to say that all medical procedures or healing paths you are on don't work. No way! There are many core truths within each path that help us get to the next point. The only thing is, we tend to stop on the bench along the path and forget to get back up again on the healing journey. If you don't do this, well - I do!

I was not going to settle...

I still remember back to the days I was paralyzed from Conversion Disorder. I could have stopped on the bench and said "that's it" and no one would have thought badly of me. Yet, I knew that I was not going to settle for where I was. I was not going to accept the condition I had. I was not going to accept that I could not walk, move and barely talk.

One of the biggest problems I see in how we heal our mind and body is pursuing things that suppress one body system over another. They keep us hiding from the true nature of what is going on. The fear that arises when we hit these horrendous moments of what seems like an impossible dilemma is enough to take the strongest person down in a heartbeat. I know - I've been there!

Fear and numbness...

Fear and numbness in our mind and body keep us from seeing more. They suppress our body systems and draw us toward the things that suppress our body systems. When we suppress things in our body, other body systems are impacted. When you impact other areas, then you start flipping the wrong light switches within the body.

Of course, it requires great courage to go deep into what is happening and find the awareness that we need, but in the end - it is your ticket out of hell. The things that just numb the pain and or illness further are not as healing as we try to make them out to be. They are more there to disconnect us from what is going on, which is not even close to being a healing moment.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/04/focusing-on-symptoms.html

Impacting body systems by suppression of symptoms and conditions in our life is the norm in healing these days. Yes, I did those things too and they helped me get to the point where I started to see there is more. So, don't discount their effectiveness, but don't get lost in them either.

Healing our mind and body is much more than 99% of the world understands. I wish it was a lower percentage, but I really am saddened by how I see humans attempt to numb and disconnect themselves these days. It is not health. It is not healing.

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Tuesday, May 9, 2017

How Much Do You Notice?

Often we go through our day not seeing what is around us. It is there, but we just don't see and notice it. We're too busy in our minds to stop and observe.

I see it every day with people. The birds chirping outside. The trees swaying from the breeze. The sun shining down and giving us warmth. The clouds forming different shapes in the sky. All of these things are around us, but we're too busy to notice.

We get on our phones and we're walking down the street texting away, but oblivious to anything else going on. Our thumbs and neck muscles work harder than our minds.

We get on social media and we comment, share, and like everything about the latest "news storm" of the day, yet we don't fully engage. We don't notice the bigger picture of what is around us. We are so microscopically focused on only the rants and raves of the day.

So darn disconnected from it all...

We get in our cars and we turn on the radio, but we never stop to truly notice things around us. There may be someone that needs some help, or a homeless person that has lost their way. There may be other things going on around us, but we're just so darn disconnected from it all. We don't notice.

There is so much going on and if we don't take time to stop and observe it, we are really robbing ourselves of the human experience. We're not meant to stare at our phones constantly or go from one busy task to another.

Meant to find balance...

We are meant to find balance in our lives as humans. One of the ways to do this is by stopping and observing what is going on in the world around us.

Most of the latest news rants and political firestorms are nothing but ego, fear, and greed competing for dominance. They are not as critical to life's sustenance as we think they are.

An experiment...

Try and experiment if you will. Time yourself if it helps for you to do this little experiment. Take one minute when you step out the door of your house to notice one thing. Maybe what you will notice is a bird, a flower or a tree. Maybe it is the blue sky or the clouds. Maybe it is a sound. Whatever it is, just take one minute to notice it.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2011/04/ask-listen-and-connect.html

Then on the way home from work, stop and take one minute to notice one thing before getting into your car. See how it makes you feel. See if you can breathe into it.

Just stop and ask, listen, and connect.

I've got a feeling one minute will go by very quickly. More than likely it will change your view and perspective for the day. More than likely, you'll let go of some of the stress of the day and refocus and center yourself.

You'll most likely find the balance that human body so badly needs, especially in these days of nonstop destruction of our time and attention.

So, go ahead.. try the experiment. Comment below with what you found. I'm anxious to hear it.

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Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Cultivating Your Mind And Body

We're living in a day of disconnect and numbing. While we can do the new age speak and say words like the mind body, we understand far less than we think we do. The mind body connection is much deeper than we truly go.

Just like planting a garden and growing seed, if you don't make a fertile place for things to grow, you will never harvest what you plant. It will be as if you're going through the motions but doing things that truly will not help.

Cultivating your mind and body is how you go in and prepare your day for a day that can be productive and helpful in your growth. It involves identifying the weeds and other harmful things to your life, where you can work to remove them. It involves feeding and watering your mind body so that you give yourself optimal conditions to grow.

We fail to see the whole picture...

Too often, we give the soil of our thoughts the opportunity to grow, but we fail to fertilize and water our thoughts by connecting to the body. We fail to see the whole picture of what we are doing, rather than just the plant that may be emerging from the ground.

Our mind body balance is critical to our overall health and outlook on life. It can either help us find wholeness and wellness or it can be a source of deep pain. Our mind body is where it all happens, but if we only focus on the mind and ignore the body, we're only halfway to the place we need to be.

The mind body connection means going into the cells and allowing us to feel and sense what is there. It is not about creating a story from those moments, but just observing and being one with our mind body to notice what is in that moment. The more we notice, the more aware we become. The more aware we become, the more conscious we are.

It must come from deep within...

Awareness and consciousness that stand the test of time do not only come from the mind like many think they do. Yes, you might have awareness or a conscious thought, but if you truly want it to be grounded to stand the test of time, it must come from deep within the body connected to the mind.

The body is such an important part of the mind body connection and it often gets missed. We stay numb and disconnected because often times, there is far too much pain that we attempt to hide. By hiding this pain, we are numbing our entire mind body connection and robbing ourselves of peace, joy, and true growth.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/09/subconscious-disconnected-by-numbing.html

Once you realize that cultivating both the mind and the body is essential for wellness, you will see much more power in healing your own life. You will experience a deeper world around you apart from the fears that are overblown each and every day.

If you want to know more, here are some good resources to check out because these people truly understand much more about the mind body connection and how it impacts every part of your life. Do yourself a favor and learn to cultivate not only your mind, but your body. The rewards it pays out will far surpass the fears that try to hold you back.

Resources

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Thursday, March 16, 2017

Dealing With Stress Showing Up In The Body

Note where you may have pain, discomfort or issues happening in the body. That is the key to dealing with stress showing up in your body along with making the connection to what is happening in life.

The first thing to do when you notice some pain or discomfort is ask this simple question. What was happening in my life just before this? Then create a timeline of events.

You don't have to make this a difficult exercise, just go with what comes to your mind in that moment. Usually the important facts are right on the tip of your tongue.

If you haven't read the other part to this blog post, make sure you read
Where Does Stress Show Up?

If you start to look at what is happening around the time the pain or discomfort is showing up, you might just find a key that helps you interact with your life differently. Awareness of what is going on helps lead you to the point of making different choices.

Without that knowledge or awareness, you're missing key bits of information that could alter and change your physical reality or even your mental reality. We can impact our lives so much and our physical bodies even though we forget that we can.

Go in and feel...

When you think you've discovered what the events were that brought on the pain, try to go in and feel that. Take a look at it. Is there anything you can change or alter? Is it trying to show you something? It it attempting to connect you with something that you need to do differently in life?

Feel and sense the pain in your body while making the connection. See what movement or connection you can make to help let it go. Sounds and very slow connected movements can do wonders to help alleviate stress in addition to breath work.

That's the first part and after that, it is up to you in how you proceed with the knowledge and awareness you have. It is up to you how you find ways to work with letting that physical stress go. We can of course keep beating our head against the proverbial brick wall, but if we understand that we can interact with our own biology, than we're on the road to making positive changes in our life.

Dealing with stress showing up in our body takes us out of numbing and disconnect. It brings us back into our body where we can interact with it in a much deeper level. Someone once said, "Know Thyself" and through the body interaction with pain, we will truly begin to know thyself.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/05/maladaptive-problem-solving.html

Unfortunately most of us go on autopilot every day of our life trying to get from one activity to the next, one job task to the next and ignoring the greater parts of our life. If we just stop and notice at some point during our day, we could alleviate much of our suffering. Numbing and disconnect gets us nowhere, but as humans we tend to keep repeating that which does not work.

This is not just a mental exercise of thoughts and thinking positive. This is learning to interact with not only our thoughts, but their connection in the body. If you stop and notice and observe, you will see them, but if you only focus on the mental aspect, you will miss half the healing that is readily available.

It is truly up to us what we allow ourselves to do and how we interact with our biology. We make the choice. We can choose to avoid it or we can choose to go in and take a look, thereby giving us a greater awareness of the body we inhabit.

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Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Where Does Your Stress Show Up

We all have stress. Unless you're superman or Jesus or someone that is no longer alive, we all have stress. Yes, there can be good and bad stress, but I'm talking about some of the normal stress we experience in our life.

For each of us, stress shows up differently and in different parts of our body. No two people are alike, although there are similarities between one human to another.

Here's a little secret that you might not be aware of while we're talking about stress showing up in the body. If you get real busy and have yourself burning the candle at both ends, there's a good chance you won't feel the stress in your body. Your body just automatically numbs and disconnects from the stress.

As humans, we are good at numbing and disconnecting. Imagine if a doctor had to work a 48 hour shift in an emergency room, but could not do it because he was feeling stressed out in his body. In that case, numbing and disconnecting would be a good thing. Yet, like the doctor, we all do this and when our 48 hours shift is over (if it ever is), we forget that it is time to feel.

Or what if you had to get to your job, take care of your kids and care for someone that is elderly. Most likely, you wouldn't have time to feel pains and illness in your own body. You would numb and disconnect from it in order to function. Yet, when we need to do this we forget to stop and reconnect with the stress in our body to let it go.

When stress in my body kicks up....

For me, I feel stress in a couple of places, but sometimes it shifts to other places in my body. I'll really feel it in my neck and shoulders at times. Boy, when that kicks up, I feel like punching things and some days that really gets painful.

I've also had times where it shows up in my low back or comes on as a headache. There are many different ways it shows up including sometimes causing digestive issues and stomach pain.

Yes, there are some that say if this part of our body hurts, it means x, y, and z. While it may be connected to that and I don't discount that it is, you have to be careful that as the observer, you don't impact the observation. Sometimes simplifying life down to these little "facts" becomes more detrimental than helpful.

There are a couple of very good books on the subject. One is by Dr. John Sarno, The Mind Body Prescription. The other book is by Dr. Peter Levine, Freedom From Pain.

I remember doing chair massage in an office one time and one of the people would complain of constant low back pain. Sure, I could have applied the simple truth to why she had backpain because it was something in her life causing it. However, I would just observe her at her desk.

I noticed that she had the computer monitor to the right on her L-shaped desk and her keyboard to the left. She was constantly twisting her body all day long, but was not aware of it. Once I pointed it out, she relocated stuff on her desk. He body physically changed as a result. Before this, you could physically tell the spine was twisted and after it, the spine straightened out more.

Sometimes we have feet issues and there are many times that when you see feet pain come up, the individual is struggling with where to go in life. They are having difficulty finding the right steps in their life. Now, it may not have to mean something as simplified as what I just made it, but I've seen this show up many times.

For me, when frustration hits me and I'm struggling to figure out what is going on, I feel it in my body as if someone was punching me. Often I've been told that I beat myself up seeking perfection in what I do. Many times I have to stop and realize that if I just give myself a break and quit beating myself up, my body feels better.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2017/02/coping-with-stress.html

There is a word for converting stress into physical symptoms and that is called somatization. Yes, you can literally create pain and illness in your body by allowing the stress to continue. We do this to ourselves while hardly recognizing that we are doing it.

So instead of trying to apply facts that other people come up with to explain pain, go in and become acquainted with who you truly are and observe what is going on. When you feel the pain in your own body and connect to it, you're really given yourself some good information that is very useful in life.

The next blog post on March 16, 2017 will tell you more about how to deal with stress showing up in the body. Make sure you read Dealing With Stress Showing Up In Your Body.

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Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Coping With Stress

Ok, here's a question asking for a show of hands.

How many of us know how to effectively cope with stress?

I see a few hands go up, but for the most part many are avoiding eye contact with me. I know... I know... it isn't always easy coping with stress.

For most of us, we weren't taught how to cope with stress that well. Our dearly beloved parents often didn't know how to cope with stress in their own lives and that's what they taught us. It isn't that we should blame them for anything because they did the best with what they had (ok, maybe not all parents did the best, but I'm sure some did).

All too often, we deal with stress by acting as if it is not there. We avoid it, numb it and disconnect from it. We look at anyone who acknowledges it with raised eye brows as if they are doing something wrong in life.

We keep ourselves so busy...

Sometimes we keep ourselves so busy that we don't have to acknowledge its presence in our lives. Sometimes we have a few extra numbing and mind altering substances just so we can continue on separating ourselves from what is going on.

Some of us do very well at shoving it deep down inside of us so we just don't have to look at it. Humans are pretty good at that. Yeah, there are days when we need to do that, but so often we forget to flip the switch back the other way and deal with the stress.

Often we avoid and disconnect and numb stress in such an unconscious way that we're oblivious to its effects upon our body ... and our mind. It is there, but we're in such a busy mode and disconnected mode that we don't see it.

When I've gone into some deep healing moments on the table, one of the first things we do is observe what is there in that moment - what we feel in our body. There are many times that I don't feel anything until I stop and start to ask the question and notice it. Then, it intensifies and that is the launching pad for the deep healing work.

Numbing and disconnecting...

Regardless of how you deal with stress, coping with it by numbing and disconnecting is not the best way. It may be necessary in the moment, but if this continues, it starts to have major impacts on the different systems in the body. It opens the door for illness and dis-ease.

Learning to be aware of its presence and learning to cope with stress is key to finding a more happier and healthier life. It may not happen all at once and some of us may require much more difficulty to learning how to do this, but you mind and body will thank you.

If you do nothing and just let it build, at some point it will try to get your attention. The daily buildup of stress can be just as harmful as traumatic experiences. Trust me - and I share this from my own personal life - you don't want to go down the road of letting it build and not finding a way to let it go.

Coping with stress is about letting go, but doing so on a daily basis. We have to find ways to stop and "smell the roses" or life will takeover and we'll be left wishing we had. There are simple ways and more profound ways to cope with stress, but it all starts by stopping and observing and feeling in your body.

After that, your body and your mind will guide the way if you allow them. They will show you things that you may not have realized, but it all starts with observing and feeling the stress within your body.

I leave you with this question - what will you do today in learning to cope with stress and letting go? How will you allow yourself to feel it in your body, so you can let it go from the cellular level?

#stress

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Saturday, February 25, 2017

Tomato Plants Teach About Stress

I've been trying to do something I've never done and finding out this is a learning process. This is the first time that I've tried to grow tomato seedlings from little seeds. I really had no clue how to do this and so I just jumped in with both feet. Of course, the tomato plants are teaching me well!

Since I am growing them close to where I work in my home office, I keep a constant eye on them. While they were doing quite well, I've been noticing that they aren't able to stand straight up as they grow taller. At first, I thought they were just stretching for the light, but today I noticed that it was more than that.

Going to google and doing a search, I started to see conversations about plants doing "legging" as they called it. If a plant was not getting enough sunlight, they would tend to grow taller and move anyway they could towards the light. I believe that is what is going on with my plants and right now, I've got them outside on the patio getting as much sunlight as they so desire.

It got me thinking though about stress. Here is an opportunity for me to learn as the tomato plants teach me about stress.

Of course, we may not always recognize how much stress a plant goes through, but in this case, I think not having enough sunshine or light is stressful on the plant. The plants need water, food, and sunlight to grow. When one of those is not in enough supply, it creates stress on the plant.

We don't fully see stress...

As I apply this to the mind body, if we have stress in our day which most of us do, it has an impact upon us. Often we don't fully see the stress and often we are so numb and disconnected that even if the stress is pointed out, we never see it.

To me, at its basic level, stress is the result of not having what you need at that moment even if it is a perceived lack of something. In this case of the tomato plants, it is the lack of light or sunshine. I realize, this is greatly simplifying what stress is, but I think it is at the essence of it. To fully describe it, would take another blog post.

It doesn't necessarily mean someone or something is bad to you, but that in its basic form, what is needed is just not available.

We overcompensate for stress..

In this case, the tomato plants try to overcompensate by growing in different directions and trying to grow taller as if to get more daylight. We too, as humans, do the same thing. We overcompensate every day by numbing, disconnecting and doing things that take us away from our mind body connection.

The way for us humans to come back is by stopping and observing the felt sense of our body and where we are. It is about stopping to feel what we know in our minds with where we feel that sensation within our body. It is about stopping to feel a sensation in our body and then allow it to connect with our mind through the felt sense.

Make changes to find balance...

I know that stress is often perceived as something that is bad or you are weak if you are stressed. I've heard all of it in life. If we look at stress as being something that we either perceive to not have in this moment or are lacking in our life, than the corrective action would be to make changes to balance this back to normal.

I know, it is easier said than done to do this, but I think if we alter how we perceive stress and if we actually recognize it, we've taken major steps to bring our mind and body back into balance.

To live in a day has stress present. I'm not sure you can get through a day without some type of stressor upon your life. Even the smallest of stressors still impact us and if we let those continue, the compensation behaviors we do often build up and come back to bite us in the butt!

Work to identify the stressors in your day and allow yourself to recognize them. Next, stop and observe what you feel in the body and then allow your mind to connect those things together. The more you can do this, the more your nervous system stays in balance and there is more resiliency in your nervous system for the larger things that show up in a day.

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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Avoiding Healing

If you're like me in my own healing, you've probably done some avoiding of what you needed to do. It is easy to avoid healing in our lives because this path is not easy.

Healing is sometimes long and treacherous. Sometimes it is exhausting.

The only thing is, if we avoid healing in our lives, it will come back up and bite us. Our body and our mind will work to get our attention and the more we avoid it, the more it will increase.

I know from experience that avoiding things in life, numbing and disconnecting will only take you down a path that isn't pretty. For me, it took me into a conversion disorder where I was paralyzed and almost on my last breath for good.

It isn't easy to heal, especially when you've been through trauma or child abuse or been molested and raped as a child. These experiences harm people in so many ways and to get your life back is an exercise in exhaustion at times. I know, I've been there.

Be real in our healing...

We just need to be honest with ourselves in our own healing and be real with what we are doing. Are we avoiding healing through various ways, or are we truly going in and doing what we need to be doing.

There are many ways to avoid healing and even if I tried to list all that I could, there would be many more. I think at a subconscious level we understand when we are avoiding what it is that we need to do, but often times it doesn't rise to a level of consciousness and awareness.

So, how do you avoid healing or how have you done this in the past?

What are your ways that you numb and disconnect, rather than take a long hard look at what is truly taking place on your healing journey.

#Numbing

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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Numbed Pain

If you're one of those people that deal with chronic pain, this post does not necessarily apply to you. It is something different that I am talking about here than chronic pain where you hurt day in and day out.

What I am talking about is pain that we numb or what I referred to in the title as Numbed Pain. It is the pain that we avoid and disconnect from. It is our busy days that keep us from feeling the pain in our body.

Yes, we do numb our pain. We go through our days of stress and nonstop activity, oblivious to the pain and messages that our body is using to get our attention. We often don't want to face the pain, so we stuff it down and hide it.

When I was traveling every week, my life was on constant go from one city to the next with very little rest or downtime. When my head hit the pillow in a hotel room of a strange city, that's when I had the chance to rest. Crossing one time zone after another and sleeping in one strange place to another, I didn't know what rest was.

In addition, I spent most of my waking hours either on the phone being the main support contact or answering emails or planning the next training session. There was no downtime. My body didn't have time to feel all the pains and stresses and issues in the tissues. I automatically and subconsciously avoided it. I numbed out to the pain. I disconnected from it.

Avoided the pain but it impacted my body...

The thing is, even though I was avoiding and numbing the pain, it was still impacting my body. I just didn't realize it nor could I see it. It wasn't until after I quit the job and had massive amounts of downtime that I really started to see just how much of a toll it took on my body.

It is human to numb and avoid, but the more we do this, the more we miss critical notices from our body of what is truly happening in the body and the mind. The more we don't feel what is happening, the more stress and issues we are storing within the cellular components of our body. These things rob us of precious energy and strength. These things rob us of peace in our life.

Oblivious to numbed pain...

All too often we are oblivious to numbed pain. We have been successful at avoiding it and now it is like we are complete strangers speaking two different languages. All the while, it is impacting us in very real biological ways.

If we continue down this road, it will get our attention at some point. We may be able to hide from it, evade it and ignore it. Sooner or later, it will catch up to us and the likes of it will not be pretty.

I'm not speaking from some new age concept here. I'm speaking from experience because I almost lost my life many years ago from numbing the pain. I ignored it and didn't deal with the stresses and trauma I had experienced in life. It showed up as Conversion Disorder after some other events became the catalyst that formed paralysis and a near death experience.

I'm not saying that I'm perfect and have learned my lesson well on avoiding and disconnecting from numbed pain. However, I have done a tremendous amount of work on myself to free myself from the chains of trauma and stress. It is through this physical and biological healing work that I've learned how to transform this into a life I never thought possible.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2013/03/eliminating-pain.html

The thing is that any of us can keep avoiding the pain and not feeling it. The more we do of it, the more chronic it becomes. The more we continue to avoid it, the more it begins to work harder to get our attention. If we continue down this path, the brain will do all it can to keep us alive but other physical realities of our bodies and minds may become nothing more than dead weight.

It is up to each one of us how we choose our life and what we allow ourselves to become aware of each day. If we allow pain to be numbed, we will be sentencing our life to great difficulty. You may be getting away with it at the moment, but just how much longer before your luck runs out and you pass the point of no return?

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Thursday, September 15, 2016

Subconscious Disconnected By Numbing

Connecting is not as difficult as it sounds, but in many ways it is difficult. In fact, most of our lives, we have been living a disconnected life and our subconscious mind is now a foreigner within us.

Yes, there are certain activities that help take us out of being disconnected, but often we have not passed the threshold we need to obtain and so even with these activities, we stay disconnected. The fullness of our life is hidden and silent. We get to the point that our subconscious mind is anything but something we are connected to in our life.

I say it is difficult to connect because we all have lived a life of numbing and avoidance. Many of the experiences we had early on in life were more than our young minds could handle and so numbing and avoidance became the norm. Even the daily build up of stress acts in much the same way as traumatic events upon the body. Traumatic scenes and images we view can also bring on the numbing and avoidance.

Numbing and Avoiding...

When we numb and avoid, we are not feeling. We are not connected to our body or our mind. We are not present in life to the degree we may think we are. In fact, most of the time when you are numbing and avoiding, you're not even aware that you are doing it. If someone tried to convince you otherwise, you would have great difficulty comprehending what they were saying and questioning strongly how it applies to you and your life.

Numbing and avoiding can be in so many ways. It can be as simple as using food and alcohol or as complex as using drugs and sex. Numbing and avoidance can show up through religious practices, constantly buying stuff you don't need, living in fantasy more than in reality or just keeping yourself constantly busy. There are many ways of numbing and these are just a few, but if you want to read a more exhaustive list that I've put together, check this page out, The Ways We Numb The Body.

We are not feeling everything...

When we are numb, we aren't feeling the full breadth of our physical body. We may not be and most likely are not aware that we are not feeling everything. If you are trying to get 100 tasks completed by the end of the day that the boss is demanding you finish, do you think that you would feel all the pains in your body or how the stress is impacting you? More likely than not, you would not feel these things. They would get in the way of you performing the tasks you need to complete. You would be numb to the subconscious mind.

Sometimes we need to numb our body to handle the current moments, but it is when we don't shut off the numbing in our subconscious mind that it becomes a problem Temporary numbing is one thing, but long term causes great damage to our mind and body. The more we numb, the more long term damage we do and the harder it is to recover.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/09/subconsious-mind-impacted-by-past.html

If we can just begin to understand how much we numb and avoid the hard parts of our life, we will be on the uphill climb to a much greater awareness filled with peace beyond comprehension. Numbing and avoidance take us away from the subconscious mind where we are empowered and filled with all that we need to take on the challenges of our lives.

We must first begin to understand that numbness and avoidance are two of our greatest enemies in our life. For the more we choose to not see how we numb and avoid, the more we are robbing ourselves of all the potential for our life. Numbing and avoidance are negative pleasures. They help us disconnect, but at the same time, they rob us of our energy and essence of life. Numbing and avoidance keep us from the deep peace within our lives.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Subconsious Mind Impacted by Past Experiences

We never know enough about who we are or what all we can be. We all have had experiences throughout our life that has challenged us to the core. Some of us have encountered areas where we have struggled to stand up against the challenges of life.

All of these experiences are recorded in different ways in our subconscious mind. It is like information being put into the computer and even though we may not be aware of it, the subconscious mind is recalling the facts.

We go through our days oblivious to the impact of these past experiences on our subconscious. Indirectly they impact our physical body and mind to the point where we experience illness, disease, pain, and mental struggles. While we stay oblivious to the impact, they work hard behind the scenes controlling and manipulating our lives to help us make sense of our days.

We learn how to avoid and disconnect...

As time passes, we learn how to avoid and disconnect from the revelations of our subconscious mind. We disregard the messages given to us and we ignore the physical symptoms that arise until it is too late. By the time we begin to notice them, they have already been conspiring against us and striving to get our attention.

In all reality, it is not that subconscious mind is our enemy, but when we fail to listen to it or connect with it, we make it the enemy. We stand opposed to the very nature of what it is hoping to get us to hear and understand.

We become masters at numbing...

We become masters at avoidance and numbing in our life. We get so good at it that we do not have a clue we are doing it. We just do it as if we are on automatic pilot. If someone points it out, we would think they are speaking a foreign language we don't understand.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/09/what-happens-in-subsconscious-mind-is.html

How could we understand? It is the subconscious mind that does not show up unless we allow it to show up. Without connecting to it, the subconscious mind stays hidden. It is not accessible through the logical mind.

In order to recognize and connect with the subconscious mind, we must first turn off the logical mind and go internally into our senses. It is through the senses that we become connected to something far greater than our logical mind understands.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Learning To Surrender In Order To Heal

It is not easy to do. I know, I know! Stating that we need to surrender in order to heal is like telling the person getting ready to jump off the cliff that they have wings. It is hard to believe, understand, and comprehend. Yet, time and time again, I have come back to this lesson.

Learning to surrender in order to heal is essential for healing. Okay, maybe it is not the beginning stage or the intermediate stage. Maybe it is not the point you're at in this moment and that's totally understandable. After all, it took me a some time to get to this point in my own healing journey.

Surrender does not happen always in one single moment. It is a process where we come to the point where we surrender a little, and then we rest. We make it a little further in our healing, and then we stop to gather our sustenance for the journey ahead. It isn't one moment in time, but a series of small little moments that add up. Healing doesn't just happen at a specific point, but healing can happen at any point along the way.

As I was going through my most recent Unified Therapy healing session, I kept coming up against the physical pain showing itself in my body. The pain was horrendous. It literally hurt in my shoulder, arm, and neck. If I tried to stay present with the pain, I would go into numbness. It would be as if my arm, shoulder, and neck did not exist.

Attempting to stay present with what I was feeling in the body, I soon found that my left side felt lower on the table while my right side felt like it was raised. My body didn't want to go in and feel these things, because it was tapping into so many of those emotions and experiences that I struggle to articulate into a coherent image.

The more I fought the process, the more the pain intensified and the more I wanted to numb my body. This is the same thing we do in life. Instead of going into the pain and the experiences we've been through, we tend to numb and disconnect. We tend to medicate and avoid. It is the human experience to do this.

A small powerful trick is to learn how to not numb or disconnect and avoid what is showing up. The trick is to go in and surrender into this moment. That is where the story unfolds and the trapped energy is released. It is like lancing a boil and letting out all the bad stuff. The surrender is the moment where we give up our attachment to the process, the experience, and yes - the pain.

Recently I fought through another round of rashes that covered my genitals in a very bad way. This time, I was able to help move myself past this because I surrendered into it. Is that easy to do? HELL NO! It can be very difficult but I've learned skills to help take myself into these moments. The more I surrendered into it and just allowed myself to be there, the story unfolded and as I wrote it down in my journal, I felt a shift taking place.

We have so much power in us, but when we hold on to the horrible experiences and the stress in our life, we allow these moments to suck us dry. They become our energy vampires, rather than motivation and empowerment to heal our lives. Yes, there is a time to hold on, but there is also a time to let go.

http://mindbodythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/02/are-you-ready-to-let-go.html

Surrender is a big key of healing that I have found because as I learn to surrender into the moment I am in, I give myself a new possibility of the moments I have not yet lived. As I surrender, I give myself the opportunity to go deeper into my own healing. It sets me up for the next time where I will need more of that strength, courage, and determination to face the deeper levels in life.

Yes, we can settle for where we are at in our life and the healing and growth we have come through. However, I'm not one that is okay with where I am at in this moment. I want to travel further. I want to get my life back deeper and more fully than I have ever known. To do this, surrender becomes one of the best tools I have and in so doing this, I reclaim more of my power and all that I am.

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