perjantai 23. elokuuta 2013

Days 296-297: Mapping out the physical


22-23082013



I was asked: “what are you processing at the moment?”, and I realized that for some reason it was difficult for me to see the big picture of where I am standing. In order to find some perspective I decided to focus on what my physical body has been going through lately. During the past few months I have been noticing specific points in my physical body that are in pain, tense or otherwise non-aligned. They are:

  • forehead
  • knees
  • left shoulder & neck

In my forehead there is a constant tension, like an expression that is “stuck” on my face. This has been the case for as long as I can remember – I can remember in my teens my family joking about my forehead being “lively” (lol), by which they meant that my forehead muscles were constantly “doing something”. A friend pointed this out to me a couple of months ago and ever since I've been paying attention to it and learning to relax the muscles on my forehead whenever I notice them getting tense, however I have not yet been able to pinpoint how exactly this tension is triggered. So far I've noticed that whenever my forehead is tense the rest of my body is often tense as well, and I have to relax everything at once – as if I was wearing a character / a role / a costume all the way from my ass to my face.

My knees have been acting up ever since I started yoga about 8 months ago. I would get a discomfort/pain in my knees (sometimes in one, sometimes both) usually while walking and I would have a difficult time shaking it off. Although this might be “just” a physical problem (my joints appear to be overly mobile), I came to think there might be something else there when I recently read a blog post where it was mentioned that pain in the knees means reluctance to “move onwards” - that I am holding on to something in the past. This realization was so recent I haven't yet had a chance to stop and investigate the moment when the discomfort/pain occurs in my knees.

My left shoulder and sometimes also neck are quite often in pain. I have gone through what the Structural Resonance interview has to say about these specific body parts, and I have realized that a major point I have been processing during the past year has been about what the interview points out: shoulders being the point of the parent survival systems, neck/throat being the point of communication/expression and the left side of the body being connected to the father/masculine system of my mind. Because of the pains I have lately been going through my process with these points thus far and trying to figure out how to proceed with this point.

So basically my shoulder is saying “don't express yourself!”, my face is saying “wear a character!” and my knees are saying “do not move!” - fascinating. When I piece it together I can see how my body is trying to tell me I am stagnant. Thank you, physical!

What has been most prominent recently is the shoulder/neck point. What got me writing about it today was that the pain was really intense when I woke up. I started looking at the point of idolizing masculinity and demonizing femininity, which is related to the father survival system I've been going through recently.

I have known for years that one of my problems is that I am trying to be “one of the guys”. I have demonized certain qualities of femininity, despising them, rejecting them, attempting to be as cool as I perceived the guys to be. I was looking for the stability I saw in my father, and I thought I could override my femininity with masculine traits (stability, rationality, non-emotionality, joking/being a clown, physical strength/ability). I was looking for respect from others because I was not giving it to myself, and because I saw men gaining respect by being masculine I thought that this was the way to do it.

During the past year as the self-suppression point inherited/adopted from my father has been opening up my expression has also been expanding. This has brought me face to face with a quality of femininity I have previously found despicable: talkativeness. I've found myself talking A LOT recently and I have felt a great release whenever doing it. There are still points where I inhibit myself from talking (which I have done to insane extents) but overall I am making progress, and this point of expression has opened up some other traits of femininity as well, for example a certain softness or kindness. When I no longer have a need to “be a guy” to defend myself I find myself really tender, and not in a bad way at all, quite the contrary.

So what I'm wondering is that even though the pain has now dissolved by the evening, why was it there when I woke up? What in the events of the previous day or in my expectations for the beginning day triggered the father survival system – the male/suppression/strength point?

--

Here I did private writings to clear up things I had been piling up the previous day, which I realized had nothing to do with the shoulder point, which left me a bit confused and wondering where the hell the pain came from then – until I realized that I had overlooked one simple thing in the morning and the moment of waking up. Because I had worked the previous night and had to wake up early the following morning I only got around 4 hours of sleep, which is too little for my body, especially when I do physical work. I felt really heavy when waking up and would have rather just went back to sleep, but I forced myself out of bed with the thought: “If I don't get up, it will mess up other people's plans.” Both the pain and the tiredness followed me throughout the day until in the afternoon I got to the forest to do some physical labour, which is when they both vanished. See what I messed up here? In the morning when I woke up I did not move myself within and as breath – I did not move as one with my body, aware of my movements, of my body parts, of the weariness, of the heaviness. Instead I whipped myself into getting out of bed by thinking “I have to get up”, and I moved myself within and as the mind, completely neglecting my physical body. I remember not being aware of my body that morning at all. When I got into the forest I purposefully brought myself back to breath because the work I was doing was so tiring to my body that I realized that I wouldn't be able to keep it up if I didn't work with my body. So: the father survival system that was at play in the morning was that of “pushing through” - forcing myself to do things out of duty/obligation or because of others.

This shows me I have to pay more attention to the moment of waking up, because how I get out of bed defines the “path” that my day takes. If I get up in beautiful sunshine hearing birdsong and instantly cheer up, my day begins with a joyful charge and I dash through my day like a movie character in a perfect world. If I wake up remembering the chores I have to do and get anxious, all of my day is dragging along with everything feeling heavy and burdensome. If I, instead of either of these polarities, get up within and as breath, as a physical being that has received her rest and now moves on to live some more of her life, be it troublesome or celebratory – according to my experience I will be more stable, less tired, thinking clearly and responsive.

This post became a bit of a digressing one, lol, kinda like my speech these days. So: I mapped out the points my physical body is pointing out to me. I opened up the shoulder/neck point a little more. I will keep on investigating the forehead and knee points in my living when and as they occur.



I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from my physical body so that I have walked through my life without being aware of my physical form of existence – the only kind of existence I can be “sure” of because it has been verified by other beings, and the only kind of reality I share with others undoubtedly – as I have not seen, realized and understood that this separation from the physical reality into the conceptual reality, so that I literally do not feel my body most of the time as I “disconnect” from my senses, actually causes damage onto my physical body because when I move without being aware of myself as the physical I am not working WITH my body but using my body as a tool/vessel for the mind with no consideration for the actual condition of my body unless I go too far and the pain/tension/discomfort/misalignment becomes too big to go unnoticed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to slack off on practicing physical self-awareness by accepting and allowing myself to “let loose” when I was on a holiday – not realizing that I become what I do; in other words, if I slack off for many enough times I will regress and/or stagnate.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to move myself out of bed within and as the mind, motivated by thoughts that aroused a feeling of obligation, thus forcing myself to get up because I “had to”, instead of realizing the necessity of getting up and understanding that I best wake myself up by breathing and being aware of each and every movement I make.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to neglect the needs of my body by not drinking enough liquids when waking up, thus being dehydrated for the next few hours and prolonging my weariness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to motivate myself to get out of bed by thinking: “tonight I get to sleep it off, just bear with it for today” - not realizing that with this reward-oriented thinking I was not HERE working with my body so that I would best manage myself during the day but was instead projecting myself into the future moment where I would get to sleep and thus holding onto the experience of being tired.



I commit myself, when and as I wake up, to focus on breathing and to thus be aware of my experience upon the moment of waking up, not accepting and allowing my experience to define the beginning day.

I commit myself to move myself out of bed within and as breath and aware of my movements.

When and as I am required to start my day without sufficient sleep, I stop upon the moment of waking up, I breathe and I become aware of my entire body, from head to toe, hand to hand, back to chest. If I do not feel tired/heavy/worn out, I proceed to move myself out of bed within and as breath to begin my day. If I do feel tired/heavy/worn out I wake myself up with breathing, moving my focus from limb to limb, muscle to muscle and thus activating my body piece by piece. I move myself out of bed and wake myself up through movement within and as breath. I will also utilize voice to wake me up by for example talking to myself. If the tiredness remains, I go through all of my senses (touch, smell, hearing, sight, taste) to ground myself into the physical.

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