Hello sweet soul, welcome back! Wow, that was a pretty intense week. So much has happened, and recently I was asking you about what your intention is for this year: What is the place that you want to live from? What is that state of being, that feeling that you want to express every single day, that you want to have as your main resource? It’s not about having it come in from somewhere from the outside, it’s about how can I practice and embody the feeling state that I wish to experience in my life.
This week we’ll dive a little bit deeper into that – how do I move on from that state, if I had this really intense week, if it was stressful, if I feel a lot of tension, if I still have quite a bit of stuff on my shoulders, maybe from last year, maybe from early this year, it just keeps piling on and I haven’t quite been able to to shake it or to recover from it.
First, let’s take a deep breath together, exhale and relax your shoulders. Good, take another deep breath through your nose, exhale and sigh it out. Third’s a charm – inhale slowly, exhale release. Good, arrive in your body – be really here with me for just a minute.
What do you notice what’s going on as physical sensations in your body? What’s there today? Any tension? I notice a slight strain behind my right shoulder blade. It often comes, it’s a well-known friend to my body.
What do you notice on a mental level? What thoughts are passing through right now? One of mine is that I hope this serves you. What’s passing through in your mind today? You know, it’s just these little thought clouds, we don’t have to get hooked up in them all the time. It tends to happen, but we can just let them go.
What’s happening on an emotional level? What emotions are passing through? I often think of them as waves: they get triggered by something, they build, they peak, and then they subside.
Our mind sometimes tries to make us believe that they’re going to stick around forever, but trust me, they won’t, so the more we can relax into what is, for example right now I feel a little giddiness because oh I get to talk to you, and I know that will also peak and it will subside. Maybe it’s peaking right now, because I’m actually writing. The question is: can we manage to not push any feeling away (for example, an unwanted feeling of sadness or fear) and can we not get attached and hold on so strongly to the feelings that we want to persist? They are going to pass through either way and it’s okay. We can just be with them and allow them to be here while they are here. What’s here for you now? Good, allow it.
And then how’s your sweet soul doing today? Just check in with that little spark in there that is still there when we forget about all the labels. It doesn’t matter which roles you’re taking on throughout the day, what certificates you have or don’t have, what you own or don’t own, doesn’t matter. Where’s that sweet little light that’s still here when we let everything else fall aside? Breathe into that for a moment, breathe into this connection. Maybe you want to place a hand on your heart. Does that feel a bit more grounded? Good, sweet.
There are two major aspects of really living from that feeling state that we want to experience. The first one is our ability to ground and we can do that with little breathing exercises like the one we just did and there’s plenty of others that I’m be happy to point you to, for example my Free 5-day Course.
The second part is how can I uplift my energy to that good place? I’m making a slight assumption here – my assumption is that the place that you would like to live from is something that is positively charged. Something that is maybe friendly, maybe inspired, or inspiring, maybe it’s loving, maybe it’s compassionate, maybe it’s really getting things going. All of that is connected with a feeling of trusting in who I am and some activated energy. To get to that place of activated energy, we just want to think for a moment of what the things are where we truly experience joy. What in your life brings that to you?
Play
For many of us that is a version of play. How do you play in your life? Is that something that you left behind when you “graduated” from childhood – if you ever did – I’m not sure I did, or better say I sometimes try to remind myself that I don’t need to graduate from childhood, because as children we are pretty good at some things that then we tend to forget later on as adults. First, children are so good at being absorbed in play. They just completely forget the world around them. Second, because of that ability of being absorbed into something, they are also really connected to their intuitive knowledge.
If we want to tease a little bit of that out, and want to experience that a little more in our everyday, how can we get back into that play mode? For me, there is a couple of aspects that I love about this, and maybe some of them resonate for you – so take what is useful, discard the rest.
First one, I love moving my body. The “worst” thing that can happen to me is that somebody tells me to sit on the couch all day and not move. It’s not the worst thing that could happen, obviously. I love moving my body, let’s just stick with that. It can be dancing, that can be running, that can be acro yoga – that’s one of my favorites, it makes me feel really deeply connected to my body, my being, to how I move through the world, how I move through space, how I connect with other people.
Right now, in many parts of the world, we may be restricted in the way how we can come together as a community and physically bond and physically play together. So take that idea and make it work for whatever is possible in your context.
Space
The second part that is really important to play is there’s got to be some room for no structure, for just exploring. Some people call it being silly, some people call it adventuring, some people call it ‘just being’ as in be who I authentically am, and to give ourselves permission to do that. A lot of the time we are very goal driven, very focused on the thing that we want to achieve next, but can we allow ourselves to have no specific goal for the play time? Whether that’s engaging with a board game or a video game – of course those games do have internal goals, but just to enjoy ourselves being in the moment more than having to reach a certain level or so. For some people the way into play can be drawing, singing, painting, writing a poem – any creative expression.
The creative doing, the following the things that spark our joy, that spark our bliss, that is what elevates our energy. Now, the challenge is that when we find ourselves in a low energy state then maybe we don’t even want to do those things. When the world weighs really heavily on our shoulders, sometimes it just feels like “oh man, I don’t really want to get off the couch”. Has that ever happened to you? Where you think “oh yeah, I love doing these things, and I know they bring me joy, but oh I don’t even have the energy to do them”. That’s our mind trying to tell us “You know what? We’re just going to conserve the energy.” The thing is that’s an evolutionary thing from when your body needed to preserve as much energy and be as energy efficient as possible to survive.
Lifting energy
Now, for lifting ourselves into the state of being that we want to experience, which is a slightly more activated one where we can express ourselves, where we can engage with others, or where we can just feel content and that peace within our center, that does take a little bit of activation. So, find a way to talk yourself into “yeah, this is the state that I want to experience, this is what I’m aiming for, and therefore I’m going to go play now, because I will feel amazing the second I start”. Or five minutes after. That would be me going for a run. Sometimes I don’t feel amazing when I start, and the first five minutes are a bit of suffering, until my body has settled into it and now we’re in a completely new state and then it’s enjoyable.
What really helps for me is to encapsulate that feeling state in a short statement. What is that for you? Pick the feeling state I want to feel. Loving, playful, and blessed – those are my three for right now. The ‘blessed’ has to do a lot with gratitude. I want to feel that gratitude all the time, so I give myself a verbal reminder. I have this on post-its on my walls. It looks fun and I love it all the colors. That verbal reminder I see several times every day, and then I reconnect to that feeling state inside. Then I check how do I activate that? Alright, time for a little play. That’s what I wanted to share with you this week.
Little recap: First of all, check in with yourself – a couple of deep breaths to really settle and notice what is going on right now. Where am I? Starting being present with that, and accepting that fully, allowing it to be there, whatever it is. Second part, reconnecting to what I want to experience in my life. What’s that feeling state that you wish to feel? Third part, your version of play, for uplifting your energy to that place – whether it is literal play, whether it is creative arts expression, whether it is singing, dancing, playing some games – your call, you know what resonates best for you. Go find that, go dig that up. Maybe you haven’t done it in a little while, maybe it’s gotten lost in between all the to-do’s, so make sure to go look for it. Spend some time on that this week.
I love you so much. I hope you have a wonderful wonderful week.