Positive affirmations have been used as a tool for change for a long time. The concept of changing what you think in order to change your life enjoyed a new surge of popularity with release of the book and DVD of The Secret . Unfortunately, it is often only the conscious mind that is involved in the affirmational process and the unconscious mind still tends to run the show with its old and often limiting beliefs that argue against change. Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman is one of many who states that the unconscious mind controls 95% of our thought process, a premise  that explains why simply using affirmations alone is not as successful as we would like it to be. 


Combining affirmations with physical movement is one creative way to bridge the dual nature of our human mind. Candace Pert, neuroscientist and author of Molecules of Emotion, wrote that the body is the subconscious mind.  And certainly the intimate relationship between the physical body and the unconscious mind is evidenced by the body's ability to digest food, heal wounds, and grow hair.... things that few of us consciously know how to do. I remember being completely awed by the inner intelligence of my body when it was able to reconstruct five shattered ribs, drawing fragmented pieces of bone back into their original structure from the far reaches of my chest wall. The body remembers how to walk so we don't have to think about it while we are doing it. It tells us when we are working too hard, when we are under too much stress, when we are happy. So including the body in the cognitive restructuring experience makes perfect sense.


Affirmations in Motion (AIM)connects the conscious and the unconscious by combining four or five specific affirmations with postural movements that complement the intention of each statement. The concept evolved after my first Reiki session at a time when I really needed to make some changes in my life, and it invites collaboration of conscious and unconscious minds towards a common goal. The words to my original AIM were what I wanted to manifest in my life and the exercise has served me well.
I open my heart.
I embrace the world.
I reach for the stars.
And I loving let go of what I no longer need.


It begins in a standing position with arms folded across the chest. With the words "I open my heart", the arms unfold and the body moves into 'starfish' position (think Leonardo Davinci's Vitruvian Man drawing).  "I embrace the world", enfolds into a gathering hug. Diagonal crossovers that reach to the sky (like climbing a ladder) accompany the statement  "I reach for the stars". And a slow forward bend with arms revolving in a tumble goes with "And I loving let go of what I no longer need". You are welcome to use my AIM, and I encourage you to write your own, to put your chosen affirmations and movements into a one or two minute harmonic convergence of mind and body, conscious and unconscious, to effect change on a deep level. 


Affirmations in Motion takes about one or two minutes each day. If you do it for 30 days, a total of one hour or less, you will see measurable changes. Every one of my clients who stuck to a 30 day commitment reported significant progress. Probably the most powerful unconscious conversation for no change is that of forgetting, so it helps to have someone to be accountable to, especially if you have difficulty following through on agreements with yourself. If you need coaching in the creation process or help with staying with it, Conversations for Change is having a Summer of Love Offerings special on AIMs: choose your own fee. 
 
Tidbits 07/06/2010
 
Weekly Tidbits have become Monthly Tidbits, at least for the summer. Enjoy the season.

 
 
The favorite posture in my yoga classes seems to be Savasana, the period of deep relaxation at the end of the class. Some of the students smiling refer to it as "dessert", the sweetness at the end of the main course. It is a time of deep exhalation, and is both the energetic integration of what we have done in class as we cool down and relax the body, and letting go to make room for what is new and fresh in the mind. Several students have confessed that when they first started the practice, they would use the time to think about shopping needs or arrange their schedule for the day, but now they cherish the opportunity to take fifteen minutes to not think, to not do, to simply be at peace.
 
This "not doing" is an inhibition of patterns of thought and tension that we might not even be aware of. To relax usually means to rest or engage in an enjoyable activity so as to become less tired or anxious; it also means to make something less rigid or tight. According to Dr. Timothy McCall in his book Yoga as Medicine, Savasana not only relaxes the body and the mind, it also relaxes the nervous system and the unconscious mind. Redirecting our attention to our breath rather than our thoughts invites a loosening of our inner holdings, the places where much of our chronic pain seem anchored. The more I work with chronic pain, the more I value the healing power of deep relaxation. Despite the apparent cognitive dissonance, chronic pain is sometimes a subliminal attempt to protect ourselves from something we fear, and the act of holding the protective shield has become exhausting and painful in and of itself. The common frustration I hear from clients with chronic pain is that they desperately want to be free of the pain and they recognize that there is a part that holds on tight, that is constricted, that is afraid to let go.  Many of the energy psychology techniques work well with chronic pain and are similar to yoga in that they negotiate reorganization beneath the surface where the tension has been held, and do not necessarily require conscious understanding or revisiting the cause of the holding patterns. 

When we deeply relax, we make room for new thought patterns that offer new creation options. It is hard to make our life different when we are thinking the same old thoughts. Especially when much of the ongoing stream of thoughts that flow continuously in our head is beyond our conscious awareness and is designed to maintain the status quo, the illusion of safely in what is familiar.... even if what is familiar is pain. A quote from the preview of the movie Eat Pray Love, based on the novel by Elizabeth Gilbert: "If you could clear out all that space in your mind you would have a doorway. And you know what the universe would do? Rush in. Everything else would take care of itself." Yoga, deep relaxation, prayer, and meditation are ways to clear out all that space.

So whether or not you practice yoga, try a simple relaxation exercise for ten minutes to reduce pain and alleviate stress. In a comfortable reclining position begin to focus on your breath. Observe the in and out of this simple energy exchange with the universe. Invite your body parts to relax using gentle injunctions such as "my toes are relaxed and free... there is no tension in my jaw". Direct your breath and compassionate awareness to any parts where you notice constriction or discomfort and invite those parts to relax a little more with each breath. If your mind starts to wander, lovingly bring it back and observe the whole process without judgement. When you feel your body begin to relax, let go of thinking and simply watch your breath, being aware of the pause between the exhalation and the inhalation. If you start to think again just notice it and redirect attention to the breath. Just breathe and be aware of breath.

The knowledge of the benefits of deep relaxation experience is not unique to yoga. The Alexander Technique suggests that 15 minutes a day in the founder's "repose position" will significantly improve health and well being. Biofeedback is a means of teaching the body to relax, and hypnosis and guided imagery work with relaxation on a variety of levels. I have heard it said that it is during deep periods of relaxation that the body best heals itself for the energy is not distracted into thought or action and can go directly where it is needed. "Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering." (From  Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A.A. Milne)
 
 
There is a story about an old world electrician who for years has used his fingers instead of a digital multimeter to test whether an electric current is live or not. When questioned about how he could tolerate the electricity surging into him, he replied that he did "not let the current dominate" him. Since the man is in his 60's and appears healthy and able to make complete sentences, he seems to be unharmed by his testing methods.

While I would not recommend his practice with electricity, I find this approach and perspective intriguing for other applications. What if we cultivate the mindset of allowing ourselves to interact with the physical world and not give our power away to the experiences?  A currently popular example of this is the firewalk, the act of walking barefoot over a bed of hot embers and coals. Long used as a test of faith in many cultures, there are others who believe it is explainable in the basic physics of thermal effusivity. Regardless of which interpretation you give credence to, fear cannot be allowed to fully dominate the experience if we are going to be willing to step onto the coals. 

Courage has sometimes been defined as having fear but taking the necessary action anyway. It is not about being fearless, but rather not giving fear the controls. Fear is one of our guiding emotions, certainly not something we would want to be totally without. It tells us to pay attention, take care, be alert. Problems result when fear dominates behavior and then the behavior itself becomes a destructive pattern in our lives. In my therapy practice I saw many people who developed habits of overeating or lying or smoking or gaming or shopping that initially began in an attempt to suppress fear based emotions of anger, sadness, or anxiety. Perhaps the lesson of the electrician is to surrender to the flows of emotional energy and allow them to swirl through us without harm, without attachment, without resistance, like mist in the wind. 


 
 
Guilt is one of those emotions that nobody really likes to feel, but sometimes our attempts to avoid feeling it can cause more suffering than the experience of being with the emotion. Having roots in both cognitive and emotional process, guilt results when a person believes that they have violated a moral standard and feels responsibility for that violation. It is interesting to note that guilt is not dependent on the accuracy of that belief and it is often associated with anxiety and depression. So, if I feel guilty when I say "no" because of something I was taught to believe as a child, I may find myself saying "yes" to a lot of things as an adult that I don't want to do in order to avoid re-experiencing that childhood fear and pain. Often guilt has been used as a covert attempt to control behavior and operates beneath conscious awareness, so we may not even recognize what is motivating our actions.

In many ways, guilt is a form of resentment that is primarily directed at self rather than at others. We resist against accepting something that happened, and tell ourselves that we should have done or not done something to make it different. When unresolved and allowed to build, stored guilt can reach overwhelming proportions that reinforce avoidance of feelings and may lead to addictive coping patterns. Like other resentments, guilt can function as a defense against feeling helpless or as a kind of self punishment in an attempt to make amends. While we are powerless to change the past, perhaps guilt is designed to be part of our emotional guidance system to help us create a better future. 

In order to be able to effectively utilize guilt in our emotional GPS, those collections of old guilt need to be defused so there are no bombs waiting to be detonated. Energy work can generate powerful and non-threatening release. Talking about guilt feelings with someone you trust or expressing your feelings in art or dance or music can make the feelings more manageable. Prayer, meditation, breath work, psychotherapy, cognitive exercises, and other techniques offer ways to release and reorganize emotional holdings. Taking action to make amends for past behavior can be emotionally freeing, either directly with those involved or by doing something good for someone if it is not feasible or wise to make direct amends. The definition of "amend" is literally "to change", and most often guilt based amends will need to be made to yourself. Perhaps the biggest change in behavior is to be able to listen to our feelings as immediate and concise input about our behavior so that we can modify our actions in ways that better serve how we want to live. To forgive past guilty feelings and no longer need to avoid them or use them as punishment sets us free to employ our emotions gratefully and gently as part of our inner guidance system. 

 
 

"Your biography becomes your biology -- you are one and the same with your life and your history. Events that you have not yet reconciled, haven't forgiven, haven't let go of, are carried in that debt in your cell tissue." Carolyn Myss, a medical intuitive and author, frequently talks and writes about how our experiences and the beliefs about those experiences affect our day to day living. Perhaps those chronic aches and pains, the stiffness in our joints are the result of cell tissue debt, of energy blockages that developed in response to unresolved stress or trauma. 

A long standing pattern of energy holding often manifests as chronic pain. Fibromyalgia, a chronic disorder characterized by widespread pain and fatigue, is an example of how disabling and isolating a collection of energy blockages can be. The word "fatigue" is often defined literally as a lack of energy. Fibromyalgia is controversial in that it does not easily fit western medical models; some people view it as a central nervous system problem, other see it as musculoskeletal, others as psychiatric. There is no easy cure because it needs to be treated as a whole person disease, a biopsychosocial  approach that does not always conflate with the symptom orientation of western medicine. Most autoimmune disorders have puzzling and complicated components. Perhaps these "diseases" are asking us to look at the bigger picture of our lives rather than to dissect them. 

Let's say you are an organic system with a thousand units of life force energy flowing through your body. This flow of electromagnetic energy digests food and carries nutrients, maintains memories and thoughts, heals our cells, generates our activities, powers our heartbeat, moves our lungs... you get the picture. Many of our emotional structures develop at an early age, before we can really assess the truth or validity of their context. So if you came to believe that you were not good enough, not supported, not loved, or that the world was not safe, a significant amount of your thousand units of energy is diverted from the flow and goes into maintaining those belief structures. If you are financing resentments about things that happened in your life, another chunk of life force goes to keeping those programs alive. Indulging in stressful activities like overwork or smoking or drinking takes another chunk of energy units, as does feeling bad about those habits, past or present. Holding in your feelings or maintaining a protective defensive attitude drains still more. Like a computer burdened by out of date software, things slow down, systems crash. Not much energy is left for joyous exploration and celebration. 

Illness is not always bad. It is often our best and most appropriate teacher, just as pain is a tremendous motivator for change. Please don't blame yourself for "creating a disease"; you are only sidetracking more of your life force energy into stagnant resentment against yourself. What if you choose instead to see your history as an opportunity to gain freedom, to create a flow of energy that allows you feel more alive, to identify with your life force rather than your wounds? In our culture, we seem overly identified with our injuries, our illnesses, and an astoundingly huge part of our economy is dependent on disease and pain. Despite our claims to desire health there is sometimes an unconscious resistance based on fear that we will be alone and apart from society if we no longer have our wounds to talk about. We want the pain to stop, but we are entering the realm of the unknown if we let go of all these familiar thoughts and patterns and step outside the consensual reality of suffering.

As Carolyn Myss said, "We don't know yet what it's like to have self-esteem in such a way that we celebrate our strengths, celebrate our creativity. We still go at it through our wounds. We still don't know what it's like to feel healthy without feeling embarrassed by our strengths. Until we develop a model of health that says we can have pride in being creative, strong, and intelligent without apologizing, without feeling shame, we will use our wounds as a privilege." One way to step in a more positive direction is simply to do more of what makes you truly feel good, of what gets your juices flowing. Choose to consciously direct energy into joyous exploration and celebration. Do yoga, sing, ride horses, dance, make music, smile, and above all learn to forgive and let go; resentments are perhaps the biggest and most dangerous of energy suckers. If you need help to further this shift towards living well, email me to schedule a free half hour phone consultation. As someone who once suffered from chronic pain and an autoimmune disorder, I understand what it is like to feel stuck and at a loss for direction. 


“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”  Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
 
 
As a life skills coach, my job is to help people manifest their goals, to create more of what they want in their lives. One of the most challenging aspects in achieving goals is simply staying on task. It is easy to get distracted, or to get caught up in being busy with work and day to day activities. Once you have defined a specific goal, two simple focus points can be very helpful in the process of conscious creation.

The first is understanding and differentiating between urgency and  importance. Urgent things demands our attention now, they call for an immediate response. Important refers to something that has significant value and is likely to have a profound effect on success, survival or well being. These two criteria may overlap or they may be worlds apart, and a key to effective time management is attention to how these categories interface. Too often we have conditioned ourselves to respond to urgency whether or not it is important. A ringing telephone is a perfect example. It calls for our attention right now, and it may portend an important job offer or a recorded sales pitch. These days with the advent of caller ID, text messaging, and voice mail, it is easier to manage our phone time.... or is it? Stopping to each check messages or screening every call can still interrupt our focus and fragment our attention. 

Many people will say that the most valuable components of life are the relationships with the people they love. And far too often we hear regrets of not having given more time to nourishing and enjoying those relationships, of having gotten caught up in what seemed more urgent business  at the time. Taking a "bigger picture" perspective and allocating time and energy to important pursuits (such as making the time to talk with an open heart to those you love) can prevent situations from escalating into crisis or regret. Attending to exercise and emotional well being activities on a regular basis can prevent a health crisis down the road, the same way that beginning to organize tax papers in the early months of the year can avert a stressful time crunch in mid April. This focus invites you to schedule daily or weekly time commitments to what is truly important in your life.

The second focal point is to continually ask yourself whether what you are doing is bringing you closer to your goal or taking you away from accomplishing your intention. Be willing to be curious about this question without judging yourself. It means paying attention to both the long term and short term impact of our actions, and making conscious decisions in the moment rather than reacting on impulse and habit. For example, if your goal is to have a better relationship with someone, this focus invites you to ask whether your responses to this person serve you, and if not, to replace them with better choices. It might be helpful to target some of your reactive habits that you can identify as moving you away from your goal (such as blaming, criticizing, cold shouldering, etc.) and make a list of possible alternative behaviors  with which to replace them (taking a time out to get perspective, sharing an honest feeling, taking a deep centering breath before you speak). By paying attention to your direction, you can begin to recognize and inhibit patterns that sabotage your intended goal and redirect yourself to more productive actions that will eventually become new habits and make your goal a reality. 

Let's put both techniques together and use the example of the common goal of having a clean and better organized living space. If you dedicate 10 minutes every day to doing something to improve your home environment, you will progress towards that goal. If you notice yourself leaving clutter on the counter and inhibit that action and redirect to putting those things away, you take another step closer to your goal. On the other hand, if you allow the clutter to accumulate, you take a step away your goal. If you ignore the mess until you can no longer function in the environment, it becomes urgent and may generate feelings of overwhelm or self depreciation. Our lives are the composite of a multitude of moments, a cascade of small steps, and it is within your power to choose your directions. If you have trouble with this, ask for help. It can make a huge difference to have someone to be accountable to, someone to assist your focus in remaining on, or returning to, the task. 

 
 
Shoshin, a Buddhist word usually translated as 'Beginner's Mind', refers to having an attitude of openness, enthusiasm, and  freedom from conceptual encumbrances.  It refers to the cultivation of an attitude or spirit where our perception is neither contaminated or limited by our cognitive thoughts and beliefs. The classic metaphor for this is the image of being unable to add more liquid to a cup that is already full; we need to first empty the cup. Beginner's Mind is a regarded as a highly effective way to learn something new, and it is often challenging to the human thought process with its tendency to try to make something fit into an existing schemata. 

Approaching something with a preconceived notion of how it will turn out alters the experience and limits the possibility of new outcomes. The ego mind, the part of us that is attached to being right in order to survive in the physical world, will often make assumptions about a situation and then set out to prove them true.  For example, if we have had an experience that leads us to conclude that horses are dangerous, our expectations will have us looking for things to be fearful of when we are around horses. We may misinterpret a horse's behavior to fit our beliefs and miss the equine beauty, strength, and intelligence because we are busy trying to protect ourselves from our own fearful imaginings. And if the object of our projected fear is sensitive to it, the outcome may indeed prove self fulfilling. 

The  Zen story of the blind committee members each examining a portion of an elephant and coming to very different conclusions as to the nature of the beast further illustrates how thinking that we understand something limits our ability to truly understand it. The "been there, done that" concept of believing we can know the bigger picture from our small piece of limited experience leaves us with a conception of reality that is not accurate in terms of the whole picture. Cultivating Beginner's Mind can encourage us to open our awareness and allow the experience of the present moment without trying to fit it into the box of the past.

When we recognize that our ego mind has taken charge of a situation we can then choose to inhibit those limiting thoughts and  redirect our spirit to expand awareness, to inquiry and exploration instead of knowing and being right. If we ask questions and listen to the answers with curiosity and appreciation, we can explore the different points of view held by others in the situation. In the example above, we could put ourselves in the shoes of the horse and imagine his perspective. In a conflict with a friend, we could become willing to see things through their eyes for a few moments. We could even think about the thoughts of an impartial observer to stretch our awareness and options. Instead of trying to confirm what we already think we know, we can become curious about new and different experience. We can choose to become willing to empty our cup to make room for new information.

In the words of the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, "In the beginners mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few." One of my teachers used to say the same thing another way: "If you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you always got". By allowing a new viewpoint and a clearer understanding of ourselves, Beginner's Mind can transform setbacks into something positive. If we accept responsibility for our disappointments and can look at our own limitations without judging them, we can glean a clearer understanding our ourselves that allows us to create new and more desirable experiences instead of repeating the old ones. 

 
 
My clients have always been my best teachers. One of them, a man struggling to deal with his wife's addiction to prescription drugs, shared with me this thought that he had found helpful in his healing process: "the longest journey is eighteen inches... from your head to your heart". Apparently this is a well known quote attributed to that prolific writer Anon, but in 1986 it was original and meaningful to me, and it has stayed with me through the years.

According to the Heart Math Institute, the heart is the first organ to develop in the human embryo. It circulates blood through the body and is regulated by its own internal computer. It has its own brain cells, very similar to the ones found in the brain located in our head, that also produce electromagnetic energy.  In addition to it being the pump muscle that moves our blood, researchers have described the heart as a storage place for emotional information with both long and short term memory, a feedback mechanism, and a sensory organ. Or, as Robert Hunter expressed it in the lyrics of a song, "the heart has its beaches, its homelands and thoughts of its own".*

Mere cognitive assertion does not make something true. It helps to start us on a path, but unless we engage the heart in the transformational process, much of our power is missing. Sometime things are clear in our minds before we come to embrace them in our heart, and sometimes our mind will lead us astray in attempt to protect us from discomforting knowledge. It is easy to rationalize and justify our positions with logic and lean heavy on the linear process while ignoring the other more intuitive parts of our internal guidance system, forgetting that it is the gestalt of our knowledge that offers the deepest wisdom. It has been said that it is only with the intercession of divine guidance, the opening to spiritual connection, that the heart can fully expand to realize its potential. One of the lines from Ephesians reads "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened", ** acknowledging a special wisdom in that center of our being.

Keeping your heart open in the face of adversity can be challenging. Sometimes fear overwhelms love and the heart get drowned out by all the mental noise. A visual meditation to support the open flow of energy involves the imagining of a connecting device between the brain in your head and the heart in your chest. In a repose position, deepen your breath and allow your body to relax. With every breath you take, allow your mind and body to slip deeper into a relaxed state of well being. Visualize a passageway of connection between your heart and head. It might be a tube, an elevator, a stairway, a roadway, or a tunnel of light, whatever image comes to you. In your mind's eye, watch energy moving along this pathway, traveling smoothly from your heart to your head and then back again. With every breath, feel that peaceful easy feeling of relaxation deepen and your heart and mind open in harmonic convergence. 

* Eyes of the World, 1973
** The Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, 10th book of the New Testament
 
 
When I was in college, a Viet Nam vet who stayed in the apartment below would sometimes be triggered by the sound of a helicopter, and, believing himself to be back in the war, would climb up on the roof with his loaded shotgun and watch for bombers. This re-experiencing of old trauma happens pretty frequently, but thankfully not usually to this degree of emotional and behavioral overwhelm. Most of the time it shows up as an overreaction to an event, an emotional flood that echoes an old story of assault, abandonment, fear, victimhood, or other disturbing event that has not been resolved. Memories live in our cellular structure as well as in our minds, and a smell, a sound, a situation can open up pockets of stored emotion that interfere with our present functioning. A person who has been mugged in an elevator may have disturbing sensations and emotions when they enter a small space even if the attack happened decades ago. There is a survival mechanism in the reptilian part of our brains  that floods our system with biochemicals when triggered. Connective tissue stiffens, the adrenals release. The body prepares for survival in one or more of three ways. We prepare to flee, to run, move away, get out of town, quit our job, pack our bags,  leave now. Or perhaps we get bigger, puff ourselves up like many animals in nature when threatened, and assume an aggressive pose to fight. Or sometimes we get small, withdraw, try to hide, pull the covers over our heads, be quiet and invisible, freeze in the headlights. These reactions are not conscious; they are automatic and biochemically initiated, and sometimes they escalate into feeling as if we are in a life or death situation when is not true, as with my friend on the roof. The lingering effects of old trauma enactment interfere with our relationships, sabotage our goals, and inhibit our happiness; frequently we are not even aware of what we are doing that creates our own discomfort, and emotional blackouts are not uncommon. 

So if we are powerless over the onset of these reactions, what can we do? One way is to inhibit the cycle completion and redirect our energies to a new desired experience. The first step to doing this is to recognize what is happening and take responsibility for it without judging it. Observe it with interest; notice what happens in your mind and body. It is helpful to talk with someone you know and trust about what you experience.  Does your jaw get tight, your breath get shallow, your shoulders hunch, your hands clench, your neck turtle down into your shoulders? Does your mind race, do you think about a past event, relive it in your mind, get stuck on one thought in a looping pattern, want to run or fight, project the past onto the present, feel emotions that are too big or not appropriate to the current situation? Recognize that these and other symptoms are the result of a bio-chemical cascade that was very effective back in the days when our crisises involved escaping from saber toothed tigers. Know that you are just responding to a trigger that your system has identified as dangerous, and it is trying to protect you with a program that has not been adequately updated in centuries. 

The second step is to become willing to change, willing to step outside your comfort zone to interrupt the pattern re-enactment. We need to update the program by finding a way to inhibit the old configuration and re-direct to a more helpful new response pattern. It is possible to do this at the time of the trigger or anytime afterwards, and you don't have to fully understand the process. Action follows thought, so if you allow yourself to really think about or visualize being in the traumatic situation, your body will respond, as it will respond to your instructions. This can feel a little scary if we are in emotional overwhelm, so ask for help if you need it; it is always good to have someone you trust hold the space for you. You can begin by changing thoughts that lead to actions, and your emotions will also change. Start small; choose one of your symptoms and simply tell yourself what you want to do instead. If you find that you hold or shorten your breath, tell yourself to exhale completely and breathe in slowly and deeply. If your shoulders are up against your ears, tell your body to let them relax, to widen and lengthen your shoulders and allow your neck to be forward and free. If you are looping in frantic thought, give your mind the direction to slow down and think about your breath. If your attention wanders, lovingly direct it back. If you find yourself closing down to try to protect yourself, inhibit the shut down mode and direct your heart to stay open, allowing the fear to blow past you without harm like mist in the wind. Find language, images, sounds, and sensations that invite you to a calmer place and use them as tools for re-direction and re-creation. We often 'leave our body' when we are triggered, so working with body responses is a great way to bring us back. 

At times fear based emotional blockages, perhaps exacerbated with continual adrenal release, settle into chronic pain in the body rather than as reactive responses or behavioral symptoms. The back or neck pain that does not respond to treatment, fibromyalgia, severe headaches, and autoimmune disorders are believed by many to be related to unresolved trauma and fear held in the body. As we become adept at the techniques of inhibition and redirection we can find freedom from the burden of old trauma re-enactment and often release energy blockages that cause chronic pain. When we reroute the flow of energy into a different script, we create the opportunity for an alternative response. When that alternative response become familiar, it becomes a new habit. Other ways of working toward this freedom include the energy psychologies and trauma theory approaches. Using these methods we can learn to release that which no longer serves us and use that freed energy to create more of what we want in our lives.