In dealing with your feelings, let’s talk about the good, the bad and the ugly.
Odds are, you think of pleasant feelings as good, and unpleasant feelings as bad. This is something you’ve learned. As a human being, you’re conditioned to feel this way, so this pattern lives on as a construct in your head. That is, until you take a good look and see it for what it is: a belief, not a truth. Before that, pleasant means good – unpleasant means bad.
Doing the deeper work is all about finding and feeling unconscious emotions. This is the challenge —the goal—something we go after, and often, it feels like a problem. Likely, it’s very different from anything you’ve done before. And so, it’s a challenge that has to be approached in a whole new way.
Especially if you’re very good at getting things done, an expert at making things happen.. If you try to use these tools with this problem– the problem of thoughts you can’t stop and feelings you can’t find, it doesn’t work. That can be a source of enormous frustration.
The old ways, the way you think things through, figure things out, and make decisions are useful to uncover new understanding. How you dig into process, into learning, expanding your awareness is through your thoughts. You figure it out.
Here’s the entire recording of my most recent Mindbody Coaching Teleseminar:
After you listen to the call, I’d love to hear from you!
You can ask me your questions about TMS and Mindbody Chronic Pain and answer some questions about how I can further help you to learn to be pain-free.
All you have to do is CLICK HERE and I’ll take you right to my on-line questionnaire.
Please do this – you’ll be helping me to help you in a very real way!
Thanks,
Ken
As you continue though the process - your process of learning to become pain-free as taught by Dr. John Sarno, it’s important to be always on the look-out for examples of the Mindbody connection. That is, ways in which your mind can be the cause of real symptoms in your body.
Why is this important?
Because it reminds you of the true cause of your symptoms and just how powerful a force your mind can be! It keeps your attention exactly where it needs to be – in the psychological realm. That is, focused on the emotional causes of your pain – not on any structural ones.
If you’re looking for it, Mindbody connection can show up in interesting places.
I’ve talked to a lot of people about meditation. It seems to me, people have a lot of beliefs and stories about it. Not as many people I’ve talked to have any real experience with it. I often hear people say, “I just can’t meditate.” Probably what they really mean is, “I can’t stop my mind from racing.”
This is a problem that most of us have had at one time or another—whether trying to meditate or just getting through a meeting at work. Sometimes, trying to meditate can even stress you out and make you feel worse. Maybe this is why most people try it once, and never go back to it again.
I’ve experienced this a lot, myself. However, I’ve always been intrigued by what’s possible with meditation. I’ve even spent weeks at a time at ashrams (full-time live-in yoga retreats) where people dedicate themselves 24/7 to living a calm and peaceful life. These people are what I call ‘meditation professionals.’ I figured, if they can’t teach me, nobody can!
Lying on the couch with the window blinds closed; that’s all I felt like doing when I was in pain.
One Saturday a couple of summers ago, I was feeling bad. Not TMS, though. I’d recently ended a three-year relationship with my girlfriend. I hadn’t been sleeping well so I was feeling tired and sad. Now, I’m not suggesting that sadness is a bad thing. It’s not. I was facing what it meant to have ended what I thought would be a life-long romantic partnership. Given that, I suppose that a certain amount of mourning is healthy.
And, I was just feeling sad that day.
I always waited until I was out of the city before I put the top down.
It’s very easy with a Miata. No motors involved. Just open the two latches on either side of the top of the windshield and throw the whole thing back. Done. The first gas station on the Cross County Parkway heading north about a half hour out of Manhattan is my usual spot to do this. It’s where the trees start, the air gets cleaner and the scenery opens up.
That’s most of what you want when it comes to driving a convertible. Although not a requirement, an interesting destination is nice, too.
On this particular sunny autumn Friday morning, my destination was Club Getaway; a weekend sports resort for adults in Kent, Ct. Think Club Med meets summer camp. I had been to both and after several weekends as a guest at Club Getaway, I’d become a member of their weekend staff. This meant that I would teach activities in exchange for free room and board.
The pose is called Sivasana.
It’s the final position of the Asana practice, the physical movement part of Yoga.
It’s the most simple and the most important. Quite simply, you lay flat on your back with your eyes shut. Place your heels together and let your feet fall open. Hands are at your sides, palms up. Then, you just let everything go, including and especially your mind.
It is the final relaxation where all of the stretching, binding and balancing from all of the other poses integrates. It’s where the bringing together of the mind, body and spirit happens. Yoga translates to “sacred union” and doing this, I suppose, is what they are talking about. For me, as for most, it is a deeply relaxing experience and I consider it part of the reward for all of my efforts with the other poses.
Looking at a picture of buildings has never affected me so deeply.
Just a few moments ago, I was paging through an online brochure for my alma mater, Syracuse University. Bold colored pages offset with photos of courtyards dotted with groups of students sitting in circles reading and relaxing on the deep green grass; majestic buildings reflecting the warm afternoon sun; classrooms full of students neat and clean, looking full of hope and promise. Just as they should. A college education is a valuable tool in our modern world.
I had a good experience in college and feel good about the four years that I spent at Syracuse. So I was surprised when I clicked to a page which revealed a large aerial photo of the main campus and suddenly felt sad. Taken from a helicopter, this image showed a view of a “world gone by” from a perspective that I had never seen before.
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr joked around on stage last Saturday night. They demonstrated the exuberance of two old friends remembering a journey taken long ago. The night could have been ripe with the significance of a Beatles reunion but they transcended all of that.
I’ve asked myself many times, What would have brought the Beatles back together? Perhaps some big benefit concert.
Last Saturday at Radio City Music Hall was a benefit, for something that was part of the journey which the Beatles took together: The David Lynch Foundation whose mission is to establish meditation as a part of daily practice in schools.
If you’re a die-hard fan then you remember: the Beatles first discovered meditation in India, at the ashram of Yogi Maharishi Mahesh. And, meditation had a profound influence on their music.
