getting ill in the first place.
In order to fully participate in this genius yet delicate process of release and unblocking we need to turn our attention inward and get to know how the insides of our bodies feel. We are used to doing this when we have sex. We can easily put our minds between our legs or wherever the pleasure is pulsing, and if we stub our toe or have a headache, it’s not hard to place our attention where the painful sensation is being felt. The extension of this is not only to notice the feelings inside our bodies when they are as intense as that but to be in daily intimate contact with the subtler sensations within us and play an active role in assisting the body’s genius in keeping the life force constantly unclogging itself and flowing smoothly.
Check in with your Body
In the next chapter, Full Body Listening, we’ll go deeper into the specifics of how to do this, but for now just feel your whole body, wriggle your fingers, wriggle your toes, and feel how you inhabit this whole body from crown to toe, not just living solely in your head with all its busy thinking mind and chattering mouth. We are so head-centric here in the West that we often get so top-heavy we forget that our whole body is a sensitive, sophisticated feeling system that is working for us constantly, communicating and transmitting vast amounts of vital data. How does each part of your body feel right now? Don’t analyse the sensations, simply observe them with gentle curiosity.
THE TRIGGER IS NOT THE CAUSE
When we begin to look at the challenging people and upsetting situations in our lives, without playing the victim and instead from the perspective that Life’s genius might be doing something benevolent, we can notice two great benefits available from these. The first is that we begin to see that no matter what anyone does to us, the emotional feelings that erupt in our bodies have not been put there by the trigger. The emotional reaction comes from that old, reactive pain body which has been waiting like a silent time bomb to explode.
Here’s the proof: if someone came into this room now and started being incredibly racist, I mean really going for it with all the forbidden words and angry, ignorant rhetoric, and you and I were standing here, I might have a total emotional meltdown and start freaking out while you might acknowledge they’re a racist and be repelled by them but not go into the same total emotional freakout as me. What does this tell us? We have both been exposed to exactly the same stimulus. I’m melting down and reacting very dramatically, and you, while still acknowledging they’re a crazy bigot, are emotionally calm. That’s because I already carry a dormant, reactive time bomb from my past experiences with racists, or from other violent people, and you do not. The emotionally reactive potential is in me, and although the racist might have triggered my time bomb to go off painfully, he didn’t cause it. That distinction is vital if we are going to take mature responsibility for the reactive parts of ourselves that go off in us day after day. The trigger is not the cause. No one can send us into an emotional tailspin if we don’t already have an Achilles’ heel in that area. So if I acknowledge that although the racist may definitely be wrong and bad and his behaviour inexcusable, the following reaction that I’m experiencing in my body came from my own uniquely reactive potential that lives in my tender pain body. I have that flavour of reactivity in me just waiting to get triggered by a racist, and you do not. My reaction is mine.
It is incredibly seductive to believe that whoever wronged us is responsible for the painful reaction we feel, but it is a mistake which often distracts us from meeting this experience with power and wisdom. I have just been vividly made aware of one of the reactive time bombs that lives in my body. Could it be that once again Life’s genius is helping me? If I have the balls (or ovaries) to step out of my victim-led take on what just happened and meet the experience with the full potential that’s on offer here, I will be almost grateful for what just happened. It is signalling to me that I have something I have been carrying around all this time that I need to dissolve in my body. With my breath and willingness I have a chance to go internal and fully feel the eruption, and disconnect from the external stimulus that set it off.
Now that’s not to say that it won’t be appropriate to have a sober conversation with whoever hurt me, but if I don’t take space and first address the painful eruption in my body then when I immediately confront the trigger person I will invariably sink deeper into a fight, and my over-reaction will usually set off their reactive side. If I go straight into battle with the trigger I’ll be doing it as a way to abandon my own feelings, and to use that person to avoid myself.
If I first address and dissolve the charge in my body and only then have the conversation with the trigger person then I will not be coming at them with angry blame and leaking my rage all over them. If I let the charge in me settle down first, then there’s a real chance that the person I need to set boundaries with, or share my needs or judgements with, will actually hear me, and my calmer, more responsible demeanour will elicit a calmer and more grounded response.
Between the stimulus and the response there’s a space, and in that space is our power and our freedom.
Victor Frankl
DISSOLVING EMOTION
Returning to the ancient Chinese Taoists, we can see what dissolving the reaction might look like. They discovered thousands of years ago that by placing your attention in the area where the eruption is being felt, and by breathing gently there, by creating an idea of spaciousness around the sensations and willingly feeling all the sensations, instead of the usual practice of avoiding the feeling and battling the external, then with patience and even friendliness, the painful blockage begins to dissolve, your nervous system calms down, and a thimbleful of your reactive constipation is discharged. This might be in the form of some emotion being felt, or just the pressure easing and moving out of the body.
Usually, when someone irritates us, instead of responsibly going internal, we go straight into battle with the external stimulus to make the feeling go away. We argue with them, we condemn, we manipulate, we numb ourselves out or escape in a number of ways – anything but feel the feeling fully in our bodies. We need to totally turn this habit around if we are to be free and creative in the world. Instead of rejecting those painful feelings, we need to turn our attention away from the external and go inward. Instead of trying not to feel what erupted in us, we need to become fascinated with it, willing to feel every atom of it. We become like a wine-taster, a connoisseur alert to the tiniest sensations within the pain body. This is how to be a willing participant with what Life’s genius is offering us at that moment. It is only by feeling these waves fully with total willingness that they get to find their expression, be fully felt, and then dissolve from our bodies for ever. When we make a committed practice of using the painful triggers of life in this way then we don’t need to keep encountering the same shit day after day. There is progress, and we gradually learn to accept and welcome all our feelings as useful conduits to free ourselves from the tyranny of our reactions. When I fight the external, I am a slave. When I am willing to feel, I am powerful.
If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it is fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart.
Pema Chödrön
Our physical reactions to stories or events from the past, or from things which are unfolding right now, when fully felt, willingly, have a place in our bodies. You can ask: ‘Is it in my solar plexus?’ ‘Is my chest tightening?’ When we give it some attention it becomes obvious where in the body the ‘blockage’ is lodged. These disruptive events or challenges can be useful signposts to locate the nooks and crannies of stale and stuck emotion. It is useful to sometimes drum up that story, let the events and possibilities that bother us come to mind, and then immediately feel where in our body a sensation has been activated. Bingo! It is like an FBI phone-tapping device. The story leads me to the feeling like a tracking mechanism and betrays the hiding places of the blockage.
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