Sometimes we forget to breathe
Touching in with the heart of pain is incredibly powerful and necessary work. But we – as a healing society – have a habit of poking the bear sometimes… treating the site of pain over and over until we can’t see past it. What if you could change your pain, your heartache, your habits with less effort?
Think of a water circling a drain:
It’s really hard to catch things as they exit the bottom of the funnel — it’s moving fast and spinning hard. We can, however, effect outcomes by playing in the periphery.
You could make massive changes to what’s showing up in your life and body by simply inserting or removing things that are moving more slowly, are easier to see, and less stressful to address.
I spent the last weekend in Phoenix at Z Health, and – as much as I learned in the coursework about neurology and human movement – one of the biggest takeaways came from a hike I took in the desert on Thursday morning. Paying attention to my feet on the ground and soaking up the surrounding landscape as the sun rose over the hills, I started to feel frantic… I need to ground! get clarity! I came all the way here… come on, Annie! You only have a little time here! Gah!
And a really quiet nudge came from deep in my chest as a breeze blew through the little canyon:
You don’t need to try so hard. Apply what you know. Then just get out of the way.
That sentence echoed throughout the weekend. I was sitting in a coaching session with a Z Health staff member, telling him how much I needed to do these eye drills and change that habit in order to address some back pain that’s been nagging me lately. And that quiet nudge came again, from him. Maybe I could let go, commit to smaller, simpler practices that didn’t seem directly connected to the issue itself?
What if, instead of poking the bear (the tough conversations, challenging exercises, and turning down donuts in the break room) you tried things like:
- Eat a simple breakfast so that you have more energy to address the stress at work
- Put a red filter on your screens to keep your eyes (and therefore spine!) happier
- Turn on a song you love during your drive home so you are a nicer person to your partner
- Set alarms on your phone so you don’t have to remember things
There’s definitely a time and a place for direct intervention – we have the amazing opportunity as humans to consciously meet and address our suffering! But if we spend all our energy focused on pain, we miss all the things in the periphery accumulating and make it nearly impossible to put enough direct stimulus into the system to outweigh them.
Remember that you are strong enough to do the hard things.
