Stop trying to feel better & just feel everything.
I hear clients all day every day who have spent years sometimes decades chasing “happiness”. They seek pills, practioners, and programs in an effort to “feel good”.
What they’re really searching for is comfort because somewhere along the way of this ever-changing world, we have been domesticated to believe that we deserve to be happy all the time. We have been conditioned to believe if we aren’t happy enough, there is a pill for that. If we aren’t satisfied enough, there is a coach for that. If we aren’t comfortable enough, there is a quick-fix strategy for that.
All that leads to is a society of people always feeling broken and incessantly striving. Yet there is no relief.
Why all the fruitless striving?
Because being happy and comfortable all the time isn’t actually possible!!
The Buddhist teachings on this topic are golden: humans suffer because they’re fundamentally uncomfortable with being uncomfortable!
We need to practice being in a moment with all that we feel and experience and instead of forcing it away, instead of angrily resisting it, instead of running from it, instead of evaluating it as good or bad, instead of trying to change it, we allow it space to be there, knowing it’s temporary because everything is temporary. Knowing it’s just energy. Knowing it’s just neutral.
Can we find our flow-the space in which all energy moves through us and we make the choice not to react to it.
Non-reactivity is our greatest asset if we can practice it. It takes practice —because we have to work on this at the level of the nervous system. We have a human brain primed to be negative and reactive for survival. But we can learn how to work with our brain, our nervous system, and the fundamental energy of which we are made.
If we can return to the most essential state of sensation, in the body, the neutrality of sensation will not only ground us in the now, but it will prevent our overprotective brains from making interpretations (for survival) which morph into negative thoughts and unhealthy behaviors.
Return to the body, identify sensations, stay with those sensations for a moment or two without doing anything about it—no judgements, no deep breaths, no counting to 10–just stay with the sensations, allow them all to flow.
We can learn how to give our bodies permission to move, to dance it’s dance, to sing it’s song. To vibrate, to undulate, to sensually move with life as it’s happening, instead of trying to move against it. In flow. In harmony.
Learning how to be non-reactive is the only way to feel good. Its the only way for us to be flexible cognitively so we can generate solutions responsibly instead of reactively. It’s the only way to be radically free. It’s the only way to stay in alignment. It’s the way to health and wellness, as an open-flowing system is a healthy one.
Challenge:
Just feel everything. Allow it all to move through you. Stay in flow.
You will achieve, succeed, and enhance your vitality.
Food for thought: If we separate from ourselves, we only foster more separation in the world. Stay present. Stay connected. Your life, and others’ depend on it.
