The Listening World Summit
I am very pleased to be helping organize the first-ever Listening World Summit in Prague, Czech Republic and I encourage everyone to either attend in person or online. The speakers are world-renowned in their fields and each one speaking on their own would be an event worth attending.
All together the experience will be phenomenal.
One of the Speakers, Marina Galan from Mexico, wrote this about her presentation:
"The forgotten, first, primordial listening.
Listening is mostly experienced as a tacit ability, unconsciously integrated into our lives via our own experiences of being listened to and the emotions it brings up in us. At a more sophisticated level, we can understand listening as an art: an ability that needs to be developed through deep curiosity and focused discipline. Yet, there is a first, primordial act of listening that is natural to every human being and is infused with wisdom and guidance. Unfortunately, it is quickly overridden in our lives by all other types of listening.
Let’s go back to the encounter of that first, primordial listening, let’s harvest from it everything it has to offer. Let’s discover how it can transform our lives."
From Katerina Fiserova, 3PGC Board Member and leader of 3P Czech Community, Founder of The Listening Project:
Change the way you listen…and the entire world will change.
Listening is a simple skill that we are all born with. A skill that we often underestimate and do not use in a right way.
If you wish for a better life, there is no need to change the world, others, or yourself. What is worth changing though is how deeply you listen. That is why we decided to organize the first international summit dedicated to listening. The event where you can experience how to listen behind the words. We created a space for a new beginning - better relationships, more efficiency, better health. Join us to make the first step towards goodwill and understanding.
Let us create a world together where we all listen better.
Our vision:
We wish for a world where listening is treasured and put into action, contributing to healing, fostering clarity, and generating solutions for both individual and worldwide issues.
Our mission:
The World Conference "Listening with the Heart 2024" has a twofold mission: to illuminate the depth of listening beyond words and enhance our ability to listen, not only to others but also to ourselves.
Our offer:
Embark with us on a journey of listening to effortlessly address issues and pressing challenges at our free online conference or the paid in-person event in Prague, Czech Republic.
To register for the free online conference, click here: https://thelisteningworld.com/#vstupenka-online
With Love,
Sara Joy
Why Worry Doesn't Work
Why Worry Doesn’t Work
This week's blog is an excerpt from It’s That Simple, A User’s Manual For Human Beings by Mavis Karn. Enjoy!
Letter Eleven
Why Worry Doesn't Work
Dear reader,
This may be one of the shortest letters I’m writing to you, but it may well prove to be one of the most helpful. I’ll begin it with my definition of “worry”:
Worry is the learned habit of frightening ourselves with our own imagination.
Worry seems to be one of the world’s most popular useless habits, but I think we keep doing it for what we believe to be legitimate reasons:
1. We think worrying is preventative.
“If I worry about all possible disastrous outcomes, maybe they won’t happen.”
The Truth:
Worrying to prevent disaster works about as well as any other superstition, like not walking under ladders to avert bad luck or avoiding cracks to spare your mother’s back.
2. We worry because we think it’s the same as caring.
“Of course I worry about you – I love you!”
The Truth:
Caring is based in wisdom and loving-kindness; worry is based in fear.
3. We think worry is being responsible.
“If I don’t worry, it means it doesn’t matter to me what happens.”
The Truth:
Worry interferes with and limits our ability to respond.
Here’s a little exercise for you. You might want to write your answers down instead of trying to keep them in your head…
Make two lists:
How do I feel and act when I’m worried?
How do I feel and act when I’m not worried?
Now take a look at the lists side by side. What’s your preference?
Does it make sense that the less we worry, the more we might feel the way we’d like to feel?
Does it make sense that worry might be optional?
Isn’t that good to know?
Much love,
Mavis
With Love,
Sara Joy
The Heart Of It
The Heart Of It
Close your eyes.
Bring your awareness to the space behind your eyes.
Imagine you are suspended in a perfect void. Utterly safe, utterly relaxed. Complete and whole. There is nothing to achieve or complete. There is no growth needed. Nowhere to rush off to. You are completely and deeply at peace.
Imagine "you" as the deepest, biggest, most expansive version of yourself that you can conceive of. The you that is at the heart of life. This you is before all things.
Before all time. Before all incarnation. Before all breath.
The you that is the blue sky. The you that is outer space. The you that is everything and nothing. You, as a human, are the same energy as whales and acorns and daffodils. You are of the Earth and of the stars all at the same time. You are the space that contains all things. The you that turns the earth, shines the stars, and beats your heart. The you that heals wounds, carries the wind, and swells ocean waves. The you in the nightly haunting chorus of the wolves. In the song of the crickets. The you at the heart of life.
This glorious you will shine out of your eyes and speak from your lips inspiring your heart, if you let it.
Feel into the streaming depths of your heart where a spreading warmth emerges. Feel into your muscles and tendons where a quiet relaxation shimmers along the fibers. Feel along your skin where your arm hairs hover and a feeling of aliveness plays games; tickling you with its hum and crackle.
Notice yourself filling up with warm liquid sensation running over your skin like a lover's touch. Notice your body go fluid and begin to melt into the core of who you are. Notice yourself overflowing with brilliance and beauty. Notice all the beautiful sensations.
This is the heart of you. It's the heart of all of us. From the space of who we are; we love, we heal, we find common ground, and we live joyously creating lives that are gorgeously, perfectly individual for each of us.
Who are you not to live it.
From this place of our natural way of being, unlimited creativity, energy, productivity, performance, strength, confidence, relaxation, and more is not only guaranteed; it's inherent.
This you is at the heart of all my work.
If you haven't already, connect with and follow us on Instagram @drsaraoneill and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DrSaraJoy
Subscribe to our podcast We Go Deep with Kat and Sara on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts
Check out our new glass pendant art inspired by the energy at the heart of life on Turtlewhale Designs on Facebook with more to come, and a new Etsy shop coming too.
We are accepting referrals to work with anyone, anywhere in the world.
With Love,
Sara Joy
At the Heart of Life is a Miracle
At the Heart of Life is a Miracle
We are miraculous. We are designed to be miraculous.
We've so lost touch with our natural way of being that when someone taps into what is inherent within each and every one of us, it's miraculous. We call it a miracle.
We can't explain it. We can't see the logic or the join. How did that happen?
Chiropractors see miracles every day in our offices. Things that aren't supposed to heal, just do. Things that aren't supposed to change, just do. I've often thought in more cynical moments that these aren't miracles, it's just society's lack of imagination or faith in possibility.
Magician and card trick inventor David Berglas said "The impossible I do immediately, miracles take a little longer."
I've started to see a new level of miracle show up in my work and in my own life. My understanding of what's possible or what's changeable in life and in the body expanded, recently. First in my learning transformative coaching, my definition of what transformation is widened vastly. I had no idea. The possibility of what's possible flew wide open.
Then miracles started happening to me, my family and my clients. I think of a miracle as something that comes from somewhere else, an experience of unearned grace, divine providence moved. We can't explain it. It doesn't fit the expected model. An outlier. It's not supposed to be possible. I'd become very comfortable with the "not supposed to be possible" or even the impossible. But the miraculous? Hmm... sounds grandiose. However, they just keep happening.
The nature of life is miraculous and when we learn to align ourselves with life, magic happens. It's unstoppable. It's also very simple. And once you get the hang of it, it's effortless. You can't quite believe you can actually live this way. I giggle every time I realize this truth afresh.
"If you want to see a miracle, be the miracle." Morgan Freeman
I've always been delighted with life and found joy in everyday things. This didn't keep me from feeling high levels of anxiety or fear for much of my life.
And then, I experienced a miracle. Maybe several. Here's where I talk about it in a recent testimonial I wrote for my mentor, Michael Neill:
In reflecting on the time I spent working with Michael, as an apprentice, what comes to me is profound gratitude and thankfulness.
Gratitude for Michael's unending knowing that all humans have unlimited potential and possibility available to them at all times. This includes me. Thankfulness that I listened to my own knowing that said "Do this, do it now."
I am so immensely glad I did.
I'd initially thought that I wanted to work with Michael to transform my two locations chiropractic wellness practice into a larger coaching and teaching business helping people across the globe to realize the depth of their astounding potential. I still do. And I am. My new coaching practice is thriving and clients are completely transforming their own lives. The depth of my impact with clients is what I'd dreamed of. And growing.
However, it was all the many unexpected amazing things that happened along the way that are why I am so grateful and thankful.
Turns out that when you really truly align yourself with life; magic happens.
My relationship with my kids and my husband went from good to stellar to beyond. Even my cat feels the love in the house and is changed by it.
I healed 7 years of "permanent brain injury" and constant weird neurological symptoms and daily almost constant "panic disorder". This was not supposed to be possible so I'd stopped talking about it. Or even hoping it could change. I was told it was as if I'd lost a leg. It would not regrow.
All my symptoms, diagnoses, and challenges vanished. As a result, I can do stuff again! I can watch movies again! So many to catch up on. I can listen to music and cook in my kitchen! At the same time! I can put the kids to bed. My vision improved. My hearing improved. I can eat any food I want. I'm much less sensitive to things like caffeine. Random body things have healed. I suspect that I haven't yet noticed all of the things that I can now do freely. I'm not scared anymore.
I feel younger than I have in a while. Lighter.
I fell in love with life all over again. And again.
I fell in love with people. With my business as it is and as I'm creating it to be. I fell in love with joy.
I discovered that I love Earl Grey tea. And that there's this flourless chocolate cake in London, England that I dream about. The pipe organ music at St. Paul's cathedral is exquisite and will transport you, if you let it.
I discovered that I am extremely well equipped for anything in life. I can create anything I can dream up. And what comes to me to dream up is more wonderful and more fantastic than I knew.
When I looked at the heart of life, I found a deep, never ending well of love. I fell into it and drowned.
You can too.
Michael Neill explains in his latest newsletter how he sees miracles happening when working with people:
“Someone fills back up with love and the overflow causes their relationships to bloom and grow. Someone reconnects with the energy of hope and leaves behind a world of thought where suicide seemed more like a sensible way out than an unnecessarily permanent solution to a surprisingly temporary problem. Someone realizes fear is just a cue to settle down and get present, and then gets inspired to launch a new business or reconnect with or revitalize the one they already have."
What’s required to create a miracle?
Knowing yourself as love, immersing yourself in the feeling of bliss that is the ocean of being, let yourself be filled with love until it spills over onto everyone around you, until it heals all your issues, complaints, aches and pains and niggling doubts. Until you can hardly stand it at all because it's so strong and lovely and vibrant and alive. Until it shines out your eyes and threatens to stop your heart with longing for release. Until it swallows you up whole, spits you out and loves you up even more. Until a miracle occurs.
We are designed to fill up with love, listen to what comes, and follow our knowing until a miracle occurs. We are powerfully amazing. Humans are not the problem; we are the solution and a gift.
"Listening is at the heart of every miracle” - Dr. Sara Joy O'Neill
We are the creators of miracles. The conduits of love made manifest in the world. You need only look within.
My work contains miracles too. Are you ready?
If so, here are some new and upcoming ways to work with me over the next few months:
1) Spinal Entrainments: This gentle and energetic chiropractic work brings vitality and fluidity to the body. For people interested in bodywork to improve their physical condition, the first step is a complementary consultation with me to look at where you are now and where you would like to be.
2) Transformative Coaching: Transformational conversation about the nature of how all humans work and exploration into living a life you love. I act as a guide along the way to creating and living your perfect life you are excited to live. This starts with a no charge conversation about what you would like and how I can help.
3) Save the date: Sept 14, 2024 at St. Brigid’s Villa at Ignatius Jesuit Centre in Guelph. We are holding our annual Immersion Day at the beautiful Ignatius Jesuit Centre. Immerse yourself in what's possible for you mentally, physically, and spiritually. Includes transformative group sessions, break-out games and exercises, entrainment sessions, and delicious lunch/snacks. Registration coming soon. Contact Nancy for more details or to reserve your spot ahead of time.
4) The Listening World Summit in Prague is a global conference that I am helping to organize with a group of international coaches to foster the art of deep listening to oneself and others to create a more peaceful world. Join us online for FREE or in Prague for the live event May 24-26, 2024. The goal is to have a million people listening from the heart. www.thelisteningworld.com
With Love,
Sara Joy
What's Before Thought?
What's Before Thought?
As the creators of our experience using the principle or energy of Thought in each moment, human beings exist before our thoughts. Many people identify with their thoughts and thinking. They think they are their thoughts. 'I think therefore I am', as Rene Descartes expressed. Actually, the opposite is true. I am therefore, I think. I am therefore, I have the capacity to think.
There is a space of ourselves before any thinking or before we create thoughts. It's a space of possibility, of rest, of being settled into ourselves. We are content and at peace.
We are literally the space in which thoughts and thinking arise. It comes from us. We cook it up like a recipe.
I like this quote from Vernon Howard. "Learn to see things as they really are, not as we imagine they are."
It points to the difference between what just is - seeing things as they really are and what just is created - things as we imagine they are.
We develop different habits of thought (recipes) in the moment and then carry them forward with us in each present moment. We feel our thinking in our bodies. You can look at this in a very binary or black and white way. If your body feels tense or sometimes in pain, then you're overthinking or creating unnecessary thinking. My head will often feel too tight. If we feel at peace and relaxed, then we know that we are more settled down with less thinking. We are letting more of ourselves shine through. Our natural contentment and peace.
Many approaches these days look at analyzing one's thought content or getting better thinking. This type of approach often seems to bring benefits but it's a lot of work constantly monitoring or being aware of the content of one's thinking. It also operates counter to how we are designed and made to work.
We are designed to notice how we feel. It's a feeling in your body but can also be felt more generally. When we are operating as designed it feels good. When we are overthinking, it feels bad. That's it.
The tense overthinking feeling is a warning light or gentle alarm indicating that it's time to settle. We are designed to settle naturally if we stop shaking ourselves up. We stop shaking ourselves up by knowing that there's nothing to do or fix in the negative thinking or negative feeling. We stop shaking ourselves up by shifting back to the feeling of spaciousness that is you. The space before thought. Put more simply, ignore the negative feelings and shift to something that feels good.
I often notice that I'm shaking myself up and realize "Oh, I don't need this thought."
Another way to access feeling good is to ask yourself "When is the last time you felt like you'd like to feel all the time?"
It's ok if it was a long time ago. You still remember. This is the space before thought or the space of you. By remembering, we are bringing that past experience into the present using our ability to create with Thought. We are re-membering the good feeling experience. Re-constructing it anew in each moment.
You are living it now. We operate so much better from this space of peace and calm. This is available in any moment because it's you and it's always there. Never diminished.
Who you are is before Thought.
With Love,
Sara Joy
Actually
Actually
Sages, over the centuries, have all pointed to very similar truths to make their point. In order to help those around them who didn't see what they saw. For many who see a deeper reality, who listen to the deeper mind, who see that life is easy and full of joy there is often a strong pull to convey those truths to others or to help others see for themselves.
A colleague of mine in Italy works with professional soccer players and corporate executives in the realm of performance coaching. Nico calls it The Easier Project. Because life gets so much easier. Unbelievably so.
I had a coaching client tell me last week that he didn't think he'd be able to get through his challenges without the understanding of life that our work together brought. It makes things easier.
I'm often asked what sorts of things I help people with.
It comes down to working with people who want more in their lives. More ease, more energy, more productivity, more ability to be present with those they love, more ability to get things done, experiencing less pain so they can do more. People want to have a nicer life and they want to get better at the things they are engaged in.
Some people want relief from pain or anxiety. Some people want to resolve panic attacks. I've worked with people with various physical and mental diagnoses who want to lessen their symptoms, resolve their symptoms or be able to live their lives more fully with symptoms.
Some people want increased performance. Perhaps become better at public speaking or sports performance. Competition performance. Training performance.
Some people want better relationships with their spouse and/or their kids. More of a felt experience of love.
Some people want better sleep, more energy, more happiness and joy every day.
People just want a nicer experience of life and to get better at doing the things they want to do.
Traditional coaching looks at the specific life areas one by one. For example, you might work with a relationship coach to get a better relationship or to be a better partner yourself. This approach is helpful in the area in which you are engaging. I have a weightlifting coach and through working with him my weightlifting technique has improved.
Transformative coaching looks at the upstream principles behind life. How are humans designed? How do we use the creative potential of life to create? What is just true for all humans? What are humans made of?
Hint: It's not puppy dog tails and snails or sugar and spice.
When we see clearly the physics behind our life experience, the engineering gets ridiculously obvious. People's lives take off. Joy is a predominant feeling. Life becomes fun again or fun for the first time. We are the creative potential of the whole Universe. Actually.
What would life be like living from that understanding of yourself?
One of my favourite quotes from someone who saw a great deal about the nature of life is:
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” Franz Kafka
Actually.
With Love,
Sara Joy
What's The Difference?
What's The Difference?
I am often asked what is the difference between the chiropractic bodywork and the transformative coaching work that I do. They are both on the same spectrum or in the same direction of looking at the foundation of what is true in life. If you think of a river flowing along, spinal entrainments are more downstream of understanding how we are creating our life experience to start with. Which is what we look at with transformative coaching.
Let me tell you a story:
A man was travelling by foot from village to village seeing the land as he went. He would stop at each village he came to for a while and help out where he could in exchange for supplies and room and board. When his supplies were replenished, he would move on leaving behind new friends and beautiful experiences.
One day he came to a village by a fast-flowing river. As he arrived, there was a great outcry and many of the villagers ran to the river in distress. The man rushed over to see what was happening. To his surprise, there were a number of people flailing about half drowning in the current. They looked as if they were going down for the last time. The man jumped into action with the villagers and began rescuing as many people from the river as he could. There were too many. The man worked alongside the villagers all day rescuing drowning people. As the sun set the drowning victims diminished and then stopped coming altogether.
The village headman turned to the stranger, who was now a new friend, thanked him, and showed him to a cabin where he could eat and sleep.
Every day in this village there would be drowning people to rescue from the river in addition to the usual work of repairing equipment, tending to crops, and maintaining the cabins people lived in. The man stayed and worked in the village for months.
"How long have the drowning people been coming down the river?" he asked the headman one day. "For as long as our elders can remember we have been rescuing folks. These people often stay in their turn to help rescue people as well. We can't thank you enough for your contribution." replied the villager leader. "Where do all the people come from?" "Why are they drowning?" Nobody knows, was the reply.
An idea grew and grew in the mind of the traveller. "Let's go upstream to see where the drowning people are coming from.", he exhorted the villagers. "No." they all said. "We are too busy here. We can't let anyone drown."
So, one day the man left the village to go upstream to see if he could discover the source of the problem. As he set out on the river trail, his new friends and dear ones became very angry with him. "You are abandoning us!" "We never thought you would leave our cause!".
As the man walked along the river, drowning people swept past in the current calling out for help. He kept on, farther and farther up the trail. Through hilly terrain and high mountain valleys. Past stands of birch trees and wildflower meadows, the river continued to claim people in distress.
Finally, the traveller came upon another village far, far upstream of the first village high in the mountains. Here the river was fast and narrow and the riverbanks were steep and slippery. It was very easy to slip and slide into the river. The people of this village kept doing just that.
"Why don't you swim and save yourselves?" asked the traveller of the village elderwoman about her people. "Swim?" she bemusedly replied.
And so, the traveller made the upstream village his home. He married one of their beautiful women and raised children with her. And taught the people to swim. And in doing so, to save themselves.
Chiropractic entrainments bring vitality and life energy to one's nervous system allowing your body to heal. Our bodies become more alive and more fluid. However, in the same way as our story, going upstream to understand how we work as human beings permanently increases our capacity in all areas of life, including our body's capacity for innate healing.
It's just how it works.
With Love,
Sara Joy
The Myth of Unhappiness
The Myth of Unhappiness
This excerpt from "The Myth of Unhappiness" by Bruce DiMarsico is quite philosophical or maybe esoteric. I find it's a beautiful and simple description of trusting in one's own inner wisdom. None of us were created by mistake. Feel free to substitute the words "thought" or "thinking" for when he uses "belief" or "believing". Enjoy!
The only truth regarding happiness- true, real, felt happiness--is this: you are the best for you. Your decisions are the best. Your desires are the best. What you think is the best way of thinking for you. You, as you are, are the best you for others. There is nothing about you that is not the best for you getting what you want. You are the best you for having what you want. What you forget is best forgotten.
When you remember, it is the best time for you to remember. What you like to eat, when you want to sleep, what you love to have, who you want to have love you, etc., is the best thing for you. When or if you change your mind, then that will be the best time to change your mind and that is the best change for you.
You know what is best for you. You absolutely know it. You cannot be wrong. It is impossible that you can be mistaken.
If another suggests something to you about what to think or what to want or how to do, because you know what is best for you, you will know, absolutely know, whether they are right or not. You know when you recognize what you want in their suggestion.
If they are right about what you want, if you now realize something you hadn't realized, it is not because you do not know what is best for you, it is precisely because you do know that what you want is best for you.
If you didn't become aware until another made you aware it is because you know it was the best time to be aware. If another tells you a truth that you recognize and you realize that you have not been aware before, that is because you know what is best for you. If it were better for you to have known sooner you would have made yourself aware sooner.
You are the best way of being yourself and being happy.
It only seems like we weren't because we believed otherwise.
Isn't it perfect that if we believe that we are bad for ourselves, we should feel bad, unsure, untrusting, crazy?
We believed that if we were good for ourselves we would always be happy and sure and confident and doing what pleased us.
No. That is wrong. Impossible. If that were true we would be lost. We would be truly hopeless, not only feeling hopeless. It is enough that that attitude makes us feel hopeless. If it were true we would also know we were hopeless and instantly die.
Because we begin with "if" we are still indicating our belief that we may not be best for ourselves. Change "if" to "since": Since I am best for me and you are best for you ... If I believe you are also best for me that is because since I am best for me I can decide that you are too. I cannot be wrong. It cannot be that I believe you are best for me because I believe I am not best for me, but only because I am. If I were to believe that you are best because I am not, then I will doubt even that decision and not really believe you are best for me. You are not best for me because only you believe you are best for me or because you are best for me by some outside magic, but because, since I am best for me, I can think or know that you are also all I want for me.
It is not because I lack anything for my fullness that I love you, but simply because I am sure of my desires and decisions as best for me.
When you are sure of you, your decisions for me are as good as mine.
When I am sure of me, my decisions are as good for you as yours.
I cannot be bad for you any more than I can be bad for myself.
What I think about me makes all the difference. Shouldn't it?
Should I feel honest when I think I may not be?
Should I feel happy when I think I may not be?
Should I feel happy when I think that I ought to be happy before I deserve to enjoy myself?
If I believe that doing or thinking what I would most love to think or do must wait until I'm happy, how will I become happy?
Happiness does not come from that kind of thinking or from doing that kind of thinking.
Happiness comes from thinking and acting, happily. Not acting like a happy person or trying to think like a happy person, but from being happy and believing and behaving happily.
It means be happy about how you think and what you want. Be happy to do what you want and do it the way you would most love to.
Let yourself happen. You're best. The way you'll happen is happy and beautiful and true.
Happiness is! Happiness lives in you. It directs every beat of your heart, every thought, every desire, every movement in your body.
Everything, Absolutely everything.
Perfection is moving you. You are now perfect.
With Love,
Sara Joy
When The Sun Shines Through
When The Sun Shines Through
"When you find that place in you that is already thriving... what kind of a life will get created?" - Michael Neill
I often feel like there are two versions of myself. The loving, compassionate, inspired, and at peace me who is connected to and is, in fact, the energy of all things in human form navigating around this world having adventures. Then there is a duller, more tense, slightly or a lot anxious, perhaps snippy version of myself that I become when I'm preoccupied with thoughts and thinking.
As Michael says in the above quote, there is a place in each of us that is already and actually always is thriving. And happy, content, and peaceful. It's there in the midst of anxious thinking, preoccupation, fear or pain. It's there alongside all of that, all the time. It never goes anywhere.
We go somewhere though. We go to the pain (understandable – it hurts!) and we go to the tension-filled thinking. We go to the past or the future to justify why we are fearful or why we are convinced something is a problem and won't work.
This version of myself, while so familiar and practiced, can feel like a zombie wandering around without any actual animating force.
I came across this quote from Mavis Karn in her book "It's That Simple: A User's Manual for Human Beings":
"In order to return to the truth of us, we need only sense the clenched feeling of having left our true self and wandered back into a habit of thought. It's that simple.
Be still. Let all the mental noise recede, settle down, and dissipate. That's the door back home. That's when you remember who you are and where you can experience the oneness with all things that people who have reclaimed their wisdom have been pointing to forever."
Many people, I was one of them, think that in order to relax and be at peace they need to resolve the tension, anxiety, or pain first. They need to solve all the problems. There is an urgency in anxiety. There is an immediacy in pain. Anxiety and fear are so urgent seeming that we don't look at anything else while constantly trying to tamp it down or make it stop. When the not fear or not anxiety becomes more interesting to us than the stranglehold of the negative emotion, it starts to break apart and loosen. It dissipates, given enough time.
One way of leaving it alone long enough to dissipate is to not make it a problem. If having a negative experience like pain or anxiety was entirely ok and neutral then it gets a little boring and our attention actually wanders from the pain, looking elsewhere for entertainment. It's very much ok to not be ok. However, the more ok you are with your experience, no matter what it happens to be in the moment, the more you default into your own peace and relaxed state.
The real key is to find that space within yourself where you are already thriving. It's the you that is still and calm while walking in nature or walking your dog. It's the you that is suddenly quiet swimming in the lake. It's the you that is stunned by the beauty of your newborn grandchild. It’s the you that kicks out of your busy mind in a moment of surprise or emergency.
Yesterday, I pulled or overstretched or ‘somethinged’ my left lower back and side. I realized it at lunch at a restaurant where I just couldn't sit without considerable pain. It was very much in my face front and centre. I started getting worried. "I won't be able to stay here. I need a different chair. I won't be able to eat. What will others think?". And on and on and on. This wasn't helping. The pain was ratcheting up from all my busy thinking. There was no "solving" this pain in that moment. It would take some time.
As soon as I noticed all this, I was back to myself. It occurred to me to change seats with my husband. It occurred to me to shift how I was sitting. It occurred to me to tell him how much pain I was in. And then it occurred to me to put my attention on the thriving or on the peace or on the energy in my body, my aliveness.
I still had pain but it went down considerably and was sort of just there in the background. By shifting your focus to yourself, your thriving self, ideas and wisdom begin to come in. You can just follow step by step.
Sometimes, I ask myself "What if this wasn't a problem?" and see what comes from there. It feels like letting your thriving-self emerge through the zombie-self. Like the sun shining out through the clouds. Look at the sun and not the clouds. The sun is always shining.
We ended up having a relaxed and most delicious lunch. I highly recommend Trejo’s Tacos in Santa Monica.
With Love,
Sara Joy
