Thursday, July 13: Feeling Badly, and the Way Out

FEELING BAD
Feeling bad is a wake up call. Just like physical pain means: stop doing what you are doing and figure out something else to do, emotional pain means…. Stop doing what you are doing and figure out something else to do.

Wow. Notice the sentence, the words: figure out something else to DO. This is the first step out of feeling bad: realizing that it is something you are doing, that it is not created in outer space, nor is it created in the so-called circumstances. It’s created in you.

Gasp. That means you are responsible, which feels “hard,” but is actually our salvation, ‘cause if we are doing it to ourselves, we can stop and do something else.

What else? Well, let’s take little baby steps, a method that leads to miracles in the Feldenkrais work. Let’s find the emotional pain and break it down into two parts: the kinesthetic, sensing part and the blah, blah words in the head part. Let’s take this approach: honor the first, and be skeptical of the second.

Like this: if say, someone dies, we have an aching feeling inside, and this aching feeling might be strongest if we lie down in a bed we used to share with that person, and they are no longer there. This is the mammal in us, sad for what we once loved and hugged and touched. Fine, this pain has places and shapes and sizes and intensity.

Feel those places and shapes and sizes and intensities. Breathe into it and feel it more. Honor it. Allow it to be whatever it is, and yet: keep this feeling of the non-verbal sensing sort. No words about the pain, how bad it is. No words about the why of the pain, how could she/he die, this wasn’t the right time, if I’d only done/said this before you died.

No words.

None.

Feeling as sensation. Go with it, go deep, see what happens.

And the words. Well, there’s the work of Byron Katie, or there’s just the simple experiencing of how much easier life is without going along with the blah/blah, or there’s this: asking smart questions of the words. But that’s later, another time.

For now, just sense the physical part and breathe and sense the rest of yourself and move in gentle and easy and even interesting ways. Let the life in you be manifested as moving, let the pain be what it is and where it is, and allow the rest of you to feel good. This is life. It is very full. Some of you feels vital and alive. Some of you is in pain.

This is living. This is awareness. This is being present. This feels good even as part of you feels bad and will heal you over and over and over.