Improve Relationships, Reduce Stress, and Increase Money

This passage comes from the wonderful book, “Bonds That Make Us Free,” by C. Terry Warner, p. 15.

“When I was small, growing up in San Francisco, my father brought home a toy from Chinatown, a woven tube six inches long and about as big around as one’s index finger. He called this toy “Chinese handcuffs.” When you put a finger in each end of the tube and then tried to draw your fingers out, the tube would tighten. The more you pulled, which seemed the logical thing to do, the tighter it would grip. But when you understood why it gripped, you saw that pulling outward was not logical at all, but illogical. You needed to press inward so the fibers would relax; then you could draw your fingers out.

Just so, when we learn how our troubled emotions and attitudes have a stranglehold on us because we have misunderstood their grip on us, we will give up our futile strategies for escaping them. Our new understanding will have loosened that grip. Being honest with ourselves is the key.”

Janet Summit
www.peacethroughprinciples.com

Sometimes we are overwhelmed because we have to do something that we really don’t want to do. This morning I took my son to his band practice at the high school. That wasn’t such a big deal. Yet I had a very busy day scheduled, and as I was taking him there I kept thinking about all the things I had to do, and how I had to get right home and begin the day’s tasks. So I was feeling rushed.

I dropped him off, and before I even got to the first stoplight, my cell phone rang. I really have made it a priority to not use the cell phone while I am driving, so I pulled off the road into a parking lot to see who had called.

It was my son. He had forgotten his marching band shoes. There was no choice - I had to go back home and get those shoes for him, because they were marching that day in a parade.

Immediately alarm bells went off in my head. “Alert! You’ll be later than you even thought!” “ALARM! You’ll have to work triple time instead of double time!” “Alert again! There goes the time to eat lunch!” (I hadn’t even had breakfast yet, so that meant I wouldn’t be able to stop to eat breakfast either.)

…….My “scheduler” in my head is nothing if not efficient. “She” usually tells me to the exact second how late I am. Funny, but she never seems to tell me that I’m early to anything.

However, I did the right thing and continued driving home to get the shoes, and then brought them back to my son. Luckily, something clicked in my consciousness. I realized that I wasn’t feeling peace. As I thought about that, I realized that I had made a choice. I had chosen to believe that my schedule was more important than people. I had chosen to believe that a clock was more important than my son. I had chosen to believe that feeling frantic was better than feeling peace.

I realized that I was exactly where I wanted to be. I wanted to be here because I wanted to let my son know that I loved him enough to drop everything to help him when he needed me to do that. And, if right here was the perfect place for me to be, then I could be at peace.

Suddenly I felt it. I really did feel peace. I felt that peace because suddenly I was in control of my own choice of how to feel. And I chose love. And all of a sudden, I knew my day was going to be easy. I had chosen the feeling that would sustain me in the day’s work.

Love will beat “overwhelm” every single time.

This fact is tremendously important. Emotions do lodge in our bodies. Do you feel tense and uptight? Notice — your body feels a certain way. Angry? Your stomach might hurt. Tension headache?

When we really understand this, it is easy to see how important it is to use our bodies as a tool to help us deal with the emotions that we may not want to keep.

Right from birth our body’s senses feed the brain information. “It’s hot. It’s cold. I’m hungry.” We might see a dog (using our eyes), and then process that information our minds. “That dog has bristly fur. His tail is down.” Then we hear a sound (using our physical ears) — growling. We immediately assume something: “I think that means he is mad, and he might attack.” And then we use our body again — we run!

In the book “Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head,” Carla Hannaford, the author, states: “The human qualities we associate with the mind can never exist separate from the body.” We tend to think of it as if the body’s role is to carry our brain from place to place so it can do the important work of thinking. Not so — all learning, thought, creativity and intelligence are the result of the processes of the whole body.

This notion is deeply rooted in our culture - but many other cultures have an awareness of how important our bodies are to our mental functioning.

Are you feeling overwhelmed? Check — have you eaten recently? Are you feeling angry? When was the last time you went on a power walk? Tired emotionally? What happens when you do 100 jumping jacks, or simply think about how to balance your electrolytes?

Of course that is simplistic. It does not address “the problem” that is causing you emotional stress. But when our emotions are overwhelming and causing us problems, it is essential to “have our bodies on our side.”

One of the reasons I do cranial sacral therapy is because I find out that cranial work provides the body with an ability to move freely, unencumbered by tension in the tissues. People feel calm inside. This gives them literal emotional power. They can and do process emotions that were once chaotic and painful, and they can and do heal.

Emotions do lodge in our body. So remember - do all you can to honor and take care of your body so your body can be your emotional support and strength.

Learning to understand emotions is critical, and learning thebody’s part in that helps tremendously.

For information on cranial sacral therapy, you can visit www.upledger.com, or on the principles of emotions, go to www.peacethroughprinciples.com.

As a teenage girl I was asked to play the organ for our church meetings. This was very scary to me. I did play the piano, but I did not know anything about the organ. I was only 14 years old. That week I went to the church and practiced the organ every day, but I was still a nervous wreck by Sunday. Shortly before we had to leave for Church I remember just sobbing with fear.

My mother finally looked at me and said, “Janet, you are assuming that you can’t do it. In addition, you are assuming that everyone who goes to church goes only to hear you play the organ, and not to worship God. So you are assuming they will laugh at you if you’re not perfect. Well, you could assume instead that it’s God’s church and He will help you. You could assume that everyone will appreciate your faith and willingness to serve.”

That really helped me. I was able to calm myself down and remember Who I was really going to play the organ for.

Remember - emotions are a combination of a feeling and a thought. That combination will lead us to assume certain things as truth. When we understand our emotions we can make sure our assumptions are really based on things we know in our hearts and in our minds to be true.

www.peacethroughprinciples.com

Math Challenge:

Can you change IX to 6 by adding only one thing?

Are you ready for the answer? First - did you really try?

Answer: Add the letter “s” in front of IX.

Were you stumped? Most people automatically think of the Roman number system, and assume that IX is “nine.” That’s because they assumed that a math problem would involve Roman numerals.

How does this apply to emotions?

One day I was feeling very angry because I was in the kitchen all alone doing the dishes and everyone else was watching a movie. When I realized how mad I was, I went to my famiy and said, “I would like some help with the dishes.” (Luckily I didn’t say, “You are all lazy and don’t care about me!” — even though that is what I was really feeling.)

My 12-year-old son (thanks, Zackery) looked at me and said, “Okay, Mom.” I must have looked as shocked as I felt, because my 10-year-old daughter said, “We didn’t know you wanted help.”

There are two lessons here — #1 is that kids don’t automatically know that moms don’t actually enjoy doing dishes alone, and wouldn’t necessarily choose to do dishes in their free time.

#2 is that I assumed my family knew the dishes needed to be done, but simply didn’t want to help. That led to my further assumption that they didn’t care enough about me to be willing to work.

I was wrong. I was wrong because I allowed my emotional feeling to lead me to think thoughts that I assumed were true, but actually were not.

That’s a great reason why it is so absolutely important that we learn about our emotions — and distinguish what our feelings and our thoughts really are.

Principle: We lodge emotions in our bodies.

How this works:
Think of the last time you felt tense. Do you remember? Think about that time, and think about the situation. Now, without analyzing anything, draw attention to your physical body.

What did your physical body experience in that moment? How did your shoulders feel? Your neck? Were you standing up or sitting down? Was your back straight, or curved? Did your body feel heavy or light? Think about how you held your mouth. Were you gritting your teeth? Were your jaw muscles tense or relaxed?

I’m pretty sure you’ll realize it’s true — our bodies really do “hold” our emotions. But do we ever tell our bodies to relax that hold? No, probably not. Most of us are going through life with a lot of accumulated emotion that actually binds us down. It weighs on us. The weight can be pretty heavy.

What can we do about it?
Typically when we feel that weight on us, we try to solve the problem. We do this by analyzing, by figuring out how to actually do something to fix whatever caused the tension.

It’s much easier to remember the principle: Emotions lodge in the body. Then help your body simply be able to release the emotion! It may be as simple as going for a long brisk walk. It may mean taking a nap to help our body relax. This is one reason having someone give you a back rub can be so calming at the end of a stressful day. That back rub can actually help release the physical tension, which will, in turn, relax our emotional tension too.

For me, one of the most effective ways to relax is to take a nice long hot bath. I didn’t realize, though, that what the bath did for me was to actually help release physical emotion that I had lodged in my body.

Several years ago Don (my husband) served with the U.S. Army in Iraq. He was gone 15 months. Of course we (the kids and I) were so excited to have him come home, and went to the airport to bring him home. We had decorated our home with balloons and posters and yellow ribbons. As our family reached home, I stepped onto our porch and suddenly had an overwhelming desire to go right in and take a nice hot bath. I hadn’t even realized it, but while Don had been gone, I’d taken showers. There wasn’t really time for a bath!

Don opened the door for me, and as he did, he looked at me, and said, “Janet, I think you should go right now and take a nice long bath.” He couldn’t have given me a better gift.

You’d think that it would have been more important to be with Don right then, but it wasn’t. No, it was vital that I have that hot bath - and he knew it too. It was so nice just to be in the tub and think about my blessings, and to think about the things we had learned and done during that year. I needed that time to release the stress and tension and replace those emotions with joy and gratitude.

Emotions do loge in our bodies. Take the time to help release and relax the emotions that keep us wound up and frantic and tense.

During a recent cranial sacral therapy session, I talked with my client about a lot of different things. About halfway through the session, though, I realized that our conversation ahd been pretty general, and I asked her if there was anything that her body wanted to talk about.

Emotions do lodge in our bodies. I know that, and so I asked her if there was anything that her body might want to talk about. She thought for a minute, and emotionally began to talk about a difficult personal experience she had gone through in her life. As she began to talk, I could feel the difference in how her body responded. I could feel the increased energy and softness of the tissue layers.

The session went long over the hour that had been scheduled, but that was okay. That is part of the lesson. My friend just needed to be able to express how she felt about that situation at the time, and how it impacted her today. She didn’t need advice, and wouldn’t want advice. She just needed to be able to express emotion.

It seems to me that one of the reasons people find it difficult to heal is that they do not believe there is time for emotions to be expressed. When IS the right time to cry, for goodness’ sake? Certainly not when there are things to do - places to be, people to be around. When IS the right time to take time for emotions? Most people simply don’t take the time, and don’t believe there is the time available. I can’t count the number of people who have told me, “If I start crying I won’t be able to stop.”

Guess what? They’re wrong. If they are brave enough to take the time, they will find that they do stop crying. They stop crying, because their body finally knows that there is time — there is time to heal. We must give ourselves that gift.

I have one rule for knowing when a cranial session is over. If a person is talking about general things, things that are “details of life,” and I have finished the standard techniques, it’s okay to end the session. I can pretty well count on the fact that their body is peaceful. But if the person is expressing emotional concerns, the session needs to continue. There really is nothing else that is more important at the moment.

And it really doesn’t take that long. The results make all the difference. I have seen people who have been going to therapy for years and years. They have been helped, and have resolved a lot of things, but they still feel that they are not quite at total peace. I believe that when they resolve things with bodywork, such as cranial, and when they are allowed to express themselves until they are done, they heal. The healing is quite profound, and makes a tremendous difference.

There is enough time. We just have to insist on that.

www.peacethroughprinciples.com

ALIONA SEES

If you walked home
From school with me,
You’d see the things
I get to see.
–Emily George
in “Pocket Poems”, selected by Bobbi Katz.

Isn’t this a great way to illustrate the importance of learning to understand someone else by really “walking the path they walk?”

So many times someone hurts our feelings, or we judge someone, or we get upset at something someone has done. But have we really seen them, or have we just seen them from our perspective of living on our own street?

Let’s try to see what someone else sees! We do that by learning to understand emotions.

www.peacethroughprinciples.com

There was a “Peanuts” cartoon today that I thought was funny.

Charlie Brown is lying in bed, in the middle of the night. His sister Sally walks into his room and begins talking. She says: “There I was, sound asleep. Suddenly I was plagued by a self-doubt.”

Charlie Brown groggily says: “You?”

Sally replies: “You’re probably right…..” as she walks back to her bedroom.

I wish we could all have this same paradigm. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we weren’t plagued by self-doubts?

Learning to understand our emotions makes a huge difference, and we can truly learn not to let those self-doubts plague us at all.

There is a “law” about our emotions that goes like this:

“By the fruits ye shall know them.”

When we have an emotion, (a combination of a feeling plus a thought) we will act on that emotion in some way. That’s our principle #3 — Emotions lead to action.

How do we use these principles?

Suppose we are doubting ourselves. You know the feeling: “I know that I’m not going to be able to do this” …. “I’m never going to be able to make enough money” ….. “Just my rotten luck.” …. “I’m never going to get it right.” ….. “No matter what I do, it just won’t turn out right.” etc.

Do you want to feel that way? No, of course not. Yet the solution seems to be like this: Try harder. Do more. Get up earlier. Learn how to do it better. Just quit whining about it and get busy.

The problem is - it’s not really that easy, and we know that internally. So most of us give up and just live with those feelings and try to muddle through.

Use the “by the fruits” principle. What is the “fruit” of self-doubt? Well, the fruit is that we are pretty miserable inside. The fruit is that we stay stuck. We can’t really improve, because we know we can’t. We don’t really try, because if it’s impossible, why waste our effort? We limit ourselves and just don’t let ourselves get in situations where we have to stretch. That way we can at least protect ourselves from those horrible doubts.

Now, in a real garden, if a farmer didn’t like the fruit, he would change what he planted as a seed, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t continue to grow zucchini if he decided he hated zucchini.

We can do the same thing. Change what we plant. Look at the feeling and the thought that creates the fruit of self doubt. What do we believe? What do we think? Change them. Instead of believing, “I cannot do anything right,” think, “I am working hard to be successful, and I believe that I can do this.” Instead of thinking that life is hard, think, “I am meeting this challenge successfully, and I know that I can get through this.”

It makes a world of difference to know what we are feeling, look at the fruit, and decide if we want to plant a different kind of feeling and thought. It isn’t hard at all for the farmer to change the seed he plants. It isn’t hard for us to do that either.