Hello?
Welcome to Support for Stressful Times.
I'm Anne Weiser Cornell.
And the times are stressful.
I feel a lot of stress these days from all kinds of sources.
Including what I see on the news.
The weather where I am and in other places.
So,
Today I'd like to talk to you about the gentle art of listening to yourself.
This is really a big deal.
Because people wonder.
What can I do with these feelings of stress in my body?
Do you feel stress in your body?
When I feel Feelings like anxious,
Nervous,
Worried,
Concerned.
Overwhelmed.
It shows up.
Usually down here.
In my stomach.
And that's very natural.
It's understandable.
Your body is speaking to you.
That's what it should do.
It's part of the process.
Of being alive,
Having feelings,
Noticing our feelings,
Letting our feelings move through us.
It all makes sense.
Some people find it's a little difficult.
To feel in their bodies.
I know I did when I first tried learning this process more than 50 years ago.
I was like.
.
.
Body,
What body?
So if you're not feeling your stressful emotions in your body,
That might be an exercise,
A process.
You spend some time.
Sensing into your body,
I can take you through an exercise like that today.
And just notice even the very subtle things.
That you may be feeling there.
So that's number one.
That we can feel our stressful feelings or we can feel any kind of feeling.
In the body.
Because.
.
.
You are your body,
Your body mind,
Your wholeness,
That's you.
And yet sometimes.
It feels like what's speaking to me from my body.
Something I don't understand yet.
Like,
What are these messages I'm getting?
Recently,
I was feeling very anxious.
In my stomach just a few days ago.
I didn't know why,
Like sure,
There's all kinds of reasons.
I could guess.
That I was anxious.
I didn't know if the anxious feeling in my stomach was from this or from this or from this.
The truth is.
.
.
Staying back from the anxious feeling and just guessing what it was about.
Didn't?
Do me any good at all.
That's why today we're talking about the gentle art of listening to yourself.
Because it wasn't until.
.
.
I listened to the feelings themselves.
That I not only found what they were actually about,
Which is a bit of a surprise,
But I also could feel them starting to calm down.
Did you ever notice?
When you feel really listened to by somebody else,
When somebody really gets you.
What you're going through.
Sigh.
It brings a kind of.
Relief.
It's like taking a big sigh.
Naturally.
This is one of the natural processes that humans go through all the time.
Excuse me,
We yearn to be listened to and heard and understood.
That brings a next step when what's here can be listened to and heard and understood.
And We can give that to ourselves.
If I'm,
You know,
Feeling a feeling and I sort of try to guess what it's about and I I'm not asking it.
Instead,
I'm thinking,
Could it be this?
Could it be this?
The problem with that is it's sort of like meeting another person.
And saying to them,
Hi,
How are you?
Oh,
Don't tell me,
I already know.
If we assume we should or do already know why we're feeling what we're feeling,
It cuts off.
A natural process.
The natural process is to say,
Hi,
How are you,
And then wait.
For the answer to come and when we hear the answer.
Then we say,
Ah.
Okay,
So that's how you walk.
So listening.
Includes.
Getting.
I actually don't already know.
It's not true that I should already know.
Since we're talking about listening inside.
Let's do a little of it together right now,
All right?
So this,
I'm going to take you through a little process and it's going to include sensing your body.
And if you're going through a stressful time and your body is letting you know about that,
And this will be an opportunity to be a listener.
To the feelings in the body and what they are going through,
What they want you to know about what's stressful,
Difficult,
And so on.
Let's do that together.
So,
Maybe take your time.
To just be aware of your body right now.
What often helps me.
To do that is to start by feeling.
My feet and my seat on the chair.
To feel.
The grounding,
Right,
The sense of contact with what's beneath.
Here I am.
Yeah,
Here's my body.
And start to really feel like I'm in my body.
You know,
I can walk around all day sort of up here.
But we're.
We're doing this together right now.
We're coming down in,
Into the body.
And that will include feeling your throat.
It's not too hard to feel your throat.
It's like you're checking if you have a sore throat or not.
Don't have a sore throat,
But you might have.
A constricted throat,
A tight throat.
Or it might be.
Fine.
Open.
Just pausing to think.
Let awareness come down a little lower to your.
.
.
Heart,
Chest area.
Sensing what you're aware of there.
We leave pauses because sensing can take a little time.
It's not instant.
Sensing how your chest is.
Takes a little while.
And then let's include the stomach.
Stomach and belly area We're not looking for anything in particular,
We're simply sensing how it is right.
With the awareness that it could be.
Open,
Clear,
Relaxed,
Happy?
And maybe it's.
.
.
Tense,
Tight.
Jumpy,
Agitated.
It's okay.
Either way.
Noticing how it is is the key and we're noticing.
Just going to leave a little pause here now.
How is your stomach right now?
And for the purpose of this exercise,
Notice if There's a place in your body where you're feeling something like.
Anxious,
Nervous,
Worried.
Concerned.
Tight.
Sometimes when people find it.
Stressful feelings like that,
They try to distract themselves or push them away.
And try to,
I don't have to feel that.
So our practice right now is.
Not to try to change your feelings.
Let them be how they are.
And simply be here.
Being with how it is.
And especially if there's a place in here,
Throat,
Chest,
Stomach,
Belly,
That's fine.
Stressed,
Worried.
Maybe also sad or heavy.
Just noticing.
So when you find something,
Let's use the words.
I am sensing something.
No need to name it any more than that.
I'm sensing something here in my stomach.
And now.
.
.
I'm going to invite you to say hello to that.
I'm sensing something in my stomach and I'm saying hello.
Hello,
I know you're there.
Notice what happened.
When you say,
Hello,
I know you're there.
To a feeling in your body.
It might be glad.
You're saying hello,
Right?
You might notice a response like.
Oh good,
You're noticing me.
Or there might be.
No response.
Or some other response.
For example,
Sometimes a tight feeling will tighten.
When we say hello to it,
Why would it do that?
I think the main reason is that now that it has your attention,
It really wants you to know.
How tight it is.
And you can say,
Ah,
Yes,
I really sense how tight you are,
Or whatever fits for you.
This is about the gentle art of listening to yourself.
So you.
.
.
The big you,
The awareness of you.
You are the listener.
And this,
What you're feeling in your body about how life is these days.
That's what you're listening to.
So we started by bringing awareness inside.
We started by sensing something there.
And then saying hello.
I am sensing something in me.
That feels tight or whatever.
And I'm saying hello to that.
Are you with me so far?
We're going nice and slow.
And if you got this far,
It's terrific.
But I've got another step for you.
And the next step is.
To like imagine you are sitting down with this place inside.
To be its listener.
So we're not going to tell it how it feels.
We're gonna listen.
To how it feels.
You can imagine sitting next to a friend.
Friend you care about.
I mean,
It's really lovely to treat your own emotional body life like a friend.
I'm a big fan of it.
Inner friendship.
That's what we're doing right now like you've got a friend you're sitting down with your friend they they're going through something difficult right now,
Something stressful,
And you sit down and you say,
Hello,
I know you're there and I'm with you.
To listen.
So what does it mean to listen?
To your body now.
It's kind of an open net.
To whatever comes next.
For example.
As you sit down to listen.
The next step might be you see some images or some memories.
That's actually one way your body might speak to you.
Sit down to be with a tense,
Gripping feeling.
And then you see.
.
.
Images of 10,
000 emails in your email.
Box or you see an image of a sick relative of yours.
The body can show you images as you sit to listen to them.
You might get kind of postures or gestures like sometimes my After I sit to listen to a feeling I get the heat My body wants to take this posture.
Like I'm wanting to.
Duck that something's coming at me.
Something in me feels that something's coming at me or might.
When we listen.
Doesn't always speak in words.
It may communicate in all kinds of ways.
That's why we give it a little more time.
While you're doing that,
I'm just going to tell you a little story about how this happened to me recently.
Two days ago.
I was feeling.
Anxious in my stomach.
And I didn't know why.
And when I thought of the different stressful things in my life,
None of them fit.
And I was with a friend who,
Actually a friend,
A focusing friend who could help me pause and slow down and just listen.
Instead of trying to guess or figure out why I was feeling this way,
I said,
Okay.
I said to the feeling,
Hello,
I know you're there.
And I'm with you.
That's a nice thing to say.
You might try that right now.
Hello,
I know you're there.
And I'm with you.
And then after I did that and I wasn't trying to figure it out or make guesses,
A memory came in of a conversation that I had had the day before.
And it was.
.
.
That conversation.
Which I never would have guessed,
Because it was a friendly conversation with a nice person,
But.
.
.
It had made me think about something.
I should be doing.
And the should be doing had been carried in my body.
As this tension.
And so what did I do next?
What do you do next now in this process?
So what I did not do is I did not say,
Oh,
Don't worry.
That's not important.
You don't have to feel that way,
Right?
You know all those things we say too.
Make our feelings go away.
That's not listening.
So what did I do instead?
I said to the worried feeling in my body,
I hear you.
That has really been bothering you.
I get that.
I get that.
I could feel it start to relax.
I could feel my breath deepening.
BOOM!
That makes me want to really emphasize to you.
How powerful it is.
To listen to yourself,
To listen to your body without trying.
To make things change or make things different.
But also not trying to tell your body how it feels or guess how it feels.
There's an open message.
There's a respect here.
When you listen to somebody,
Including yourself,
You really respect that.
Well,
We've been doing a little exercise,
So let's officially complete it.
Whatever's been going on in your body and your.
In a relationship you might want to say thank you.
Thank you.
And I'll be back.
You can say to it,
You'll be back.
Let awareness emerge.
Ah,
Feel your grounding again.
