Allowance - Connecting With “And/Both” Inbox

Inspired by a participant who wanted to learn how to be with discomfort more… In this 23 min rest we gently deepen into ourselves, discovering the territory “and/both.” To do so, we slow down and curiously explore the multitudes of expressions and experiences we are having. This rest is designed to bring full participation of your brain and nervous system in ways that support your well-being.

Transcript

All right, Just letting yourself settle in if you're not already. And all that means is, Is letting your bodies have permission to find the spot that feels right for the body to pause with. So letting the arms find their resting place and your sit bones find their resting place. The arms, I'm sorry, The legs, The feet. And also noticing, Yeah, If you need anything right now, Do you need an extra pillow or do you need a blanket or do you need to rearrange yourself a little bit? Really giving yourself permission to be cared for in the way of having your body's practical ness attended to. And then as that is, As the case, Just noticing kind of where your body has chosen to position itself, Noticing what the if the arms are bent or straight. If the legs are bent or straight, Of course, Not changing any of that, Just noticing like, Oh, Yeah, The my knees are at a what's that angle? Huh? 90 degrees. And that's just the actual factual of this moment, Right? And then noticing the degree how my elbows are positioned and like, Oh, That's that's where my elbows wanted to be right now. This is where my wrists want to be. This is where my my ankles have chosen to be in this position. Just connecting to the actual factual of sitting or laying down. Not proving any points or winning a competition or having the right position or the wrong position or just noticing what that actual factual part of the prefrontal cortex to observe like, Oh, This is the position that I'm in. There's no no need to judge or no morality here. Just observation. And then just witnessing or noticing how your your body is already inclined to be breathing. Just observing no need to change anything about the breath right now unless you want to. Otherwise just watching how the body in this moment is breathing. Of course, That may vary from breath to breath. And you may feel comfortable noticing certain aspects more than others, And that's okay too. It's fine to just notice the breathing in the nostrils, For example. And just notice what you notice with that. And just letting yourself have permission to include whatever you want to with the breathing process. So we're now inviting our attention to continue to stay connected to that prefrontal cortex that observes and notices but doesn't try to fix or change or critique. And that's not always easy. So we were just naming like, I'm really inviting myself to just observe my sitting breathing body almost as if you were a half step behind yourself. And just observing, Imagining there's no right or wrong or good or bad in this moment. There's just the feet on the floor, Or the breath coming out of the nostrils or whatever your whatever is simple and easy to observe and notice. Sometimes we forget or we don't know how or that we can even include the easy or the neutral or the comfortable. So in this moment, Just letting your attention meander. Could meander from head to toes, Just noticing the neutral areas, The simple areas, The could be the comfortable areas. It could be something even as ordinary as the eyelids or my favorite the armpits or you know, Anything from head to toes that's just kind of ordinary, Easy, Neutral, Maybe even boring, Maybe that word might come up or just kind of noticing all the or some of the sensations or experiences that are okay. If you notice your attention going into thinking that's really normal, Or evaluating or critiquing that's really normal, Just gently bring your attention into that meandering, Looking for what might be simple in this moment and just be curious of what you might discover that maybe you you often don't include. Maybe it's the back of the knees, What my daughter calls the knee pits. Yeah, Forget about that area. Just like to connect there or to some other area that you might just accidentally exclude that you might find some simplicity or ease with. Now if you are noticing discomfort and your attention wants to go there and include that, Just let your attention know that we will go to that. We're not trying to exclude anything in this moment. We will include all the different territories perhaps, But we're just acknowledging that even though there might be some discomfort, There's also some experiences right now that don't fall in the realm of discomfort and we're including those for a moment more. Now for some of us this will be really hard because we really only care about discomfort on some level or we're really just mostly familiar. Our neural networks, Our neural pathways are just oriented to pay attention to discomfort. So sometimes this can be challenging to notice ease or simplicity or neutral and if that's you, Just give yourself some compassion for that. It's not sometimes what we have neural pathways oriented to. And if you're the opposite, If you are habitually oriented to what's easy or neutral, You may want not really want to connect to what's uncomfortable and that's okay too, That have some compassion for yourself with regard to that. We will move into the and both territory of acknowledging both comfort and discomfort and that is also not easy to do. So if it's not so easy, Just you're in good company. It requires efforting sometimes to notice the both and both comfort and discomfort. So now we're going to on purpose consciously acknowledge where there might be some discomfort. Maybe it's some area of the breathing that when we connect it to breath earlier, You're like no, Not that area, Let's go here. And so now you can still notice the comfortable aspect of the breath but maybe also just very gently acknowledge that there is another area or areas where there's a little discomfort. Maybe the discomfort that you're experiencing has nothing to do with breath. Maybe it's somewhere else far away from the breathing mechanism. If that discomfort is anywhere between the nostrils and the sit bones, It will interface with breath in some way or another, Maybe not super directly, Maybe more indirectly. But the breathing mechanism does, The mechanics occur from the nostrils to the pelvic floor. So if your area of discomfort is in any of the, In that realm, In that territory, Just gently notice the area of discomfort and also remind yourself through an inner narrative, An inner conversation of oh, I feel a discomfort in this location, Whatever, Wherever that is, And it's not head to toes. Or really wanting to connect inclusively to notice how there's some discomfort and I'm also going to include the comfort or the neutrality here. And you can let your attention just very gently meander back and forth, Kind of like toggle, Like ah, Here's the discomfort, Okay, Notice it in this area and nearby is, Oh, Here's the neutrality. And when we slow down, We'll notice that the discomfort is a very small percentage of our experience, But when we don't slow down with it, It's as if it's like 90% of our experience because that, And that's just because our attention is excluding all of the neutral and is just including the discomfort. So it seems like that's all that's happening. And when we slow down, We can notice like, Oh, That's just like 10% of my experience or less or maybe more, Whatever percent that is. And then we're going to notice like all this, All this other territory or some other territory that's quite fine as it is. And if you're one of these very normal human beings who doesn't like to include discomfort, I would just invite you to be just very gentle with yourself. And you can use that inner narrative to support you of maybe something like, I know I don't really like this. And I notice that there's no harm coming to me or this isn't dangerous. I'm in a safe room. You can even open the eyes at any point to just verify that like, Oh, Yeah, I feel this discomfort. I really don't like it. It seems like it's dangerous, But I look around and the walls are really steady, The floor, The ceilings steady. See the windows, The doors, You can even look behind you and you can know a name to yourself like, Oh, I can, I am not in a dangerous situation here. We're just naming that for the reptilian part of the brain to hear that, Even if it seems to contradict another part of you that's experiencing what might feel like some threat or danger with a sensation. So we're staying with the and both in this way. And just being very gentle with yourself with this discomfort that maybe you're inclined to not usually include and reminding yourself it's safe to feel discomfort. I don't have to like it. I don't have to want it to be here or be happy that it's here or invite it with open arms. I cannot like it. I can prefer it not be here and it's there's no danger right now. And I have these other areas that are nearby that are neutral. If you are having a hard time finding discomfort and you want to just explore to see if there's some hidden areas or some of you, This is going to sound like, No, I don't want to do that. If you want to do that, I'd invite you just to connect deeper into your breath, Deeper into your belly breaths, Deeper into the full breathing cycle. When we open to the full breathing cycle, Sometimes we'll wake up to some little areas that maybe we didn't know we were hiding from. And then we can have that same conversation of like, Okay, I didn't quite see you there. I don't really like you here. And there's no harm coming to me. I'm just opening to more right now. And I can either stay with including more, Including this deeper breath or this discomfort, Or I can go back to how I was breathing before. So you have choice here. You don't have to endure through anything necessarily. If you're on the other spectrum where you habitually do go to discomfort, It's really the same kind of invitation to be gentle and curious and acknowledge, Yeah, There's some discomfort here. I'm familiar with this discomfort here. I don't like it. And what supports me while I'm feeling it? What supports me or helps me to feel safe in myself or in my sitting moment here while I'm including this discomfort? And that can be anything you could include the space around you literally with your eyes open or the chair or the floor or some other sensation in the body. Reminding ourselves here that there's no supposed to or shoulds right now. There's just invitation to include more. Include more discomfort maybe. Include more comfort maybe. Include more neutrality. Include just the naming of the preferences or the sensations. Include acknowledging of inner dialogues or inner narratives and including what might support you in this moment as well. And reminding yourself that you can choose what to include and choose what to exclude. If you want to do that, You absolutely can. You can say, Okay, That's enough here. I'm going to turn my attention, Include my feet for a bit here, For example. Or I'm going to just daydream for a little bit. That's totally valid. You can choose to do that. There's no competition here. Nobody's keeping score, Keeping track other than maybe you, Which is understandable we do that. Yeah. Yeah. And letting your body move as it might be inclined to move here, That's including as well. Maybe your body wants to move, Stretch or lean or lean back or forward or maybe your body even wants to stand up. Giving yourself permission to choose what feels right for you in this moment. And then as we slowly start to come to the end of our rest, Just kind of noticing for yourself. What has been okay to include or allow? Where are you with your relationship with allowing right now? Can you allow yourself to include certain things that maybe you wouldn't normally or exclude things you wouldn't normally maybe exclude? Can you allow yourself to choose to connect to ease or allow yourself to connect with what feels nurturing in this moment? So allowance can manifest in lots of different ways. It doesn't mean you have to allow what you don't like. You might not want to experience what you don't like right now and that's okay. Maybe you just get to see. I'm just going to be quiet for a few moments just so you can connect here with with yourself here. Keeping the eyes closed for another moment if they're still closed and just thanking yourself for being here. Thanking yourself for being here, Willing to connect with yourself in the way that you have today. It's not always simple or easy to slow down and and take a look at what we're experiencing. And just real slowly as you're still staying connected to your sitting and breathing body, Just real slowly letting your attention or your your gaze slowly open. Just real slowly so that you're still really noticing this sitting and breathing territory that you had been while the eyes are now open. So we're still connecting to this inner territory while we're including the outer territory with the eyes open and then letting the eyes take in more. You'll notice what you notice with that. Any moment you can close the eyes again just to reconnect with the inner territory that maybe you'd been connecting with a moment ago. And then gently reopen them to your eyes to see if you can be with and both the internal and the external. And then coming back to to the screen here and writing anything down that you want to write down just to notice. And we'll come back together here.