My Relationship With My Life

This somatic inquiry helps us to see where we are shutting parts of ourselves out of awareness. It could be an angry part or a part that is afraid jealous, or grumpy. We see that being angry or depressed doesn't mean there is something fundamentally wrong with us. We experiment with relaxing into an open-hearted welcoming of all of ourselves.

Transcript

There's so much of our experience that's welcome,

That we enjoy,

And there's so much of our experience that's not as welcome.

And also there's a lot of parts of us that we can kind of wholeheartedly welcome into a practice,

And then there are parts of us that we're not quite so happy about.

So notice as you're getting comfortable and deciding how you're going to position your body,

You want to move or stretch.

When we're doing something like a blue star or a meditation,

It's helpful to have our body still.

But when we're doing anything else,

It's often more helpful just to notice,

Could I be more comfortable if I moved a little?

Sometimes you might want to shake a little or stretch.

So as we're tuning into our experience in the moment,

Notice what your relationship is with that experience.

And take a few breaths.

Notice as you're noticing your body and your breath,

Maybe thoughts in your mind as well.

If you were to say every part of me is welcome,

Including maybe the hip joint that hurts,

Or the clenching of your jaw,

Or something that might be tight in your body,

Just as an experiment,

If you were to welcome everything in your body,

All the sensations and energies,

Notice what that would feel like.

And is there something you could soften maybe a little bit to allow that to be more true?

When we're tightening up against a part of our body,

It becomes more painful.

So it might be that we could move our shoulders around a little bit or stretch somehow,

And that things would ease a little bit.

It's hard to welcome things that are uncomfortable or painful.

Very helpful to notice those habitual reactions of pushing things away.

Even something as simple as that bit of tension in the neck or shoulders,

Or something relatively simple.

But then we get into a little bit more complicated ones of,

I'm not that sure about welcoming that sensation or energy in my body.

When I attune to my stomach area,

For instance,

I feel whatever it is,

There's often a lot of sensation in our stomach area,

Or wherever that might be for you and your body.

So it's this habit of turning away that we're highlighting right at the moment,

Of shutting things out,

Putting them to the side.

There's not a right or wrong answer to this.

We're not trying to pressure ourselves.

We're just bringing our attention to it.

And then we go a little bit deeper and we go into working with the younger parts of us,

Or the angry part of us,

The hopeless one.

And those can be really a lot more difficult to bring forward in terms of,

Why would I want to bring that forward?

I know it's there,

Does nothing but cause me trouble.

Why would I want to bring that forward?

So that's something we could sit with for a moment too,

Is sometimes there's a lot of willingness to let whatever is suppressed come forward or come up.

Other days it's like,

Yeah,

This is not the time for that.

And we can honor whatever's going on and work at a level that we're really comfortable with,

Or less uncomfortable with maybe.

One of the ways to stay anchored is to work with our body and our breath.

We can be here in this moment.

If you were to invite forward whatever it is that's kind of streaming through your unconscious mind,

Or maybe that's present with the sensation and energy in your body,

We could kind of dip into that as well.

What is it that's going on in our unconscious mind and in our deeper levels?

Things that we might not be aware of right now.

And then we notice how we interact with that.

One thing that happens often is that we'll maybe have an angry part come up and we might shut it down.

It's like,

Well,

What's the point in being angry about that?

I can't do anything about that anyway.

And then we just stuff it back in there.

There's other ways that we do that as well.

We might reframe something that's quite popular in some kind of psychology circles.

So if I'm feeling whatever it is,

Not very courageous for instance,

One of the ways we might work with that is to bring our heart and our compassion to that.

Another way might be to come up with some kind of a different way of looking at it.

And all of these can be helpful.

And it can also be helpful just to allow that to be whatever it is,

To be here.

Noticing your body,

Your breath.

If you were to bring your attention through the whole of your front forehead,

Eyebrows,

And eyes,

Notice the sensation,

The energy there,

Let your forehead soften.

Notice your mouth and jaw.

This is an area of the mouth and jaw where often we're holding things back.

If you have some anger stirring somewhere inside of you and your experience with anger is that it's not safe to express it,

Might be that you got in trouble for that.

It might be that people might not think you're nice or maybe you've let her rip and then had some repair to do.

You've hurt someone's feelings.

Maybe anger has been a really wonderful tool that you can create some boundaries.

You can express your anger at injustice.

We have a lot of different experiences with anger.

If you were to say,

Part of me is really angry right now.

Notice what pops in.

What part of you?

Is there a sense of an age?

If you were to open your arms and wholeheartedly let that angry part of you be here,

What's your experience with that?

Does that feel safe?

Welcome?

I really welcome my angry part.

And of course that's a complicated answer.

It can be really overwhelming,

Harder to control.

Now we're getting into,

Am I in a fight response or am I feeling and expressing anger?

So if we're in a fight response,

That's a survival response.

Some anger has come up because we're experiencing some kind of a threat and we're needing to protect ourselves.

And it can be a real heated experience in our body,

In our mind.

One of the ways to work with that as anger rather than kind of that out of control,

Fight response is to come back into the body and be really grounded as you're looking at this.

So take a few breaths,

Let your body relax,

Let yourself come back into awareness that right now you're just kind of looking around a little bit.

We're doing an inquiry,

We're exploring.

Is there some part of me that I've been pushing down,

Not allowing a voice?

And could I welcome that part of me?

What does it want me to know?

What's going on?

And notice if your response is kind of along the lines of,

Well,

Just calm down,

Cool off,

Messages we've heard a lot in our life.

We could allow ourselves to notice if we're trying to make it nicer or cool it off a little bit.

Anger can be very useful.

It alerts us to a boundary cross.

It alerts us to injustice.

It brings us up out of a freeze,

A feeling of hopelessness or shutdown.

It's like,

No,

I'm not going to go away.

I'm not going to go into that hopelessness or despair.

There's something wrong here.

I'm going to let myself feel angry.

Well,

The way I've experienced it is the difference between expressing anger and a fight response is awareness and self-regulation.

I can be very angry and speaking in a very angry tone and still be completely aware.

I haven't lost myself in it.

So fight response is kind of an unconscious survival response.

And if that happens,

Could we bring some compassion to ourselves?

Something that was happening was strong enough,

Kind of knock us off kilter,

Take us out of regulation.

So we might do some cyclic sighing.

We might look around the room,

Do the five senses practice,

Use some of those tools to come back into regulation.

Could we have some openheartedness for ourselves?

There's a lot of things in this world that are not right.

And anger is an appropriate response.

I'm responding to something with anger that doesn't make me wrong.

And I might want to really come in and be connected with myself and figure out,

Is this the younger self who didn't really have any way to express themselves,

To say the words,

To set a boundary?

What are my options now?

And we don't have those options until we're,

And unless we're connected inside.

We're just using anger as an example.

There might be a scared part of us,

And we don't allow ourselves to feel fear.

So we push that away.

We're not aware of it.

Notice all of the energies,

The thoughts,

The experience that you're having.

We're looking at our processes of suppressing what's going on,

Of disconnection.

We know that trauma disconnects us.

So we're really looking into some of the mechanisms of that,

Some of the ways that happen.

Notice your body from head to toes.

Notice your jaw now.

If you have that energy of clenching,

If you're holding words back,

You might,

Just as an experiment in your mind,

Visualize yourself saying something.

And you might say it out loud if you're in that environment that you could.

You're not gonna disturb anyone.

Let yourself have the experience and express what you need to.

You're not wrong or bad because you feel angry.

Bring your awareness down into your chest as well.

Notice what's going on there.

Your stomach,

Your arms and legs.

We are very complex beings.

If you were to put your hand on your heart or open your arms and just say,

All of me is welcome.

All of the scared parts,

The angry parts,

The mean parts,

The jealous parts,

The grumpy parts,

Whatever comes to mind,

I'm open.

I'm not going to judge myself anymore and put myself in that narrow channel.

I'm gonna let myself be.

Let's kind of move into that.

What would that be like?

Imagine that you're completely open-hearted.

You're welcoming to every part of you.

Everything that's coming up is here for a reason.

It's based on our experience and maybe our whole life we've shut that part out of our awareness.

We could open the door a little bit,

Maybe a lot.

Being angry or scared or sad,

Grumpy,

Depressed,

Those aren't a commentary on our own basic goodness.

Those are experiences that come as we go through life.

Physically with our open arms,

Our open heart or metaphorically experiment with I'm open.

I'm welcoming to everything that's here.

No part of me is bad.

I'm all welcome here.

And if some part of me has a message,

If some part of me wants me to know,

Well,

I'm mad that you never pay attention to me.

We can listen to that.

I'm mad that you work all the time or that you stay up all night watching shows or something and you don't get enough sleep or there's so many things that are going on inside.

And then we could keep coming back into noticing our body,

Letting our body relax,

Noticing the support that's here,

Notice your feet,

Your seat.

What could help that be more true?

I welcome all of me.

And maybe there's a young part that you could bring into your arms or look into their eyes.

I really get it that you were so angry.

There was a lot that was wrong,

A lot of injustice and it's okay for you to be angry.

It's okay for you to let me know.

It's safe enough now to feel what's here.

We'll figure out a way to work with it.

Notice your breath.

Take some deeper breaths if that feels comfortable.

Some long sighs.

And what's here is something that's related to but not the same as how we move out in the world.

So out in the world we might have a job that we can't afford to lose so we have to be careful or we might have people that we really love and we don't want to dominate with our anger.

There's a lot of different ways that we can express ourselves with awareness and kindness but just to notice and allow ourselves to feel what we feel without making ourselves bad,

Without shaming ourselves,

Can open up our heart to the variety of ways that we feel.

We really let ourselves feel that we're not bad because we feel depressed or angry or whatever it is that we feel.

All of this is welcome here in my own heart,

In my own awareness.

I don't have to leave any part of me behind.

I can welcome all of me.

As I come towards the end of the practice you could open your eyes and look around and notice your response to your environment again.

There's sunshine where I am right now and like almost everybody I really welcome the blue skies and on days when the sky is foggy or cloudy it doesn't mean that something's wrong.

To be able to use the somatic mindfulness to see what is going on,

How am I in relationship with my experience,

With my life,

Is so helpful in terms of being free from these automatic patterns that can shut us down.

So to bring ourselves into an open-heartedness,

Into a compassion and kindness for ourselves as a human,

That we're here,

We're doing a practice and we're connecting within,

We could allow ourselves to enjoy that.

So whatever your day holds I hope you have some enjoyment,

Some pleasure,

Some freedom.

Thanks for being here together.

Reviews

I appreciate the gentle expensive invitation here. Creating that broad conscious soft container for all parts, that’s tender vital work. Thank you so much, Lynn.

This is so helpful and just what I needed to hear.. Meny thanks Lynne 🙏❤️💫

This practice was perfectly timed for me today. I had to become angry in order to set a badly needed boundary that took months to finally muster the courage to do!
Thank you Lynn for guiding me to not beat myself up but rather welcome this part of me and know it was the right thing to do to protect myself.
Your calm, practical approach was soothing and simply made sense.
Inez in Portugal

I appreciate your calm and conversational style in this meditation. It’s very helpful for welcoming and listening to anger. 🙏