Birdsong before breakfast

This morning I stepped out on the front porch to breathe in the cold air, see the sunshine, and wonder about my day.  The street is very quiet.  The school across the street lies empty, of course, for the last ten days.  The snow from yesterday was still quiet and solid; it was pretty cold.

Then I heard it:  the insistent rapping, rapping, rapping of a woodpecker across the neighbourhood.  It was probably a block or more away, but it was clear and persistent.

Spring is here.  This is early spring here in our part of the Maritimes, whether there is a pandemic or not.  There is strong, penetrating sunshine, crisp and still shocking cold, icy pavements, and birds eking out a meal from the insects that are embedded in trees whose sap is starting to run.

Photo by Tina Nord on Pexels.com

A little later, I took my coffee out to the back deck where the sun was strongest.  Not clever enough to wear my jacket, I knew I’d only be out a few minutes, but it was enough.  When I was able to still my mind, I could hear a mourning dove, probably two streets away.  Then a gull, closer.  Then I could tune in to some twittering in bushes near me.  There was a veritable spring symphony going on out there.

Birds are back in business.  It is romance season, time to get your songs fired up, mark out your territory, make note of food sources, shift from seeds to insects for some.  They don’t know or care about what agitates me.  They are intent, as always, on their own journeys, their own lives.  The intensity of their biological drives to survive and to help their species survive, one mating season at a time.

I know that spring isn’t an inevitable thing.  I know that our songbird stock is vastly small than a century ago.  I know that climate change or a volcanic eruption or an asteroid hit could make all of this go away.

But I am also warmed and comforted and encouraged by the continuity of the birds, and the procession of the seasons, and the feeling that life itself is our best resource in hard times.  Life has a way of asserting itself under all sorts of conditions.  When I tune into the assertive voices of Life Going On, I can remember that I am part of that, too, and so are you.

EDITED to add:  here is a lovely bit of Mozart with birdsong …and video

video

Silver maples in bloom. Costello 2020

 

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I Wanted to Bake Cookies for You

I know that it is very hard to be living in this world right now.  It is hard to live with such uncertainty and such rapid change.  It is stressful to think about the future and to think about the past.  It can be difficult to live with other people who are feeling stressed and anxious.

Photo by Brigitte Tohm on Pexels.com

While I am so grateful that we have tele-health options available for our sessions, I am also disappointed and a little angry that the choice whether to use tele-health was not mine to make.   I can hold those two feelings, gratitude and disappointment, and notice that it is really possible to feel both.

When I think about what you may be experiencing in this turbulent time, I want to be able to help.   The very real desire I have been feeling is about taking care. In my mind, I wanted to bake you some cookies….bring you a pot of soup…..offer connection and caring and a moment of peace.

However, I can’t do everything that I would wish I could do.  I cannot see you in person, and I cannot bake cookies for you.  However, what I can do is offer the telehealth visits, and I can also offer a message a couple of times each week.  If you are interested in seeing those messages, you can head to my resurrected blog and sign up to get a notice by email when I have posted something new.  This is a small gift to you, something else to help you get through these potentially difficult days while we adjust.

It isn’t cookies but it is something.

Leslie

Spring comes to the neighborhood

The crabapple tree is going to have a great weekend.  I can see her through the burgeoning green of the maple in my side yard.  The crabapple sits in my neighbor’s yard, currently housing an assortment of songbirds who are shuttling back and forth to a local feeder.  But the tree is focused on what’s happening in her flowers, not on the birds.  Birds are secondary, irrelevant.  The pink is deep, almost red, lightening at the edges of buds so swollen that they seem about to burst. The day is sodden and cold, so the buds are just waiting, just gathering moisture and strength, awaiting the next time the sun makes an appearance.  When that happens, well, you better watch out!  The crabapple is going to bloom, with a no-holds-barred eroticism that will pull every bee in a county mile into her orbit.  Watch out!  That sensuous hot pink, the seductive perfume….the tree will be humming as you walk by, humming and buzzing with the activity of a thousand winged things, all frantically doing what they do and the tree herself will be regal, vibrant, basking in the pleasure, taking it all as her due, enjoying the brush of stamen on pistil, the dusting of pollen, the industry of bees, the enjoyment of human passers-by.  Oh, what a weekend she will have.

The sensuality of spring is everywhere.  Birds are loud and demanding.  The frogs in the little pond across the street spend every evening declaring their intentions. The onions and potatoes in my kitchen bins are insistent:  sprouts happen, they tell me, and spring cannot be denied.

I feel it, too.  I feel the urge to create, to make something new.  I dig my hands into the soil of the garden, watch my mind generate ideas, stir up a new recipe in the kitchen.  Long spring days that last well into the evening, warmer weather that draws one outdoors, the smells and sounds and skin sensations of spring….all beg to know, what will you make?  What will you create?  What will you bring to this season of growth and newness?

 

The Being of Doing

This morning I had a large load of laundry to hang up.  I found myself rushing to get it finished, hurrying to complete the task because I had another task to complete or maybe just because I wanted to get back to my cup of coffee.   The point was that I was going to spend twenty minutes hanging laundry and I could do it with my mind in the next task or in irritation or in feeling rushed, or I could hang laundry and practice being present to myself as I did it.  So I decided to take this task moment by moment, and try to see when I was derailing and when I might actually be in the present.  Hanging laundry doesn’t take a lot of attention and I can attach many memories and thoughts to it, so it was a bit of effort to stay present.  In fact, I was thinking I’d write a blog post about hanging laundry and that was yet another way I escaped the present moment!  Ahh, the monkey mind can be a clever fellow.

The most potent sensory moment was in snapping out my cotton flannel pajama pants and tossing them over the line, feeling the cold wetness on my hands and the dryness of my skin, smelling the damp cotton and the briefest sense of the enjoyment of the future of pulling on clean pajamas….maybe that was a memory and not a projection, but in any case, it was being present to my own inner experience as well as what was coming in from my senses.   I might have enjoyed more spending that twenty minutes sitting on my meditation cushion in silence, but I still would have needed to hang the laundry, and so I am choosing to see that as part of today’s practice.  How can I BE when I am still doing?   This is one way.

Be-ing is something that I can access all the time.   When I am deeply into thinking or remembering or reacting or otherwise unaware of myself, I can stop, notice my sensory experience, take stock of myself (“what do I notice in my body NOW?”) and connect once again to the ground of Be-ing.  I don’t need silence, my cushion, or even a quiet space, although they certainly can help.  But I am “being” all the time, even when I am not able to notice it.

How do you find yourself in the midst of a lot of doing?

Finding my limits

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how much I have to do, how much I want to do, and whether I can make those two points match up.  New Age-ish philosophy would suggest that there are no limits, that limits to oneself are entirely invented by the mind and thus can be transcended simply be believing that There Are No Limits.

But what if your limits reflect something good and healthy?  What if your “limits” are really your boundaries?   I have limits, for sure.  I have boundaries, physical, social, and behavioural boundaries that I don’t generally cross or allow others to cross.  These things keep me safe, maintain my integrity.

Boundaries are a body experience.  When you feel yourself sitting on the chair, or feel your feet pushing into the floor, you have an increased awareness of your body in space. As you push those feet down, you can feel your muscles become activated, feel the blood flow more vigorously, feel your inner space.  You know, without even having words for it, where you begin and where the floor ends.   And you also know that the floor can and will support you without invading you or making you conform or hurting you in some way.

However, if that floor was made of Jell-O, or was covered with nails sticking point up, you would have a different experience.  You would still have your boundary….where my body is….where the floor is….but your boundary would tell you that you cannot trust the floor to hold you, or to hold you without impinging on you.

Your BODY tells you that, when you explore the boundary between your body and the floor. Limits are a good thing, I tell you!

I have social limits as well.   I don’t let people touch me without permission.  I don’t say “yes, I’d be happy to do that” if I really am not happy to do that.   I do not invite people to my home whom I don’t want to see.   Those limits are also good for me.

In other places, I want to test my limits, and maybe even shift the boundaries a bit.  Getting older has actually, much as I hate to admit it, meant that my joints are stiffer and less flexible.  When I practice yoga, for example, I try to ease my body gently past some of these physical limits, or boundaries.   When I run, I notice that I can shift the limits….training has that effect.   But those are active choices I get to make.  I am happy to know what my limits are, and grateful that when I want to move past them, I can sometimes do that.  But more grateful that I have them firmly in place for my own safety.  Boundaries help us know where and what we are, and help us in relating to other people.  More on that part…later….

Leave “not good enough” behind….

This New Year, I need to lose weight, exercise more, quit smoking, train for a marathon, meditate every single day, read a novel a month, and quit spending money.  Entirely.    (The subtext:  I’m not good enough the way that I am.)

Unrealistic goals, you say?   You bet!  But we engage in this unrealistic process at least annually, and some of us find that we have to be in continuous self-improvement mode to feel even marginally okay about ourselves.

I have been considering this question of self-improvement.  It is a North American pastime, and weight-loss programs, gyms, and other businesses that cater to our sense of being not-okay tend to make a lot of money in January before the motivation flags.

I am interested in this not-okay-ness.  Many of us have a continuous internal criticism process going on.  When we are engaging in our self-improvement behaviour, perhaps the critical voice quiets, or maybe it changes tone. Maybe we feel a bit better for a little while, but usually the judgment shows up again, or perhaps in another way.

Imagine thinking about everyone the way that you think about yourself.  Imagine what it would be like to view everyone as “not good enough” or in need of change.  If you see your partner, your children, your co-workers as all needing to change (generally we need them to change to suit OUR expectations), you probably also see yourself in just as negative a light.   In fact, I suspect that if you see other people in the light of negative judgment, your inner experience of yourself is probably powerfully negative.  And it feels miserable and yucky to think ill of yourself and everyone else.   It becomes so pervasive that even things that you might otherwise see as good and wholesome take on a negative tone (for example, a friend has success and you cannot be happy for her, but can only think of the reasons why she doesn’t deserve it).

I’ve heard people say that they are afraid of not being hard enough on themselves.  They think that they might become dissolute, lazy, pointless, or some other scary thing if they are not continuously correcting and criticizing themselves.  Even the idea of letting go of the internal critical voice is hard to think about because who would I be if I didn’t think all of these things about myself?   The inner critic becomes so much a part of us that we cannot recognize that voice as someone else’s.   We think that we are hard on ourselves because we DESERVE it.  And we are hard on other people because they deserve it, and also because why should they get to be themselves if we can’t allow ourselves that luxury?

There is a way out of this, and it isn’t at the gym.  Or it could be at the gym, but the way out actually begins with being willing to question your experience and your thoughts.   What if you were actually wrong about your need to change?  What if you were really okay just as you are, and that your internal litany of self-criticism is just a reflexive thinking pattern?  Would anything else change in your life if you could flex around this issue?

Changing your thinking sounds easy.   You just have to change your mind.  But your mind has been practicing particular thought patterns for years.   Shifting those pathways is not easy but it is simple.  You just have to keep on doing it, over and over.   Let’s look at specifics.

STEP 1

It is easiest to start with people other than yourself.   So try this:  think about a person in your life, perhaps a very annoying person.  Notice how your mind generates a story about how annoying this person is, and the specific behaviors that annoy you.  See how fast this happens!  Notice pictures, words in your mind, whatever your mind generates, and then notice how your body reacts to this line of thinking.  Don’t judge yourself, just notice!  Now stop all of that internal stuff and begin to look inside your ideas about this person for something that you really appreciate, respect, or even envy.  See if you can generate appreciation, respect, or even pleasure in yourself about this other person.  Try to stay with this thought and the feeling that comes with it;  notice what happens in your mind.  You may generate other ideas that are about appreciation.  You may want to shift back into negative judgment.   Just notice and try to stay with what you appreciate, respect, or take pleasure in.  Watch your thoughts and how your body responds.

What did you find out?   Remember that you are finding out about YOU, not about the other person.  You are finding out what happens to you in your thinking about the other person.

STEP 2

After you have practiced step 1 for awhile, you might notice that your everyday annoyance and judgment of other people is shifting. A practice that can help you to be less critical generally is to make a requirement for yourself that when you indulge in a critical thought about someone, you have to generate three items about that person that you appreciate.  This will help to shift the balance of your thinking from negative criticism to a place where you are feeling more open and positive.  Notice how your body reacts to your thinking.  Remember, for every one criticism, THREE appreciations.

STEP 3

If you have friends who like to engage in offering judgment and criticism of other people as group activity, notice how this feels to you.   Notice how you feel when you join in, and how you feel if you just observe without judging your friends (or their target).  Watch your body and your mind as these interactions go on.

At some point, you might try the experiment of offering an appreciation about the target within your group.   Do this as an experiment to notice how it feels to you to actually go against the group-think, and to see how the other people in the group respond to you.  Can you tolerate feeling outside the group?  Does the open feeling that comes from appreciation help you to manage any anxiety that comes from stepping outside of the norms of your group?

STEP 4

If you have been doing the steps, you probably have begun softening your stance toward yourself without even noticing.   Check it out;   when you notice that you are criticizing yourself, see how that feels.  Then see if it is possible to make a shift to identify something that you actually appreciate about yourself.  For example, I might have spent more money than I planned but I do a good job of providing for my family.  Or maybe I haven’t quit drinking yet, but I have become honest with my partner about it. You cannot lie to yourself about how well you are doing, because your critic will be on alert for that.  (Curious, isn’t it, how we can lie to ourselves about how BAD we are but we cannot lie to ourselves about our acceptable qualities. That’s a topic for another post.)

If you can agree that self-respect is important you might borrow this strategy from the   Emotional Freedom Technique .  Agree about the thing that needs to change, but take the stance that you can still appreciate yourself.    Here are some words to use:  “Even though I have twenty pounds to lose, I still appreciate and respect myself.”

“Even though I …..whatever your critic claims…….I appreciate and respect myself.”

If you want to be radical about this, you can even say something like “I totally love and appreciate myself.”

CONCLUSION

Now you can assess what you might want to change about yourself.   But you can make that assessment from a platform of self-respect and appreciation for who you really are, and not from a place of shame and humiliation that makes you criticize yourself.   Maybe you want to explore your creativity more.  Maybe you want to try a new sport, or dance more.  Maybe you want to learn a new language, or to write code, or to take care of lost animals.  Whatever it is you want to change, let it be about becoming more yourself in the world, and not about conforming to the image of a critical, judgmental part of the self.

In feeling the openness of living in appreciation rather than judgment, you can enjoy more and take more pleasure in your life.  We all know that life has challenges, struggles, pain and sorrow.  These are part of being human.  Those struggles don’t preclude us from pleasure and enjoyment.  We can have all of that, and more.

 

 

Just noticing….

I am fortunate in my life to be able to take a bit of time to contemplate, to reflect, and to consider my experiences.  I am not often in reactive mode any more: I don’t know if that is a change due to my age or to my life circumstances.  Maybe both…and maybe a lot of therapy in the middle has been influential!

Anyway, I have noticed two things lately that have made an impact on my thinking. First is this irony:    I recently posted with great joy about the silver maple trees preparing to bloom (see here).  Well, now they are open and my sinuses are responding:  I am foggy-headed, thick-thinking, and have a dull pain that moves around in my head.  Yes, I can claim the source but it still left me wandering around the house yesterday, wondering what it was I needed, what did I want, why was I feeling so…bleagh?

So I did what I know is the thing for me to do when I can’t figure it out.  I drank two glasses of water and headed to the gym.

What is it about the gym?  What is it about moving all that energy around in your body that makes you feel so much more like yourself?   I don’t have any answer for that, but the experience made me remember a “rule” I had made for myself back when I was running long-distance.  The “rule” was this:  “It is always better to run.”   This was a guideline for when I was waffling around indecisively.   Without fail, running improved my waffling and generally improved my sinus symptoms, even though I was often out in the offending allergens.

thanks to smileforme99 on fotothing

The second one is a bit different.  I have an injury to a shoulder:  something a bit intractable that I hope will be cured by strengthening my back and chest, providing more stability to a joint that is easily strained.   Today is a rough day for the shoulder, probably because of having to use it to work with back and chest.   I found myself wallowing, in that fogged-in, wandery kind of way, having work to do, having things to consider, having many items that probably needed my attention, but being completely unable to point my attention where I wanted it to go.  I finally acknowledged some organic realities:  I was hungry, my shoulder hurt, and more caffeine was not going to unfog this brain.  So I found food and ibuprophen and then took twenty minutes cuddled up under a blanket, gazing at my most miraculous blooming cactus and breathing.  I didn’t try to do anything at all, didn’t “try” to meditate, contemplate, or even reflect.   I just sat with what I was experiencing.

Clever barista at Second Cup

It seemed sudden, my awareness in an instant, my noticing that my shoulder was easing and more relaxed, my head was clearing, and my upper body beginning to relax.  For the first time I was able to see clearly how that low-level discomfort (read: pain) in my shoulder was creating tension in neck, jaw, head and face, and how creating some space there shifted everything.  Soon enough I could get up and move into doing something…not because I HAD to (I can always do what I HAVE to do) but because I actually wanted to…my body felt more like it belonged to me.

I have been a body psychotherapist for years and for years before that I was in training and in therapy myself.  Yet I am continually amazed to see how my body IS me, and how the messages from the parts of me other than my mind are so very influential.  Allowing for space and time to explore my inner experience allows me to see how that experience may limit me, or how it may free me.  The experience of chronic, low-level pain pulls on energy reserves and causes the body to tense as if to protect itself.   Finding a respite from the pain means that the body has a respite from its vigilance, and there is more energy available for living life.

Seasonal rituals to support your life…

Daylight savings time starts on March 13th.  Before that, we’ll have some enlightening experiences here in the Canadian Maritimes.   Daylight will come by seven am.  This is a Big Deal, considering that in winter, most of us go to work in the darkness.  On the other end, before the clocks change, it will be light-ish outside until seven.   And when the big shift happens, of course it will be light until eight pm.   Unfortunately, the sun will also be rising at eight am (again).   Living on the far western edge of the time zone means something different than living in, say, the middle of the time zone.

But messing around with the clocks is one of those time-honoured things that logically makes no sense whatsoever (you gain an hour?  lose an hour?   Not really…..twenty four equals twenty four) but we do it because everyone else does it.  What makes a bigger difference for most folks is the actual change in daylight hours, which is a function of seasonal change and the tilt of the earth’s axis.

On a practical basis, early morning light means I don’t have to carry a flashlight along with the poop bag when I walk Max the Labrador in the morning.  It means that when I head home from the gym in the early evening before supper I don’t have to turn on my headlights.  It means that outside activities can continue later into the day.   It also means that my internal clock, which appears to be set to “hibernate” from the short days in December, has re-awakened.

I love that re-awakening process.  I like to watch it in the world and in myself.   Today, gray and cloudy and peculiar as the light is for late February, I can look out the office window and see the buds on the silver maples.  They are near to bursting:  silver maple buds form in the fall and when the juices start flowing the tress flower very early.  You do have to look pretty closely to see those flowers:  these are not flaming hibiscus calling for attention.  They are pretty subtle, feathery dark red things that open far earlier than most.  I’ve been living side by side with silver maples for ten years now, and I love that they are a very early reminder that the light has changed and that spring is coming, just as inexorably as winter came a few months ago.

winter maples

Another sign that I am waiting for is the song of chickadees.  Chickadees are a very common bird here;  so common we might miss what signals they bring.   The characteristic “dee-dee-dee” call is heard all winter in our woods.   But spring brings another sound;   a two-pitched dropping tone….maybe like from the fourth to the second of a major scale?   Yeah, my music theory is a little sketchy…but the sound is also characteristic of late winter/early spring in this part of the world.  I have an ancient association with it from my own children’s childhood.  There was a little segment on Sesame Street about tapping maple trees.  The horses pulled a sledge through the woods, while the farmer gathered the sap, and the sounds were of the animals, the sledge and the “dee-dee” of spring chickadees.   My Dearly Beloved, who knows about this stuff, tells me that chickadee call is all about finding a mate.  It is most decidedly a spring thing, and becomes increasingly rare as the season wears on, birds are nesting and raising young, and that biological urge goes underground for another season.

I notice signs in myself.  I am eagerly awaiting the first of March so I can start feeding my houseplants again.  This is a rule I internalized from somewhere…stop fertilizing in October and start again in March.  I have no idea if there is a good reason to give them a break in the winter but I am willing to do it, as it supports my need for seasonal rituals.   The other thing I notice is my sudden interest in gardening again…what shall I try THIS year?   Where shall I put the tomatoes, for example?  What flowers worked best in the boxes last year?   Those thoughts, like the silver maples, have been in something of a dormant state for a few months.  I actually remember being relieved when I put the garden to bed in the fall…but a little time off from something can make it more attractive.

There is something, for me, at least, in seasonal awareness, and seasonal ritual.   We put little fairy lights on a timer in a big houseplant in October when the days get short.  When March 13th comes, it will be close to the time when we remove them, because the sun provides the light we seek.   There is comfort in these seasonal rituals, small as they are, comfort in listening for the chickadees and watching the maples bloom.   The world around us may be full of chaos, but earth turns, seasons change, and we go on.

Chickadee and Silver Maple blooms are Creative Commons licensed

Winter maples, Leslie Ann Costello

 

Shake it up, baby! On doing morning releasing exercises as a practice

Okay, so today is only Day Three, and maybe that’s a little early to be making any statements about this new practice of mine. I am trying to commit to a 28 day practice of engaging in the sequence of bioenergetic exercises that David Bercelli has pulled together and labeled “Trauma Releasing Exercises.” Click here to go to his website: trauma prevention

I’m not sure I entirely accept all of the claims made by the proponents of the method but I do know that the first part of the series is profoundly grounding and the second part opens up the opportunity for the body to discharge a lot of energy in the form of movement.  I also know that when I work through a stress-release, stress-release sequence of movements, I usually can feel a lot more and mostly I feel better.

The FEELING more is what counts for me.  I am pretty good at shutting things down in my organism, i.e., my body.    I  look quite contained and relaxed, and situations and events do not visibly distress me.  I also have chronic tension in my neck and shoulders (my physiotherapist would just shake her head at this point) and sometimes stomach upsets and sometimes trouble with sleeping.  If I am unwilling or unable to feel my emotions as they are happening, then I have to do something to keep them from being in my consciousness.  So I tense my musculature, tighten and constrict so that nothing gets through.  Not feelings, not energy, and if I am particularly tight, I can even limit the flow of fluids through my tissues.  And I am not alone in this:  many people are expert at this sort of shutting down.  So opening up is a good thing!

On the weekend, I was delighted to have a group of bioenergetic therapists and trainees visiting me in my home and office.  We shared a lot of good ideas and some of our particular interests.  Margaret Bernard of PEI led our group through the TRE and that was a great reminder for me that daily bodywork is really a must for me to stay connected to myself.  I can readily connect with my thinking parts but find connecting with the feeling parts takes more attention. TRE helps me to bring that attention and also to let go of the holding and constriction.

So in only three days, I’m noticing that my feet are connecting to the ground differently.   I have increased flexibility in my toes, which is a bigger deal that you think.  Toes are a critical connector to the ground, and thus when we have good movement in our toes, they can hold on better.  Really!  Take off your shoes and try it.  Squinch up your toes and try to walk around. Yes, really do it.  Do it until your feet have some intensity of feeling in them, say, a seven out of ten. (Intensity, also known as PAIN!!!) Then mindfully spread out your toes on the floor, feeling everything (relief?) and try walking with all of them active and engaged.  Aahhh……thank you, toes.

Nicer toes than mine….flexible looking! creative commons

    So toes.  That’s good.  I also notice that when the vibrations get going,, I can let them move quite readily up my body but that things get hung up at my diaphragm and throat.  This is not new news to me; I know that I have blocks there, pretty typical ones from childhood.   But when I allow myself to make a sound with those vibrations, the blocks ease up a bit.  And when the sound starts to soar, almost like it isn’t part of me, then my body opens up to laughing and sobbing and all sorts of spontaneous movement.  It is very cool.

From traumaprevention.com with thanks

I stay aware in this process, too, because I know that these kinds of unusual movements often permit the free flow of thoughts, memories, images, and sensations in the body-mind. This is access to my unconscious, and I don’t want to miss a thing! What I have found is that after I am finished (and how to decide to be “finished?”), I sit to write in my journal and the ideas are also flowing….ideas about so many things, not just the constricted content of my usual thoughts.  Who knew that bioenergetic exercise would also open up my thinking self?

I’ll keep doing my daily practice and let you know how it proceeds.  In the meantime, you can do TRE also…there are books and videos available from that website and also therapists and bodyworkers who are trained to help you learn the sequence.  You can find a practitioner on the website. You can also just follow  your body into movement and charge and discharge, but I know that can be harder to do than it sounds.   Let me know how you do!  Below is a video about TRE.

TRE video

Who’s in charge of your life? on not letting mood dictate your behaviour

I wonder how often I attribute my choices to my mood?  “I wasn’t in the mood to do the dishes,” for example.  Or, “I’d exercise more, but I’m just not in the mood.”  When I think this way, it is almost as if my mood is something outside of me, or something that comes over me without my awareness, knowledge, or permission.   And then I give it the power to decide whether I’ll do the dishes or exercise.

Or maybe (MAYBE) I let my mood dictate my behaviors because I don’t want to take responsibility for my choices.  Somehow it would not be as okay to claim the choice to sit on my couch and not do something.

We often feel like we are subject to the whims of our internal lives, as if our moods and emotions rule us.  I don’t think we were constructed that way:  I think that moods and emotions are information for us but they are not masters and we their slaves.  But when we just react our way through our days without even really noticing our inner life, then it may feel like our feelings are running US.

How do we get out of that?  How do we get to take charge of our own lives?

We first have to have awareness of our thoughts, our feelings, and our body sensations.  We need to be able to notice our vitality affects, for example (energy level), and notice sensations of prickling, tightness, openness or lightness, whateer sensations are present.  We need to be attuned to our own selves as well as to the world around us, and that means that sometimes we have to turn down the stimulation and just check inside ourselves.

Atmospheric phenomenon to which we attribute meaning

Pay attention to the shift in your emotion, no matter how small. When you notice yourself getting more upset or distressed, ask yourself, “What am I telling myself right now?” or “What is making me feel upset?”  It is likely a thought which has occurred to you.  But how might you feel if that thought had not occurred to you?

In other words, how would you feel if you didn’t believe that thought?

Ah….maybe I’d feel just fine, thank you very much.

Conversely, the body can give us messages that we interpret to mean something.  The other day, I felt fabulous…had just finished a long walk with a little running, was working a positive inner dialogue about my progress, was able to notice the trees, the air, the birds…all those things that contribute to my personal sense of well-being (your list will be different).  Suddenly I found myself irritated at some minor frustration, very irritated.  Wait!  How did I get from feeling fabulous to feeling irritated?   I checked in on my thoughts, my experiences, and by body sensations and yes, there it was…the tiniest little bit of aching in my groin from running.  The endorphin flow had slowed, I could start to feel the work that my joints had done, it was painful though only slightly….and suddenly I was easily irritated.  And probably underlying that body ache was some automatic thought…”Oh, this again,” or “Ugh, I hurt,” or “I don’t feel so good,” and so irritation happened.

Mood is a number of things but whether we let our moods dictate our lives is a personal choice.  If I only did things when I felt like it, well, I’d have some pretty severe limits on my life!  So I choose to watch my thoughts and remember that thoughts, mood, and feelings are all part of my body, and they all are fluid and shifting…so I might as well live my life and let my mood catch up with me.