ONE, TWO, CHA-CHA-CHA!

So you thought you were quite resilient, you could cope well when life threw you a curve ball. During life’s little ups and downs, you could get back up on your feet and carry on. That was before COVID.  But as we’ve discovered resilience needs to be long-term thing, it’s an endurance exercise. So how can we nurture our ability to carry on when we are feeling worn down and the landscape is so unpredictable? How do we prevent ourselves from falling into depression and anxiety? 

 

I think that resilience is the mastery of our experience of time. Resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back after experiencing adversity. It is only after something stressful has happened to us that we have to draw on, or perhaps test, our resilience. If you are not resilient you get captured in the stress of the past event and land up depressed, traumatised, and anxious. Being resilient however, requires a delicate balance between being embodied and present in the moment and being able to not only look forward, but being able to step forward into the future you imagine for yourself.  

I recently saw a video clip of a little girl, about 2 and a half years old, walking across the room two steps at a time. She was counting: ‘one, two’, and then pausing and doing a jig ‘cha-cha-cha’.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u_bKmiCyZU )   Something of this spoke to a deeper part of me.

 

With her goal being to cross the room, the little girl kept her eyes focused on her feet as she took each step. She placed her feet down with intention and clarity grounding herself with softened knees and waiting for her balance to be stable and her body to be present before taking the second step in the same manner. Her voice as she counted the steps “One, Two” was stable and smooth as she elongated the vowel sounds with confidence and good volume. The pause before the jig involved a free and deep breath and a real sense of being in that one moment, not getting ahead of herself. And then, in the Cha-cha-cha her body came alive with a bilateral twist involving her arms, elbow joints, hips and a loose spine. Fully embodied, everything moving with rhythm and dynamic emphasis, her voice percussive and supported by her diaphragm.  There was a moment of gathering and then a breath before she continued the dance forward with the next two steps.  

 

I think this little girl can teach us a lot about resilience and about achieving our goals during and after this pandemic.

 

STEP ONE: Just get across the room

Decide on a goal that is attainable for you. Many people fall down because their goal was just not realistic. Even more people are unsuccessful because they are aiming for someone else’s goal. Someone else, a parent, a partner, a friend, society, culture, etc. expects you to achieve X. And so you believe that is what you should do and you take that expectation on, thinking that your self-worth depends on achieving that. When you don’t get there, you crash believing you are worthless.

 

Besides setting goals that are your own one has to unpack and really understand why you want to achieve that goal, and, if you actually really do. I am talking about considering your deeper emotional and psychological needs and desires here. In VMT we work to understand the multiplicity of our human experience. Embracing the idea that your personality is multi-layered, in other words that there are many parts of yourself (or sub-personalities if you like) that are at play here, try to discover more than ego ideals. For example ask yourself, how would your Inner Child benefit from you attaining this goal? Or, in what way would achieving this goal support your experience of independence? What would your Wise One offer you in this pursuit? What about the Inner Saboteur, what fears are sitting there that would derail your efforts? What is the Inner Critic saying and what of the Inner Compassionate One?  If we can bring the different voices of our self to a ‘conference table’ of sorts to discuss the decision to pursue a goal, and explore our goal and anxieties from multiple angles, we will have more buy-in and more chance of success.

 

Another pertinent question to ask is: what is the cost of perusing this goal? And am I willing to make that sacrifice? For example, is it time with family, capital, your sense of security, having to bear your anxiety, not being supported by friends or family? Or is the cost having to give up, or place a pause on something else that you believe is important? There is always a trade-off and if you are to be successful in reaching your goal you need to be consciously aware of this cost and be okay with the sacrifice.  

 

Before she starts her journey, the little girl readies herself. She doesn’t start before she is ready to do so. 

 

STEP TWO: Focus on your feet

The old Chinese adage by Lao Tzu goes: ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’  With her goal being to cross the room, the little girl kept her eyes focused on her feet and with intention she took just one step at a time. Although when pursuing goals step one is to have a clear idea of what the end result will be, equally important is to have a clear breakdown of each of the little steps that will get you there. Sometimes though people don’t break the small steps down enough and land up trying to leap. The little girl in the video does this so well as she prepares herself first and then when she is ready places each foot down with such clarity of intention, as if each step was just as important as reaching the destination. Breaking things down into manageable bite-sized chunks and giving each of those little chunks a real sense of value is important. What the little girl is embodying is an ability to pay attention with intention. She is absolutely and fully present in that one moment, being with the task of moving her one foot forward.  In this way she avoids any possible anxiety about the next step.

 

She grounds herself. To be grounded requires us to be connected to our bodies in the doing. Importantly being grounded is a state of being that is flexible. The little girl’s knees and hips are soft, not ridged. It is such flexibility and awareness that allows her to maintain her balance and to make adjustments as she goes. Her balance is stable because she takes time to contemplate and readjust. Many people fall off the path towards their goal because they are rigid in their approach to each of the steps. Expecting each step to be the same can really trip you up and cause enormous anxiety. Regularly questioning and unpacking your expectations of each step helps you to adjust to the ever-changing circumstances of the real world which is often very different to what you imagined when you set out on your journey. Sometimes this requires you to completely re-imagine the pathway to the goal.  Without flexibility, movement and constant adjusting to circumstances there is no balance, ask any tightrope walker.   

 

The reward of nurturing a sense of being grounded and flexible in each moment is an undeniable sense of confidence. The little girl’s voice as she says “One. Two.” is stable and smooth with elongated vowel sounds her clarity and volume reflects her inner confidence, there is no self-doubt there. She is certain and articulates clearly to express where she is in her process and what she is doing, she trusts herself. Such a voice is the result of the physical and emotional support she provides herself. She is ‘together’ and committed to the step.  

 

STEP THREE: Self-care in the pause.  

When pursuing a goal, whether it’s a business venture, completing a degree, creating a presentation or getting fit, self-care is what enables us to keep on track in a sustainable way.  That’s not to say you won’t achieve your goal with shear iron will (although this is uncommon) but the physical and emotional cost to your health of that all or nothing strategy is often very high. Without conscious self-care we are likely to get caught in the Slave – Slave Master dynamic, which eventually becomes intolerable for other parts of the self. This is exactly when the inner Rebel and or the Saboteur will plot ways to derail you. When this starts to happen pause and ask yourself: What part of yourself is not being heard? What parts feel as if they are not being taken care of? Which of your subpersonalities are anxious, angry, board or neglected?  Invite them to the table and listen to what they have to say.

 

The result of the slave – slave master strategy can leave you feeling fragile, exhausted and unable to deal with the next roadblock or rise to the next challenge. Conscious self-care is simply essential for long-term resilience but when you have never operated like that how do you even start? What does self-care even mean?  One strategy would be to create – or welcome back – the subpersonality of the Compassionate One. This subpersonality is nurturing and sees what you have already done and achieved. She/he acknowledges the time and energy you have put in, the sacrifices you have made and reassures you that you are on the right path. The Compassionate One knows that you can reach your goal. She/he gently holds you in the pause and tells you that you are enough, that you are doing enough. He/she is calm and supports you out of anxiety, stress and overwhelm back into the present moment and into your body.

 

The little girl in the video takes a contemplative pause after the work of the two steps. There is freedom in her pause and a deep breath. She displays a sense of being in that one moment, not getting ahead of herself. There is no anxiety of not having gotten to the other side of the room yet, or that there was still a way to go. She is not caught up in feelings of not being good enough. The compassionate pause brings us towards ourselves, helps us to acknowledge the step we have just accomplished no matter how small. If you carve out time to reconnect with your body, to be mindful of your inner relationships to self, if you listen deeply, breathe fully and use vocal resonance to bring you back home, you will be laying the foundations for life long resilience.

 

STEP FOUR: Learn to dance

It is with such glee that the little girl bursts into the dance. “Cha-cha-cha” as her whole body comes alive, every joint and nerve ending is energised as she radiates joy. In this moment her voice is percussive and supported not only by her diaphragm but by her whole body. Unlike the steps, which are focused and concentrated, the dance is dynamic and multi directional, very different in movement quality. In this way she punctuates her journey with pockets of joy.  When you’re grinding away at a goal the self-care pause and the dance can melt into one but I think they are different and both of equal value. Although the dance is certainly taking care of yourself it is about something else too. The cha cha cha is like popping candy, yes its sweet but it also pops! Its alive, it surprises our mouth, and connects us to fun.

 

So how does one create popping candy? Whatever you plan it should be something exhilarating, unusual and completely out of the ordinary. These joy breaks take planning and ingenuity. They need to be moments of expansion of self in body and mind. We are not talking about exercise here – that is self-care. We are talking about things you don’t do everyday or haven’t done ever or not in a long while. Perhaps its something that you loved doing as a child but just haven’t had the time for, or have put aside since you are of course now an adult and adults don’t do that.

 

Sing your favourite song.  Dance with a stranger.  Dance in the rain. Take a skip around a park or down the road. Ride a bike through a puddle of water. Swim in ice-cold water. Go rock climbing, learn to surf, paint your face, go fishing, jump off a diving board, play in the mud, take a helicopter ride, or a hot air balloon ride. Jump out of a plane, go shark diving. Connect with nature in a new way, climb a tree.  Be creative and inventive, a little crazy. As you can see these are wild ideas, but that’s the point! We must devise ways of connecting to the parts of ourselves that want to feel free and unrestricted, that need to feel alive and to bask in the exhilaration and intensity of being human. Of course it doesn’t have to be so outlandish, plan a guys trip to the mountains, or book a belly dancing class, paint a picture. Have a laugh and have a story to tell.

 

What this cha cha cha does is give your bodymind an experience of expansion; it provides the nervous system with some reprieve from the focused, often contracted, linear state of achieving the goal. When we are so serious and focused on the task at hand we often hold ourselves in a contracted state, even our breath becomes shallow. Punctuating this with pockets of joy allows your body to move in curved lines and for you to reconnect with the sides and back of your body and kinesphere. It facilitates flow and breath. It changes the rhythm and your sense of self.  Importantly, it provides immediate fuel and momentum for the next part of the journey.

 

One, two, cha cha cha!

 

 

I am Gina Holloway Mulder and I provide clients deep multi-layered support and self-development strategies when setting and working towards goals and through life transitions. Contact me for an assessment session to explore Voice Movement Therapy as part of your journey.     

So here we are in week six of the knockdown, I mean lockdown.  As we continue to attempt to navigate this new landscape by searching for non-existing jobs, or creating online opportunities, or building a new business which is deemed ‘essential’, or trying to keep our sense of humour while tackling the online schooling for the week, or the laundry, many of us seem to be in a loop of falling or dipping down into depression or a feeling of collapse and having to pull ourselves up again.

 

There is a constant feeling of down and up. Sometimes we feel positive, that some progress has been made or we feel comfort in having quality time with family or a call from a supportive friend. And then, sometimes, we feel down, we feel shit, and start to wonder if this will ever get better and if it will ever be possible to recover financially. If anyone says that they have not felt these dips of depression I wonder if they are smoking something or if they are perhaps drunk… ok sorry, silly jokes aside. 

 

We are making our way through an extremely challenging time and it is human to feel the effects of this on one’s mental health and sense of wellbeing. As a Voice Movement Therapist I often introduce clients to an embodied exercise about this sense of falling down and having to get back up. In fact I work with this exercise when helping people to develop their resilience. Resilience is all about being able to get back up, to be able to find the resources and creativity to try again and to try again differently. In fact I think life in general is about falling down and getting back up.

Let me explain a bit more. 

           

Each one of us, at the early age of a few months, begins to find some personal agency when we gain enough strength and co-ordination to lift our heads. From lying down we are now able to lift up and look around, and now we see the world from a vastly different perspective. After some time we develop enough strength to find our way into a sitting position, then we work out how to move in a direction; we shuffle along and then figure out how to crawl. Then between 9 to 15 months we make our way up from this horizontal existence (lying down, sitting on the ground, crawling) to a vertical standing position. Although we are praised for our first steps, it is the getting up which should really be celebrated.

At this stage the infant initially has no idea how to coordinate the limbs, how to harness the strength of the core, how to place the feet or how to balance in order to stand. In addition the ligaments are not lengthened and the shear strength required to lift the body – remember the legs have not done weight bearing exercise – is phenomenal, it takes time, creativity and perseverance. And yet, there is an instinctual drive to find your way into a vertical position, a desire to be independent, and a drive to claim your place in the family and the world. Eventually, we get up. The experience of achieving this vertical sense of self is a core and embodied memory and forms the foundation of our sense of confidence. As the toddler becomes more confident and ventures into the sagittal plane of walking she/he will fall down numerous times and have to again find the pathway back to the vertical before moving forward again. 

 

And so the lifelong pattern repeats itself as various life events and relationships trip us up or cause us to collapse to the ground or sink us into the depths of our inner seas. If we are to survive, to continue to move forward and to thrive, we need to be able to find, perhaps ever more creative, ways of getting up, of finding a pathway into the vertical. This is resilience.

 

If we consider resilience as an embodied skill, which I believe it absolutely is, there are a few key concepts to work with.

 

1) Understanding the Vertical

When I ask people to find a sense of the vertical and to explain what they feel to me, they might share a feeling of being straight, on occasion a sense that they are moving or reaching upwards – perhaps through the crown of the head, often people don’t have a consciously embodied connection with this inner feeling.  What is important is that in embodying the concept of the vertical we need to feel inner energy moving downwards into the ground and at the same time feel this sense of being tall and reaching upwards. So there should be a sense of the vertical that lengthens our body in both directions, from the core just below the navel. One should experience a sense of energy moving, it is a dynamic feeling. In other words, vertical is not a rigid, stiff soldier-like experience. Imagining the spine lengthening helps in finding something of the vertical, however we need to extend all the way to the feet. Here is a little exercise to help you find something of this vertical feeling:

• Barefoot, stand with your feet a comfortable distance apart. Feel the ground meeting the soles of your feet and feel a sense of gravity.
• Now imagine the most glorious tree. Construct a clear picture of your tree in your mind. 
• Now imagine that you are this tree. Imagine your body is the tree.
• At this point I normally ask clients “Where do your roots start?” perhaps a strange question. Think about it for a moment; feel into your embodied experience of your tree and touch where your roots start. Most people share that their roots start at the sole of the feet, that in fact they don’t ‘feel’ their roots / or that their roots are not imagined as a part of their body or even really connected. The embodied image is then of the tree trunk placed or balancing on the earth.
• So now, place your hands on your hips, on the bone of the pelvis not on the waist. Reconnect with your image of yourself as your chosen tree. And now imagine that the earth is in fact at the level of your hips, where your hands are. In this way you are planted in the ground and the lower part of your body becomes the roots of the tree and the upper part of your body the trunk and branches etc. 
• As we know trees lengthen into the vertical both in the direction of the ground and the sky. The root system reaches downwards to get water and nutrients in the rich soil. The trunk and branches reach upwards towards the light.
• Using your imagination see if you can find something of this sensation in your body as you connect with the concept of vertical. The idea of reaching further than your body, allows you to connect more fully with the direction of energy.

 

This is a very useful exercise in becoming more familiar with the feeling of being in the vertical. The more familiar it is to you the more successful you will be in being able to return to this sense of self when you have fallen down and are having to pick yourself back up.

   

 

 

2) Balance and Grounding

Balance is a dynamic and flexible state of movement it is not rigid or still. Balance requires constant adjustment and activation and an awareness of the multitude of ways one can adjust to maintain balance. Think of a tightrope walker, or an acrobat balancing a plate on a stick while in a one-armed handstand on a moving horse. One thing the successful balancer does is to find a reference point, a point to focus on. In life we would do well to think of balance as an ever-changing thing too. What worked yesterday may not work today, our circumstances are constantly changing and we are being asked to engage differently and find new solutions, this take flexibility and an ability to flow. Importantly having a reference point to focus on, for example a child’s well-being, a creative project, earning an income and so on, facilitates the flow in the movement and offers us a different experience to the frenetic movement of anxiety and panic.

 

Being able to balance things, and our self, also requires us to be grounded. The more grounded we are the easier it is to find and re-find balance. In a previous article (Start in the Body) I shared some basic grounding exercises. 

 

• You can play with simple balancing exercises too. Balance on one leg, on one hand and one foot. Swivel around and find a different way of doing it. Use a chair or a wall or work with a partner to find ways of balancing together. You could even play with counter balance by standing face-to-face and then holding hands and leaning back. Try to maintain your balance. Or you can work back-to-back. Start back to back in contact with each other and then step your feet away from each other so that your balance relies on the connection between you and the other person.

 

These are easy exercises and you have probably done them before, but I urge you to play with them again to reawaken an embodied memory of the lessons previously learnt, to highlight in an embodied way the necessity of movement and adjustment in balance and the importance of grounding in keeping balanced.

 

3) Trust in yourself and your ability to get back up.

Increasing our awareness of the vertical, balance and grounding develops a deeper more mindful self-awareness and a robust sense of confidence. Here is my embodied resilience exercise. I hope you find it valuable in your self-reflection.

• Find some space where you can move around a bit. You will need to, at least, walk 5 steps in different directions.
• Be aware of your body’s limitations and take care not to injure yourself.
• The exercise is to walk around your space and to then to allow yourself to fall down.
• When you are on the ground take a moment to be there and feel your body in relationship with the ground. Feel gravity. Be aware of where the floor touches your body and where it does not.

• Breathe. Feel a sense of expansion and contraction in your body.
• And now, with a mindful approach find your way back up to your vertical. Be here for a moment to re-establish what the vertical really feels like – you might like to use the image of the tree again.
• When you are ready walk again. And then when the impulse arises – planned or by surprise – fall to the ground again.
• After being on the ground for a while again begin to make your way back up to the vertical.
• Repeat this for some time. Each time finding a new and different way to get up.  Get creative. For example can your chest give you the impulse, or lead you, back into the vertical. Next time try the initiation from your foot, or shoulder and so on. Perhaps there is an indirect way of getting up. What if you follow a curved pathway or a straight/direct pathway. What if you float up, or jump up, or roll around before getting up.
• Remember that each time you find your vertical you should take a moment to really feel into it and what it means to you.
• The longer you take to play with this idea the more it will sink in that you can find an endless number of ways to get back up. You will realise that you can draw on your creativity to support you as you journey back up, that you can improvise in the moment to find the pathway into the vertical.
• Be open to your emotions, and I encourage you to vocalise too as you play. For example, how does it feel to fall down yet again? Why have you fallen this time? How long does it take you to gather yourself in order to travel up to your vertical again? Try to engage with your feelings and imagination and link this experience to your life as you fall down again and again. Have you sabotaged yourself again? Have you been betrayed again and so on. Or, do you become aware of your absolute resistance to falling. Do you become aware of the enormous amount of energy it requires to stand up again? Or do you spring to it excited to get going again and start enjoying the fall. Vocally, does your voice go wobbly as you realise you are about to fall down. Do you shout and swear about being tripped up again. Do you reach highs and lows that you never knew you could? And so on. And then too, what is the sound of coming back up to a confident well-balance and grounded vertical? How does your breathing feel?

 

The possibilities of play are endless and all of these falling and getting up experiences are showing us something about our experience in life and of our relationship to resilience. In parallel, what also develops is your trust in yourself to get back up, to continue to find a way to move yourself back into the vertical so that you can ultimately move forward again. And each time it gets easier and more familiar, it gets less frightening and one feels less anxiety about the inevitability of the next fall.     

 

A great way of developing resilience is improvisation, yes the kind of improv they teach at drama and movement schools. In improvisation the actor/performer has to remain flexible and awake to what each moment presents. He/she must also find the confidence and the self-trust to respond in a creative way. Most importantly though the improviser has to have courage and know that perhaps this next time they will fail or it wont work out how they imagined it to be. Either way they develop the ability to move back into a vertical self ready to engage in the next unexpected moment. You see, in improvisation no amount of planning helps you. It is all about the unexpected. You have to trust that it will be ok, trust that you will be ok in the moment and that you will find a way to recover or to move the story forward. Your life narrative is not unlike the impov class.

 

Resilience in the end is about being able to courageously lean into the unknown with the knowledge that you will be knocked down again. But at the same time resilience is also about trusting that you know how to find the pathway back into the grounded, embodied, balanced vertical self.

A Voice Movement Therapists reflection on Psychologist Leonard Carr’s Article entitled

“Hope for the Best. Be prepared for the worst” 

(You can read Leonard’s Article here )

 

 

During the early days of the CoVid 19 pandemic a number of people warned that we might also be faced with serious mental heath crisis. There is no doubt that five weeks into lockdown the pressure is having a significant impact on the mental health of many.  Esteemed clinical psychologist,Leonard Carr, responded early on with a most valuable and still relevant article entitled “Hope for the best. Be prepared for the worst”. In the article he clearly unpacks a number of the psychological aspects of the crisis and offers some insightful growth-focused ways of thinking about and responding to our current situation.Carr’s article spurred me on to respond in a parallel way from the perspective of the embodied modality of Voice Movement Therapy of which I am a practitioner. I hope that, through this article, I can provide you with a starting place, a first step towards deepening your sense of embodiment as a personal resource for well-being.

 

Deepening Our Understanding Of What We Are Experiencing 

 

In our attempt to find ways of coping with the stress and trauma of living during this pandemic we would do well to accept that the body and the mind are in fact one and the same, the bodymind. And so, any attempt to tend to our mental and emotional health demands not only a cognitive strategy but also, and equally importantly, an embodied one. Take a moment to close your eyes and remember a most joyous or beautiful moment in your life. Remember and imagine in a good amount of detail the settings, the sounds, smells, and the others who perhaps shared that moment with you. What you might notice is that your body, right now, tangibly responds to this positive memory and its associations by relaxing, releasing and expanding. The opposite is true if we think of a negative experience; the body will tighten, breathing will become more restricted and one will feel a tangible sense of contracting. As embodied beings we respond to our environment, quite basically, by contracting or expanding, by closing down or opening up; indeed not unlike a mussel on a seaside rock, or a snail in the garden. 

 

At the moment many people are experiencing a phase of contraction. Fear, anxiety, anger, exhaustion and overwhelm are having a contracting effect on our bodies and on our minds.  So your muscles might feel tight and your throat tense, you may be clenching your jaw or grinding your teeth at night, you may be experiencing headaches or a change in heart rate. On the other hand you may feel a lack of strength in your body, your posture may express a sense of collapse or retreat.  

 

One thing that is common to many as a result of this state of contraction, is restricted breathing. Breathing is either more shallow, rapid, or tighter or you may be unconsciously holding your breath. If we want to feel better, feel happier, positive and empowered then we must actively find ways of experiencing a sense of radiating expansion. There are a number of breathing techniques that I use with clients to de-stress, open the body, to nurture self-awareness and to integrate the bodymind; here is one that might be useful to you right now in inviting your body to enjoy an experience of expansion.

 

• Imagine the most exquisite flower you have every seen or even imagined. Perhaps you remember been gifted such a flower or perhaps you spotted it on a nature walk. Have a clear image of this flower in your mind. Be specific about the colour and texture of the petals and think also about its fragrant smell. Now place your hand on your solar plexus area, that is the place just below your sternum bone where the ribs meet in the front of your body. Gently be in touch with this area with the tips of your fingers…. Now imagine that your exquisite flower, as a bud, is here in this solar plexus part of your body. And, as you inhale, allowing your body to relax and open up as you do so, the flower opens a little more until it is in full bloom.  Give yourself some support in this experience by opening up the fingertips as you inhale so you can feel the sensation of the flower opening on your skin.

 

• The second part of this imaginative breathing exercise is to tap into your sense of smell. You can choose to use the fragrant smell of your exquisite flower or you can think of your favourite or most pleasurable smell. This might be the smell of freshly baked bread, baked by your grandmother. Or it might be the smell of someone you love or loved. In any instance it should be a smell that you can’t get enough of. Now connect with this smell as you take a deep inhalation. Breathe in this pleasurable smell, as much of it as you can. And enjoy the somatic sensation of relaxation and expansion. Feel that even your nostrils, sinuses and respiratory passages open up.

 

When negative experiences result in a contraction of self; physically, mentally and spiritually, we can use breath, movement, imagination and embodied memories of positive experiences to facilitate a journey back towards an expanded sense of self.

 

Approaching self-care from an embodied perspective enables us to effectively re-establish our balance and nurture our well-being through listening to our body. Is my body in a state of contraction or expansion? What can I do to help myself expand?

 

• When we tune in to what our body is telling us about how we are we can make mindful choices about what to allow into our bodymind and what to reject. For example if you come across something on social media that pulls you into a state of contraction, perhaps it is time to make the choice to take a sabbatical from that platform or group. The same might be true with individuals you are in contact with. Make the choice to listen to and act upon what your body is telling you about your well-being. The body never lies!

 

 

Bring Yourself Into The Present

Connecting more consciously with the body and its movement, the flow and rhythm of breath, the resonance of vocal sound, the sense of touch and smell, the sounds of people and nature around us, are essential to being able to be present in this moment. It is the body which connects us to time and space. At this time many people are either living in the nostalgia of how things used to be (often hoping things will go back to ‘normal’), or living in a state of fantasy of how the future might be. Both of these states, the past and the future, exist only in our imagination. Spending too much time in either serves only to detach you from the present, from yourself and the others who are in this moment with you and all the gifts and opportunities that are being offered to you right now. In other words, it is the embodied self that grounds us and provides us with the ability to find for ourselves a sense of safety and support.

 

Being in the present can be challenging. It requires us to quieten the mind and focus on connecting to the deeper layers of the self and our truth (including our difficult emotions) and at the same time to connect with the environment and people we find in front of us.  It is in being fully present that real connections are made with oneself and with others.

 

 

 

Being present requires us to be grounded. It also requires our senses to be alive and our hearts to be open to this moment.

• In a standing position with bare feet, soften your ankles, your knees and your hips.
• Breathe.
• Now focus on a point in front of you. Zoom in on it. And then, as your breathing becomes more expansive, allow your focus to slowly open up and soften. See through ‘gentle eyes’ becoming ever more aware of your peripheral vision. Allow more of the space you are in to be incorporated. If you spend time softening and being with peripheral rather than sharp-focused sight for about 5 minutes your brain will go into more of a relaxed Alpha state. 
• From this open, relaxed and aware state allow your body to find some very gentle movement. Perhaps just a sway. Now become aware of the soles of your feet. Feel them in contact with the ground. Become aware of where you place the weight of your body on your feet. Is it more forward or backwards towards the heels for example. Or, do you favour the outside edges of the feet for support. Allow your weight to move around to explore the feeling. Now try to find a more neutral weight distribution on the feet.
• Make sure your joints are soft. Feel the weight of your body.
• Now imagine that your feet are in relationship with the ground. As if there is a personal meeting of your body and the ground. Feel the weight of your body in relationship with gravity – there is an equal and opposite force. Allowing your feet to move around, feel the stepping or shifting of weight as a meeting or connection with the ground and then a pushing away from the ground. In other words, find movement through smoothly pushing away from the ground through the feet.  It may start to feel like a tender dance with the ground.
• Become more aware of how this movement feels in the spine and in the rest of the body. Remember to keep breathing and the joints soft and feel your weight’s relationship with gravity. Allow your breath to open and expand gently as you enjoy the sensation of being supported by the ground.
• When you come back to a neutral and still position find a sense of your body being a vertical column with energy moving both downwards into the ground and at the same time energy moving up through the body and then through crown of the head towards the sky. 

 

When you feel yourself being knocked off centre and out of balance, or pulled into the contraction of anxiety or fear, bring yourself back into the grounded present moment. Right now I am breathing, I can smile, I can move and go outside, I can… (this or that) I have the time to… I have a voice… I am grateful for… I can see the clouds and feel the sun (or rain, or wind) on my skin. In this moment, this very moment, I am fine, neither the past nor the future exist. And then ask: can my next choice be one that supports my well-being? If something is not supporting your well-being and offering you a sense of expansion in some way it’s probably time to make different choices.

 

The Key To Well-Being Is Embodiment

 

If we can actively nurture a sense of embodiment in ourselves and are able to be present in the moment with an open heart and gentle eyes we will be better able to connect with and support those around us in this time of stress. We can only embrace change if we open and expand ourselves to the experience of this moment. When we can find a more fluid, grounded and ‘breathed’ sense of self and being in timespace we can relax into the certainty of change. (The phenomenon of balance is achieved through movement and not rigidity.)

 

One’s sense of well-being is ultimately a function of how grounded you are in the present moment. Self-care is nurtured in and through the body and the ever-deepening connection with the bodymind self it provides. If we listen carefully to those inner voices and to the truthful impulses in our bodies, if we can put aside our self-judgements, embarrassment and shame, we can feel the fundamental and ancient human instinct that invites us to dance and sing our selves and our souls through this. Play your favourite song, or one which matches your mood, and move your body, follow the impulses your body is providing you. Take a deep breath and sing the songs you love and need right now, sing them like YOU wrote them for this moment.  Your bodymind and soul will thank you.