Oh lordy, there is so, so much unwinding to be done! I have made a start this weekend. It really does feel like sitting on a swing when you’ve wound the ropes round and round and round, and then you let go… It’s a whirlwind once the unwinding begins. No wonder we tend to keep on going in a wound up state… the unwinding is not a graceful process…
From contraction to decontraction. It can feel juddery can’t it?
Sure can. It’s so physical.
I’m very happy. It’s Saturday midday, and I’ve spent the morning lying about on the lawn in the sun, consciously feeling my body unwind. I even did some stretching and blessed my stressed-out innards with a TRE session. Heavens above, if there were ever a miracle unwinding tool which gets straight to the gathered stress and trauma held in the body, it is TRE. It’s been a tough couple of weeks, without a stop and with a great deal of accumulated tension from teaching and studying mental ill-health. But all for good reason. And now learning to process out tension is part of what will make me a better practitioner in mental health.
I’ve been enjoying the ‘clean language, clean questions, clean thinking’ approach, and today came across this video which models it and also describes someone relaxing into stillness. I like it.
Furthermore, I liked this video on learning to ‘hustle smart’ to work well and yet avoid burnout:
So I am am indeed unwinding… What should I bear in mind as I go?
Flushing out. Decontracting. Unwinding. They are all in the ‘motion: outward’ mode. Remind you of anything?
Emotion = E-motion = via the Latin: {Ex = out. Movere = move.}
Indeed. So, while this unwinding can be seen as a physiological process, it is helpful to remember that it is the emotional body which causes the contraction and the holding on. In contrast, the wild animal experiences a frightening moment, after which it lies down to tremble out (move out) the stress, and then gets up and skips on with its day. Only the human traps the experienced trauma/shock, causing it later to emerge as ‘e-motions’ whose messages are often ignored, so shocked is the person by (unexpected/unwelcome) outward manifestation of the escaping emotion!
So, the message here is to remember to honour the out-marching emotions that might arise as you unwind – and to heed their messages.
Yes! As I did the TRE on the lawn this morning, I didn’t feel much emotion come up… until I finally noticed that what was popping up was a sense of ‘meanness‘. This is classic because one of my major plumptons (preintentional speech phrases) is ‘Everyone’s so kind!’ Here in the TRE I was watching the arising of a sense of ‘Everyone’s so MEAN!‘ – unkind, ungenerous, miserly, spiteful, unfair. Ha, good to get it out! Simultaneously I was wondering about my own meanness. Have I been repressing or denying it?
Ask yourself: what is this meanness for?
Meanness is for defending ourselves when we feel vulnerable, fearful or impoverished.
Ok. Good. So meanness is about self-defence, though it can be experienced by the receiver as active aggression. Right?
So true. In that sense, the meanness of another can be considered less of a threat to me.
And it can be seen with compassion.
As in: the politicians are mean because they are afraid their toys will be taken away.
If you like. Or: people are mean when they fear they will be reduced to nothing, because that is what their inner ego is threatening them with – devastation.
This is why we have to ‘hustle smart’, isn’t it? So as not to be mean to ourselves on account of the same voice that makes us mean to others.
Right. Scarcity-thinking is the ego’s M.O. and it makes us mean to ourselves and to others. It makes us contracted so we feel we have to ‘hold on to’ that which we have.
Whereas conversely an abundant mindset allows us to unwind, to let our emotions flow out of our systems, to give away the goodies, to be generous to the next person, to be kind to ourselves.
Spot on. So let’s unwind, in the spirit of abundance.
I am unwinding – abundantly