Your Body Rules

Loving Greetings,

As I began listening to my body, new possibilities opened up to me. For example, realizing I was overwhelmed with energetic information in a classroom, opened up the possibility that I may not be as dumb as I thought.

But how do you change a belief you've had about yourself since childhood?

I began by setting an intention to stop calling myself stupid. After all, I wouldn't call anybody else stupid, so I could at least treat myself as well as I treat others.

Each morning, during my meditations, I stated my intention out loud to be kind to myself in my thoughts, words and actions, to the best of my abilities. Then I noticed what happened to my energy. I paid attention to see if my energy drained away, stayed the same or increased. If my energy drained, I changed the words in my intention until I felt better.

My intention seemed to work for a while, until I made a mistake, bumped into something, or forgot an appointment. Then my thoughts about myself reverted to their old pattern. I thought of this old pattern as my "inner critic." Obviously, an intention was not enough. So I asked my inner critic to partner with me in changing this thought pattern. One memory surfaced up each time I asked my inner critic to help me.

I learned at a very early age to constrict, or tense, my body in an effort to become invisible to the nuns at school. They were always shaking me and screaming at me because I couldn't seem to stand in line the ‘right’ way. And I had no idea what I was doing wrong; so I couldn’t fix the situation! This pattern of constriction reinforced my limiting beliefs around being stupid: "I’m not smart enough to know what to do in any situation."

The more I tried sheer willpower or affirmations or journaling or dialoging with my Inner Critic, the more evidence showed up in my life to prove how stupid I was.

So, how did I get my Inner Critic to hush up?

By using my body to coach myself.

For me, and my Inner Critic, being stupid meant being slow.

My body movements, however, were anything but slow. My breathing was fast and shallow. My movements (walking, talking, picking things up) were too fast and uncoordinated. My thoughts were racing. I was constantly bombarded by intense emotions.

Somewhere along the line, my body, in a constant state of stress had forgotten the pattern of slowing down. So, I used body movement to learn how to re-gain control of my body. I began by speeding up my breathing and movements and then contrasted that with slower breathing and movements.

It took less than 2 weeks before I began noticing the difference in my thoughts and reactions to situations. Instead of reacting defensively, my thoughts were calmer and I could access many different options in a situation. My responses became more appropriate for the situations and people were being kind, rather than attacking me.

It seems almost too simple, doesn’t it?

But, changing your body’s patterns actually changes your thoughts. And your emotions, too!

You see, my body’s pattern of tensing up actually cued my Inner Critic to start up its story of being mentally slow. So, when my body didn’t tense up, my Inner Critic didn’t know it was time to begin its story!

As an added bonus, I didn’t get defensive if I wasn’t tensed, so my emotional state didn’t trigger my Inner Critic to speak up either.

To find out more about using your body to quiet your inner critic, try my free Ecourse, "Self Coaching Techniques" at http://www.spiritualcrosstraining.com/