To Wind or Unwind

In line with many traditions of meditation and neuroscience, the brain acts as a filter of information.  There is so much data coming into our nervous system every moment of our lives, that we cannot pay attention to but a fraction of it all.  We filter information, we decide what is primary, secondary, tertiary, etc.  Most of this process is done unconsciously, outside of our personal awareness.  This is a powerful survival skill.

However, there is also so much that we learn to avoid, disallow and push out of awareness that can contribute to levels and layers of dysfunction in our behavior patterns, feeling states, moods, mental and cognitive capacities.  This internal behavior can be conscious or unconscious.  For example, we may prefer not to feel sad, so we think on the bright side and keep sadness at bay.  We may not even know that we cannot tolerate the experience of grief, and unconsciously tighten our diaphragm and close our breathing to a minimum.  As we avoid, suppress or repress our emotional lives and our awareness of aspects of our experiences, we wind our bodies and minds in ways that we often don’t know until a crisis point occurs.

Unwinding from a long day sounds like a must for most of us in this culture.  Yet we seldom allow ourselves to truly unwind the tension patterns in the body or release the emotions that crave expression.  We likely intuitively know that doing so would put us face to face with the basics of our lives; our grief, our fear, our hurt, our desires, our anger, our shame.  The courage it takes to truly unwind cannot be measured and so too the reward cannot be measured.

TRY:  Take 10 minutes after dinner and before bedtime, to turn off all input and settle into the body.  Take time to sense your breath, your 3 Dimensional body and allow yourself to know what feelings are swimming around inside you.