I found it interesting that when I did get divorced some of my guy friends who were single assumed that I would be out all night every night chasing tail like some of them still were, however this was not the case for me. I was emotionally and physically drained after the first year of having moved out my home, so the idea of being with someone new was just a fleeting thought in my head. I knew that I would be ready sometime in the future, but only after I had created enough balance and space emotionally, so that it would allow someone to come into my life. I felt what I needed was to get back to the calm and happy positive person that felt I used to be.
So how to do this, to get back towards a more balanced me? I thought being active and trying new things outside my comfort zone was what I had to do to get me recharged.
I should explain what I mean by “creating space”. What this means for me is having a still and uncluttered mind without the mind chatter of doubt and pointless thoughts crashing like wave’s day in and day out.
As a young man, I have always been interested in the nature of life from the physical universe to the spiritual (metaphysical) one. This exploration was kicked into high gear when I gave up Catholicism for Lent when I was 25 years old.My mom who is more Catholic than the Pope was not happy about it. At the beginning of Lent like every year she would ask what I was going to give up for the next 40 days. When I told her Catholicism, I could smell incense (Frankincense and Muir) quaffing through the phone and I swore I got hit with holy water! Having grown up in the community of Catholics and going to Parochial Grade School and High School, I found at 25 years old that I needed more than the standup sit down fight, fight, of the marching Catholics.
This decision to leave the church had led me to study many religions and philosophies over the years from Taoism and Mormonism to Unitarianism & Buddhism to new age thought. I read books on the historical life of Jesus and books written by Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly, Eckhart Tolle, Kahlil Gibran and many, many others. My soul was thirsty and I knew there had to be more to life than just living in the fear and strain of trying to get to heaven and avoiding hell. I was hungry to fill my heart with more than the literal dogma of the church. So, I learned how to meditate by studying with a teacher which taught me to quiet the mind and be in the present moment. A practice I strive to do every day.
Yet at 35 when I got married this happy and what I thought balanced guy fell away from what I had learned and instead focused on trying to stay ahead of all the things life was throwing at me from growing my own business to taking care of two children and a wife while maintaining a loving family and beautiful home. I forgot about keeping my own balance and peace of mind at the center of my life.
It was my own fault for not maintaining this balance and focus on the things that made me feel whole. I had gotten caught up in the minutia of life which I believe keeps us separate from our true nature and our community. It is so easy to get carried away when you think the things that are most important are the ones that are outside of you.
To get back to a more balanced & healthier life I knew that one thing I had to do was burn the emotional energy that built-up in my body every-day. The best way for me to do this was by getting physical. I thought what would mix things up and get me moving?
I felt in my gut was that this path would help me get my life back, energizing my body, freeing my mind, and healing my heart.
It seems it always happens to me that when the universe is guiding me to do something and I ignore it that it will show up three times in different ways usually in just a couple of days. This happened to me regarding taking a yoga class which I always wanted to do, but was dragging my feet, because I had never done it before. Like most things new in our lives it can be a little uncomfortable being the odd man out sort of speak. However, after the third time of having the idea of doing yoga came up from a woman who I had gone to high school with, I found out that she was also teaching yoga! Well this was all the encouragement I needed. Once I started, I never looked back and have been doing yoga at least two to three times a week for many years. By the way I sleep like a baby the days I do a class.
Whether it is yoga or a cooking class, joining a gym, riding a bike or just taking walks you need to shed the emotional energy you carry around each day and one of the best ways to do this is to get active….. and this does not mean active drinking! What I think we also need is a change of routine and scenery to create this timeout where we can get in touch with ourselves and recalibrate our mind, spirit and body.
Yoga was perfect because it makes you have more awareness of your body and feel what is happening internally. What happens is that energy centers in the body open up allowing you to breath deeper and more fully which in turn balances your energy. I found that doing back bends poses was a great heart opening practice which helped release emotional blockages. I would visualize my chest opening up like a treasure chest releasing an unending flow of pink and golden light from within me. This may sound strange but my heart-ache really did subside. I found I wasn’t holding anything in, I was opening whole-heartedly and letting it all out. It was very healing.
If you have not taken a class, I would highly recommend it. Plus, you are not getting any younger and it helps with the stretching not to mention it is a great place to meet like-minded people and make new friends.
Heavy and light energy awareness.
Another shift I needed was to wean myself of my own negative self-talk which was toxic. These fleeting thoughts of negative emotional energy would come and go and cover me over like quicksand. I was not avoiding any emotions by self-medicating, which was good because what I realized is that what would arise in the anger and doubt most of the time was a questioning of my own self-worth. There is no doubt that divorce gets you out of your physical comfort zone like a tornado whipping through your town, but it also gets you out of our comfortable thought patterns as well. This is why change can be so damn hard. Everything you know gets turned upside down and the world as you knew it has changed and would never be the same again. Knowing it happened for a number of reasons still does not make the process any easier when all you do is dwell on it. It was this pattern of dwelling on things that I needed to change and really mix things up.
The goal of doing something physical was to feel and shift the energy in my body usually from my head and stomach area which felt heavy and thick to the heart where I could open it up and clear the stuck emotions. This would bring a much lighter and easy feeling which I really needed. This awareness of how a heavy emotion affects your body is key to releasing stuck energy. Try to be aware of what part of your body you feel the sensation, and imagine moving it into your heart area. Now imagine and feel your heart opening releasing and letting go of that heavy sticky feeling and thick emotion. Practice doing do this and if the pit in your stomach is still there do it again and really feel the love welling out of you and encompassing your whole body. This lightness will come just keep going.
One of the best explanations of this is by Arnold Patent. His 19 Universal Principles in his book The Journey discusses that everything is energy and that how we use this energy with our belief patterns and actions determines how we experience life.
This is one of the 19 that hits home for me: Oneness: “Since the essence of everything is pure loving energy, in the truest sense, we are One. Oneness, love, is indivisible. Whenever we attempt to withhold love from anyone, we withhold love from everyone, including our Self. The truth of this principle becomes clear as we allow our hearts to open and feel our disconnectedness.”
Oneness: “Since the essence of everything is pure loving energy, in the truest sense, we are One. Oneness, love, is indivisible. Whenever we attempt to withhold love from anyone, we withhold love from everyone, including our Self. The truth of this principle becomes clear as we allow our hearts to open and feel our interconnectedness.”
Your body & ataraxies in any situation. A fun word meaning the absence of mental stress or anxiety. A quietness, tranquility, a state of peace.
The most amazing aspect of getting in touch with feeling the body is that at any given time in your day with any interaction with people you know or don’t you can feel where the tightness or resistance is and have the awareness to take a deep breath and let it go.
Does it feel tight in your shoulders or the pit of your stomach? Does your neck hurt or hips ache? Some of these are the natural part of being physical moving through your day, but there is a difference with emotional tightness or ache that I noticed. One of my goals was to clear my own negative thoughts with my awareness of my own body, because for me it is an immediate indicator of what is going on in my head. Your awareness of where and what this sensation feels like is key to being able to clear this emotional baggage. I can then take a deep slow breath and focus my thought (which is energy) to that spot. Many people send light or love to that spot, visualize golden light to that spot (think the Sun).
You may at this time have an emotion or thought come up when you are focusing on this area. See if this thought is one that is being held on too for reason. Breath the thought and emotion out of your body and feel the lightness that comes to you. For me the ache you feel will usually go away as well.
I find it fascinating to see what Louise Hay’s book “You can Heal your life” says about the particular body part or area that is giving you problems. See if the emotional energy she says needs to be released might be what you need to do. She also says “Well, I believe you created those experiences over and over because they mirrored something you believed about yourself. It doesn’t really matter how long we have had a problem, or how big it is, or how life-threatening it is. The Point of Power Is Always in the Present Moment” ― Louise L. Hay, You Can Heal Your Life
So, listen to your body, this approach is great for being in the present moment and reenergizing yourself. This calm feeling is what you should feel in meditation or when you take a moment to see something beautiful and acknowledge its beauty.
Try to make decisions in any situation that will lead you to quiet peaceful mind. Ask yourself in a moment of indecision what choice in the long run will keep me balanced? It is by not reacting to something that is happening in that moment that is your quest, just pausing to get clarity and trust that the best decisions will always come to you.
This is not as hard as it may seem, if you start small by pausing throughout your day to just stop what you are doing for that second and breathe deep and feel the breath in your body come in slow and go out slow. That’s it! By starting with these Peace Pit Stops throughout your day you will be able to do this when something seemingly much more important is happening. Try it now while you are reading this, it’s a good place to start so that your feelings and emotions don’t run your life.
The neuroscientist Dr. Alan Watkins gives a great explanation of the difference between feelings and emotions. He says that emotions are energy-in-motion and that there are 34,000 different emotions we could feel.
Feelings are the awareness in our mind of that energy or e-motion. Our job is see and understand our emotional life. Everyone knows people who hover around certain emotions all the time. You have meet people who can act nice one moment to then blowing up over a simple misunderstanding. The question is what areas of all these different emotions do you seem to continually hover? Exploring this will help you get a handle on changing your behavior. Seeing these stuck emotions continually cycling can help you move from a victim to taking ownership of your emotional life. Which I believe is key to coming back to a place of love.
I would recommend watching his Ted Talk called How You Feel What You Feel December 18, 2015.