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For so long we thought that our reaction to stress had two expressions, fight or flight, or something along that spectrum.
New research has shown that there’s a third response. We freeze.
I know this one well. I think of the times in my life where I didn’t know what to say, what to do, how to express what I was feeling, thinking, experiencing. So I froze.
When we freeze we stay there.
We can’t move forward, we can’t move back.
Emotionally and energetically, we get stuck.
And so that pattern gets locked into our body.
And every time we’re in a similar situation, we simply bring up the same reaction.
Four things about this are important.
The first is that when we freeze, we can’t receive. We can’t receive from life, we can’t receive love.
We can’t allow anyone in.
The second is that in this space it becomes scary, very scary, for some people even terrifying to let go.
Our self-definition has become whatever we’ve created it to be.
And without that, no matter how limiting it is, not matter how little it serves me, not matter how it keeps me stuck, not matter how much hurt goes with it, I’ll stay there.
Because I have no idea who I’d be without it.
When the stress or trauma has been deep and repeated, the patterns are deeply embedded within us.
They are who we’ve become.
And it’s so difficult to see the possibilities of who we could be.
The fear of letting go of who we’ve been is that we’re stepping into space, the space of creation. It’s the space of creating who we are based on the life we’d like to live, the relationships we’d like to have, the aspects of ourselves we’d like to bring to life.
And we have to let go in order to create that.
We have to learn to trust, ourselves more than anyone else.
We have to learn to love, ourselves more than anyone else.
The third thing is that we can change so much through the body.
In my work that’s touch and bodywork.
And there are so many other ways, breath, movement, sound, plants etc.
Our bodies are an expression of energy.
All of our patterns, everything we’ve done, everything that’s been done to us, is reflected in our bodies.
Caroline Myss said that our biology is our biography.
We change our energy patterns, then we integrate with the mind, we understand, we see what’s happening. We go deeper into the body, deeper into the mind.
Everything within us is connected.
We need to do it on all levels.
The fourth, and maybe the most important.
The heart.
This is where the power is.
More and more we’re learning about the heart field, the energy that it has.
We call it Love.
Science, philosophers, poets, mystics, healers, shamans are all connecting more with the heart.
It’s not an airy-fairy everything is love blah blah blah.
It’s something within us that has the power to heal, to grow, to expand.
It has the power to help unfreeze us.
It has the energy to melt that frozen, locked in state and bring is into the light of possibility.
The more we connect with our hearts, develop a relationship with our hearts, the more we’ll be guided on this journey.
Give it the time it needs, be kind to yourself, be compassionate with yourself.
And in time, you’ll love yourself a little more, a little more each day.
There’s a breathing exercise I teach my clients to connect with their hearts that I’d like to share with you.
Touch your heart, or your heart centre in the middle of your chest.
Imagine that as you breathe in, a slow deep breath, you’re breathing in to your heart, and as you breathe out, a slow deep breath, you’re breathing out from your heart.
Do this twice a day, for 5 minutes, longer if you like.
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