Sunday is a good day

Sunday. Often my best opportunity to spend time in reflection that also can include writing.

I am continually amazed with the awareness of how my internal experience of the moment so fully defines my mood and my capacity to navigate life and it's various challenges. Really, it pretty much determines what feels like a challenge and what does not. If my insides are in discomfort I tend to lose my flexibility for flowing with the externals that I can't control. I'll be more specific so that what I'm referring to is clear.

When I am physically in pain everything going on around me - -other people, traffic, loud noises in restaurants - - becomes something that feels intrusive and unmanageable. When I am not in pain everything going on around me feels separate from me and just part of the symphony that is accompanying my solo performance. There is a really nice interweave of sounds and feelings and energies. And when something is off balance outside me (like loud music in a restaurant) I am not thrown by it. I may feel dislike or frustration with it but it is a simple experience that doesn't make me feel like I want to pull into my shell or run away or beat someone with a stick.

I have come to understand in a much clearer, deeper way that these times of pain are a trigger for me of unresolved trauma. We all have certain experiences that when we are in them we get triggered into reactions that don't particularly fit the present moment. Physical pain is one of those for me. Some people are much more resilient when they are in physical pain. They don't get triggered into wanting to run away or beat someone with a stick. As I have been working with my nervous system and the stored trauma from earlier experiences in my life I am becoming more resilient. Pain doesn't limit my options to the degree that it used to. I still get triggered but with less severity.

What are the experiences that are your "trigger" places? I invite your awareness to identifying those times when your reaction to something in the present moment might not actually fit what is occurring. They are hard to wrap our brain around sometimes because we can so automatically go to what has become a familiar, characteristic reaction. It so totally feels appropriate and fitting to be reacting in the way that we are in a relationship, or in traffic, or when a sales person is not helpful in a way we wish for them to be, etc. To be able to step back and begin to recognize that our reaction seems bigger than the present situation might call for can be our first place of shifting some stored stress or trauma.

I feel tremendous gratitude for finding my way along this path. Healing not only gives us a richer, more meaningfully experienced life, it also sends us along the path of the evolution of our Soul. The bigger picture of what we are doing here. We are all weavers. The texture of the fabric deepens in color and feel with our consciousness brought to it.

Movement can occur when immobilization begins to resolve

I have been away for a long time. Away from my writing. The blink of an eye and children are grown with children of their own and wrinkles and lines betray the passing of time that is not fully registered by the brain. I'm stunned that my last entry was over three months ago. Sometimes writing calls to me and in my recurring place of immobilization I can't find the voice to respond.

Christopher and Michela, of my last entry, are doing well. Examples of the miracles of our modern technology combined with their Spirit's ability to mount the obstacles that can befall one's path beginning with birth. It also didn't hurt to have a mother and grandmother who persevered with their continuous welcome and care over many, many weeks in a preemie ICU.

I wanted to speak to immobilization today. It is something that so many of us can relate to and tend to experience with frustration and distress. It is something that can be stored or set in our physiology due to a multitude of events, beginning with in utero or birth experiences or from any number of events that may have occurred in the years since. I believe that understanding this can be a tremendous relief. We humans typically tend to find fault with ourselves when something is a struggle for us. To know that feeling stuck, or immobilized, or like we are spinning our wheels and going nowhere is a state of one's physiology and not an example of one's flawed character or motivation can be both relief and the beginning of being able to address the real culprit(s).

The primitive part of our brain and our nervous system sometimes remember things that the more evolved part of our brain dismisses or categorizes as routine or unremarkable. And sometimes we do recognize something as having had a big impact on us but don't really understand that our physiology is storing what has not yet resolved from the event.