ULTIMATE HAPPINESS
KEY #1 BE AWARE OF YOUR BODY
Your first and most reliable guide to happiness is your body.
Deepak Chopra
Awareness Provides Access to Everything
The power of awareness in the body is inconceivable. It is the avenue to connect to the
underlying interconnectedness of everything. “Your body and the universe are a single
field of energy, information and consciousness.
That is how the body can monitor thousands of different physiological functions inside
the body, be responding to the movements of the planets, digesting a meal, thinking of a
grocery list, having conversation with others and be making a baby all at the same time.
The body is a self-regulating and self-healing interconnected organism. Awareness is
crucial to its ability to function effectively. When a person becomes unconscious they
impair the body’s ability to maintain harmonious regulation. The flow of energy and
information to and through the body are disrupted.
In our culture there often a profound disconnection between body, mind and spirit.
These disconnections create an absence of harmony, showing up as; depression, anxiety,
eating disorders, physical illness, lack of energy and attention, as well as cognitive
problems.
Change, right down to the level of the genes, is always going on in our bodies and it is
never neutral. Awareness, determines the direction of that change. Without awareness
it moves towards disconnection, disorder and decline. Increasing consciousness directs
evolution in the direction of connection, coherence and health.
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Awareness is not trivial or optional. Deepak Chopra
Deepak Chopra defines fulfillment (ultimate happiness) as right thought, right feeling
and right action. He suggests that we can access, through our bodies, qualities of the
universal field of infinite possibility that are particularly important for fulfillment.
Intelligence
Our bodies have vast intelligence, gained over thousands of years of
evolution and their daily accumulation of further information. The
body provide us with tremendous guidance in every decision. It can
with exquisite perfection repeat thousands of integrated activities from digestion to
generating desire day after day for a hundred years. There is a constant flow of
communication offered as intuition, to create more health, harmony and of course
happiness, if we just choose to use our awareness to tap into it.
Creativity
Just as amazing as our ability to repeat sequenced activity, is the body’s
ability to be creative. Darwin determined that adaptability was more
important for survival than intelligence or strength. Creativity
contributes to happiness by creating new ways to achieve what we desire, regardless of
our circumstances and to keep life fresh and engaging. Creative expression of ourselves
is possibly one of the most satisfying and enjoyable parts of life.
Power
The true power in our lives, comes from our connectivity to the
universal flow of energy and information. From the spark that creates
life to the electricity that pulses through our every cell, power is life.
The power to transform thought into action into manifestation of things, the power to
connect and create and the power to move our bodies for decades comes from
connection to the universal force, through our bodies. From inside, from outside and
from others, power flows in us, through us and around us, endlessly there for our use.
Which of these do you feel a lack of?
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The Harmonious Self -Healing Assessment
When you sit quietly, relaxing and breathing evenly;
If you are in a state of Harmonious Self- Healing, you will feel; a deep sense of peace,
enjoyment of the moment of stopping, light effervescent joy or curious wonder of the
unknown, without grasping or pushing away at any thought, feeling or image.
This is our natural, integrated and flowing state. In this condition your body healing
systems are working simply by being grounded in your body’s natural state.
If you are not you will feel; tired, anxious, obsessive, a rush of
memory, unpleasant physical sensations, uncomfortable
emotion or relief.
These are all signs that your body is operating under excessive
demands and struggling to process and release all the incoming
sensation and information.
This happens when, for a diverse number of reasons, we have lost the ability to catch
and release sensations, images, feelings and thoughts in a useful and timely manner.
Having a tight hold, with clenched hand allows us to do some things, but not others.
Just as having an open palm that holds nothing allows to do other things, but certainly
not everything. So the harmonious balance is to be able to close and open our grasp as
needed and guided.
When we hand on or let go erratically or inappropriately, Deepak Chopra suggests
paying attention to feelings of heaviness, avoidance or grasping and ask the body what it
needs to address them.
But for some of us becoming aware is more likely to trigger a desire to escape mode than
a state where we can pay attention. In this situation it will take a more specific approach
to restore our natural catch and release balance.
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When We Can’t Tolerate Being in Our Bodies
Sometimes we can’t stand to even get close to our bodies, much less take up residence in
them long enough to become aware of and release anything. Many people have
tremendous anxiety in their bodies, which relentlessly chases them away.
Whether it is from chemical imbalances, cognitive clenches or past traumatic or just
negative experience, the body has a system that if we can come to know and trust it, will
help us reconnect with our bodies and all the intelligence, creativity and power we want.
Peter Levine a preeminent
researcher and therapist treating
trauma survivors calls this effect
pendulation.
What this means is that,
whatever we are feeling it will
change. Deepak talks about this
idea of change being constant
and reliable.
As we become aware of
something in our bodies, if we
can remember that the law of
pendulation is constant, we will
know that it will move if; we allow it to, we stay grounded and coach/comfort ourselves
through it.
This is not an easy thing to do. If it were there would be no therapists, we would just all
do it ourselves. But we have forgotten, never known how or become hopelessly deluded,
thinking that our security is in staying away from our bodies and all the discomforts they
hold.
The first thing to do is be compassionate and understand that there are good reasons for
us to have developed in this way.
The next is to remember why we would want to become aware, getting close and clear
with this stuff that makes us feel bad. The law of pendulation suggests that the worse we
feel the more we can know happiness. Actually, as we shovel out all the old unprocessed
stuff we simply uncover our natural happiness.
The next is to work on an effective method of grounding. Many people find that they can
use a stone or other token to remind themselves of their safety, natural ground of being
or the reality of them being the part that watches change , but is the non-changing
observer or spirit.
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Another useful idea is to picture the upsetting sensation, image, feeling or thought as
muck that is stuck. Stuck in our bodies, brains and energy fields. We can tell it is stuck
because it is so slow to move in pendulation.
Some people have been following the old patterns of avoidance for so long, that their
bodies and brains actually think they will die or simply do not have the ability to allow
the intense feelings, high or low, to come and go without exerting some sort of control.
Surrendering to the process of pendulation helps our bodies and psyches get back into
the rhythm of contraction and expansion, that will always take us to more consciousness
and coherence. In this way we can find islands of safety even in serious discomfort. In
time the pendulm of life swings less and we become comfortable in all it’s gyrations.
This is the path of recovering from addictions and returning to our natural state of
happiness.
As both Levine and Chopra pointsout, there is suffuering in life, but it is finite and fluid.
This process can help us find that truth out and come back from drowing in our bodily
experience or dissociating from it.
HAPPINESS HOMEWORK
Learn to harness the power of awareness.
Practice with your grounding tool, to feel support
and distress, adjusting your experience by shifting
your awareness
1. Create a safe and comfortable space to practice in. Wrapping up in a blanket
often helps to ground us and provide an external feeling of safety while we build
our internal one. Some people like to use a timer to limit their exposure.
2. Bring something like a stone or other token to ground you. Focus on it and on the
support of the chair or bed or ground beneath you. (this may be all you do!)
3. When you are feeling grounded, let your awareness move gently into your body
and notice what it finds. At the observation of any anxiety or other discomfort,
take your awareness back to grounding, shifting back and forth.
4. When you can, notice how the uncomfortable feeling changes or pendulates.
5. End your practice with an expression of gratitude and closing prayer or saying.
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