I was asked this week, about what to do when feeling stressed or when feeling physically unwell.  I share what seem like alternative ways to alleviate stress, even though they aren’t! They are about coming back to wellness through our senses! Simple put, what would happen if you shifted the focus to what enlivens you? what lights you up? what gives you peace and serenity? Rather than “trying” to “fix” the problem.

http://www.deblange.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/anxiety-and-freedom.mp4
 
This is not about avoiding your feelings or your physical state. I do advocate and guide people to be with their physicality and their emotions. Just being with them, seems to shift them. By being with them I do not mean being aware, like when you are meditating. Being aware of them is one thing, but feeling our physicality and our sensory responses to life has enriched my life beyond my imagination. Especially, when learning to communicate, with what I say our messages from our soul, coming from our senses, our physicality, the images we see and draw and our movement.
 
I feel and sense the physicality of my body and my energy/spirit, something that I think “we” are trained to avoid. It is as if western society has become so “sophisticated” anything bodily is too basic. My experience, tells me, that this is just what we need to re-connect our thoughts with our body, otherwise we are dis-connected and out of body. If you know what I mean, making choices from your head alone can be very mis-leading. have you ever noticed how many voices in there? Of course, we can learn to distinguish which one is the saboteur, which is the wise voice, which one is the jester, the carer, our youth etc. But, as I often say, give your body/spirit the freedom to speak to you, start paying attention and you may be guided to a whole new way of being, beyond your imagination.
I feel, since we are little kids, we have been taught to “lie”, to pretend we like things that we don’t, to agree with things that we don’t want to. From the simplest things like, “Give Your Aunty, a kiss on the cheek”, when you don’t want to, to don’t say what you really feel. I remember my son when he was about 2, sitting on his Great Nanna’s lap and feeling the folds of her wrinkles, and then he said, “What is this?” as he played with the wrinkles. My Nanna, was a very proud woman and he soon found out that you don’t be open and honest about some-one’s appearance!
So, all of these little things lead us to feeling tension inside when we are asked to pretend, and we get so used to feeling this mis-alignment with our truth we don’t even know what it feels like to feel free of constraint by living from our own inner truth on the inside out!
The more we get back in touch with all of our senses, we can choose what lights us up.
In the video, I share how kayaking, mosaicing, InterPlay and travel all helped me shift from living in my head with lots of anxiety from being some-one who I was not, to being connected with my body/spirit and creating life playfully with love.