The Weight of Stress

Oh My, I Had No Idea I Was This Tight!

Not only is “oh my, I had no idea I was this tight” a familiar refrain I hear from massage clients but I experienced it myself last night during my own deep tissue massage.  I knew I had built up some excess tension from summer biking and doing less yoga postures and more meditation, but I hadn’t realized just how tight my muscles were in my neck and shoulder until my therapist, Karen, began working.  And this common phenomenon is both a boon and a block.

Not feeling the full load of tension is part of how the Total Self gets us through life.  Because let’s face it, if we felt how tight we are in each and every part of our body, we’d probably all be lying in bed groaning.  Adapting to and managing the ongoing tension we hold in our bodies is part of how we function through the stress and activities of our lives.  This is the boon…in spite of what we pile on or our lack of self care, our Total Self will try to help us get through the best it can.

However, this very same adaptability combined with our lack of detailed awareness, leads us to sometimes ignore or miss the signs and symptoms of tension build up.  This leads us to continue further towards imbalance until we reach the crisis point where our system can not tolerate any more and throws up the red flag…usually intense pain, spasm, or illness.   This is the block side of the equation.  Without being aware of the lower levels of tension build up, it often takes a more severe episode of imbalance to catch our attention.  And waiting for the extreme condition and message isn’t overly healthy because it takes more work and effort to treat then had we taken care of the tension earlier in the cycle.

Before my massage, I hadn’t reached a true crisis point…precisely because I had paid attention to some earlier signals from my Total Self.  Towards the end of the summer, I was getting more hand and arm numbness and more headaches with my cycling.  I first tried some chiropractic and eventually switched to riding my indoor recumbent bike instead of my outdoor road bike.  Those adjustments helped but having left it a little too long, my tension is more entrenched. So, instead of enjoying a soothing, preventative massage, I will need to do a series of less comfortable massages in order to get the muscles back in a better condition. 

Last night was a good wake up call that I had been letting some of my self care slip.  I had been stretching but for shorter amounts.  I hadn’t been getting my monthly bodywork sessions because I was “too busy”.  I hadn’t been soaking my forearms because I kept forgetting or getting distracted.  In other words, I wasn’t making use of the knowledge and tools that I have.  Yes, we all do this and sometimes it takes a painful “ah ha” to remind us that we’re off track.

For today, I committed to listening better to the messages from my Total Self AND following through on what I know I need to do.  What do you need to do to stay out of the crisis mode?

Re-Connecting to Choice Brings New Sense of Empowerment

I had a client this week who was struggling with a work situation which had her feeling unhappy, angry and powerless.  She literally came into my office fresh from a phone call and crying, such was the intensity of the situation.  Long story short, she was pushed into working with a group against not only her choice but her better judgment and there is a person in a leadership role who is lacking in diplomacy and compassion…to put it mildly.  In fact, from her descriptions, the person is actually engaging in emotional and verbal abuse and, because the project is being done by volunteers, no one is censoring his unprofessional and cruel behavior.

Sounds bleak, doesn’t it…an untenable situation in which you see no way out.  This is where my client was…stuck in the story and caught in the drama.  By staying in this place, she was unknowingly contributing to the negative energy of the situation and becoming further enmeshed in disempowerment. 

Step one:  acknowledging and accepting where she was at…not being able to be who she is or express herself.   To help shift the energy and explore options, I invited my client to become aware of how she was feeling in her body, where this energy was being held and stuck.   By connecting with the body instead of the story, my client began to tap into her inner wisdom…first noticing that the emotion was held in the chest and throat (heart and throat chakras) which represent interactions with others and being able to express one’s truth.  As she vocalized this, some of the tension in her body softened. 

Step two:  ask the body part what it needs.  At this point we explored options…did she need to express herself by leaving the group and what would the fall out be?  Did she need to explore different ways of communicating within the group that felt more authentic for herself?  On one hand she realized that she wasn’t able to be authentic in the way that was normal and comfortable for her.  But she also realized that she actually wanted to stay in the group because she thought the long-term benefits would be worthwhile.  This was a pivotal moment in which she realized that she had a choice and that her choice was to stay.  Gone was the sense of feeling powerless!

Step three: identify a better way to support herself in a temporary situation that was uncomfortable.  Part of her holding was in the throat and jaw and she knew it was about communication.  She was being shot down by this abusive person and was getting the message from herself and others that the best thing to do was “put a piece of tape over her mouth”.  At first this felt restrictive but as she explored further, she realized that she had the opportunity to develop and expand new ways of communicating on a more subtle level.  And suddenly, instead of feeling restricted, she began to feel hopeful and even excited about learning a new skill. 

The results…she created a new belief statement for herself to support her personal choice and commitment to stay in the group and that she was open to exploring communication from a new angle.  In her body, all the tension on the right side was gone (her logical mind was completely on board) while some tension remained on her left side (the emotional side understood but still felt a bit raw from her experiences and anxious about trying out something new).  And, perhaps most importantly, my client felt more in control and had a plan of action, both strong values for her.

And she did all of this powerful work in just 40 minutes!  Shifting perspectives doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out process.  Identifying the core issue, asking what that issue needs, and taking inspired action is the basic structure we used and you can use it, too!  Give it a try this week and see what interesting results show up for you…and share if you wish.

Client Case Study: An Interesting Reflection on Lists

I had a client this morning who brought to the table a pattern that I think many of us hold in today’s modern society that I’d like to share…the ongoing burden of lists.

The background.  Jill (name has been changed for privacy) has been having some ongoing tension in the mouth, jaw and neck for the past several months which we’ve been exploring.  By her own description, she is a task-oriented, efficient, perfectionist.  She has a part-time job that really requires full-time hours, is a mother, and has an upcoming social event that is taking lots of planning and time.  Put all these pieces together and my client has found herself in a highly pressurized environment!

Prior explorations and discoveries.  As I mentioned, my client has been working on this pattern for several months.  We have done regular CranioSacral Therapy and massage to soften the tissues, we have done inner mouth techniques to release the tension in the jaw and re-align the jaw joints, and we have strategized about ways to deal with the stress through a specific meditation.  We also explored left brain forms of self support from new communication patterns in the work situation to her methods of delegating or seeing when she doesn’t delegate.  All of this has helped but the tightness continues to come back.

Beneath the symptoms.  The cornerstone of my work is that symptoms in the body are messages from within that something is imbalanced and is asking for help.  This morning we dug deeper under the surface to look at what the tension in the mouth might be saying.  And in doing so, an interesting pattern showed up around lists. 

The Lists.  Many of of us use lists to keep our tasks organized and help us move forward towards goals.  Jill came in saying that she felt weighted down under the endless lists.  She has a master list for work, another master list for her social event, then she has her daily lists of the tasks off the master list that she wants to accomplish that day.  Any of this sound familiar?!  Right now, the lists are never ending and no matter who much she accomplishes, there is still so much left.  The energy around these lists, therefore, feels heavy and creates pressure.

The left side of Jill’s body is the area that is having the greatest tension.  This side of the body is also connected to the right brain which is that aspect that ties in with the emotions, the state of being.  In the discussion about the lists, Jill came to the realization that she does trust that she will get the items done but she doesn’t like who she is in this process and how she is feeling.  She wants to be in a better internal place of ease while doing these tasks.  Both of these ideas reflect a being state of energy with emotional components which ties is with the tension held in the left side of the body.

We then ask the left side of the body what it needed today to feel greater ease.  The answer was to stop making lists…a request my client didn’t think she could do.  No problem.  The list is simply the vehicle not the real issue so we began to explore underneath the list.  For my client, her stated purpose of the list is to acknowledge that she is getting things done.  Notice that purpose isn’t about staying on task or actually getting the task done because she knows she will do that.  This is an important distinction because while she states that the point of lists is to create acknowledgement, this is not what’s happening!  Jill current pattern is that she finishes a task and instead of pausing to think about what she’s finished, bask in her success, or acknowledge a job well done…she moves directly into the s pace of knowing she has more to do and feels pressure to get to the next task.  It’s a double whammy…no positive energy flowing from feeling successful and pressure to do more in a cycle that seems to be never ending.

Expanding awareness and new options.  This awareness created real clarity for my client not only about what she was doing but that her actions weren’t supporting her needs…this disconnect thus triggering her body to “speak up”.  In discovering this awareness, all the tension in the right side (connected to the logical left brain) went away and the tissues on the left side softened from my perspective but still felt tight to my client.  The inspired action to begin to shift this pattern and align it with her truth was for today to focus only on the celebration, the success of a job well done every time she crosses an item off the list.  Yes, there will still be more items on the list that she will be working towards but the focus on her energy will be elsewhere.  And she likely will not be able to hold the self request perfectly because shifting patterns does take time.  However, the experience itself will continue to increase her awareness and each time she pauses for those 30-60 seconds after crossing off an item, a new thread of energy will be added to the new neural (brain) messages which becomes a new pattern over time.

What little adjustments can be made to your pattern to  line up the actions with your truth?  And if you’re a list maker, is the process serving your needs?