Each week I send out four thoughts that string together to make one larger one on Friday. We call them Inspirited Living Introspectives. They are thoughts that help shape, and even shift our perspectives. Sometimes Inspirited Living Introspections are thoughts that I’m working with myself. And, sometimes they’re related to things I’ve noticed in the collective.
Our Higher Self: How Energy Flows, Meditation, and Yoga Nidra
This week I was thinking about how energy flows.
We know from our science classes that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It simply flows from one place, one person, one spirit to the next… flowing through all living things.
When it gets stuck, or held too tightly in our bodies, we feel anxious or tense. When it gets unblocked and can move, we experience relaxation and relief. That’s the connection to Our Higher Self, Our Soul Self.
When we become aware of holding, and become unblocked, we are free to feel the connection, compassion, and creativity of our Higher Self, Our Soul Self.
Our Higher Self: How do I Unblock Energy?
Many of us practice grounding—bringing ourselves to a quiet restfulness in order to notice where the energy is stuck or flowing. Many of us practice yoga nidra—full body mindfulness to help move energy along. And many of us practice meditation to understand where, how, and why energy can stop flowing.
We know how this can feel to us. Tense and achy muscles, headaches, shortness of breath and restlessness are often physical manifestations of blocked energy.
And we know how marvelous the relief feels: when we notice, turn towards what is blocked, focus our compassion on why we are blocked, and allow ourselves to let go of blocked energy. Pema Chodron’s website has guidance on how Buddhism can guide us through this process, too. It’s amazing how that can work!
At Beachwood Integrative Equine Therapy we connect with our Higher Selves, and focus on releasing and moving the stuck energy inside of us by working with the horses. Beachwood’s horses are amazing at helping us to become aware, and to heal and help things move.
There are many approaches, and one result. How much better we can feel when we realize that holding and pushing through doesn’t work as well as opening our hearts, our minds and our bodies to connection and allowing that energy to flow.
Our Higher Self: Incongruence and Pleasing Others
When we pay attention to energy moving, we may even begin to notice what blocked energy feels like to those around us. How does our holding, or our stuck places, our blocks, show up in our interactions with those around us?
What does it feel like when you can sense something is wrong for another person, but you don’t know what you are sensing?
Our Higher Self: Inspirited Living’s Introspectives and Incongruent Energy
What I wrote this week focused on how it feels when we don’t feel safe, and parts of us hold. Sometimes, to save energy, or to not feel what we don’t want to feel, we pretend to be okay, even when we are not.
Monday: When we discount our own feelings because we want to feel differently than we do, or when we want to please someone else, we appear incongruent.
Tuesday: Anyone who’s been badly burned and struggles with trust will often behave incongruently.
Wednesday: Horses read incongruous energy loud and clear.
Thursday: Energy is not something you can see or hear or taste, but you definitely feel it.
Our Higher Self: Incongruence feels Uncomfortable for Everyone
We may think that we are covering it up well—maybe we think no one will notice.
Maybe we want to fool ourselves into believing it really is ok.
The truth is, we feel what we feel. We can feel happy, joyful, ecstatic, hopeful, optimistic, and boundlessly enthusiastic. Those are our feelings.
We also feel pain, sadness, discomfort, hopelessness, jealousy, and anger. Those are the ones we usually want to cover up.
Sometimes we discount or push away our own feelings because we think we shouldn’t feel them, or we feel ashamed of feeling them. Other times we might disconnect and cover up our feelings because we think other people won’t approve, or worse, will disconnect from us or hurt us because of the way we feel. No matter what the reason, people can tell when we are incongruent.
It’s a sense we all have, that we don’t teach about. It’s an ability that helps us feel safe. When we notice that someone is behaving one way, but they are holding, or feeling differently, we notice and are aware.
We sense, at a very deep level, that the outside and the inside are not lined up. And that incongruence registers as something to worry about or be afraid of…
When we are incongruent, it makes others uncomfortable, and they may follow their own instincts. They may avoid us. They may cut interactions short. They may steer clear of spending time with us. Anything to get some distance between themselves and this disconcerting feeling that something isn’t right.
Our Higher Self: Why do We Pretend?
If being incongruent makes everyone, including us, feel uncomfortable and icky, then why do we do it? One of the many reasons is self-protection. Anyone who has been badly burned by other people learns to protect themselves. It’s just how we survive.
When we try to protect ourselves, we hide, or make our feelings more socially acceptable.
We behave the way we learned to behave the first time we experienced that it wasn’t safe to show what we feel. Maybe we were shamed for feelings when we were young, told we were bad for feeling things like jealously, or anger. Or taught that others don’t want to know when we experience feelings that have been called negative. And then we learn to hide our feelings, or to show feelings that aren’t genuine; in other words, to behave incongruently.
Our Higher Self: Community and Connection
All of us have to juggle one of the most fundamental needs of all humans: staying connected. It might be tempting to think that if we all just expressed all of our feelings honestly, then everything will be perfect.
In reality, we know instinctively that in order to survive, we need to stay connected with our families, our friends, and our communities of choice. It’s part of being human.
As I talk about in our Inspirited Living BeComing You Intro Course, being connected keeps us alive. Being connected brings us joy, safety, compassion, support, and love.
Living connected means that we feel with and for each other. That means that when we live together connected, we have to be pretty responsible for our feelings! And that’s really difficult to do when our society doesn’t teach us how to carefully and safely express our emotions.
So how can we stay connected and stay congruent at the same time? How can we navigate human relationships and express our true feelings without editing ourselves?
On our road to self discovery, we have to learn enough about ourselves, and how we feel, from a perspective of self-compassion and love.
Our Higher Self: Horses Help Show Us How to Connect
Many of us have experienced the incredible connection with a favorite animal or pet. Interestingly, studies have shown that horses have a very special connection with humans.
As fight or flight animals, horses are constantly reading their environment, including us. Watch a herd of horses communicate in a field and you can see how energy moves through and between them, because they live together, most often unblocked; openly allowing it to move freely, strongly, and healthily.
Horses are communicating, having interactions with each other constantly. And, they still stay connected. Expressing their emotions in a healthy herd is expected and required to keep everyone safe.
Our Higher Self: Energy is Something You Can Feel
As we start to wrap up our harvest season and store energy for the dormant months ahead, I wrote these Inspirited Living Introspectives to help us remember the importance of not shutting down. Our energy still needs to flow. Our feelings and needs, connected to our communities, are still important.
As the Northern Hemisphere prepares for darkness, we also prepare for winter festivals, and we often become incredibly busy. It’s so easy to tuck away our true feelings, our true needs, and inadvertently disconnect from our friends and families because they sense our incongruence.
Now, more than ever, we need community, compassion, and kindness. And we need our energy to flow in order to stay connected, inspired, uplifted, and supported.
Many Blessings
Lynne