by Nancy Jonker
Okay, we’ve made it through the body, top to bottom. Hopefully by now you have a clearer idea of how much information is available if you choose to tune in. We may not always know what to do with this information, but, for now, we can practice tapping into what’s available and ALLOWING what we find.
The other thing about the body’s information is that it provides a source of “undeniable knowing.” A friend, coach, therapist or mentor can tell you that some particular action is right for you, but it’s not the same as accessing your own body sensations, bringing them into awareness, and sorting out what they mean for your next step.
One of the things I like best about doing body work in conjunction with talk therapy is that the weight of the knowing rests inside the person, and not just about what the talking brain has to say. Sometimes our brains can see both sides of things and keep us in perpetual confusion. At those times, tuning into the body’s information can be profoundly helpful.
—Journal Junction: Slow Journey Through the Body—
Take a moment to write in the space provided in the workbook or in your journal about this experience of becoming more aware by journeying through your body slowly, from head to toe. Write about what was striking or significant to you in doing this exercise. Write about any discoveries you made or any faint awarenesses that became more pronounced or clear.
Up Next . . .
So if building the bridge from our head to our heart (and gut) is what provides us access to our inner wisdom, how do we support that bridge and keep it open and clear for travel? How do we get clear about what we know, feel, and believe?
Chapter 5
Centering—Getting Clear about Who You Are
At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.
—Lao Tzu
In the quest to know what we feel, think, know, and believe, we need to get more acquainted with our inner selves—our center if you will. There are various ways to do this, and we’ll explore some exercises in the following pages.
Centering with the Breath
Use of the breath as a way to center is perhaps the most time-honored method of centering there is. Meditation practices commonly focus on the breath as a way of slowing down and letting go of distractions. Feeling the breath as it enters is one way to focus sensation in the body; following it as it enters the lungs and the body moves in response is another way.
Various visualization exercises can enhance this experience. For instance, you can imagine an open tube between the nose and the lungs, encouraging the throat to open. You can imagine a light in the belly, which glows when the abdomen relaxes and air enters the lungs. These are some of the numerous ways we can use the breath to center and access our inner selves.
A Centering Exercise Using Visualization
This is another exercise that promotes an inward focus so again I have created an mp3 for your use. Click here to download the audio version of this exercise if you want to focus on centering without the distraction of reading.
Let’s try a centering exercise. Sit in a comfortable chair in a private, quiet place. Put your hand on your center, wherever that is for you. This might be over your heart, your solar plexus, or closer to your navel. Close your eyes and visualize your “center.” If you’ve never thought about this before, that’s perfectly okay. Just try it and see where it goes.
As you try to be with your center, breathe into the area under your hand. And with your mind’s eye, notice whether this center of yours has a shape. If so, what kind? What is the substance? Is it solid, fluid, or something else? Does it have a texture? Is there movement or is it static? Does it have a color? More than one color?
—Journal Junction: Your Center—
Notice everything you can about this center of yours. Even if you can’t see anything in your mind’s eye, write down in your workbook or journal what you noticed. If you had images related to the questions above, describe them. Take some time to describe this experience.
This is an experience that you can come back to as often as you’d like. This is a way for you to begin to explore and own your center. Even if it seemed that there was nothing more there than a black or dark area, it is fertile ground for something to grow and come alive. If you’re not intimidated by the experience, try it again in a day or two, or establish a visitation schedule for yourself!
If this was a rich visual experience for you, you can tap into it whenever you’d like. One reason it’s so important to connect with our center is that we need a tangible way to connect with our inner knowing, the seat of our own wisdom. We must have a way to access “who we are” if we are going to stand up for ourselves and stand on our own two feet.
One caveat here is that this process often takes courage, fortitude, and persistence. Many times, the first thing people encounter when they do this, especially if they’re not typically “centered,” is a feeling of sadness. Maybe this is from letting down our guard. Maybe it’s about tapping into our deeper selves that don’t get enough sway in our day-to-day lives. Whatever the reason, know that sadness often comes when centering, but it paves the way to many good things.
For instance, being in touch with our center is crucial if we’re going to maintain good boundaries, be able to remain differentiated in our long-term relationships, and create good energy flow in our bodies and lives. Being centered also fosters our personal power in the dimensions of cognitive and emotional functioning by helping us stay clear-headed, be in tune with our own wisdom, and be able to regulate our emotions.
Visualizing exercises can also be fruitful in allowing ourselves a greater range of behavior, if not in reality, at least in our mind’s eye. For instance, you could imagine yourself having a conversation with a friend, partner, or parent. You could imagine saying exactly what you’d like to say and see what that “feels like”—all in your mind’s eye.
—Journal Junction: A Conversation in the Mind’s Eye—
Maybe you want to even write down what you’d like to say and then imagine saying it. Research is showing that doing something in our mind’s eye activates some of the same neural pathways as if we were actually doing it. So no need to pick your most difficult conversations, just use it to play with different ways of being and expressing yourself. You’ll find space in the complimentary workbook for recording this mind’s eye conversation.
Elizabeth, Lady Catherine—and Me
For example, when I was in my early thirties, very intrigued with this whole idea of empowerment and women speaking their minds, I watched the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice (1995, with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle). I came to the part of Elizabeth’s confrontation with Lady Catherine, Mr. Darcy’s socially conscious and caustic aunt.
In this confrontation, Lady Catherine insulted Elizabeth and her family one way after another, insults which easily could have triggered Elizabeth’s shame and insecurity. Yet at no time did Elizabeth buy into this mindset, fall into shame, or back down!
Elizabeth kept her boundaries clear about what constituted her business versus the business of Lady Catherine. She finally walked away when her self-respect was at stake. In so doing she demonstrated masterly boundary setting and unflappable cognitive and emotional functioning.
I was so impressed and filled with yearning for that ability, I watched that scene dozens of times! Elizabeth Bennett was such a great role model of a strong woman speaking her mind directly to the person who was confronting her, and she was doing it in the moment. What a commanding example of personal power!
As we can see, nourishing our desire and capacity for personal power can happen through various means. Watching and listening to others who possess this skill (even on the movie screen) can provide valuable role models for us to emulate.
Eleanor Roosevelt offered this reminder: “Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.”
Centering—You and Your Mother’s Bel
ly
“When are you going to stop living according to the feelings in your mother’s belly?”
This was the question my therapist asked me when I was stewing about a decision regarding my family. I didn’t fully comprehend what he was asking, but it felt big.
How do we not live according to the feelings in our mother’s belly (or partner’s or friend’s, or father’s)? How do we not make decisions according to what “sits well” and “doesn’t sit well” within us?
How do we know when the guilt and inner churning is a voice to listen to, and when it is calling us back to an earlier way of being (like when our survival really did depend on the good graces of our mother)?
One way to know is to check in with our center, our inner knowing. We have to stop the churning long enough to be able to connect, see what we want to do, and give ourselves permission to do it.
—Journal Junction & the Decision Grid—
One useful tool for realizing your center is called a “decision grid,” which I learned from one of my mentors, Darla LeDoux (AlignedEntrepreneurs.com). You can find a decision grid readily presented in the workbook or you can draw one out in your journal.
First determine what it is you are trying to decide.
Then draw two perpendicular lines forming an axis x and y. Then draw two intersecting lines inside so there are four quadrants. At the top of the grid, above the left column write “Love” and above the right column write “Fear.” Then label the top row “Yes” and the bottom row “No.”
Now go to the first quadrant and write out (it’s important to actually write these out) the love-based reasons you would say yes to whatever it is you’re trying to decide. Then move to the right column and write down the fear-based reasons you would say yes. Moving to the second row, write down the love-based reasons you would say no, and then the fear-based reasons you would say no.
Your page will look something like this:
What I’m trying to decide:
This decision grid is remarkably powerful in helping us see and understand our motivations. We can better evaluate whether fear or self-care is prompting our decision, and then we can move forward accordingly. Even if the fear-based reasons are the strongest and we decide to go with that decision, we do so with greater awareness. This awareness allows us to make choices with increasing freedom, thus increasing our levels of person power in all seven dimensions, as we move through this overall process of understanding ourselves, our motivations, and our choices.
Consulting a Trusted Friend
Another way to discern what to listen to when we’re uncertain how to interpret our internal reactions is to run it by a trusted friend or mentor. Just like that gas gauge that doesn’t work properly and needs other sources of data to confirm or deny the validity of what it says, we often need to check in with a steady person or people to help us evaluate.
Getting acquainted with our center, the seat of our wisdom and inner knowing, is part of how we become individuals. Staying connected to what we know about ourselves, as Elizabeth did when she was confronted by Lady Catherine is another issue. This requires the skill of grounding, or staying connected to what we know and what is real.
Up Next . . .
In the next chapter, we will explore what grounding is, how to develop this capacity in ourselves, and how to regain our ground when the proverbial rug gets pulled out from under us.
Chapter 6
Grounding—Staying Clear About Who You Are
Be strong then, and enter into your own body; there you have a solid place for your feet.
—Kabir
Maybe we’ve got the centering skill down. When we’re quiet and focused, we can have the experience of settling into ourselves. When we do this, we feel like we’re home. Our heads stop spinning with endless options, and we have a sense of what matters.
Oh, how great it would be to live our lives from this space! But, in the beginning of this journey, most of us don’t actually live in this space. We visit this space, sort of how a college student might touch base with home.
Grounding is the ability to maintain our connection to this home base even while we’re attending to the demands of the day, even while we’re connecting with a significant other. How many of us have had the ability to connect with ourselves, but as soon as we connect with someone we really care about, we’re more with the other person than we are with ourselves? For women, this is a common experience. We’re intuitive, perceptive, and caring. And we can easily lose sight of ourselves.
When I think of grounding, the metaphor of contemporary skyscrapers comes to mind. Not only have engineers changed the construction of these buildings to enable them to withstand the forces of wind and earthquakes, they now insert a tuned mass damper into the core of the building’s interior to absorb seismic shock.
There are videos where you can watch the huge gold ball (the tuned mass damper) move as it absorbs the shock. The sway in the skyscraper becomes imperceptible as the counterforce within the core of the building absorbs the impact of the shifting ground. What a model of centering and grounding!
Another great metaphor for grounding is the root system of stately trees. The deeper or wider a tree’s roots go into the ground, the better able the tree is to withstand the storms, wind, and drought. Recently I visited the redwood forest in northern California and learned something about the root system of the redwoods.
These sequoia sempervirens have shallow root systems, often going down only five or six feet. Yet their roots can extend over one hundred feet from the base, intertwining with and even fusing with the roots of other redwoods. This powerfully increases their stability during strong winds, rain, and even flooding.
When we want to connect to the ground, to maintain or even regain our center, we are simultaneously needing to connect to our inner selves and the reality of how things currently are. We are seeking to reason without distortions, to test reality quickly and accurately, and in so doing exercise personal power in the cognitive and emotional dimensions.
When we’re grounded and connected to our inner wisdom we free up our personal energy and our capacity to take risks. We know we can rely on our inner resilience and thus have little to lose. How do we do this? We dig deep within ourselves, use feedback from trusted others, and challenge ourselves to think clearly about ourselves and our true capabilities. Here’s a story to illustrate this.
When I was leading a workshop a few years ago, I was doing so from a depleted state. I had been working against writing deadlines and was preparing until the moment the workshop began. I was co-leading it with the top person in the field who had been my trainer and mentor. There was a strong pull within me to feel small, ill-equipped, and deficient.
Throughout that workshop, I had to dig deep within myself to access my natural intuitive skills, and I had to remind myself, sometimes moment by moment, of the reality that I was competent, skilled, and able to do this work well. I also checked in with my trusted co-leader to support and confirm my view of reality.
Working with myself in this way was a full-time effort, as much as working with the participants in the workshop! In being so purposeful and determined in my quest to ground myself, I confirmed and augmented my person power in the dimensions of my cognitive and emotional functioning, my boundaries, and my capacity for taking risks. In the words of Sheryl Sandberg, “I learned to undistort the distortion.”
Being able to stay grounded was critical to my success as a leader. Grounding is critical to all of our success as leaders.
I’m going to take you through some exercises, so you can grow this capacity in yourself and stay connected to your inner wisdom and power on a consistent basis.
Getting Thrown Off-Center
All kinds of things can throw us off-center. To fuel your thinking, here are two categories of challenges that come our way. The first are the internal challenges to our inner wisdom. And the second challenge type is external, the challenges that come to us
through our interactions with others.
The Internal
In terms of internal challenges, we’re talking about guilt, shame, anxiety, and insecurity. For example, we might know that it’s time to leave a relationship, but as soon as we reach that awareness, our gut begins to churn and our breathing becomes shallow. Guilt and anxiety begin to flood our system as well as words, such as “You can’t abandon him,” “That’s so selfish I can’t even go there,” or whatever your internal dialogue is.
Or maybe you know it’s time to leave your job. And as you contemplate doing so, you get flooded with fears about your ability to find another job or fears about making your business idea work. So maybe you doubt what you know and stay in the land of confusion, where the personal power dimensions of personal energy and cognitive and emotional functioning sit at a low.
Sometimes this confusion feels more like a brain fog. As soon as we see the truth of something, our brain gets cloudy and unable to process. Or we might feel the burning sense of shame.
Shame, you might recall, is distinguished from guilt by how global it is. Guilt is regret or remorse about something we’ve done: “I’ve done something bad that I regret.” Shame, on the other hand, is regret or remorse about who we are: “I am a bad person” or “I am a worthless human being.” These are real examples of our inner self-talk. Shame is debilitating and can take us on a ride like nothing else.
