“Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don’t want.”
Esther Hicks
(and Abraham and Jerry)
Worry sits in the body like a dark cloud. I can often feel it nestling in the old familiar places, making itself comfy, settling in for a stay. Little hooks grasping the cells, tangling the fascia, drying the membranes. Sticky, sour.
You know – the body eavesdrops on the mind, picks up its signals, amplifies them, swallows them whole.
Worry can easily tip into anxiety, even panic. The body drinks it in, deep into the resevoir of each cell.
What to do?
Here is one way to invite a shift. Let the eyes meander – just let them move where they want to move, not just slipping over the surfaces, but lingering, and letting what they see come to them. Let them settle on something that feels inviting, even beautiful. Stay there and soak that in. Breathe easily as you hang out with whatever has drawn your attention. In, out, in, out. Feel the breath moving through the whole body – effortless, smoothe.
Here is a story I tell in my book, Our Horses, Ourselves: Discovering the Common Body.
“Emily Jones, head of The Putney School, was speaking about the end of the year, and what comes next, offering strategies for weathering the change. ‘Here is what I want you to do,” she said. “See something beautiful every day and let it make you happy.’
In an age of digital preoccupation, Jones was suggesting something different: that we learn to experience the earth and our bodies as primary sources.She wanted us to be moved and changed by what we see, hear, touch, smell, taste. She wanted us to break into blossom.
When we transform our own bodies through movement or imagination, when we blend our own sensuous physiology with the earth or our horses, we become a feeling, expressive landscape among other feeling, expressive landscapes. This merging and blending is the path to a deep peace and pleasure, where we abandon our separateness and become connected; woven into the fabric of our world. And in that shared terrain we can more easily feel and find each other…and ourselves.”
My book has about 65 different strategies for shifting body and mind toward what we want. Some of them are about horses and how they can help us. All of them are for anyone with a body.
You can buy the book HERE.