Bringing in a new perspective can help unlock you from physical, emotional, or professional stagnation. Here’s how to bring in a little curiosity to help you achieve great things.
Curiosity is key.
If you are unsatisfied with some aspect of your life – a relationship, your job, your chronic low back pain – the crucial first step is to be curious about it. “Why is this happening?” Pay attention to it like a detective would. In order to change something, you must first understand what it is you are actually doing. Inherent in this, of course, is taking responsibility.
Shine a light on your shadows
How do you take a fresh perspective? You have to be willing to see something you haven’t seen before. This often means being willing to uncover something that might be hard to see or that you don’t like. If you only look in the light, at what you have grown accustomed to seeing, you will only get part of the story. You have to look in the shadows, too. Your flashlight is an alert curiosity. Leave the judgment out.
Your curiosity will be your fuel. You will need reserves of fuel.
If you really want to change habits, you will first have to be willing to see any resistance you have to observing them – in your body and mind. You will have to be willing to see your attachment to what is familiar, to what you know. This is life’s work. Then, and this is the step we tend to skip, you must accept it. I didn’t say you had to like what you find. But you must accept it. “Yes. This is actually what I’m doing.”
It’s not about fixing
When I work with my clients through the 11-series of Soma Bodywork, I tell them that I am not here to fix them. Fixing implies that we will take them back to some familiar place. But that way of being got them to where they are right now – tight and in pain.
My job is to take them forward to a different, more satisfying and authentic way of moving through the world. I encourage them to be curious and feel into their bodies. Then, together we proceed down the path toward healing. This involves some vulnerability, some not knowing exactly what is around the next bend. Let it feel odd. See where it takes you
Getting comfortable with discomfort
It might be uncomfortable at times but that’s a part of growth, right? You say you want something in your life to change, well, then you have to be willing to change the way you do life.
When a client is suffering from chronic low back pain, for instance, we talk about how they sit, stand, walk, feel stress in their body. Through manipulation of their tissue and movement re-education over the course of the 11-session series of SOMA Bodywork, we work to see, feel, and unglue the chronic holding patterns that have developed simply from being alive.
Usually, these tension patterns have habituated – the client is no longer feeling them. This is especially true of pain that is chronic. So the first step is to feel that part of the body again. This begins with me manipulating it and continues as they begin to move with more freedom. Welcome back to your hip. Feel into it. Take it for a walk.
Maintaining awareness
Ask yourself, “What am I doing every day that has led me to where I am now?” Underlying chronic pain is some movement or tension pattern that is pulling your body off center. If you just keep going through your days the way you always do and expect your low back pain to somehow magically go away, it won’t happen. Even if you are getting help from practitioners and going to pilates, yoga, or other activities that nourish your health, if you do not pay attention to how you are moving, you can injure yourself or perpetuate a chronic issue.
SOMA Bodywork will help you more fully inhabit your body. We will unglue stuck places that have led to pain. We will give you tools to help you stay awake in your body. We will get you on the road to healing and support you along the way. You will feel like you haven’t felt in a long time.
Like with many things in life, the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. Be curious. Be willing to do the work. There is nothing like this house we live in. Take care of it.
