Living without constriction

Every time we live in 'constriction' we die a little bit.

Relationships can be our biggest joy and yet they can also be the single biggest drain of our life force.

We are married to ourselves in the first place.

All other relationships flow on from the way we relate to ourselves and in this fb live I share an exercise that helps you love yourself a bit easier so you are able to connect easier and feel truly loved and valued.

Here are some symptoms of 'constriction' or stuckness....

How many times have you felt alone and you don’t want to be alone?

Or you feel the urge to do something but you don’t know where to start?

Or you feel a tightness in your chest, like a vice and no amount of gym or yoga can relax it?

Or even worse, you are with somebody who you used to have a real connection to, and now the love is gone?

You feel a distance?

You are cautious instead of trusting...

There is a stuckness in the relationships

You long for connection and you don’t feel anything. nothing that you have achieved means anything anymore. The easy flow of love… where is it gone?

Elton John said today that 29 years ago he was a broken man.

None of his achievements, his incredible success, his private jet, his houses and wealth meant anything to him anymore. He was empty.

Alcohol, cocaine, and drugs were his best friends. They filled the void, till they didn't anymore.

Finally, he joined AA and now he has been sober for 27 years.

I love AA's motto: “To thine own self be true.”

He had to learn to love himself, that was the end of the story.

Or the beginning you could say.

This is what he said: "I survived a lot of things. Life is full of pitfalls, even when you are sober.

I can deal with them now because I don’t run and hide.

I learned to communicate."

I am here to tell you that Elton John didn't need drugs and alcohol as friends, our best friends are the trillions of cells in our body.

To create a miracle turn around in any area of your life, we need the support of all the cells of your body, those trillions of friends that are standing by us.. to help us now..

We don’t know love, or any other feeling, till we feel it in our bodies.

So just for fun, focus your awareness on a place in your body where you feel stuckness and stay present for 10 seconds or so in a non-judgemental way.

Breath into the new space that has opened up and ask yourself:

I wonder what I am feeling.

I wonder….Instead of thinking I know…

What I have seen in my own life and working with 1000’s of clients that the biggest barrier to love is defensiveness.

Defending ourselves.

Defending our territory.

Defending our belief systems.

Defensiveness comes from pretending.

The minute we stop pretending, the healing can begin.

Where does all this defensiveness come from?

We learned to pretend as a child in order to survive.

It was a form of protection, pretending to be different from who we really are.

After a while, we forgot we were pretending, and it felt real.

We think the pretence is who we really are.

Then, when somebody tells us we are being defensive, we get more defensive.

More barriers.

We are not defensive because we love being defensive but because we are scared.

We are in the dark about what goes on inside ourselves.

The universe comes along and triggers us with a situation or a crisis, which is is an invitation to dive into ourselves, to explore ourselves deeper, and instead, we get scared (but we pretend not to) and defensive.

Defensiveness is an act of hiding.

We are too scared of what we will find inside ourselves.

We hide from ourselves and we hide from other people.

We are afraid of what others might think if they really knew what went on on the inside.

Defending is like the death knell in any relationship.

It stops us from learning what we need to learn.

We have all sorts of mechanisms to justify our defensiveness.

We overeat. Over worry. Drink, do drugs create arguments, busyness, distract ourselves, etc.

Mine is studying. What is yours?

Another favourite one of mine as a child was getting sick. Illness kept me safe.

Denial or getting sick to avoid attention into the real self.

Defensiveness constricts intimacy, which you can translate as "into me see"

It takes courage and courage is a choice that can make from moment to moment, in our commitment to stop hiding and start loving ourselves!

As a challenge for the next 7 days, notice when a defensive barrier comes up for you.

Simply think or say out loud: I love myself for feeling defensive.

Keep going with: I love myself for feeling scared... and so on... chase it all the way down the rabbit hole... till you feel a sense of ease and calm in your body.

Now your cells are on your side and you have created lasting change on your path to happiness and fulfilment and a meaningful life.

Much love as always. Grada