Four ways to balance yourselves
 
Emotional: Speak what is absolutely true from your heart to someone in the moment
 
We have two voices we can use when we want to answer the question how are we doing? One is what Fritz Perls called the phoney voice, that is careful to not hurt or inconvenience another person. When we hear ourselves using that voice we know it is not the truth we are speaking. It comes from the self-image we created in order to be admired and loved, not to be criticized. It is the voice of our beautiful, strong, proud, successful self.
 
Even when we were children we knew there was another voice. That voice whispered the truth: I don’t understand, I’m afraid I’m not loveable, I didn’t like what you did to me, I can’t do that – I’m not strong enough… The voice that speaks the truth has not been used since we were very small, and so it comes out very small. It sounds like the child we were, and so it is not heard with the power of truth behind it.
 
The fastest way to come back to balance from depression, confusion, loss of faith, loss of confidence, is to speak to someone of our weakness in a voice of strength. This is called letting our heart speak. So many people I know don’t want to hear the voice of their own heart. Often I suggest to put your hand over the area of the heart, where there is so much defending, and give support and acknowledgment to it. In Gestalt we often let the heart speak and hear what it has to say. It always will speak the truth, but then we reply from our thinking mind and, like an untutored parent to a child say things like: There’s nothing I can do, or I tried and I can’t. Instead why not ask the heart what it is it needs. Sometimes it just needs to be listened to. Sometimes it speaks about changing your busy life to find time to grieve. In Shamanism it is said when the heart leads, the brain follows. What is the complexity of our brain to be used for if not to solve the problem of how to satisfy the hungry heart? And what is another human being for if not to respond from their heart to yours?
 
Mental: Consider another point of view
 
When we get stuck it is because we think there are only two options. Often we think we either bend or leave, yield or fight. When people I know are routinely stuck in “two options” this is what I say to them as a challenge: find the third option. There are actually infinite options to any situation, but if we can find a third option, we are free.
 
I have heard it said if I have only one possibility, I am confused; if I have two possibilities, I am enslaved; and if I have three possibilities, I am free. This works when you have a nightmare – my favorite game to play with children who wake up from a bad dream is to ask them to “finish the dream” where it left off. They close their eyes and see the green monster about to devour them (which is when they woke up), and suddenly they have a laser sword and cut it open and out of it come other kids they just rescued and so on and so on. Imagination is the gift of childhood we most forget when we are older. A teacher of mine used to break the word down to “I the magi” or Imagine a nation!
 
Imagination is not the same as projecting our fear of what happened in the past onto the future. It is not the same as buying a lottery ticket or expecting your partner to change. It is not daydreaming instead of engaging with life. It is available spontaneously in every moment that transforms a walk down Queen Street into an adventure, or puts on a red nose in the middle of a fight and turns it into hilarity. Jungian therapy once aided people to develop faith in the ongoing pictures that continually run in the background of our thinking minds, showing us our unicorns, canoes, and flying machines. It is why we love animals so much – their otherness sparks our spontaneity. Imagination is a glance away.
 
Physical: Touch your body with care and intimacy
 
Find one body part, only one, that seems to be reaching out for your attention.
 
What do these things have in common: rumination, depression, anxiety, panic, doubt, and worry? When we are immersed in them, it is as if we don’t have a body. We are an “army of one” battling in total isolation in a realm of thoughts, without awareness of our breathing (which is always stuck or high), of our tensing (which is always holding or stilling, in our arms, hands, legs, feet, torso, neck, shoulders…), our energy for movement (the trapped desire to pace, or run, or squeeze something, or stretch out our arms) and our connection with the world around us (the availability of support from our feet touching ground, the wind in our hair, the cushion under our butt ) — the whole of life reaching out to us as we sit distracted by our own inner world.
 
For many people, body awareness has been compromised through survival techniques such as numbing our own skin, withdrawing energy from our limbs, holding tension so steadily that it is as if we are in a vise… But the amazing thing about our bodies is they never leave us. It only takes a moment of recognition of our breath or even a finger or toe to recall us back to our embodied selves. Most of the time we only remember our bodies when we are in actual physical pain and by then it is very late. We seem to train our bodies to know that only when they scream will we attend. Then we speak about self care and put ourselves on programs.
 
What I am suggesting is much simpler. Next time you are stuck in obsessive thoughts or images, feeling down or over-stimulated, try to find one body part, only one, that seems to be reaching out for your attention. Feel it at the same time as your thoughts try to distract you from it. When you feel even one part of your body you are feeling the world, because there is no separation between you and the world. Shamans say that only humans let you down but earth and wind and sky have never and will never do so.
 
Sexual: The quickest way to return to life is to connect with the feeling of sexuality
 
Too often we associate the feeling of sexuality with the act of having sex. Purchase sexy underwear if you don’t have it and wear it under your clothes – don’t tell anyone. Include the feeling of your genitals privately along with all of your other feelings and thoughts. No one need know. Swivel your hips slightly. Dance with yourself, engage in sensual pleasure – eat a strawberry, smell a flower, touch silk, ring a bell by your ear, enjoy a strand of your hair, consensually explore another’s skin without any end gain. Sexual feeling is imbued deep in the profile of our planet – it is alive with sexual encounters from the kiss of the sun on the surface of the ocean, to the splash of rain, the touch of insects on flowers, the excitement of animals and birds when they see one another approaching. To open oneself to the feeling of sex is like plugging into the energy of the planet and life itself. Even for a moment it will shift you back to livingness.
 
Any of these four things can shift you in the midst of the challenges of family, of weather, of work and the pain of loss. I often have this image of how it is when we are stuck: It is as if I am hanging onto a ledge, my fingernails digging into crumbling stones and terrified that if I loosen my hold I will fall. The ground is actually just inches below my feet and people are saying to me: Just let go, you won’t fall. But I do not believe them. Does this image work for you? I invite you at such moments to choose one of the four approaches, and see if there is a shift.
 
There is a fifth way which is not everybody’s way and that is Spiritual. For people who include spiritual in their aspects of self the fastest way to return to balance is prayer. One does not have to believe in Gods to pray. The healing power of prayer is to hear one’s voice raised in humility to something that is greater than oneself, saying the words: Help me, I am unable to do this now. Be with me, I am lost. We have never said these words to another, and yet in the immensity of the universe we are speaking the truth when we acknowledge that we came into this world without a clue, and rely on the mystery that brought us here to be open to us. Prayer is something I learned to do when I felt angry or vengeful or judgmental at others – I would say Great powers, I pray that they gain awareness of what they do, and I pray that for me as well.
 
-Jay Tropianskaia, Director of Training
Copyright November 2017