The theme of my previous travel to Sri Lanka was to listen to my intuition. It was not always easy and I was often getting distracted by circumstances, feelings, (perceived) obligations, habits, interruptions, requests, offers and other items asking for attention
I feel that the next step to improve my concentration and hear better that inner voice is to make some space. With this I also hope to create space for the new things in my life : new habits, thoughts, things I really love. So some sort of spring cleaning.
I already feel that I’ve been progressively letting go some things such as obsessive attempt to control everything around me, giving more space for spontaneous discoveries and plans. Also, during my trip to Sri Lanka, a few days in Zurich and now in Spain, I’ve received a lot of love and kindness from people around me. I’m still learning how to accept it without uncomfortable feeling of obligation – that is work in progress to make more space for love and kindness in my life
On my brainstorming list, how I can make more space in my life I currently have: meditation – to empty up my head from the constant chatter of my thoughts; concentration – to stay focused, that also includes less multi-tasking and more mindfulness every day; release of emotions bottled up in my body (more about it below), getting rid of things I don’t need as they take a part of my attention; continuing with the media detox (including social media) and screen time reduction; taking care of my body to prevent and reduce invasive pains and aches, for example, shoulder tension; working on the addictions, sweets being the biggest, but also the habit of celebrating with alcohol or reaching to it as a default drink for a more special meal. The list will probably get longer as I will go through this journey
Releasing bottled up emotions
In yoga it is said that emotions are stored in the hips and some hip opening exercises can help to release them
That sounded too esoteric to me until a girl next to me, Kelsey, was sobbing during the yoga class. After the class she told me that she suddenly felt a wave of emotions during certain hip-opening exercises
I absolutely couldn’t relate to that, even more so because I couldn’t imagine myself crying in public… And yeah, my hips are very stiff!
That was until another class with Selina, a wonderful yoga teacher from whom I have learned a lot in just three days of my Ayurvedic retreat sampling. During that class we did a couple of anger release exercises. One of them was energetic shooting of imaginary arrows from a virtual bow, with a loud shout. First couple of rounds were a bit awkward and we as a class were discovering ourselves in this somehow unusual situation, but after a moment the shouts were loud and full of the emotion that was getting released. I have really felt that some of the anger bottled up in me was gone – I felt lighter, having more space in my chest and more clear mind
I wanted more of this feeling! I browsed for more exercises and the first thing which came up was advice to breath deep and focus on something else, for example counting, going for a calming walk, etc. Maybe those techniques could help not to explode in the moment and not to harm people around, but they are definitely not helping to release anger. On the contrary, in my view they push away that feeling, implicitly communicate that feeling anger is wrong, negating it and hiding it
One of the coaching exercises encountered was advising to focus on a feeling, not judging it, just observing: how it feels, in which part of the body does it manifest, how long does it last, and then trying to understand why is it there, what message does it want to deliver. If message gets delivered, then its job will be done and it will go away
My other ideas, how feelings could be released, are: spontaneous dancing and other spontaneous arts, as well as intuitive yoga. Well, probably any sport can work. For anger specifically finding a spot to scream or if not available, silent scream or scream into the pillow might be some other ideas
I thought about spontaneous dancing because a few months ago, when the decision to quit my job had finally matured in my head, suddenly I was dancing – just like that, alone at home. It very liberating. Similar would be jumping out of joy
Intuitive yoga class, that I have tried in Zurich at Jenseits, was a recent discovery: we were doing what we felt like, with only some ideas or suggestions for a direction or starting point. I felt my body had a lot to say
I’ve also tried painting but there I had a blockage of needing to achieve an esthetically pleasant output. This prevented creativity from flowing freely. Writing this blog is my new experiment
These are my current thoughts. Please comment if you know or have tried out another way – let’s share!
Fairy Travels 