Making sense of it all. ......

How to get still and start feeling what you’re feeling. A Still Point Curiosity & Contentment self enquiry

Welcome to our next Curiosity & Contentment post for members of the Still Point meditation & mentoring community inside Inner Source.

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If you came to our first meditation circle last week you will have hopefully been through a process of starting to pay more attention to what’s going on in your body. If you missed it, the replay link can be found here. 

In the coming days I will be posting an essay around the idea of something called Polyvagal Theory which talks about our own autonomic nervous system and what it’s telling us if we pay attention to it. 

This exercise is all about starting to put some language around our own internal landscape. I thought it might be helpful to tackle this before we get too stuck into the physiology and start thinking about the concepts rather than feeling what we feel.

Give yourself permission to feel

A lot of people think they are ‘no good’ at visualising, feeling or putting words to what is going on in their body so let’s try a little visualisation experiment. 

I want you to imagine yourself on what you remember as one of the very best days. One of those days when you were completely in the moment, activity or experience. I don’t mean a perfect day heavy with expectation, but one where it always feels like it was the best of times when you reflect back or recount it.

I’ll give you an example - one of my best friend’s weddings - about 6 weeks after my partner and I got married all the way back in 1999. We hadn’t known each other that long (I think it was about 18 months)  but when we met we instantly hit it off. (There is actually a funny story here about how we met in the bathroom on the first evening lecture of an MBA course at our local university. We were both still in corporate jobs which we then both left within a year of getting married to pursue very different avenues - for another time.) Anyway, we soon discovered we were both planning a wedding and had lots of hobbies in common and the four of us subsequently spent a lot of time together. 

My wedding was a wonderful day - and despite some things not going quite to plan I can honestly say I was very much in the moment and not letting any of the minor family dramas bother me. 

However, after all the excitement of ‘the day’ and a gorgeous honeymoon in Mallorca, life was back to earth with a bump except for this wedding on the horizon. The wedding was at the Langdale Chase hotel on the shore of Windermere in the Lake District and the weather gods were smiling on us. Blue skies and majestic views framed the drinks reception in the gardens and all the beautiful photographs. It was our first outing as a married couple and now that our wedding had passed I could enjoy and appreciate every moment and detail of this one. Free flowing champagne, a wonderful couple of hours on a boat trip while a musical duo entertained us with cheesy music then back to the wood panelled reception room to chat before rounding up the evening  with a surprise firework display (well a surprise to the groom). It was quite honestly one of my most memorable days.

I feel a warm glow rising in my belly writing about it, and a smile curling on my lips. The joy and happiness reaches me through a quarter of a century to wrap its arms around me and hold me firmly but lightly. It feels safe, my heart is steady and ripples move from my heart centre to the edges of my body as  the warm glow spreads beyond myself and into the space around me. Wide open, joyous and vulnerable in our friendship.

 I have a photograph on my bookshelf in front of me of the happy couple and I remember that shot being taken almost as if it was yesterday. It reminds me of the celebrations and how we all had our whole lives ahead of us. We have all been through harder days since - loss and grief, ill health and pain. Reminiscing about their special day never ceases to renew that feeling of hope and love and how no matter what we have been there for each other 

This is my state of balance and joy. Warmth, expansive, vulnerable. This is what I feel like when all is well with the world. 

Question for today