Stop Running And Start Moving - Grasshopper

Looking to give emotional pain the runaround? Stop running and start moving.

We’re all looking for another way around the emotional drain of pain. It doesn’t exist. You will find more unicorns.

 

The only way around pain is through it. It’s the shortcut that most of us refuse to use.

 

By running, we pretend the pain is not there. “If I run faster it will never catch up with me” seems to be the mantra. Sorry, that refrain is a myth.

 

It seems we will do anything to avoid the dark night of the soul. That’s sad because that’s the method that shines a light on the pathway through.

 

A dark night can be a place of enlightenment if we make this decision: To feel the pain.

 

Feeling the pain is not repeatedly talking to yourself or anyone else about it. It’s about finding out where the pain in your body exists and sitting with it.

 

All pain registers in our body but we seem to want to use our mind to deal with it. That has the success rate of bringing a rock to an Uzi fight.

 

Sitting with your pain is feeling where it physically registers in your body and staying with the feeling, not escaping by talking about it. You’ll never talk yourself out of pain but you can feel your way through.

 

Where does pain register? Is it in your temples, your throat, your chest, your stomach, your bowels, or somewhere else? Stop and feel where it physically lives in your body and then focus your attention there.

 

By doing so, you are giving your pain the time of day, the recognition it’s looking for before it moves away.

 

The temptation will be to remove your attention from your body and go into your head. That only elongates the time pain will remain.

 

Feeling the pain and moving through starts the process of metabolization. By wanting to talk about it instead, we choose immobilization.

 

I will tell you from experience that this is not a painless process. It takes courage to feel your pain.

 

Take off your sneakers and run towards your pain. You’ll feel the barefoot reality of moving through. What’s on the other side will breathe new life into you, not have you continually out of breath.

 

All the best,

John