I Understand It Now. Now What?

Make it easier next time.

Have the realization that didn’t come easily and grow by allowing yourself a little relief, or stay in the story, and circle back to bang into the same wall.

It’s raining after high temperatures through my first week back in Montana. We walked the dirt road instead of the woods.The rain is making for a more mellow than planned weekend. Rain is like a realization. It must be accepted, not merely seen.

Growing is reaching upwards, ascending your own emotional elevator to patiently create a new baseline. You start by acknowledging your current floor, and stepping in. It takes the strength to relax into what you are feeling, and to appreciate this act of awareness as a starting point.

You’ll start going up if you follow the steps I lay out for you.

The first week back in Montana was all go. It was hot, dry, and everyone was out everywhere. I got up early and hiked. Every day I thought about getting in the river.

The first farmer’s market of the season was Tuesday. I’d never seen a line of cars like that at Lindley Park. People were looking for spots already a few blocks down main. I decided to give it a shot, and we pulled into the park on the East side.

The biggest pines near town create a frame like the cypress trees that lead to an ancient villa in the hills beyond Rome. Between the pines is where the vendors set up in rows at the edges, shaded by the trees.

There was really just one lane for two directions of traffic with all the parked cars. I paused at an opening where vendors unload and people walk in so I could wave an older lady in a minivan past, pulling in my mirrors. She had to back up and give it another go but got through, and we smiled at each other.

Maybe it’s embarrassing but small moments like that with humans bring me almost to tears. The tenor of interaction is often not very nice these days. We are all subject to this near-constant deluge of combativeness and blaming, and we are susceptible to reflecting that inside ourselves.

When we are upset we want validation, so we find it, but then the mistake is that we hold onto the story instead of feeling – so there’s no release.

When you know why something is how it is, it can be a step towards liberation from that very story, or it can be a reason to stay in the loop.

There’s this guy on Instagram who is an incredible basketball shooter. I don’t remember the name of the account but he will set up harder and harder shots with spikes around the rim and things like that so that the trajectory of the ball has to be perfect. Once he figures out the combination of the physics and the physical, in every post, he says, “I understand it now.”

I want the moment when you realize something about yourself to be like that, to make it easier next time.

I understand it now.

During an in-person session with a client this week, we got to a big realization together. She was expressing how she’s been thinking a lot about wanting to take a year off of work to paint – just paint.

I’m going to take you from A to Z quickly here: we were able to unpack that the real issue was a childhood wound that led her to believe she had to wait to be free, and go all or nothing. The associated feeling of frustration led to a state of dissociation that had been prevalent as long as she could remember. The feeling was a frequent visitor in her recent relationship.

The feeling itself is the cause for the delay in allowing her to be satisfied with her life, her painting - anything.

The problem isn’t needing a year to do nothing but paint. She has a great kid and a great life and doesn’t even really want that. She was unconsciously finding something to validate the feeling of frustration, so created this all or nothing painting scenario. For this woman to create different experiences, the feeling has to change or it will continue to operate like a magnet.

She was able to trace the feeling way, way back. Next, we practiced an active meditation that initially allows space for the visceral experience of the emotion before using breath and experiential anchors to ascend to a higher frequency emotional state.

One of the blocks that many people encounter in therapy (I’ve been here) is that you talk about your problems so much it becomes an addiction. You finish therapy and immediately call someone else to tell them about the same problems.

In order to experience the same story differently, you have to be in a different place.You have to ascend within your internal emotional elevator.

It’s hard to be angry at a farmer’s market. I made a beeline for the taco truck and the line moved well. I mispronounced Cochinita Pibil even though I knew how to say it. I just got a little overwhelmed trying to order for everyone.

The tacos came quickly and we walked out of the wide, tree-lined aisle of the market and sat in the grass, watching children run around.

The grass is very green, thick, and soft right now. One boy, probably 11, with a boot brace on his lower leg dressed head-to-toe in Under Armour walked circles around the area, like doing laps. I knew he was a sports kid and out of commission for a while this Summer.

I could see the tension and it reminded me of being there. Kids’ bones heal quickly, but we only know that as grown ups. As adults, we have to be patient, and understand that emotion shows us where we are right now so that we can get reoriented, and begin again. We have to do this many times even in one day.

You step into the elevator of emotion exactly where you are right now, and feel. There’s no other way. Then, if you practice, you ascend. Each floor is a different way of feeling, and all experience is colored by the lens of the floor you have made your baseline.

Here is a simple practice that will lift you up. You’ll feel a shift, and then the big trick is to keep at it every day. It’s the simple practices that pack the punch. Here’s what I want you to do:

Go ahead and sit down with your back in a comfortable position.

Look straight ahead, put your tongue on the roof of your mouth, breath down into your belly, and relax your stomach.

What’s a feeling that’s happening right now and where is it?

No story. A story has words strung together. Feelings are simpler.

Close your eyes.

Stay with the part of your body where you feel it the most for a few moments.

Now - start breathing in for four and out for four, with a four count hold at the end of both inhale and exhale – box breathing.

Ask yourself, what emotion do you want to drive with for the next little while?

Keep up the box breathing and smile just a little. Keep ramping up the feeling, like lifting a weight.

Practice as long as you like, or as long as feels right.

The birds are really doing it outside. The rain has stopped. The clouds look amazing. Everything is so green.