Being Inside Yourself

Being inside yourself means your spirit is centered in your body.  Life can pull at us and we can lose that centeredness easily.  Our spirits, or our "essence," can actually move outside of us.  It may sound strange, but you have probably experienced it before.  When you are really upset about something or frazzled, you can sometimes feel like you are in front of yourself, or right on the surface, and can be highly reactive to things going on around you.  You may snap at people for the littlest things or have trouble calming yourself down.  Has this ever happened to you? 

When you are centered, the same things can happen around you and you are not affected, not reactive.  You are just a witness to what's going on.  You can consciously choose to engage or not.  You are able to sit back and decide if it's worth the effort. 

When we are really focused on the future instead of the present, or if we are really anxious about things, we can also find ourselves "out front."  This is an unsettling place to be.  You can actually feel "top-heavy," like a helium balloon attached to something by a string, ready to blow away.  The same thing happens in the body, it's like we are not attached to the ground.  We feel ungrounded.

To feel grounded, settled, and peaceful, we need to be inside and centered.  Here we feel at home; we feel "right."

Today's Action

When in a high-pressured situation, walk away, close your eyes, and take deep breaths until you feel inside yourself.  This will at least give you a moment to focus enough to make a conscious choice to engage or not. 

When you have more time, sit comfortably in a chair or on the ground and close your eyes.  Take deep, relaxing breaths imagining you are settling into your chest, deep down into your heart.  You can place your hands on your ribs in front.  Starting at your collar bone, gently press 2 fingers in between your ribs where they attach to the sternum (the center breast bone), holding 3-5 seconds, then move down between the next ribs.  Follow the sternum down, breathing comfortably and settling inside.  You can return to the top and repeat the process until you feel centered.

Sometimes we don't even realize we are not centered.  If done often enough, we can live centered more of the time and easily return to center when off.  This can also help with falling asleep at night and can be done on children to help them fall asleep.  (And that's a wonderful thing to a parent).  Enjoy!