Language can be applied to our experience to support our capacity to be present.
In modern psychology there is a popular idea that one should welcome and embrace our feelings. In my experience, holding an idea that I should welcome and embrace my feelings can feel like an expectation or demand. Instead, I want to be able to give feelings the space to be exactly as they are, whilst they are being held with care and compassion.
We know that Presence does not have preferences. It is fully allowing of life. So, we want to give our feelings the gift of Presence, that is, they can be as they are. I want to be sure I'm not putting myself under any pressure to welcome or embrace my feelings.
Our feelings are often bound up with a story about them, or another person, or life itself. When we are young we don’t have the skill to process feelings fully, we often resort to suppressing them or denying them – as a strategy to survive. These unprocessed feelings get locked away in the body, a form of stuck energy, and if not eventually processed it is likely they will surface as illness or pain later in life.
Our relationship with our body is fundamental to our spiritual/healing journey and our capacity to communicate.
To help us with this, we can use language to support going deeper and to create space needed for transforming our experience. A word that is very helpful for this is 'something'. Sometimes what we feel is not clear to us and it can be helpful to name it as a 'something'. We will always feel something, even if we don’t know what it is, and if we are willing to stay present with the ‘something’ then it can unfold in unexpected and healing ways.
(The above is an excerpt from my forthcoming book 'Relating with Presence')
I will be exploring and sharing further how to bring Presence to your communications in a series of new workshops 'Relating with Presence' in Melbourne and Byron Bay this year. A pre-requisite to attending this workshop is completion of a NVC Foundation Training and I will be offering the 'Relating to Connect' NVC Foundation Training prior in both Melbourne and Byron Bay. Details of all workshops can be found here.