De-Stress.pdf Mar-Apr 2014 | Page 17

Now within this bubble, you can put whatever scene in nature makes you feel happy or relaxed. Let’s populate the bubble with that image. Notice the colours… the shapes… are there any sounds in this environment… Now try walking a bit, in your mind’s eye… and notice that the bubble moves with you. You can always reach out of it, to move towards what you like, but nothing can come inside without your permission. While you are in this bubble, bring your awareness to how you are feeling, and what you are sensing in your body. Take a few minutes, or seconds, to bring this to a close. When you are ready, gently open your eyes. Often we feel our boundary has been violated and we feel threatened, we feel angry. When we do this exercise, we re-establish the sense of ourselves, that actually our boundary is intact. And often when you do this, it is not always that you feel good or relaxed, but whatever is true comes up. If you are sad, sadness will emerge, and if you can stay with it, it will move. Emotional states don’t move, because we resist the true emotional state. We use anger instead of tears or tears when we get angry. We do this exercise to remember that we have a boundary and putting our energy into it. And that has a pretty good impact on the nervous system; it re-establishes your sense of self. Something to consider The word Stress is not actually an emotional word, it is a physical word. But we say it – I am feeling stressed – it is an answer we give to a lot of things. It is not even a physical response, it is actually from the world of Physics and Engineering: ‘a pressure, pull or 17