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Getting Relaxed

by Jim Dreaver

In over twenty years of doing transformational work, I have found that the single most powerful technique for releasing stress and tension in the body and coming to true inner clarity is learning to make your body, senses, and mind objects of observation.

In moments of quiet meditation or contemplation, practice looking at your body, its sensations and feelings, as well as the thoughts and images passing through your mind, as you would look at any other object -- a tree, a cloud, a car.

It's a process of learning to become a dispassionate observer of your body, mind, and senses. Doing this helps free you from identification with them. Instead of being caught up in your body and mind, and looking out at the world from a place of relative conflict and contraction, pull your awareness back a little, to a place slightly behind and above your head. From there, begin to experience yourself as the space in which your body appears, in which breathing happens, in which sensations, feelings, and thoughts arise. I call this way of observing, or experiencing your own body, mind, and senses, "expanding awareness".

Health, then, is your natural state, and your body's energies are always seeking their own organic harmony, or wholeness. When you are able to detach yourself from the areas of stress, tension, and pain in your body and just be aware of them without the interference of your analytical mind, they have room to unwind and release. This is not to deny or ignore pain; it is to be present with it in a relaxed, open, non judging way.

From this neutral place you can feel the length and breadth of your body within your awareness, your consciousness. You can observe the rising and falling of your breath. You can notice the space around your body. You can watch the movement of your arms, your legs, your head, your trunk within your visual and sensory field.

The more real this quality of awareness becomes for you, the more you find yourself in the expanded state of consciousness -- the sense of ease, of flow, of well-being -- that is your true nature. You feel very grounded in and connected to your body. All your senses are alert. You feel awake, clear, extraordinarily present. And behind it all is this tremendous feeling of spaciousness, of freedom.

Gradually, you begin to realize that you don't live in your body, as you had always believed, but your body lives in you. This is when you start to really "get" the core insight. It dawns on you that your true nature is pure consciousness, awareness, manifesting in this unique constellation of energy and matter that is your body/mind/self.

To see this is extremely liberating. It frees you from inner conflict and fear, including the fear of failure and even the fear of death, which means you can walk in the world with a much greater feeling of confidence.

Developing a Relationship with your Body

Your body is the vehicle for your spirit, the being you really are. Who you are is reflected in your body, in your muscles and joints, the way you breathe, sit, move.

To extend the vehicle analogy, imagine that you are taking a long trip in your car, but your car is a poorly serviced, unreliable clunker that is always breaking down. The trip wouldn't be much fun, would it? It's hard to enjoy the journey when you're constantly worried that your vehicle might not make it. That's why it's important to put energy into taking care of your body -- so you can feel good moving around in it.

When you don't feel good in your body -- when you are tired, out-of-sorts, when your energy is contracted or stuck -- it affects your attitude and makes you think all kinds of negative thoughts. On the other hand, when you have a sensitive and healthy relationship with your body, your attitude always improves.

You know what you need to do. You need to eat right, exercise, and learn how to relax. The good news is that improving your physical well-being doesn't require a major change in your habits and actions. It's really more about a change in consciousness -- the shifting of attention, or awareness, described above.

In learning to let go of the tension, worry, and stress inside you, you'll start to feel a whole lot better physically, and you'll have more energy. It is psychological and emotional stress that's the real killer -- much more so than eating the occasional fatty meal or not exercising for a week or two.

You'll also be much less worried about or afraid of what is happening in your body. People fear unusual sensations or sudden changes in their bodily experience because they don't have a relationship with their bodies. I remember saying to a client once, "Bill, if you had a relationship with your wife like you have with your body, you'd be heading toward a divorce by now." Don't get so divorced from your body that a doctor or therapist has to say that to you!

The best way to help your body do its job of keeping itself in balance is to develop a good relationship with it. That means to stop ignoring it, stop judging it, and start treating it with kindness, affection, and love just as you would a person you really cared about.

Becoming Intimate with Yourself

Trust in any relationship needs a certain level of intimacy. Trust itself leads to deeper intimacy. To become intimate with yourself, begin with your body. Start paying attention to the sensations and feelings in your body, to the movement of energy.

There's a saying in healing and bodywork circles: energy flows where attention goes. To generate new energy in some area of your life, just give that area more attention. If you want to liven up your marriage or relationship, give it more attention. If you want your work to be more successful, give that more attention. If you've planted a garden and want it to flourish, water it, weed it, and care for it with love -- then watch it grow. It's so simple!

To bring new energy into some part of your body, just expand your awareness of that area. To release shoulder tension, for example, bring your awareness into your shoulders and then consciously tighten them by hunching them all the way up around your ears. Breathe in as you do this. Then slowly release your shoulders, breathing out as you do so. Repeat this process several more times, loosely bounce your shoulders up and down, and notice how much more energy you feel in them.

This technique works because by intensifying the problem -- the contraction -- you're bringing it more into awareness, and that gives you more control over the muscles. It's a law of the body: heightened sensory awareness automatically brings about greater motor control.

You can apply this principle to any tight muscle in your body. Just fully, consciously contract the selected muscle, and then slowly release it. Notice the gradual flood of new sensation and feeling.

Continued on the next page:
* Relax and Let Go;
* Ease & Bliss.

This article was excerpted from the book The Way of Harmony: Walking the Inner Path to Balance, Happiness and Success, © 1999 by  Dr. Jim Dreaver. Reprinted with permission of the author. Published by: Avon Books, New York, NY 10019.

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About The Author

JIM DREAVER is also the author of "The Ultimate Cure: The Healing Energy Within You", and "Somatic Technique: A Simplified Method of Releasing Chronically Tight Muscles and Enhancing Mind/Body Awareness". For information about his work and speaking schedule, please write to 450 Pitt Avenue, Sebastopol, CA 95472, or visit his website at www.jimdreaver.com