Layer Two, Week Two – Sunday
- Morning – Read Affirmations or watch Affirmations video
- Midday – Watch Video and Read Instructions Square Breath, Level Three
- Midday – Watch Video and Read Instructions Sensation Awareness, Level Three
- Evening – Read Week Four Concepts
- Evening – Practice Square Breath, Level Three or Sensation Awareness, Level Three
Last week we talked about distraction and the feelings you have just before your subconscious mind serves up some tasty morsel to chew on. This week, let’s explore the feelings of your energy in more depth. As you read this, what observations can you make about your energy? Are you feeling tired, tense, frustrated, confused, excited, expectant, hopeful, or any of the other emotional or feelings words you know? Find a label(s) that fits and then see if you can feel some of the components of that feeling. If you are sad, mad, or glad, what sensations are you associating with the label? What do each of your labels feel like?
As a member of The Change Militia, you will build curiosity, tenacity, and the ability to tolerate healthy discomfort. As you begin to master these concepts and movements, you will be increasingly powerful, relaxed, and confident. Stress, judgment, and resistance will fall away and your successes will begin to feel effortless. You will get healthier, have increased energy, and sleep better. Your interactions with others will be fuller, deeper, and more transparent. Your relationships will be more intimate, playful, and fulfilling.
To grow, to progress, to achieve effortlessness; you must let go of what is holding you back. The universe is in a state of constant expansion, perpetual movement, and unending cataclysmic change. You are a part of the universe, a part of everything it does, a part of the magic of constant expansion … unless you put sufficient energy into resisting that expansion, movement, and change.
Take a minute or two, sit quietly, relax your eyelids, and contemplate your place in the universe. Picture yourself from 10,000 miles above the earth, see yourself sitting as the Earth spins at 1000 mph. Zoom out even farther and watch the Earth orbit the Sun at over 60,000 mph. Every second you sit; the Earth is moving 18.5 miles. And that is just the beginning. Our solar system moves around the Milky Way galaxy which moves around the Local Group of Galaxies. Stillness is an illusion; in reality, you are moving a couple of hundred thousand miles an hour as you sit.
Layer Two, Week Two – Monday
- Morning – Read Monday Concepts
- Morning – Practice Square Breathing, Level Three
- Evening – Practice Sensory Awareness, Level Three
Yesterday, you were tasked with feeling something in a new way and then asked to decipher the components of that feeling. Today, let’s concentrate on what your throat feels like during the day. As you are reading this, what sensations can you become aware of in the front of your throat? Does it feel tight, scratchy, hot, cold, or numb? Close your eyes and spend a minute feeling. Feel your throat when it feels you are being ignored, want to say something, or are trying to keep from saying something. It will feel different in different situations, see if you can distinguish the changing qualities. Feel for the frog, and the lump.
Compensation is the wicked bedfellow to resistance. Compensation is the negotiation and accommodation our subconscious mind makes when it feels threatened. It finds the easy way; unfortunately, it is not usually the most beneficial way. Physical compensations are how we settle on the easiest way instead of the best way. Poor posture is a great example of physical compensation.
Every movement, action, and decision has some form of resistance and compensation. When you can highlight them, you give yourself the opportunity to begin to alter, mitigate or change them.
Begin to question, be curious and explore your movements, actions, and decisions. Look for the compensations and resistances you use and when you find them, challenge yourself to be a little more engaged, involved, and connected. Be persistent. Your subconscious mind is going to fight you; it wants you to be average. It strives to constantly moderate your decisions toward mediocrity.
You can kick its ass or be half-ass, the choice is yours.
Layer Two, Week Two – Tuesday
- Morning – Read Tuesday Concepts
- Morning – Practice Square Breathing, Level Three
- Evening – Practice Sensory Awareness, Level Three
Any luck feeling the qualities of your throat change yesterday? As the electro-magnetic energy moves through your body it will collect wherever there is impedance. That lump in your throat when your emotions are upwelling is an example. Today, feel for similar qualities around your upper chest. What does love feel like in you upper body? Affection? Jealousy? Admiration? Connection? Intimacy? You are feeling for energy collecting, compressing, or pressurizing. You might also feel a lack of energy or the feeling of a vacuum as more energy is leaving than is entering.
I’ve put together a list of energy configurations as the gross indicators of your degree of receptivity and your levels of opposition and resistance. Your current and habitual moods (resistance configurations) will fall into one or more of these categories:
- Stagnant – Low, weak, and unmoving, stuck, lethargic, depressed;
- Compressive – Pent up, tense, strained, holding back, capitulated, constipated;
- Expansive – Growing, glowing, ecstatic, generous, blissful, elated;
- Transitive – Shifting, changing, unstable, mutable;
- Isometric – Pushing and pulling, conflicted, tense, passive aggressive, actively nonmoving;
- Isotonic – Unbalanced isometric, concentric, eccentric, leaning, tense, resistant but moving;
- Fluid – Effortless, flowing without resistance, carefree, fearless, relaxed, confident;
- Fluctuating – Unresolved, variable, searching for balance;
- Percolating – Compressed but beginning to move;
- Explosive – Instant decompression, hyper-reactive;
- Scattered – Unfocused, multi-directional;
- Bleeding – Leaking, dissipating, deflating;
- Accumulating – Drawing in, actively ingesting with limited expansion. Pressurizing.
Read this list over a few times and every time you do a Current30, evaluate yourself and see which configuration(s) feels the most accurate.
Layer Two, Week Two – Wednesday
- Morning – Read Wednesday Concepts
- Morning – Practice Square Breathing, Level Three
- Evening – Practice Sensory Awareness, Level Three
Today is solar plexus day. Feel for the energy in and around your diaphragm and solar plexus (a nerve junction just below your sternum). Butterflies in your stomach, trouble breathing, nausea, and stomach cramping are all examples. Have you ever glanced into your rear-view mirror and seen the flashing lights of a police car? That feeling.
Each of your bodies: physical, mental, emotional, and energetic might hold a different resistance configuration. You will have specific resistance configurations for your emotional body, mental body, and energy body. Your physical body parts will have different configurations based upon usage, patterns, injury, and the amount of tension you are holding.
See if you can discern your general and specific transitions during the day. Transitive will exist every time you transition from one configuration to another. Fluid is the target. Feel for it, bask in it, and make it your default. And remember, you are looking for fluidity in your thoughts and emotions too!
Whenever you feel yourself tense, frustrated, or overwhelmed, get up and dance as freely, playfully, and unstructured as possible. Dance like a drunk monkey. Try it!
Layer Two, Week Two – Thursday
- Morning – Read Week One Thursday Concepts
- Morning – Practice Square Breathing, Level Three
- Evening – Practice Sensory Awareness, Level Three
Low belly and low back today. A sinking feeling in your gut, or low back tightness or pain. What does it feel like in your body when you hold yourself back? When you think someone is holding you back? How does your belly react when it feels like you are being judged? , What sensations arise when you do or contemplate doing something that isn’t in line with your values? How does dishonesty (yours or others) feel in your belly and back? What sensations awaken when someone demands or expects something of you? Play with this, be curious; it will surprise you.
All the configurations in each of your bodies: physical, mental, emotional, and energetic are created and controlled by your subconscious mind … until you make them conscious and decide to configure yourself differently. Decide wisely and often. Be fluid.
As you get better at identifying what your configurations are generally and specifically (through Current30’s); you can begin to alter and change them.
If you generally feel stagnant, you will have tools to determine where specifically the stagnation exists. If you are mentally stagnant; you can use some of the meditations to energize yourself. If you are physically stagnant, you can start moving, focusing on the body area that feels the most sluggish. If you are emotionally stagnant, pick a meditation that upwells emotional energy or just relive as somatically (in your body) as possible some highly charged event in your life and feel your emotional body enliven.
Layer Two, Week Two – Friday
- Morning – Read Friday Concepts
- Morning – Practice Square Breathing, Level Three
- Evening – Practice Sensory Awareness, Level Three
See if you can connect the energy flow from one part of your body to another today. Feel for the flow of energy or the transition in impedance. What happens before and after your throat gets tight? If you’ve been sitting for a while, how does feeling in your legs change when you get up and walk around? Take a minute, feel your neck and shoulders, and then start gently moving your neck in circles. Check in again, what changed? Feel your low back and belly, hula your hips, and then feel again.
Your subconscious mind doesn’t want to acknowledge any of the places you are stuck. It likes stuck. Stuck is under control and predictable. Usually, your subconscious mind allows you to either skip over the places that you fear or it tries to convince you that stuck is the best place to be.
Your subconscious mind will always try to detour around the greatest potentials for growth, change, and success. It tries to shield you from the changes that follow accomplishments and the new opportunities for the births of better things.
Find the places in your life where you are stuck and look around. What exists in your stuck places? What stories, images, and beliefs are there? Why does it feel like you can’t move, transition, disregard, or abandon stuck? What value are you placing on those stories, images, and beliefs that may not actually have value? How does stuck keep you from being happy, fulfilled, successful, and playful?
Layer Two, Week Two – Saturday
- Read Week One Saturday Concepts
- Morning – Practice Square Breathing, Level Three
- Evening – Practice Sensory Awareness, Level Three
The movements of energy you have been experimenting with this week trigger your subconscious mind or your subconscious mind triggers them (chicken and egg). Feeling and understanding your energy flows will give you amazing insights to your preferences and bias’. Begin to connect your energy flows to your thoughts and your thoughts to your energy flows. Observe how your emotions alter your energies and your energies influence your emotions. There is an amazing world in and around your body that affect, effect, persuade, and dissuade you more than you probably think is possible.
The Square Breath connects those stuck places to the sides of the breath. It takes them by the hand and coaxes them forward; sometimes just a step, other times like a mad dash for the exit. Occasionally, this breath pattern grabs hold of the things you don’t want to face and immolates them in a flash of understanding, resignation, and acceptance.
Movement brings about change. When challenged in a healthy way, the systems begin working together, overcoming fear, resistance, and the subconscious mind’s desire to hold onto pain. Getting unstuck starts with a choice, is fueled by determination, and gains momentum as you celebrate your successes.
When you lower your resistance, an uber-natural harmony and resonance is created, sometimes instantly. As your harmony increases, your capacities and capabilities expand. As your capacity expands, each of your challenges will be a smaller percentage of your total. Think of the things that cause you stress, overwhelm, frustration and fatigue as if they were pull-ups.
When you can only do 5 pull-ups, each one is 20% of your capacity and each one feels like a big effort. After focusing on increasing your ability to do pull-ups, you will be able to do 40, and each one will only be 2.5% of your capacity. Daily stressors won’t affect you like they do now. Everything will feel easier because every action will be a smaller percentage of your capability. When you can do 100 pull-ups, each is only 1% of your capacity and they feel almost effortless. The energy required to perform each pull-up didn’t change; you did.
I am the architect of my life.
I am my own ultimate authority.
I build my life and choose its contents.
I am full of vim, vigor and vitality all of the time.
I am always overflowing with joy.
My body is healthy; my mind is sharp; my soul is at peace.
I am stronger than any negative thoughts.
I am patient.
I am tolerant and non- judgmental.
My emotions don’t control me.
I have an unlimited amount of potential.
I forgive easily and completely.
I laugh easily and often.
I am warm and affectionate to everyone.
I refuse to blame others for their weaknesses.
Difficulty is a price I am willing to pay for growth.
My todays are happier than my yesterdays.
A guiding and loving power watches over me.
I love being intimate.
I am a thriving, vivacious and likable person.
I chose happiness over success.
I put myself first.
I am incredibly creative.
I am spontaneous.
I brighten every room I enter.
I am up to every challenge.
My friends and family really like me.
I am a fountain of love and support.
I am admired and respected.
I am positive and encouraging.
I am blessed.
I have wonderful friends.
I am self-confident.
I am self-reliant and self-sufficient.
Change holds the promise of all future success.
I am at peace with my past decisions.
My fears don’t control me.
I wake up excited.
I am not my suffering.
I am Divinity, nature and balance.
I love my life.
I am graceful, elegant and charming.
I add spice to every place I go.
I love to talk.
I deeply appreciate how I show up in the world.
I love my body.
I am photogenic.
I am a great listener.
I am compassionate and kind.
I use my anger as fuel for empathy.
The mirror is my friend.
I never get overwhelmed.
I allow myself to rejuvenate.
The best of months of my life are ahead of me.
I don’t fear death.
I’d rather be kind than rich.
I don’t let stress influence my mood.
I am on the right path.
Success is in my near future.
No one is better than me.
I love to listen.
I am healthy and getting healthier.
Love is the answer; pain is the question love asks.
Step 1 – Read the affirmations and/or watch the video. See what resonates and what is dissonant. Find the one that feels the hardest for you to believe. Write it down.
Step 2 – Sit comfortably with your sentence in sight. (Chair, floor, or sofa, but be comfortable. Posture is important but secondary to being relaxed.)
Step 3 – Take a Current30 and begin Exhaust/Purge Breathing (Inhale deeply and exhale with mild force. As you inhale encourage yourself to relax. As you exhale, feel yourself venting tension) Continue for 60 seconds focusing on relaxing your face, neck and shoulders with each compelled exhale.
Step 4 – Sequential Relaxation (Normal but deep breathing) As the name implies, consciously relax your body as you breathe. The key here is to move from one body part to the next focusing your attention and intention on each until you feel the tissues melt.
Step 5 – Take a mental and emotional inventory. Look for habitual patterns of emotional posturing and mental tension. Search for mental images and beliefs. Unwind predispositions and presumptions. Let yourself relax, melt, and get fluid.
Step 6 – Gently contract your perineum and then inhale for a count of four (contracting the perineum is the initiating movement. It is done before you start your inhale.)
Step 7 – Maintain the static contraction of the perineum as you hold your breath for four counts.
Step 8 – Relax your perineum and then exhale for a count of four. (relaxing the perineum is the initiating movement. Relax before you allow yourself to exhale.)
Step 9 – Gently contract your perineum and begin the square breath sequence again. Repeat for a couple of minutes.
Step 10 – Look at your sentence and repeat it to yourself in a loop as you continue square breathing.
Step 11 – Track your feelings about the sentence as you breathe. Allow for the possibility that the sentence could be true for you. Continue for several minutes.
Step 12 – See if you can identify which side of the breath has the most resistance to your sentence.
Step 13 – The next time you do this, pick another sentence that is hard for you to accept.
Why it Matters – This exercise will begin to highlight the limiting beliefs you hold. Behind every judgment you have, every prejudice and label, there lives a limiting belief. The affirmations are beneficial beliefs; your resistance to them is a very small sample of how you make things harder for yourself.
Everyday Usability – As you begin to feel your resistance and sense where it lives in the cycle, you will be more and more aware of it throughout your day. As you acknowledge just how pervasive it is, you will understand the importance of it. Resistance is like pulling on the brake levers as you ride uphill on a bike into a headwind with flat tires and a heavy backpack towing a trailer full of rocks.
Progression – The fourth level of the square breath will allow you to challenge your ability to remained focused for an extended period of time.
Step 1 – Sit or stand comfortably and do a Current30.
Step 2 – Bring one hand in front of your chest, fingers pointed up, palm facing the side and then inhale deeply.
Step 3 – At the top of your inhale, strongly contract every muscle possible.
Step 4 – Continue to maintain contraction as you exhale.
Step 5 – Maintain contraction until it feels like you need to inhale again.
Step 6 – Continue for several breaths. Take a few normal breaths if you start to feel light headed.
Step 7 – Take a few normal breaths to reset and then begin the sequence again.
Step 8 – This time, allow you hand to move against the resistance. Move it in every direction and feel the resistance in as many body parts as possible.
Step 9 – Continue for several breaths. Take a few normal breaths if you start to feel light headed.
Step 10 – Switch hands and continue for several breaths. Take a few normal breaths if you start to feel light headed.
Step 11 – Take a few normal breaths to reset and then begin the sequence again without resistance.
Step 12 – Explore how fluid and relaxed you can be as you move. Find other areas to relax.
Step 13 – Repeat with opposite hand. Continue to look for new areas to relax and soften.
Step 14 –Â Begin to move freely, seeking fluidity.
Why it Matters – This movement will give a physical demonstration of how resistance feels in your body and the major physical effort it requires.
Everyday Usability – As you begin to feel your resistance and sense where it lives in the body, you will be more and more aware of it throughout your day. As you acknowledge just how pervasive it is, you will understand the importance of it. Resistance is like squeezing the brake levers as you ride uphill on a bike into a headwind with flat tires and a heavy backpack while towing a trailer full of rocks.
Progression – The fourth level of the square breath will allow you to challenge your ability to remain focused for an extended period of time.
