Another year, another Thanksgiving day!
What shall I say? I have been getting at least 15 messages over facebook from all kinds of dance or yoga related events that are celebrating "gratitude this week". It is a wonderful topic and there is a lot to be thankful for and we will get into that later.
Being a bit of a realist I can see very clearly, that this time around thanksgiving and Christmas, is probably the most stressful time of the year for most people I know in the US.
All the issues around being with family (No, they have not changed in the last 30 years, sorry. And they will bring up all that old stuff you did not want to think about anymore again.) or not having a family are coming up again. Then there is shopping, travelling, cooking, "the guests are late and the turkey tastes like cardboard now", "all the cookies just fell down on the floor"... well you name it.
And on top of that this year we have all the rest of the challenges we are dealing with in our bigger community.
So I am interested in how we can get through this time gracefully? How can we actually focus on gratitude versus stress? How can we have fun versus not wanting to be there?
One of my favorite brain scientists and wonderful author - Rick Hanson - always talks about the fact that our brains are like Velcro for "bad" experiences and like Teflon for "good" ones. We need around 5 good ones to offset 1 bad one in our neurological wiring. Therefore we have to really anchor our good feelings, good memories and sensations in our nervous system. And it is not enough to just think about them, it is necessary to really anchor them in our bodily experience.
This is where Core Connexion comes in. Being a somatic based art, we always start with centering our awareness in the body to invite presence. You all know this part and it can help you! From that place we can handle experiences much better than from a place of the mind. We call this "being grounded and anchored in the NOW". It is like being a tree with deep roots. Those stressors are just gentle breezes for a tree with deep anchoring roots.
Then - adding Rick Hanson's technique - we can remember a good time in our lives, a time when we felt really alive, happy or taken care of. For me it would be swimming with a dolphin in Hawaii, when I felt that amazing, friendly power from this animal, that could easily destroy me, but would probably never do that. I of course projected all kinds of loving characteristics into it, but I experienced a time of total embodiment without any fear being close to this big bottle nose dolphin. (In the end it does not really matter what was real or not. If you remember it as a good experience, go for it.)
This pleasurable or good experience we are supposed to relive as vivid as we can and feel the results of the memory in our bodies! (I would anchor the fearlessness and embodiment in my body). This is the anchoring process and it provides good wiring in our brains. Without sensing it in the body the memory is not registered fully. Going with the tree metaphor, this grows our roots into the earth!
So what does that have to do with Thanksgiving, you might ask? It has all to do with this holiday. In this stressful time, be sure to come up with a good memory before you go into it. Then stop in between, to enter your body, welcome all of yourself, while breathing and then see if you can connect to that memory that you can flesh out for yourself as I described above.
This will help you to offset a lot of the old triggers from being with family or not having a family to spend this time with.
Another good thing about Thanksgiving of course is the turkey itself. Turkey meat contains L-Tryptophan, which is very calming to our nervous system. It actually helps us relax, sleep and makes us happy. This is just a handy side effect of it all.
I personally like to go through times like this asking myself: " What is the gift here? What is the challenge here? Who is the unexpected stranger, that I learn from here?". (I got inspired to that by one of my teachers Angeles Arrien)
What is the gift here?
Truly we are blessed to be living in this beautiful place and to be able to dance and get together with our community every week. Despite any challenges this year has brought us all in this world, above all I would like to give thanks to the wonder of life itself.
Thank you all for sharing your presence, dance and spark of your soul with me and us!
