As I did yoga today I was reminded of where all the unexpressed emotions lay, the container that holds them when I lived a short distance from my body, is my body.
What has always been true and will always remain true, is even if you mind doesn’t allow you to stay in reality, we haven’t found a way to take our bodies out of it.
Our heads only live in denial; it is like the phrase, ‘get your head out of the clouds’.
I am reading “The Joy Diet” by Martha Beck.
Her book contains instructions for a different kind of “diet,” one designed not for the body but for the soul.
“When the word diet first entered the English Language, back in 1656 when I was a little girl, it didn’t refer to food intake. It meant “a way of living or thinking.” A few decades later, diet also came to mean “a day’s journey.”
Her first technique is to do 15 minutes of day of nothing.
The second one is to be truthful. Imagine this is the chapter I read last night.
“The practice of telling ourselves the truth is so simple and so freeing that you’d think we’d all do it constantly. The fact is, however, that most of the people tell themselves the truth only in selected areas, and many of us lie to ourselves and others about practically everything we experience. Why? Because living behind a pane of glass, numbing and empty though it is, also feels safe.
…in 1992 and the years that followed, I realized that the simple, small truths of my real thoughts and experiences were the keys that unlocked the dungeon doors for my true self. Trying to stop telling them would have been like trying to give up oxygen.
This was an almost inexpressibly painful period of my life, but as it drew on, I began to feel intensely, vividly alive. Prior to that time, I ‘d had no idea so much joy was even possible. I’ve watched in pain and pride and dozens of my clients have taken the same kind of plunge, determining to tell themselves the truth, no matter what, then opening up secret after secret, breaking through lie by lie, until they find their hearts. I only recommend that they go for one Moment of Truth a day, but the effect is the same whether you go for broke, as I did, or proceed gradually, as I suggest. As far as I can tell, this process is always hard, always painful, always so, so worth it.
If you did nothing but pursue the truth about yourself for the rest of your life, you would never run out of fresh discoveries. Every day brings you new experiences, changing you, bringing new aspects of your true self into expression. There are many layers of thoughts and perceptions in your mind, so many interactive connections that have been developing from infancy on, that the largest part of you will always be an undiscovered country. As you tell fewer fibs and keep fewer secrets in your inner world, you’ll find energy you once spent on denial turns outward in a kind of creative bloom. Fascinating ideas, compassionate actions, unheard-of adventures will bubble up from the inexhaustible well of your unique personality during your Moment of Truth.” Martha Beck
This is the perfect book at the perfect time to help me articulate the ways of living outside of the bubble or as she says, behind the pane of glass.
I love that diet is a day’s journey!
What will you do on your diet today?