Relaxation

A great part of your day is devoted to activity. Your body is moving, you are doing things, you plan and organize. Your thoughts are way ahead of the things that you are actually doing now, or busy look back on what you did, recently or long ago. All personality-stuff, and thus you are busy re-establishing and strengthening its grip on your life by interpreting for you everything you experience.

As soon as you wake up in the morning, your personality begins with its frantic thoughts, and it will only slow down when you fall asleep (which may come not as easy as you would like due to all those thoughts running around in your head). During the day your perception of what happens, is heavily colored by the judgment of your personality that focuses on whether or not this contributes to your plans and expectations. Your body is part of these dynamics.

Thus all attention is focused on the part of your personality, and your inner Self does not play a role of any importance. Now when you keep on focusing this way, you may understand that that is very one-sided, which will naturally start looking for compensation sooner or later. Also, the pressure and intensity of the program of your personality is likely to exhaust you. It will come as no surprise to you that, after a while, self-defence mechanisms like negative judgments about the situation that you are in, fatigue or minor or greater unpleasant bodily feelings simply urge you to slow down. If you deal with this by simply focusing on getting rid of these mental or bodily feelings, then you are just working with the symptoms and overlook their cause.

The essence of your inner Self is Being. Being does not mean "nothing", but there is a form of action rather than activity. Action which is inspired by the moment, rather than the result of thinking, planning or reacting. If you go with this action you will find that doing whatever you are guided to, is experienced as very easy-to-do, and is accompanied with feelings of joy and carelessness. Things simply go much easier and more spontaneous than you could ever have imagined or organized yourself.

Now this will take some time to get used to, because it means that you have to trust this process that simply does not guarantee (or inform you about) what the next step is. It is very different from your normal, controlling and judgmental approach. And yet, there is no reason why you should not put your trust in your inner Self, because that too is part of you. You are simply not used to being in contact with it, and have not as yet learned to appreciate its different yet very gentle guidance.

Relaxing is about decreasing the energy you put into your personality and make place for your inner Self. It also helps you to deal with your everyday chores and problems in a way that makes you feel more at ease, stronger, more balanced and confident, because you now have changed the balance of the focus of your attention. Your personality always creates a form of tension, and now he has less and less opportunities to practice that.

Because the essence of your inner Self is being, relaxing is about making space for your inner Self. Your inner Self is peaceful and quiet by nature, you do not have do do anything in particular to bring that about. Make sure that you do not replace one activity with another, or that you label a trick like simply stopping your activities or slowing down your mental activities as "relaxed". There has to be "something else". And preferably: be consciously aware in the action of the moment. You may notice the thoughts, ideas and activities that your personality constantly seems to offer you. But simply let them go by, do not explore the thoughts or discuss them in your head, simply do not pay any specific attention to them. You can practice this in any situation you are in. You can function from your inner Self in the midst of turmoil and frantic activities. Simply in the way described above. Do not judge, do not work with your own thoughts, just watch them go by and be present in the moment.

This kind of experience can of course be triggered by exercises, during a walk through nature, or while watching a beautiful sunset. But there are lots of people who do not get relaxed from walking, or get very bored at a beautiful sunset, or just stop their activities or slow them down without making space that can be filled by your inner Self. Learn to become consciously aware. E.g. BEcourses can help you, because they will inspire you on a daily basis and in small steps, using everyday situations, to practice. By the way, do not over-exaggerate it, that will only cause stress and resistance and your personality will put a lot of effort in compensating. Be gentle with yourself, you are questioning a pattern that you have nourished your whole life, allow yourself to adjust to that.

The information on stress may offer interesting additional information, even if you do not experience stress at this very moment. To help, support and inspire you, you will find a lot of practical information on the columns pages. You may use BEcourses to help you along the way to bring these changes about or work with you in a practical situation that causes stress or similar feelings at this moment. You can also use the online relaxation exercises.