Centering + Practice = Freedom
Often we assess that there are places in our lives that are out of our reach — whether it is a job or a new career, responding differently to our partner or children, or taking different steps to achieve breakthrough results in our life.
It feels out of our realm of possibilities.
Someone declared to me the other day; “I need to be able to set limits with this person, but I just can’t”— as if it is a fact and there are no other possibilities available to them. This left me noticing how easy it is to slip into the mood of a story; as often that is how things appear to us. And yet, a centering practice can provide us with an opportunity to step out of the coherency of the mood, body or story and into another place to create a different reality for our selves.
Where in life do you get stuck and show up either with yourself or with others in a way that keeps you frustrated, resigned or resentful? What are your habitual patterns with your body when you are in this place? What is the story that supports the mood that keeps you from taking different steps?
Establishing a centering practice can help:
- find the stability within your body to be able to have a difficult conversation with a friend
- Increase energy to be bold and take new actions on a team at work
- Roll up your sleeves and move forward in a focused, purposeful manner to get the job done in the face of a crisis
- Effectively setting a limit with a family member who has crossed a boundary
- Maintain openness in a situation that would normally cause you to shut down or create constriction and conflict.
Centering
“From center all options and possibilities are equidistant.” ~ Julio Ollala
Center is our foundation; it is the foundation from which we start and return.
Centering interrupts the coherency which exists in the realms of mood, body and language — for the moment –to help us access silence, acceptance and a grounded energetic place in your body to create the possibility of choice.
When we are off-balance and not centered, we are in a predisposition to only see things from that place……
We frequently forget the body in our habitual patterns of living. When this occurs, we lose the capacity to observe. Yet, as we center in our body, we have awareness which is essential to begin to change our story — transformational change.
Practice
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. “ ~ Aristotle
We are always practicing something; what are you practicing?
Simply put, all of our behaviors (our actions or inaction) are rooted in emotions. Most of our habitual patterns are governed by our limbic brain as “what fires together, wires together”. This is why we often stay stuck in old patterns even though we want to be different.
Bad news: As we continue practicing these unhelpful patterns, we keep strengthening these networks to maintain the same responses.
Good News: We can change our brain (create and strengthen neural pathways) through practice. Not just an exercise, but an on-going practice can change the neural networks in the brain to support new behaviors.
A centering practice is key to access and harness the power of center in body, emotion and language to guide us in a healthy and constructive way.
Your invitation….
- Notice when you are off-center in your body and mood.
- Consciously visit center over and over again so your body “knows” exactly what center is.
- Aim to become a self-centering machine by learning to recognize off-center and then to re-center.
- Practice centering 3 times a day, 5 days a week.
Freedom
A centering practice allows us to reach a “wise mind” place from which to choose and connect to wisdom. In this place we find freedom, as we can harness the power of awareness to choose. We begin to train our brains and our bodies to respond differently. A centering practice provides us with a greater capacity to act and achieve the results we want in our lives.
So, what are you practicing?
Here is of one of my favorite centering practices.
