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Welcome back to Faith and Soul Care. This is Sherry Elaine, and how do we move past mental blockages?
The way we want to talk about mental blockages, they are patterns of thinking that keep us from moving forward towards a goal or towards the life we want to live. It's the things that—our own thinking that holds us back
.Maybe there's something you want to do or something you know you should do. You have a dream you've been thinking about or a desire to experience more joy and purpose in your everyday life, and yet you feel yourself stuck in the same old, same old.
You know what you want to do, perhaps, and you've thought about it, you've prayed about it. Maybe you've even made a plan, but something seems to get in the way.
And in the prior episode, we talked about the first step to moving past these blocks is that we notice them, and we notice the story specifically behind the block.
Become Curious About the Story
Become curious about what you're telling yourself. So instead of simply saying, "I'm not motivated," or, "I can't do that," we ask why.
What am I telling myself about this, and is that actually true?
Because sometimes underneath that first answer is a deeper story. Often it's a disappointment or a fear or a past rejection, a failure, a criticism, or some belief that we've picked up somewhere along the way.
And once we notice that story, that narrative, we can start to bring it into the light and see it more truthfully.
But here's another important piece to this, and that's what we're going to talk about today, and step two.
Step two is to calm your body before you try to change your mind and your actions.
A Quick Note About LifePoints
Now, before I jump into this fully, I do want to remind you that right now, I am enrolling for the second round of the LifePoints learning group.
All the information about it is in the show notes, or you can go to sherryelaine.com/lifepoints.
This is a 10-week program. It is for women, and we go through many of the topics that I cover on the podcast. We guide through them, learning how to declutter our minds, reframe, rewire our brains for positive and truthful thinking, how to get the stress and tension out of our bodies and what they call resetting the nervous system.
I'm going to talk a little bit about that today on the podcast. We go through it together in a guided coaching group.
So go check that out, sherryelaine.com/lifepoints, or of course the link in the show notes or on the blog if you found this on the blog.
[You may listen to these articles always on the Faith & Soul Care with Sherry Elaine podcast:]
The Body Is Part of the Story
Now, back to the topic.
The body is part of the story.
When we talk about mental blocks or stress or overwhelm or burnout, it's easy to think that everything is happening in our minds. For so long we've been told we just need to think differently. We just need to be more positive.
We just need to remember what God says about this, what it says in the Bible.
But why, then, are we not able to just act on it?
It's because we're not just our minds. We're not just our brains. We are embodied. Our minds, our emotion, our bodies, spirits—they're all connected, and they affect each other.
And sometimes we understand something intellectually, but we have a very difficult time acting on it because our body is responding as though something is wrong or something is unsafe.
When Your Mind Knows What to Do, But Your Body Doesn't Cooperate
So you may have experienced this.
You know everything is okay, but you still feel anxious for no reason, for example. Or there's nothing scary happening or anything to be afraid of, but your heart's racing.
Or you feel overwhelmed and frozen even though all you need to do is something simple or totally doable, and you just can't bring yourself to do it.
Your mind knows what to do. Your body isn't cooperating, and many times it is because we have built up so much tension and stress in our bodies that our bodies are telling our brains, "I'm just done. I'm done."
And the connection—there's a cycle. It doesn't get better on its own. You have to get in there and rewire it and get the stress out of your body so that it stops sending those signals to the brain.
And I'm speaking of this very simply, but we do know that our muscles communicate to our brain and our brain back to our muscles, and we do know that there is a way to calm that response.
Resetting the Nervous System
And this is part of the circuit that keeps us stuck.
So many times, especially if we're one that knows we're stressed and tense and overwhelmed, and we are the types that we can feel it in our shoulders and in our upper back, we feel it in our body. Maybe we're getting headaches a lot.
Before we can reach the place where we can really change our thoughts and let the new thoughts connect, we need to help our bodies become calmer—what's often now referred to as resetting the nervous system.
So when your body senses a threat, you don't even have to be in actual danger. It could just be an emotional threat.
It could just be as simple as thinking about wanting to do something, but then having a fear about it, or perhaps you're afraid of being criticized.
And that's not really a physical danger. However, your body, in a slight way, can still respond to that as a signal to shut down, to pull back, and you keep this tension in your body.
And when you're in that state, you're not in a good place to reason your way through a problem. You're not in a good place to rewire your brain easily, and you're really not in the best place to connect with God in prayer.
I'm not saying don't pray when you're in that state. That's definitely true. But what I'm saying is, even in the Bible, we're clearly told, "Be still and know that I am God."
And that word be still means to just release, to cease, to stop trying and stop striving.
So sometimes before we try to figure things out, we really need to settle ourselves.
And you don't have to solve everything right away. But it's important not to make the situation worse by getting up to fix something and not following through, and then taking that sense of failure further and further into your mind and into your body.
What Does This Look Like Practically?
So what does this look like practically?
You want to pause. Stop what you're doing. You might want to put your feet on the floor, relax your shoulders, notice where you are, notice your breathing, and take slow, gentle, deep breaths where you exhale longer than you inhale.
That is the key.
Do this 10 times, breathing in, breathing out with the exhale longer than the inhale.
When you deep breathe that way, ensuring the exhale is longer than the inhale, that communicates to your nervous system, to your main nerve, safety.
Okay?
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Another thing that you can do is what's called progressive muscle relaxation.
And that is where you start with your feet, or your toes even, and you squeeze your toes as hard as you can and let it—and then relax it.
Then you do your feet and relax it, then your lower legs, then your thighs, and you go all the way up to your head and your face, tensing each muscle as you go up as hard as you can and releasing.
That is very effective for resetting your nervous system, teaching your nervous system, your brain, and your body that things are safe.
We can start anew.
Three Daily Anchors
And so when I am working in my coaching groups, we incorporate three daily anchors.
One is a body anchor, where every day we are doing something to communicate to our nervous system that things are safe, okay? That we don't have to be in survival mode. We can relax. We can calm.
That's one of the anchors.
The other anchor is a thought anchor, which is taking time to reflect on our own thinking and rewiring those thoughts. We learn a process for that.
And the third anchor, of course, is a prayer anchor.
We learn effective methods of prayer in that LifePoints coaching group that's starting up.
Calm Your Body Before You Change Your Mind
So I'm going a little long here, and I will come back in the next episode on this topic. We will talk more about the prayer anchors I just mentioned.
But calm your body before you try to change your mind and your actions.
Before you make a plan, learn some of the strategies about how to reset your nervous system, how to get that tension out of your body, and you will find after about two weeks that you start getting your energy back.
You start feeling more refreshed. You start getting some motivation back.
What We're Carrying in Our Bodies
It's amazing how much the tension we're keeping in our muscles that we've piled up for years, because every time something stressful has happened, we tense, and we keep some of it.
We don't ever get back to baseline if we are not intentionally getting the stress out of our musculoskeletal system.
And that affects our thinking, and it affects our planning, and it affects the way we react, and it affects the way we interact in our relationships.
And it affects our ability to calm ourselves because that might be why we're so irritable or why we're, you know, short with somebody, or we lash out because we've—we're carrying that stress all wound up.
And when you get it out, you start from a whole different place.
I hope that makes sense.
That is all for today, and I will talk to you again soon.
Bye for now.