Creating Calm and Releasing - Ali Shapiro · 10/31/2015 Creating Calm and Releasing Anxiety: Go Deeper, Not Faster ... HOME BLOG QUOTES FUN & INSPIRING FORUMS ADVERTISE ABOUT CONTACT

10/31/2015 Creating Calm and Releasing Anxiety: Go Deeper, Not Faster

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Creating Calm and ReleasingAnxiety: Go Deeper, Not FasterBy Ali Shapiro

“It’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry

it.” ~Lena Horne

Friends, relatives, and the waitress who served me breakfast saidI was the most relaxed bride they’d ever seen. “Most brides areordering the bloody Mary’s right now, not the green tea,” theserver remarked.

This was July 9, 2011, and I was about to marry my husband, best

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friend, and favorite comedian. Our wedding washed over me like apeace I had long forgotten.

Aside from finding the person I always knew I was looking for, thegrace I felt that day resulted from a wedding process infused withtranquility.

Because of a hypothyroid diagnosis the year before, I had sloweddown my life considerably to try and heal naturally. Graduateschool completion got delayed. My health coaching business, anallconsuming love for the prior four years, was now prioritizedalongside my personal life.

For the nine months leading up to our wedding, I had a social lifeagain. I exercised consistently. I had space to breathe.

Slowing down wasn’t a winning lottery ticket. It involved examiningthe deep distrust of life felt in my core after being diagnosed withcancer as a teenager.

While chemotherapy and radiation cured me by the time I was14, healing turns out to be a lifetime process.

Because I knew slowing down was temporary—“I’ll never get thischance again,” I reminded myself when old habits flared—itbecame easier. Rest became a foundational healing element inmy life and within seven months my thyroid returned to normal. Mybusiness got incredible results for clients and I continued to easilypay my mortgage.

Life felt safe and beautiful because I was in control. The deepcancer wound I had carried around for 19 years appearedscabbed over completely. I wasn’t just the calmest bride butthe calmest me I’d ever remembered.

August 22, 2011, I watched my husband leave in a taxi. He hadbeen accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was en routeto a fiction writer’s dream. I knew since he got the acceptancephone call back in March that we’d be spending the next twoacademic years longdistance.

Suddenly, the Rainer Marie Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poetreading I had chosen for our wedding ceremony weren’t merelywords on a page but my real life:

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“Even between the closest people infinite distances exist, amarvelous living sidebyside can grow up for them, if theysucceed in loving the expanse between them, which gives themthe possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and beforean immense sky.”

It’s poetic on paper. In real life, it’s jarring nonfiction. Things nowout of my control, my anxiety story returned.

My anxiety didn’t look like panic attacks or heart palpitations.It was selfdoubt that kept me constantly busy.

One more research study to analyze, one more blog to post andI’d feel safe. Eventually, I would know enough and market enough.But it turns out enough never comes if you don’t feel enough.

Doing cannot fill a being with something missing from theircore. Enough is enough, not incomplete.

In an empty condo, there was tremendous space for me to be.Unlike my wedding process, this scenario wasn’t full of parties,friends, and an elegant event at the finish line.

Because I have a coaching and counseling background, Iknew this wasn’t about my husband being gone. I knew it wasabout me having to be with myself.

Over the next couple of months, I intellectually sliced and dicedthoughts and feelings only to get nowhere.

I got back into yoga. I continued with my green smoothies. Then Ivisited an integrated M.D.

I went in wanting to discuss the effects of screening tests I havefor secondary cancers. Unexpectedly, he said he sensed I hadn’tfully integrated my cancer experience. After explaining I had seena therapist eight years ago and felt I’d intellectualized theexperience as much as possible, I surprisingly burst into tears.

To a medical doctor.

He said there are many ways to communicate with the body. Herecommended an art therapist who could help me with visualimagery. This type of therapy works to communicate and heal thebody at our core, or what some would call the soul.

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I thanked him for the referral. Before he left the examination room,

I asked how he got through medical school. He replied, “That was

my neardeath experience.”

What I discovered in my visual imagery work over the next seven

months is the body’s intellectual technology makes the Internet

look like child’s play.

I wasn’t over being sick at such a young age. I had packed myremnant pain into the trunk of a car hoping the speed of mylife would help it fly away.

At autobahn speeds, the weight and awkwardness were easily

forgotten. However, my tires became bare.

Visual imagery isn’t about intellectually getting over or through

pain. It was learning to slow down and be with it. To accept that “it”

happened.

Imagery brings buried pain to the surface in a gentle way. I found

parts of my life that I wanted to deny. The parts that, at age 13,

were so scary they had to disappear for me to survive the most

grueling year of my life.

As I embraced those parts, the sense of peace and confidence I

was looking for in all that doing surfaced on its own. The more I

experienced uncomfortable feelings with a bodily intelligence, they

more they dissolved into wisdom.

Caring and respecting ourselves involves honoringuncomfortable feelings as a reason to go deeper, not faster. And as wisdom dictates: to go fast you need to go slow.

I now understand the need or urge to consistently over pack my

life as a warning sign. It can be a message for you too. If you are

craving calm, here are some steps that can help set the stage:

1. Create an “artificial” slow down period with abeginning and end to experience how more getsdone and enjoyed.

Leading up to my wedding, I received a sample taste of the joy in

taking life slow, in being versus doing. Knowing this was a

temporary period allowed me to enjoy this time without guilt. The

pleasure and magic of experiencing myself and things seemingly



happening on their own gave me the desire to keep this pace oflife more consistently.

2. Stop thinking positively and allow yourfeelings.

Thinking I had such a great life (wonderful husband!, both fulfillingour dreams!, healthy!) made me feel guilty about feeling so downpostwedding. But these emotions were guiding me to someoutstanding business that needed to be reconciled. By embracingmy feelings, I was able to let the wounds of trauma not just scab,but scar—which is a lot less delicate.

3. Lose your mind and get into your body.

My pain wasn’t rational but emotionally lodged in my bodymemory. Regardless of how deep your pain, tapping into yourbody can be your prescription for an emotional release. Trystarting a dialogue with your hidden emotions using visualimagery, yoga, dance, or walking meditation.

Healing isn’t a linear, rational process. As my therapist says, “Inimagery, 1 + 1 equals purple.” Emotions may come up at randomtimes.

As long as you feel more still, more complete, it’s working.

Or your symptoms may also be, like mine have been, friends andfamily saying they sense a new peace in you. They can’t describeit and most likely, neither can you. For it’s not what is there butrather the absence of frenzy in your core.

On August 22, 2012, my husband left after the summer break. Butthis time, I’m feeling centered in the transition. And I’m in no rushfor these feelings to change.

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About Ali Shapiro

Ali Shapiro, author, speaker andhealth coach, supports individualsand groups to see the emotionalintelligence and wisdom in theirweightloss and wellness challenges. A regular health contributor to theNBC 10! Show, she's been featured inthe Wall Street Journal, PhiladelphiaMagazine, and CrazySexyLife.

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Creating Calm and Releasing - Ali Shapiro · 10/31/2015 Creating Calm and Releasing Anxiety: Go Deeper, Not Faster ... HOME BLOG QUOTES FUN & INSPIRING FORUMS ADVERTISE ABOUT CONTACT