MENTAL TENSION
The tight band of control
You may be familiar, perhaps overly familiar, with that tight band of constriction in your head. The tension that you can’t seem to let go of. The pressure behind the eyes, in your forehead, in your jaw, grinding your teeth, radiating down into your neck and perhaps into the temples, back or top of the head too. The thoughts that preoccupy your mind and keep you up at night. The constraint of attempting at all costs to try to figure it all out. What is it all? All of the movements, all of the activities, and all of the motions of life. What you are doing, what other people are doing, what the events around you are doing. At the core of this constant vigilance to figure it all out is the desire to control yourself and the life around you for your safety. Will you have what you need? Will everything and everyone be ok? Are people going to be upset? Are you worthy of what you want? Are you going to make it? Can you express yourself without backlash? Will you be able to do whatever you need to do? Will you know whatever you need to know?
This mental tension, and the feelings of loss of control and power which the tension is rooted in, take up the majority of space inside our being. While the source of this tension is in our mind it can manifest in other parts of our body besides our head. It might be in your gut along with feelings of anxiety, nausea or the inability to digest your food. It might be in your legs with a sense of restlessness, or in your hands where you find yourself gripping or grasping even when no objects are in your hands. It might be in your throat where you feel you can’t speak or make a sound. It might be in your chest with the sensations of difficulty in getting a full breath in or letting a full breath out, or perhaps in your solar plexus with feelings that it isn’t ok to be yourself. This predominant theme of mental tension and the resultant tightness in various areas of the physical body is the interference if you will, of the smooth flow of energy (aka life force) through your being. Without this tension life simply moves through us. With this tension we keep life force at bay, blocking its motions, twisting the light that we are and feeling the uncomfortableness of the backup of this energy flow.
The function of mental tension is to prevent you from feeling a complete sense of loss of power and control. Bodily tightness is control as it manifests through the physical body. Tension helps us not feel the intensity of certain feelings that we don’t want to feel and at the same time impedes life from moving through our bodies fully. If the goal is to live fully by being ourselves fully, then tension might be our biggest challenge to overcome on the journey to the true purpose of this life.
UNWINDING PATTERNS
Moving into your power & freedom
Tension patterns get created through collective conditioning and via our own past experiences. Just by being born in the soup of a collective consciousness we learn or imbibe via the field of the collective human awareness, what we should be afraid of, what we should gravitate towards and what things in our world mean. Based on these perspectives and meanings, we form energetic and neurological patterning. We either feel in our natural state of knowing “I’m safe and life can flow through me,” or we create patterning that says “I’m at threat” and we protect ourselves by blocking the movement of life. The same is true for our individual experiences. If we’ve had threatening experiences where we were mental, emotional or physical overpowered, harmed, rejected, not included, not seen or not loved, we learned how to survive. We did this by creating adaptive energetic and neurological tension patterns, which have direct physical effects. These patterns are incredibly intelligent and very good at physical, emotional and social survival, but these patterns are not us. They are not who or what we are. They are adaptations, but when they’ve been around for most of our life we can confuse them as who we are.
We are not the threat adapted tension patterns, but rather we are that which remains when the tension pattern releases. In the space of open aliveness is where we find our true selves. When life force gets blocked, consciously or unconsciously, we are in a state of survival, which is a bare minimum functioning state. We are alive, but not fully. There are gradations and variations. This can manifest as physical pain and bodily illness, or degeneration at its most extreme, but it can also look like not feeling like your life matters, not knowing why you exist, not having the relationships or opportunities that you want in your life, and not feeling lovable. In order to move into physiological and psychological well-being life force must be flowing, energizing, nourishing and bringing life through us.
Unwinding mental tension and the bodily expressions that are connected with it, is how we come back into flow. The impedance in flow isn’t outside of us, it is inside of us. Even though it often seems that other people, situations and external events block the flow in us, it is us blocking the flow in response to how we are perceiving the events, situations and the other people in our lives. It will take some self-inquiry and self-awareness to really see this, but ultimately you will realize that it is you who creates the patterns you experience. Remember that none of these energetic and neurological patterns are bad or wrong. You created them because you needed them. They were intelligently created. It is simply a matter of increasing your self-awareness and seeing if these patterns are really necessary for you now. It may be that at certain moments in time they are needed, but perhaps they aren’t needed as much as you might think that they are. It is a process of assessing and choosing what is best for you, which only you know and which only you can choose through being self-aware. Without self-awareness you will automatically run these protective ways of being and feeling. With self-awareness you choose how you be and how things impact or don’t impact you. It’s up to you. While this might feel intimidating, confusing or overwhelming at times, or like too much responsibility for yourself, you will realize in time that it is the most empowering and freeing. This is where your power lives, where you no longer feel helpless, where you see the truth of your being, what you are, and that your power has been there all along.
Dr. Amanda Love, Subtle Energetic, Light Touch, Network Spinal Chiropractor, Boulder, Colorado
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