Also? It’s on me! You can register to attend for free by using coupon code “free!” at checkout. (You will still need to register and complete “checkout” in order to receive the link to join my class.)

Mwah! I’d LOVE to see you there! (Why not take care of your day-after-Thanksgiving-self right now and HERE).

xoHeidi

P.S. Why yes! I’d love it if you shared this post or a link to the class with your friends in a speedy text message, a post in your social media feed, or via a good ol’ fashioned e-mail. Thank you! https://heidistable.com/product/ready-set-pause/ Feel “free!” to share the coupon code as well, of course.

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“What’s it like to be you in the world?”

I ask this of people who come to Heidi’s Table for the first time. Probably, they and I have just met. They have made an appointment so I know their name and phone number and email address, and by now they’ve taken off their shoes and coat, but more than that? Not much

“What’s it like to be you in the world?”

I didn’t used to ask this. I used to dive right into the nitty and the gritty of allergies and injuries, of accidents and surgeries, of illnesses and medications… It’s not that these things aren’t important (and I will still ask about them before I work with someone’s body) but now I have those questions wait. First things first.

“What’s it like to be you in the world?”

People seem surprised when they hear this. There is no automatic answer. I’ve not asked them where they are from. I’ve not asked them what they do. What I have done is made a space for them to stop and notice themselves.

What’s it like to be me in the world…

Oftentimes I watch them pause. And wonder. The question mark has turned into an elipsis… This delights me. They are checking in with the ultimate (if still just potential) expert and friend of themselves: them! (Or he! Or she! Or whatever pronoun they use to refer to their dear own self).

The benefits of their session have certainly begun. I allow for a beat or two after my question and then I might say a bit more: “help me understand what your body does a lot of, what happens when you’re ‘stressed out’… Sometimes people tell me what they do for work, for play, but please answer however you think will help me understand what it’s like to be you.” And then they do. And invariably I feel honored to have been allowed to hear what it’s like to be them.

Sometimes, later in the day, maybe as I’m falling asleep, something a first time-client has said will come back into my awareness. Maybe I’ll remember that thing they said first. Or the way they held their shoulder. Or the way they finally sighed on the table when their mind slowed down. Sometimes I have the sense that everything I hear and observe during my interaction with clients and their bodies lives in a kind of pocket somewhere in the vicinity of my heart. It’s warm and it’s soft and it hums, this pocket… something about intimacy, something about connection, something about the privilege of having gotten to be there, and all of it something to do with this being human, in a body, in this our crazy and amazing world.

What’s it like to be you in the world?

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Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.

Muscle tension gets a bad rap. But it’s not a bad thing. Think about it: If it weren’t for tension, your muscles—which are attached to your bones—could not contract and you would not be able to move. Yikes!

When things are working well there is a constant balancing and rebalancing between tension and relaxing, between muscle fibers firing in contraction and then releasing to rest.

When muscles don’t get enough tension leading to movement, they begin to cry out for it, so to speak, using the language of pain and discomfort which in the common vernacular we have names for, like, “that knot in my neck,” or “that pain in my butt,” to name just two.

If your body, or an area of your body, has not been getting enough movement then that pain in, say, your butt may well be trying to say: “Get up, darling! Move me! No, I’m not tired… I’m tired of sitting!”

On the other hand, when muscles don’t get enough opportunity to release and rest, they also begin to cry out, very likely using that same language of pain and discomfort.

Like daytime and nighttime, like light and like shadow, like the bird wings and the hand opening and closing in Rumi’s poem, tensing and releasing are useful and beautiful, each. Calling one good and the other bad kind of misses the whole picture. Not to mention that favoring one over the other will, very practically speaking, lead to imbalance. And imbalance always has a way of affecting our integrity.

Sometimes imbalance in the contraction-release cycle can play out like this:

One muscle or muscle area gets overused and exhausted and maybe its function starts being impaired. Then another muscle will jump in, so to speak, to pick up the slack of the muscle that is crying “Uncle!”

That sort of pinch hitting that muscles do for each other is useful, for sure, but when done for too long or too intensely, then the muscle doing the filling in for the other’s exhaustion can’t tend to its main body function. And what could happen then?

Here’s an example…

Take the diaphragm. The diaphragm (in your “gut” area) is a dome-shaped sheet of muscle and tendon whose main function is respiration. Yup, the diaphragm is all about breathing. Yay! (Still not sure where your diaphragm is? Well, it’d be where you could get the wind knocked out of you if you ever—let it never be so!—got punched.)

When you aren’t using your diaphragm to its full capacity for breathing, your neck muscles will jump in to help out. (After all, the body doesn’t mess around in making sure you are breathing. Thanks, body!)

Now neck muscles are useful and incredibly good at their main function which is all about helping you look up and look down and look around — that is, flexion, extension and rotation of the head — not breathing. They will help, for sure, but they’d rather just pitch in here and there rather than permanently. And who can blame them?

When your breathing is shallow and skimpy for too long, your neck muscles will, understandably(!), be all, “hey, man! A break? Can we go home for a rest already? We’ve been working without a break all day! And what about that diaphragm over there, just sitting around—!”

Your diaphragm, meanwhile, is completely underemployed and we can easily imagine what that is doing for its sense of wellbeing and self-esteem!

The constant balance of things… Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Also amazing that we get to take so much of it for granted: the cycles of our bodies, the cycles of nature, the balance and rebalance, constantly, always toward integrity.

Taking a moment to notice it all might be nice. You might just find yourself breathing a bit deeper just for having noticed. Ahhhh… (Thanks, diaphragm!)

https://giphy.com/gifs/birds-wings-beautiful-gif-11LohX9sOLw4QE

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And I just love it!

The act of making art or in some way giving expression to heartbreak means that the whole thing about that ache won’t have to come out sideways.

Come out sideways?

Yes. “Coming out sideways” is the expression I use to describe what happens when things that want and need expression don’t get acknowledgment or direct expression. And then because they still are needing acknowledgment and expression they end up coming out indirectly, often in unpleasant and painful ways. Or in reactive ways that we later regret. Either way —bottled up or hidden away inside, or reactive outwardly— painful.

Like when you’re angry but you have a thing about anger (like, for example, you don’t think it’s kind to express anger) so then instead of having a conversation in which you acknowledge your anger and talk about the situation that brought it about you end up just sucking it up and smiling but inside yourself, or with other people, you’re all ohmygod…grrrrrrr! And then one day, or maybe even just 5 minutes later, you snap or say something snarky, which then you might quickly follow it up with a “just kidding!” That’s an example of anger coming out sideways.

Like knots and tension in your body. Oftentimes that kink in your neck has little, maybe even nothing, to do with your pillow. And all to do with some heartache, grief or some hard or confusing thing that doesn’t otherwise have expression or resolution. Knots and patterns of tension in your body can be examples of something coming out sideways.

Like reactivity. Like when you bite your sweetie’s head off, or yell at your kid, or flip the guy in traffic the finger… Reactivity and irritability, be it toward people dear to you or strangers in traffic, are examples of things coming out sideways.

So, what about you? Is there something eating at you, something waking you up in the middle of the night, some disappointment that feels too hard to carry, or some something that seems too complicated, or maybe even impossible, to put into words?

Making your broken heart into art

“But I’m not an artist like Leah!” you might be saying.

To which I say, “No matter!”And also, “Says who?” And also, “Can you really know that?!”

Making art out of heartbreak or grief or sadness or anger, can happen in so many ways! (And if the word “artist” throws you or makes you want to argue about whether or not you are, then think of it as in some way giving outward expression to what’s inside.)

Paints, pencils, crayons… Yes.

Poetry, prose, or just a free-write in your journal… Yes.

A song in the shower? Yes.

Moving to the sound of a song that says it so well for you? Yes.

Telling the thing to a friend or therapist? Yes.

Asking your dreams to help you before you fall asleep and then writing them down first thing in the morning? Yes.

The possibilities for expression are endless. And they can be private (you don’t have to show the world, unless you want to, of course!). The important part, the part that will offer you and your body all the benefit, lies in the act of expression.

All for today. Onward, dear reader. Best wishes to you in making your art and expressing things so they don’t have to come out sideways.

xo

Heidi

P.S. More of Leah’s art can be found at https://www.facebook.com/art.by.Leah.Piken.Kolidas/

[Post edited on 13 Feb. 2017]

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1.     Take 10 slow, deep breaths. Allow those breaths to reach all the way down into your gut (diaphragm) area. Put your hand right there –that place that if someone were to punch you they’d knock the wind out of you— and feel your hand rise with every inhale, and fall with every exhale. Do that for 10 breaths.

2.     Invite your thoughts to hitch a ride on your breathing, as if your breathing were a wave, or a train, or a car, or an [insert your favorite thing that moves that you can hitch a ride on]. Give your thoughts a place to rest, a place to put their feet up, and enjoy the ride.

3.     Notice your thoughts AS thoughts rather than hooking into or engaging their content and story and following them unconsciously down that same old same old rabbit hole again. That worry about ___? Hello, Thought. That urgent push to do something about ___ right this very second now? And hello to you, too, Thought. That regret about how you didn’t ____? Ah, there there, dear Thought. That looming and quickly approaching deadline for ___? I see you, Thought. If ___ really is something you need to address, it (and you!) will be much better off for you having calmed yourself down.

4.     Don’t take your thoughts personally. Did you make that thought cross your mind? No. Neither can you make that thought disappear. Thoughts come, thoughts go. Don’t take them personally. Notice them as thoughts. Let them come and let them go. If you have trouble not taking them personally, imagine your thoughts running around in a big field somewhere. My thoughts, when I do this, look like wild horses. They can run around but I don’t have to run around in the field with them. I like to sit on that bench there under the big tree while they do their thing, thankyouverymuch.

5.    When there is a thought or a family of thoughts that has got you by the throat and is not letting you sleep or breathe or enjoy your otherwise good life, dammit!, write the stressful thought down on paper and practice meeting it with inquiry and understanding. “My boss is a jerk.” “My child should get off her iPad.” “He doesn’t understand me.” “My children should call me.” “It’s too late.” “If I don’t have a child, my life has no purpose.” What’s your stressful thought? Write it down. (My favorite way to practice inquiry on stressful thoughts is called The Work of Byron Katie. Google it!)

6.     Close your eyes, breathe and take a moment to notice where in your body you sense or feel the upset. Is it heavy in your chest? Is it a lump in your gut? Is it thick in your throat? Is it fuzzy behind your eyes? Is it a pressure in your temples? Put your hand there and say, in your own way, I see you there, I see you. And breathe.

7.     Feel the support of the ground under you. During overwhelm and upset it can feel like our mind is a kite on a flimsy thread in a windstorm. Rather than being that precarious kite, turn your awareness toward the ground under the feet of the person holding the kite. Stand or sit tall and strong like a mountain and breathe into that ground. The ground never went away, you just forgot it was there. Let the ground support you.

8.     Notice the pull of gravity. As long as we live upon and call this dear planet Earth our home, we get to enjoy the force of gravity that keeps us from floating up up and away. The force of gravity is such a part of our reality, we GET to take it for granted. Take a moment to appreciate that there is always this force pulling you back to earth, back to home, back to ground, back to body. The pull of gravity toward ground is with you whether you notice it or not (whew!) — calm comes in noticing it.

9.     Practice being sensual. Turn your awareness toward your physical body. Take a moment to touch, to swallow, to yawn, to smell, to taste, to hear…and notice. Our senses are something else we get to take for granted. Take a moment to notice the world through your body’s senses and allow your thoughts to come and rest in your body.

10.     Let your body work up a sweat doing something physical. Allow the muscle of your heart to pump up its volume while you work it for 20 minutes. Maybe you’ll dork dance in the kitchen, maybe you’ll walk around the block several times, maybe you’ll run, maybe you’ll bike to the store instead of driving, maybe you’ll put on your favorite music and jump up and down… Work up a sweat, shake up the thoughts and let the ones that no longer serve (if ever they did) float away. Thought? What thought?!

11.  Practice the art of not being impressed by your thoughts. Sometimes a very juicy thought comes along, a thought that is really hard not to lasso in and call your very own. Practice the art of noticing and not being impressed by your thoughts, no matter how juicy or enticing. That thought about that same old thing that always bothers you? Hello there. No biggie.

12.  Bring to mind the calmest and most loving person, place or thing you know. Allow yourself, in your mind’s eye, to sit in this person’s, place’s, or thing’s presence with your upset. What are the qualities of this calm person, place or thing? Go there, be there, rest there. How are they (how is it) with your upset? By imagining it, you are practicing it.

I’m about to tell you something very secret: there is an old-timey village in the mountains that I sometimes go to in my mind’s eye when I’m very upset and it all feels too much. In this village there is a group of wise old women — their laps are wide, they have chin hairs and don’t care, their eyes are fierce and ever so kind at once, and they have all the patience and wisdom (from eons of experience) in the world. They are never in a hurry. Sometimes they do a drumming and dancing ritual around me, sometimes they go off and concoct or cook me a magical brothy thing or potion for what ails me, sometimes they chant sounds in an ancient language to put me to sleep, and sometimes they hold me while I cry. They see me; they honor me; and they are never, ever upset by my upset.

13.    Practice the tenderest kindness imaginable toward yourself today and give that kindness a physical expression. Maybe you’ll put your hand on your heart or reach your arms around you and squeeze the remarkable being that is you. Notice you. Even and especially when you are at your most upset, anxious and stressed, take a moment to notice how you are showing up and doing the best you can. Hooray! I, for one, am so happy there are people like YOU in the world.

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Over the years I’ve heard my question answered in many ways but there is one intention that is, by far, the one that clients say the most:

Relaxed

What a worthy intention! When we are relaxed, hard things somehow become softer, easier. Tight places become roomier. Annoying things feel more neutral, and maybe even, humorous.

Being relaxed allows for seemingly impossible things to shift and settle into something new, something which tightness and anxiety may not have allowed us to see before. Relaxing clears space for the next and best thing to happen unimpeded; seen that way, relaxing makes better things possible.

I’m certainly not one to tell people who are feeling anxious or tense to “just relax” — it’s annoying, to say the least, and a bit insulting, too. After all, you’re smart and you do your best, and if it were so easy, I’m sure you would have already.  But I love helping people relax, and today I want to tell you two things that make relaxing much more likely to happen:

1. Acknowledgement

Think of acknowledgment as saying hello to what is there, even when (or especially!) when what is there for you is unpleasant or hard. It’s a nod of recognition, a way of letting the unpleasantness or tightness know that you see it. It’s a little bow of respect. You may not like it, and you may wish it were different than it is but you are saying, nonetheless: “I notice you. Hello.”

Tension, anxiety or whatever word best describes what is hard for you, deserves your noticing and respect. After all, it is there for some good reason. Maybe it is trying to protect you. (Letting you know, for example, not to take on anything else.) Maybe it wants you to remember that “no” is a valid answer needing no further explanation. Maybe your body —through tightness and anxiety— is trying to express something that is off (like how you keep smiling and pretending everything is fine when it isn’t), or out of balance (like when you sit for hours on end, not letting your body get movement or fresh air).

Our bodies hold a wealth of wisdom and I love helping my clients learn to listen to their bodies, but simply acknowledging what is there for you right now and saying hello to that is always a good place to start.

2. Support

It’s hard to relax when we don’t feel supported.

Imagine you’re entering a room and are looking for a place to sit and the only chair available looks kind of sketchy. You aren’t sure it will support you. If you sit down at all, you’d probably do so very tentatively, holding back some of your weight and then only letting go a little bit at a time until you know that the chair is stable and strong enough.

The support of the ground or of the furniture we sit upon is something we often get to take for granted. Thankfully, most chairs we go to sit in do support us.

Habitually tense and contracted places in your body can become so accustomed to tightness that even when your body is fully supported and by all accounts could be resting, those places may have a hard time letting go. If your body remains on high alert and tight when you would love to be resting, take it as a signal to pause and notice the support that is already there for you. Especially notice the support right under and around the place of tightness. And then, after you have said your “hello I see you there,” take a conscious and deep breath and as you exhale, notice if there is any softening, any relaxing, that is ready to happen.

Yes, it’s hard to relax when you don’t feel supported, but feeling supported can often be as close and as possible as an intention to give a nod of acknowledgment followed by a conscious noticing of the support that is there… it’s worth pointing out that the support is there whether you notice it or not; the magic, however, in this matter of relaxing, is in noticing.

Go ahead. Next time you have a hard time relaxing, practice saying hello, notice the support that’s there, and on your next exhale, see what happens. Maybe, like me, you will hear the ground saying to you:

“It’s OK. I’ve got your back.”

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Every day I spy amazing acts of courage.

But today I want to tip my hat to an act of courage that might often go unrecognized, but which deserves every bit of hurrah as the amazing things I just listed:

Every time you show up for your life in the most relaxed, undefended and open-hearted way possible, you are practicing a gorgeous act of courage.

You are amazing. I’m not just tipping my hat here, I’m throwing it way up in the air for you.

Our world is a better place for having you in it. Thank you!

Warmly yours,

Heidi

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On January 1 I took over the lease for my office. Even though this did not come as a surprise, a few days before the actual date when my dear office mate of the last year would be moving out, I found myself feeling quite anxious. After waking up really early (again!) and not being able to fall back asleep, I enlisted the help of a really good listener:

I told my really good listener exactly how wobbly and scared I felt. (What a relief to say things just as they are to someone who listens and wants to understand.) Then I told my really good listener that I could feel it like this heaviness in my middle. I pointed and put my hand there and my really good listener (named Jeffrey), just kept listening.

Then I told Jeffrey about how something in me was scared of taking on the added rent. (Again, relief! So helpful to say a fear out loud.) That scared part of me said things like, “What if you fail? Then what?!” Jeffrey just kept listening. Then I told Jeffrey that something in me was afraid that people would stop coming to me altogether…that they’d stop liking my massages and that I would never be able to convey how amazing a thing Focusing is. (Yup, also felt good to say that, even though something else in me felt embarrassed to admit that I was afraid people just wouldn’t like me anymore.)

Listening and being with everything inside me just like it was really brought relief. I hadn’t wanted advice and Jeffrey had not given it. Instead, Jeffrey had been present with me in a very Focusing kind of way, a way that allows things to change seemingly on their own. Listening in that Focusing kind of way is engaged. It’s active. It’s interested. It’s curious. It’s present.

The next morning, as if out of nowhere though I’m quite sure as a result of having been with everything just the way it was, I asked Jeffrey if he’d help me do something brave and big to mark the change for my office.

And that is the story of how my office came to look like this… I loved it before, and now I get to love it in a new and all-of-my-own kind of way.

I hope you visit soon. My table very much looks forward to having you on it.

Warmly yours,

Heidi

P.S. The paint color is called “Wheatfield.” Maybe one of these days I’ll tell the story of how we picked it!

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She and the designer exchanged a couple of e-mails and had a phone conversation in which she tried to put into words what Heidi’s Table is all about:

“I love body,” she said.

OK. She may not have blurted it out exactly like that, but it’s true: she loves body. She is fascinated by the straight-up, say-it-like-it-is truthfulness of bodies. And she is in love with how vulnerable and strong, how soft and how hard they are, all at once.

Heidi listens to bodies. She listens for how they express things for which people don’t have easy words, or, sometimes, words at all. That pain in the neck, that tightness in the jaw, that rumble in the belly? At Heidi’s Table people can get curious —in a friendly and not-in-your-face kind of way— about how their bodies express, as best they can, what otherwise isn’t getting expression or understanding.

Heidi is also fascinated by minds. The stories we tell in our minds. The thoughts that appear and pass through our minds. The endless ways that our minds interpret and give meaning to things, and the way we then feel and sense these mind-things in our bodies.

In short, what she was trying to tell her designer was that she wanted a logo to get at the whole “mind-body connection thing” in a playful way, without ever having to say anything like those tired words themselves.

Presence, listening, curiosity, grounding, comfort and ease are all qualities that Heidi wants you to receive when you come to her table –actual massage table or her new website (in the works!)– for a visit.

As if that all wasn’t elusive enough for a logo, she went on to tell her designer that she loves mixing and concocting things like essential oil-based potions… Things like the organic body butters and balms that she uses in her massage practice.

Lastly, though so not leastly, she told him that words are her paint, her clay, her instrument. Sometimes she writes to remember, and sometimes she writes to understand, but mostly she writes to connect, be it to herself, to you, or to our dear world, in this amazing thing we all call life.

Thank you, Richard Miller of Calyx Design. Heidi could not be more tickled. The new logo speaks a thousand words, but in short this is what she hears it say:

Ground and sky, let the love affair begin!

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But on the days that the subway or the bus gets you places without a hitch? You get to take it for granted. La la la, oh yeah, the Red Line? The 77? Yep, I take it to work and home every day. I don’t have to park a car. I get to read. I get to eavesdrop on interesting conversations. I get to find out what that lady who can’t stop laughing is reading.

It’s easy to notice a relationship when you’re having a disagreement. You notice how she didn’t look at you. Or, maybe, how she did. You notice how he’s not calling you by that sweetly irreverent name like he used to. Or maybe he’s not calling at all. You miss him, and you feel something snag in the vicinity of your heart. Ow.

But all those other days when you roll over and there he is in all his adorable flesh-n-bones-ness? Those times he calls your name like a line from his favorite song, the one he hums when he’s content? Or when the sight of her makes you grin like a happy fool? Ahh. You get to take this person for granted. Mmm…

It’s easy to notice your body when something hurts. Like when that pain in your neck made you stop short just now when you tried to turn, apparently too quickly, to the right. Or maybe you were bending to pull on your shoes, only to feel your low back seize up and, oh noes! Now it’s hard to stand up straight and you wonder, “is this what they call putting out your back?” Whatever it’s called, it hurts.

But on all those other days when you get out of bed and brush your teeth and lace up your shoes without a second thought? Body? Oh, body! It bends and straightens, turns and returns, stops short and starts up again without a second thought. Not to mention your breathing, which, most of the time keeps happening without any thought or effort on your part. You get to take it for granted.

Right now I’m getting to take for granted this chair, that string of lights, toes, bendy hips, arms, how comfortable it is to have my feet up on the yellow and white looks-handmade-but-turns-out-to-be-from-“just IKEA” bedspread, the empty frame, the sprigs of lavender, the support of the ground, the pull of gravity toward that same solid ground when my thoughts start twirling away a bit anxiously, this here breath, that sigh, and one thing that is so very new that I have not yet had much of a chance to take it for granted: my new office! I love it.

You? Is there something you get to take for granted? How sweet of for you to notice.

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