Finding The River by Sally TophamChapter 1 Tuning In and Feeling the Connection Life is like a river. We navigate the rapids with the challenges we face. We overflow with emotions when we feel sad and hurt or happy and joyful. We can recede or dry up when we feel threatened and unsafe or blocked and negative. We flow when we open our hearts and allow love, understanding and compassion to rise up within us. The high tides are when we experience abundance and fulfilment and the low tides are when we feel defeated or at a loss. Every bend in the river is a reflection of the cycles and changes we experience. Iâve been in all of these places myself. And I want to share with you some of the methods and techniques Iâve learnt and used to help myself and my clients through the ups and downs we all have to face. Everything offered in this book is based on two fundamental things: first, that there are many ways of helping yourself through all kinds of problems, and second the importance of learning to keep our energies free and flowing. Iâm going to be telling you about lots of things you can do to help yourself find and maintain a better state of inner balance, all of which will be a foundation for finding your personal river. Iâm going to be giving you core strategies to help you hack your way through the undergrowth and get you out of the jungle! Iâll be describing various aspects of energy work and teaching you some techniques you can use. Iâm also going to be explaining how working in harmony with the cycles of Nature can help you in this process. Iâm not going to promise that you will magically heal every part of your life or that you will be able to let go of all the unskilful bits of you which get in the way of becoming who you really are. Iâm afraid there arenât any quick fixes in this kind of work. But what I can promise is that by following these methods and guidelines, you can make life a whole lot easier for yourself! By using these ideas, you can have less stress, more ability to cope and, if you use them regularly and on an ongoing basis, you will find youâre gradually growing more in tune with your true self. Your way forward starts from the moment you decide that you want to change. So, letâs begin! Have you ever found that if you have a problem and you go out for a walk in nature, something seems to shift in you for the better? Somehow, your state of mind is improved? You may not have actually solved your problem, but by some means or another, youâve managed to put some space around it? Taking your problems for a walk can be very helpful! Now, just in case you want to tell me that you lead a busy life and donât have the time to go out for lovely country walks to clear your mind when things are difficult, let me assure you that you donât have to live in the country in order to do this. You donât have to have a garden either. Neither of those things is necessary in order to connect with nature. You could just have a window box or a potted plant in your living room or a bunch of flowers on the table! And if you donât have any of these things, you could simply tear a picture of a beautiful view out of a magazine and stick it on your wall and spend a bit of time enjoying looking at it! All of these methods are fine if you can use them. But if all else fails, the quickest and easiest way of connecting with nature is through your imagination! We all hold images in our minds. Weâre like a camcorder thatâs constantly in operation. We shoot the film with our eyes and re-run the scenes in our imagination. And every time we do that, we are right there again, re-experiencing everything we felt! Before you go any further, Iâd like to invite you to do Exercise 1. Exercise 1: The Magic of Memory and Imagination Just take a moment to fastback through your library of mental images and choose a time when youâve been out in Nature and it felt really good. You could go back to a childhood memory if you like, or stick with a more recent recollection. Maybe you were walking by the sea, or sitting looking at a sunset, or it could have been when you were on holiday in another country. Iâd like you to select one of these memories right now. Make a quick decision about which one you want to recall. When youâve decided, Iâd like you to close your eyes, just go inside and bring the image of that place back into your mind. Imagine the place. Remember the weather. Is it warm or cold or somewhere in-between? Imagine the sounds. What are the sights you can see? Can you smell anything which was very particular to that place? How does it feel being there? Allow all those sensations to come back to you. Do this now. Donât read on until youâve done it. Stay there for as long as you want. Then come back and open your eyes. How was that? Most people can quite easily re-experience what they felt by using image recall. By the way, notice where in your body you felt those good feelings and what they were like. For example, if you felt a sense of somehow opening up and feeling more spacious inside did you feel it in your head or your chest or your belly? Or somewhere else? Just make a mental note of where it was for your own information and weâll come back to that in a later chapter. If youâre able to re-experience that nice feeling without even being there, itâs as good as having a magic carpet, isnât it? Imagination is wonderful in this respect. It can transport you instantly to any place or time you choose. So next time youâre wrestling with a problem and you arenât able to physically take it for a walk, all youâve got to do is repeat that little exercise. Only this time, try to stay a bit longer and be very conscious of allowing yourself to soak up all that nice healing space youâre remembering and let it flood through you. Using your imagination to take you to a place inside where you can retreat and feel safe and good is a very healing thing to do for yourself. This way of working is totally natural for us because weâve been using our imaginations since we were children. Weâve got a whole host of film clips which we store in our minds, and we can re-create these images for ourselves whenever we want, wherever we are, and at any time of the day or night. Exercise 2 will help you create that safe place within yourself. Exercise 2: Creating a Safe Place Within Yourself You might like to refine Exercise 1 by deciding which, of all your memories, is the very best one you ever experienced in Nature. Have fun scrolling through your memories. Then use the âfilm clipâ of that image, and, just as you did in Exercise 1, go back and enjoy that glorious space. Let it become a special, safe and healing place where you can retreat whenever things get too much. Itâs a simple, easy thing to do and you can help yourself enormously by summoning that memory. Try doing this before you go to sleep tonight. It doesnât matter if you fall asleep in the middle of it. Itâs a very nice place to fall asleep in! You may find that doing this exercise gives you a particularly good nightâs sleep and the next day, you wake up feeling more refreshed than usual. Do this exercise whenever you need it. Before I continue, letâs try to understand what may be happening to us when we go out into the countryside or into a local park or even into our own back garden. Nature is quiet and often full of wide open spaces. Just being there and soaking it up helps you to find space in yourself. You see, when you get yourself into a frazzled state of one sort or another, your energy and your body tends to contract, and sometimes your mind seizes up to the point where it can feel absolutely solid. Nature diffuses this by filling you with a sense of expansion, which is why it can make you feel better, clearer and more relaxed. And donât we all need that? Sadly, in our present culture, weâre so engrossed in our busy lives that we forget the natural things around us. Anything weâre aware of can so easily be taken for granted or remain unnoticed. Why is that? Well, just look at the way we live these days! This is the age of technology and the more it speeds up, the faster we have to go to keep pace with it. Some of us are stretching ourselves to the limit to keep up with our machines! Press a button and you can send information to the other side of the world nearly instantaneously. We can sell and buy in cyberspace without ever coming face-to-face with a human being in the process. Mobile phones allow unlimited access at any time and any place to friends, family, and trade and business contacts. Many of us are working much longer hours than people were 25 years ago. Weâre bombarded on all sides by the media which feeds us a mind-boggling amount of informationâgood, bad and indifferentâ24 hours a day. Whilst the plus side of this is we can now be much better informed than we were before and far more advanced in many respects, as a civilisation we are suffering from more stress-related problems and diseases than we were in previous generations. Now, Iâm not advocating that we all live reclusive lives in the country or emigrate to some remote area where people are living at a snailâs pace. Iâm not saying we have to give up the luxuries afforded by technology. Nor am I suggesting that we throw away our mobiles or stop reading newspapers! Iâm just saying that this global village we all live in can get very noisy and crowded. Itâs small wonder that many of us have lost touch with Nature or the concept that we ourselves are part of it. Actually, wherever you live, Nature is never very far away. Even amidst the concrete, glass and high-rise blocks of modern cities, you can still see it, touch it, and feel a sense of wonder about it. I remember once walking across Leicester Square in the heart of Londonâs busy West End one summer evening and seeing the evening sky turn black with flocks of starlings coming together and preparing to settle for the night. It was gob-smackingly amazing. People were stopped in their tracks, staring up at the sky, hardly believing their eyes. Nature is always there, just like the sun is always there behind the clouds. Youâll find it in parks and village greens, in those small patches of grass in the middle of squares, in gardens and in window boxes, in the birds and the wildlife which live in our cities and towns. All weâve got to do is become more aware of it. Then itâs really not difficult to regain our connection with the earth and become more aware of our natural rhythms, instead of letting ourselves be driven by the speed of the culture. What really helps is learning to âpress the pause buttonâ as one of my teachers (William Bloom) would say. If we can trigger a more gentle, spacious flow within ourselves and take some time to find the stillness within on a regular basis, it can make a huge difference to how we cope in our daily lives. So how can we do that? Well, itâs quite simple. We extend the sort of thing we did in Exercise 1: The Magic of Memory and Imagination and Exercise 2: Creating a Safe Place Within Yourself and go into whatâs known as a guided visualisation (or meditation). You just need to bring certain images to mind and use your imagination. Exercise 3: The Connection is a great way to connect with, and feel a part of Nature. And it doesnât necessitate you going outdoors at all! Here are just a few pointers before I take you into this: âą You can benefit most from doing this every day âą First thing in the morning is usually the best time, but some people may find it easier to do it in the evening âą Experiment to see which time of day suits you best. At first, you may not be able to stay in this exercise for longer than a few minutes, but the more you practise it, the more time youâll want to spend with it because it feels so nice. The longer you can stay the better. Itâs called âThe Connectionâ. Exercise 3: The Connection Put the phone on answer. Turn off the TV, radio, stereo, and computer. Close any doors or windows if you are in a draught. Make yourself comfortable in a sitting position with your back straight (supported by cushions if necessary) and with your feet placed firmly on the floor. If you are OK to sit cross-legged then do so, but make sure you are comfortable. You could lie down to do this but itâs best not to as people tend to fall asleep when they lie down! Close your eyes and bring your attention into the base of your torso and imagine that there is a line (or lines) of invisible energy extending from that part of you deep down into the earth beneath you. (You can imagine this like a big tap root or the roots of some great tree if you like.) Let these roots extend as deeply into the earth as you want them to go. As you extend them down, allow yourself to feel the safety and support of the earth. Stay with this for a few moments. Now, still keeping hold of your connection to the earth, bring your attention to your arms and both sides of your body. Imagine invisible lines of energy extending from there and outwards which connect you to the surface of the earth and to all the creatures which dwell upon it. Imagine they stretch out to include the vegetation, flowers, plants and trees which grow out of it, as well as to the seas and oceans and all the creatures which dwell there, too. Allow your energy to stretch outwards, imagining you are able to embrace all these things. Stay with this for a few moments also. Now, still feeling your connection deep into the earth and all across its surface, bring your attention to the crown of your head. Imagine more lines of energy extending out of you from there. Allow these energy lines to reach out to the treetops, to the hills and mountains, to the birds which fly in the sky. Then let the lines extend upwards and outwards even furtherâlet them stretch up to the clouds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Let them extend into the galaxies beyond our planet and out into the universe beyond. Stay with all this for as long as is comfortable. Enjoy your connection to all these things. When you are ready, come back slowly and sit for a while holding onto the feelings you experienced. Exercise 3 is an adaptation of âThe Connectionâ meditation by William Bloom. Donât be surprised if you find that your response to this exercise changes according to how youâre feeling at the time of doing it. Sometimes, in the early days, you may feel as though not much is happening. But if you can commit yourself to practising it regularly over a period of time, youâll start to notice subtle changes in your experience of it. Getting a sense of your connection to everything can make a huge difference to how you feel about yourself. When you do feel deeply connected, I promise you that the sense of belonging, the feeling of being held in some great benign bubble and being part of something greater is a truly joyful and healing sensation.
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