John Du Cane

John Du Cane

Respect Regained

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“If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”—Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When you look at your naked body in the mirror, do you avert your gaze? When you stare into your soul, do you grimace at what reflects back at you? When you watch your thoughts go tumbling through your noggin, do you sneer in disdain? Or—for all the cracks in your teacup—can you still respect your body, your soul, your mind?

Now, respect—like beauty—is in the eyes of the beholder. We respect what we interpret to respect. Respect means to “look back at”, but that “looking back” is colored by the shifting rainbow of what we value. Respect is an estimation of worth—and that estimation is as individual as the grains of sand on a beach.

We can respect ourselves—but fear ourselves. We can respect others—but fear them. Others can respect us—but fear us. So too, can respect co-exist with hate. We see the worth, we acknowledge the worth, but we don’t necessarily love the person.

Respect

Respect for ourselves is hard-earned and easily lost. Respect from others—that’s hard-gained too—and most easily squandered. Respect for others—that takes work too. Respect that comes easy—in any dimension—is respect whose mists will vaporize with the morning sun…

The recovery process is—as much as anything—the process of regaining respect for ourselves—that others may then regain their respect for us. The shards of our shattered self-respect laid all about us. Slowly we picked up the pieces—with the help of our friends, our loved ones and of the fellowship… And we learned that—for all the pain—it’s never too late to earn back our worth as human beings. To earn back respect for ourselves—and to be respected back in turn.

Today, then let’s do an exercise that strengthens simultaneously three parts of our body that can so easily be disrespected: our abs, our butt and our back. Saggy butt? This will fix it. Bent-over back? This will fix it. Flabby abbies? This will fix it.

Lie on your back with your hands clasped on your stomach. Bend your knees so that your feet, at hip-width, are relatively close to your butt. Lift the hips and lower back off the ground, so your head, shoulders and feet support your raised body. Press your hips up as much as you can, tighten your butt muscles and abs for a couple of seconds, relax and lower yourself down slowly. Inhale and hold the breath before you rise up, exhale on the descent. Do 10 repetitions. Or more, if you can manage it.

It feels terrific to respect my own body—by giving it the elegant form it deserves.

The Trick to Recovery Is Having Some

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“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”—Sir Isaac Newton

Besides the money, we have spiritual and physical bank accounts. As with the financial, it’s prudent to make regular savings deposits, spiritually and physically, against those inevitable rainy days. In our recovery, we place rightful emphasis on the need to build up our spiritual account. It’s hard to beg and borrow your way to a robust recovery…

However, many of us in recovery have not been so adept at building up our physical health account. This can have unfortunate consequences. While we can never do more than stack the health deck in our favor by regular exercise and sensible diet, having no deck of cards to speak of can be a grim alternative. Nature loves to slap us around the face or kick our legs out from under us, every now and then—just to show who’s boss. If we don’t—or simply can’t—bounce back up from those mischievous hits, we can be in a world of hurt. Hurt that might threaten the stability of our serenity.

Stones

Exercising for strength and vigor has an immediate payoff. But, it’s the consistent practice of demanding exercise that will give us a fighting chance to ward off those future blows of fortune. Physical resilience is a necessary companion to spiritual resilience. Deep pockets physically, deep pockets spiritually. It just makes sense, right?

For bang for the physical buck—and to avoid bouncing those resilience checks—there is no single exercise that beats the full bodyweight squat. It’s not even close! As we progress through our year, we will return over and over and over (and over) to this magnificent drill. Repetition is the mother of resilience. Let’s show that mother some love, now:

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Cross your arms over your chest and squat down as low as you can, preferably below parallel and eventually with your thighs touching your calves. Keep your knees from bowing in by aligning them with your feet. Keep your back as straight as possible. Come back up and lock out your legs and hips completely. Squeeze the muscles in your legs as tightly as possible for a second, relax and repeat the squat. Inhale and hold the breath as you descend. Exhale as you ascend. Do two sets of ten repetitions, with a ninety-second rest between sets. Do more sets if you want and can…

I’m loving the surge of well-being that comes from vigorous exercise!

The Pain Body

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“The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, ‘become you,’ and live through you.”—Eckhart Tolle

Residual emotional pain can lurk like a virus in our system, waiting to trigger and burst forth when we become suddenly vulnerable. Like a virus, there is a cunning intelligence to this “pain body.” And, like a virus, it is ever alert for the opportunity to gorge itself at our expense. When the pain body does have a breakout, the damage from the feeding frenzy can be expensive.

Some of us have relatively mild and quiescent pain bodies. They live deep within us and are rarely triggered. Others of us seem to be more like “pain bodies waiting to explode.” The rage, the fear, the hatred, the resentment seethe and simmer just below our surface—ready to leap from our throats, talons bared, at the slightest provocation.

The Pain Body

In recovery, it is essential to build some skills against a sudden pain body attack. Or a pain body attack from another person. A major theme running through Spark Your Day is the need for us to be ever-vigilant in protecting ourselves against incipient vulnerabilities. A vulnerability not attended to in time, can lead all the way to a relapse, after all.

By its nature, the pain body can only grow when we feed it. If we are attacked by another person’s pain body eruption, by far the best strategy is to not give it juice. Just don’t respond. The pain body attack will dissolve through lack of reciprocity.

If the pain body attack is erupting from within us, then we have at best a few seconds to negate its impact—before we are overwhelmed and become its victim. Self-awareness is the ultimate self-defense against the pain body. Remaining fully aware—noting but not reacting to the proffered engagement—will burn away the pain body’s power. However, some of us may lack the meditative skills to pull that off successfully…

Here’s a movement/awareness/breathing exercise to help fortify our chances of vaporizing a pain body attack:

Stand relaxed with the feet shoulder-width apart. Place your attention in your stomach (where the attention goes, the energy goes). Take a long, slow, deep inhale that expands your stomach gently, like a balloon. As you perform this inhale, raise your right hand up and across your body until it is opposite your left shoulder.

During the movement, spiral the hand and arm as if screwing in a light bulb. When you reach the top position, your palm will be facing up toward the ceiling. Run your attention from your stomach, up your back, then through the arm and finally into the palm as you complete the movement.

Spiral your palm and arm down back to your right side, as you exhale. Reverse the flow of your attention, so you guide the energy back from the palm to the stomach. Repeat this movement ten times. Or more, if you want. Then switch to your left hand and repeat on the other side.

Don’t be surprised if your fingers and palms start to warm up and even tingle as you do this. That’s the breath and energy stimulating your blood flow. Which is a beautiful thing! Over time, performing this movement will leave you feeling a nice combination of relaxed and energized—the perfect defense against that pain body trying to disrupt your equanimity…

It feels so empowering to be able to relax out of my self-induced tension!

Shame—And the Crisis of Being

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“Shame is a soul-eating emotion.”—C. J. Jung

We feel guilty when we have done something we know is wrong. We crossed the line. We transgressed. Guilt can be the helpful signaling system that pushes us to correct the errors of our ways. Guilt can lubricate social friction and is beneficial in moderation—like most of the edgier emotions. Guilt is a good self-corrective course setter, to help us navigate our commitments in a responsible manner.

Shame, though, is another kettle of fish altogether… Shame strikes at the core of our being. It lessens us, derides us and would that we were dead. And shame brings out the worst in the bully, the predator and those who would bay with the hounds of the witch hunt. Shame can be enormously destructive. Enormously. There’s clearly a species-survival mechanism in place here—with a signal that warns us that we are “bad” to the core. “If you go on being this kind of a person, you endanger our tribe. Shape up or we’ll ship you out.” However, the cost-benefit ratio of this survival mechanism looks horribly skewed in practice, does it not?

Shame

Those of us in recovery are all too aware of shame’s power. After all, shame took the mother of all wrecking balls to our self-esteem, our dignity—our very essence. Some of us became not much more than shallow specters of our former selves, haunted by self-loathing and despair. We allowed shame to saturate our interior landscape—often freezing us into inaction for fear of being further shamed…

In recovery, we learned that the disease of our addiction had instigated much of our shame-causing insanities. We learned to take responsibility for our past aberrations, without wallowing in the associated shame-orama. As we stitched up the rags of our tattered psyches, we learned to be gentler and more forgiving of ourselves.

Sometimes, though, some event, thought, remark, slight, or memory can cause an unwitting flush of shame to burn back onto our cheeks. That burning feeling—it’s a warning sign and it’s a vulnerability to be taken care of promptly.

Here’s a formula we will make use of now:

Adjust the body, to adjust the mind, to adjust the spirit.

Stand tall. Stand relaxed. Put the hint of a smile on your face. Rotate your shoulders up, back and down. Press your shoulder blades close to each other. Hold the position for ten seconds. Relax and repeat for a total of ten times. Your chest will naturally expand somewhat and push forward. That’s fine and good. You may feel like a bit of a puffed-up peacock while you hold this position. Well, good for you! It makes for a nice antidote to the hunched, rounded shoulders and hangdog look of the shame-based profile. Let your body posture be your medicine for today…

It feels exhilarating to right now assert proud posture and a smiling self-confidence!

To Rest, To Renew, To Refresh

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“Taking time to rest, renew, and refresh yourself isn’t wasted time. Recharge. Choose what energizes you.”—Melody Beattie

When we are addicted to exercise, taking time off can seem like a guilt-inducing betrayal. We can get real antsy sitting on our butt, rather than pushing the envelope physically, day in day out. We drive ourselves to accomplish something—anything—and of course the quest for the endorphin rush is never far from our minds. This drive to exercise is laudable. The drive to tear our body down without giving it time to restore itself—not so much.

Remaining resilient in our recovery requires a delicate toggling between the vigorous and the gentle. Too much, too often can result, too easily, in too little, too late… We hit the wall, we get hurt—and if we are not careful, our exercise program grinds to an unseemly halt. Self-care in recovery is a two-way street: make physical gains by challenging our systems. Then reward ourselves with a restorative healing process that will help consolidate those gains. The older we get, the more time we need for that restorative consolidation.

We inflict benign damage on our muscles to prod them into adaptive strengthening. Excellent! It’s a sort of induced, temporary state of vulnerability intended to reduce our longer-term vulnerability. That’s show biz… As guardians of our own recovery, we just need to be hyper-alert to our tendency to overdo it—and put ourselves potentially at risk.

Refreshing Waterfall

So, the restorative movement today is mostly mental:

Stand in a relaxed posture with knees slightly bent and arms held slightly away from your sides. Take a long, slow inhale. As you inhale, use your attention to have the sense you are pulling energy through every pore of your skin, deep into your bones. Feel your entire body expanding, as if you were an inner tube being pumped up. Then exhale very slowly, sending the energy back out in all directions. Feel your body contract on the exhale. Repeat for at least ten iterations. Do as many more repetitions as you feel to.

This is a very powerful and wonderful practice. It’s a treasure. Practice it to know it and feel it… Your recovery will thank you for the care and attention!

I am taking the time to restore my energy, body and being by relaxing, resting and breathing.