“When you know in your bones that your body is a sacred gift, you move in the world with an effortless grace. Gratitude and humility rise up spontaneously.”—Debbie Ford
When chemicals aren’t racing and raging through our blood and brains, it’s somewhat easier to move with grace and elegance through our lives. In our using and abusing days, we cared not much a whit about such niceties as grace and elegance. We wanted the firestorm, the maelstrom, the surge, the burst, the jack, the hit, the bang—anything that would push us into an extreme of feeling. Or we wanted the great numbing—the opiate that would anesthetize us to any possibility of felt pain. We met stress with either excess or freeze-out. We fought, we ran or we froze.
In early recovery, the turbulence in our veins began to subside. Our shot and frayed nerves began to soften and re-sheathe themselves. The oscillations in mood, the energy swings started to level out some. We found we had to be patient with the process. There is only so much toxic residue and upset that can be safely removed and defused in a certain period of time. And each of us is remarkably different in constitution and capacity when it comes to that cleaning practice. We found great solace in knowing that we were not alone in this journey of recovery. We had a new fellowship who could sustain us in our darker moments, our waves of discomfort and discouragement. We realized that the chemicals had bitten hard—and those wounds needed plenty of time and care to heal.
In recovery, we are acutely aware that the little user-beastie still lurks patiently within us—just waiting for a slip, so it can pull us back into our former insanities. Getting impatient with the recovery process—trying to force the healing too fast and hard—can boomerang back on us and cause a dangerous distress. Relaxing and taking it easy is the ticket, we learned, to a safe, steady and resilient recovery.
When we relax and let our bodies feel themselves, we have the opportunity to move with greater self-assurance. And from that relaxed acceptance, we can move with a more gentle elegance. We will feel more graceful to ourselves and we will look more graceful to others.
When our natural-born grace feels under fire, it’s good to have a repertoire of movements we can use to douse the flames and calm things down. Today, let’s practice one such move:
Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, arms by your sides. Knees slightly bent, butt tucked under, shoulders down and relaxed. Put your attention in your stomach. Simply swing your arms behind you with a moderate push to get things going—rather like priming a pump. Then let the swings rebound forward and up with a sense of effortless grace. Push back when the arms reach the top of their unforced arc. Do at least twenty repetitions, but anywhere up to one hundred would be great.
This movement is very calming indeed—and also naturally detoxifying—as it will help activate your debris-cleansing lymph system.
I move gently—and as I move, the grace descends upon me and fills my being.