John Du Cane

tension

The Perils of the Impulse

By

“Before you make a decision, ask yourself this question: will you regret the results or rejoice in them.”—Rob Liano

How would our traffic work, if all three choices were always only Green? Never Red. Never Yellow. No stop. No slow down. Just go, go, go all the time? The answer of course, is all kinds of pile-ups. Fender-benders if we are fortunate, but horrendous meat-grinders at the other end of the spectrum. Mutilation, disfigurement, disablement, limbs torn off, young and old—their lives shattered forever from one reckless decision.

ImpulseAnd yet, only too often in our using days, that was our MO: blistering through the Green and to heck with those silly Yellows and Reds! Those were for the wimps, the straights, the buttoned-up types who were too scared to live life to the max.

Unfortunately, our lack of impulse-control often hurt not only ourselves but had devastating consequences for others. We were accidents waiting to happen. Human wrecking balls. Bad for us—doubly bad for the poor unfortunates who crossed our paths…

When we entered recovery, we suffered much regret and remorse, remembering the consequences of our impulsivity. We came to understand that the impulse for fulfillment—while crucial for our will to live—is an immensely powerful and easily mismanaged force.  We, in particular—with our addictive propensity to shoot before we aim—need help regulating our urges.

Our journey in recovery is hence all about caution and safety. On a daily basis, we are released from the perils of chemical consumption. We are careful to release ourselves simultaneously from the perils of impulses run riot. Moderation may appear boring to us initially, however the more moderately we take our moments, the deeper those moments become. Richness happens when we pause to feel it…

Today, let’s reflect for a moment on an urge, an impulse that may be presenting a challenge for us. Will giving in to that urge result in joy or regret? It’s good to remind ourselves that just because we have the impulse, it doesn’t mean we have to act on it. Because, that impulse may not have our final best interests at heart.

Here’s a method we can do now to help release the tension from a needy impulse. We are using the paradoxical notion: to release tension, begin by intensifying the tension. Our method uses a wonderful exercise called the HardStyle Plank:

Kneel on the floor. Then bend your torso forward, placing your hands and forearms on the floor. Make fists. Rotate your fists so they face in toward each other. Scoot your feet back all the way and raise your whole body into a line parallel with the floor.

Tighten your fists as much as you can. Now tighten your abs as hard as possible. Now your butt muscles. Tighten your thighs. Be as tight and as tense as you can manage. Hold this tension-laden position from thirty to sixty seconds, breathing lightly through your nose. If you notice you have relaxed a certain muscle group, show them no mercy and insist they tighten themselves back up!

When your HardStyle Plank becomes more than you can continue to be friendly with, relax and come out of the position. Hopefully, if we ask you now about “that impulse” you will answer “what impulse?” The HardStyle Plank is a fabulous strengthener for your whole body and in particular your core. Plus it doubles as this wonderful impulse-releaser.

I enjoy the calmness that comes upon me, as I choose not to rush in to that beckoning alley.

Let’s Join The Crew

By

“All is connected… no one thing can change by itself.”—Paul Hawken

When we embarked on recovery, we set sail with trusted companions in a large sturdy boat. We’d paddled our canoe solo against the flow for way too long. We were tired of slipping back—of frantic stroking, with just some churned foam to show for it. In fact, we finally ended up with the paddle ripped from our bleeding hands—the boom of the approaching rapids growing louder by the minute…

Really, we have been the fortunate ones, somehow rescued into recovery by the love of others. And we can congratulate ourselves on having taken advantage of that good fortune by accepting the rescue, making the connections and joining the crew.

Join the Crew

Now we can plunge forward together through the waves of change. We can navigate the inevitable storms, the riptides, the reefs and—yes, also—the doldrums with the courage that comes from companionship. We realized we don’t have to be alone to face our addiction and our tribulations anymore. We can do this thing together—and are stronger for it.

Let’s take a moment today to reflect on all those who cared enough for us in our darkest days—and who helped us toward the salvation of recovery. We know that without our fellow “crew members” we would have continued to chart a destructive—if not terminal—passage through those troubled waters… We can best thank them, can we not, by staying connected, staying part of the team.

Now, let’s give some juice to that overworked fellow who connects our head to our body—the neck. There’s a ton of joints in our neck area that are often starved of healing synovial fluids, because of our tension and rigidity. Bring on those fluids!

The magic juice-stimulator—and it happens in a jiffy—is joint rotation. We agreed to be a crew member, so nodding our heads up and down in agreement seems appropriate: without moving your shoulders, incline your head up and back as far as it will go without discomfort. Now bring your chin to your chest as best you can. Repeat for a total of ten repetitions.

It can be disconcerting to discover how little range of motion we might have in our neck movements—particularly when we turn our head from side to side. Do ten repetitions of that movement also. See what we mean? That’s from too much tension. Frankly, we really can’t move our neck too much. It wouldn’t hurt at all to include neck rotations in your hygiene practice on a daily basis. But for now, we’ll stick with these two movements…

I appreciate those who connected with me and who invited me to join them in the journey of recovery.

Beyond Gallows Humor

By

“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”—Erma Bombeck

We joke about what most angers us. We joke about our secret desires. And we joke about what we fear most. Our jokes release us from the tensions and stresses and anxieties that lace our lives. Small wonder then, that both pre- and post-recovery we relished the ghoulish end of the spectrum when it came to humor. For we were the ones possessed by death, despair and self-loathing. As we recovered and the pain began to recede, then so did the gallows humor—at least to some extent.

However, there remains a risk attached to dark humor for those in recovery. The risk is around sabotage—self-sabotage and sabotage of others. We tread lightly on the shards of our past, so that they cut not our soles as we begin our new path… Humor can help lighten our steps, but the lightening may sometimes dishonor the gravity of our experience. We need the balance and the wisdom to discriminate between humor that dis-empowers and humor that celebrates our essential dignity.

Our dignity took a hammering—mostly self-administered—when we were using. Now that we are picking up the pieces, it’s important to be delicate and sensitive to the chinks in our self-esteem. We once liked to chop ourselves up, as a way to distance ourselves from our suffering. While being overly serious could be considered a dis-ease in itself, too much “cutting up” can discredit our real achievements in getting straight and staying straight, sobering up and staying sober.

We can seek to lighten another’s distress by making them laugh—releasing them from what may be a self-involved drama-fit. But let’s always be sensitive to the true dynamics. Is the humor hurtful or helpful? Damaging or restorative? Wounding or healing? Each of us needs to approach our humor in these situations like the helmsman of a sailboat. Is the wind blowing strong, is it gusting, or is it just a faint breeze? How tight we pull the sail in—or how much we let it out—has to be felt for and adjusted to in that very moment. Such are the skills we build as we navigate our recovery.

Humor

Today, let’s do an exercise that dramatizes this dynamic. We will call it the Squeeze and Release:

Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and maintain an upright, yet natural-feeling posture. Inhale through your nose. Now, squeeze both your fists as tight as you can. You call that tight? Come on! Tighter, tighter… ok, that’s more like it! Feel the induced tension irradiate up from the fists, until both arms are as tense as you can make them. Hold the tension for a few seconds. Exhale forcefully through the mouth and relax the hands and arms completely. Collect yourself and repeat for a total of ten times.

I squeeze and I release, I squeeze and I release—and I can feel the stress disappear from my body and mind.

The Pain Body

By

“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!