What's that Feeling in the Pit of my Stomach?

You know what it’s like when your stomach is tied up in knots?

That used to happen to me a lot, especially when I was rushing to get something done. I’d get distracted from the job at hand and spend way too much time trying to figure out why those sensations were there in the first place, where they came from. Was I sick? Getting the flu? Did I have some kind of stomach disorder? All those questions I didn’t have the answers to made it worse. I could have searched my past to come up with an event that had triggered what I had labeled as fear. But that took time and effort to look back. I would try any number of energy medicine tools I'd learned over the years (and I had learned a lot of them). Needless to say, I spent a lot of mental and emotional energy distracting myself from what had been distracting me!

I remember a time when I was preparing for a major presentation and that feeling of constriction gripped me again - not just in my stomach but in my shoulders, my upper chest, my jaws… even my lips felt stretched tight against my teeth! I went through that same sequence of questioning and trying to decide where to look and what to do about it for so long that it took me forever to refocus and finish the darn thing. What should have been an exciting project became a drawn out, unpleasant task that had no joy or feeling of accomplishment. What a waste of time and energy.

When I discovered a different way of to understand what was going on with me, it felt like the clouds parted and the sun came streaming through. Insecure thoughts (and the feelings and sensations they trigger ) come and go all day long for all of us; we don’t make them appear - they just do. And then they move on. Unless we pay too much attention to them and unwittingly invite them to stick around - or move in with us.

Once I realized this remarkable ebb and flow, I saw I didn’t have to “do” anything about any of it. I could notice it, certainly, but gradually all those forms of energy disappeared because I didn’t need to believe they were a problem. It just wasn’t helpful to tell myself I was afraid and needed to do something about it.

​When that energy comes up now I see that it's just the coming and going of life through me. I don’t need to stop it. It has it’s own flow, and when I let it move me, I find myself way more creative, having more fun and doing so much more than I ever imagined I was capable of.