Developing and Strengthening a New Muscle: Your Center
When setting goals and intentions, there is another piece that becomes very important to utilize and develop – your center. The world is moving so fast and there is an abundance of information and distraction. Because of this, I often see individuals are not tapping into this gift they already have.
So, what is your center? There are two places that I see with clients in which processing comes from – their head or their center.
When trying to solve a problem, generally they start by telling me how they are working it through in their head – this is taken from experiences or learning.
When I see that happening, many times we talk about bringing this out of their head and down into their center. There are different names for this. Your center is the “knowing” part of you that sometimes defies logic. It is an intuitive sense or “gut” knowing or feeling.
Because of distractions we tend to dismiss this as not real, or we have been taught to think of it as not important. But tapping into this center or knowing part is one of the strongest tools we have as humans that we tend to ignore. Some people have a stronger sense about what this is generally because of their belief in it, or they have developed it.
What I always start with is recognition of these differences – Where are you working on this solution in your body? After recognizing it is being worked on in the head, we move it down.
This can be done with a few calming breaths and actually picturing bringing it down out of the head and into the knowing center. I may ask a few questions about this like:
What do you know about why this is important to you?
What is the real purpose here?
What is your gut sense of this and what is it telling you?
An example of this often comes up when I am writing this blog each week. Many times, I start by solving it in my head. I write it on my calendar and keep asking the question – What am I going to talk about? Nothing comes. I block out time in my calendar to write. Still, nothing comes. Then I start to worry a little that I won’t be able to write at all.
What works is when I recognize my head thinking and instead bring it down into my center. What is my true purpose here? To provide meaning and insight to individuals so they can live with more purpose. So, what does one person really need to hear from me that would be meaningful? Then, all of a sudden, I can write a blog.
Some other ways that this “head to center” can be developed are through:
Meditation or prayer
Writing thoughts out on paper, especially automatic writing, in which you write whatever comes to mind
Paying attention to your body and what signals the body gives you physically. It is amazing to me when someone in a session is in their head trying to solve a problem and I ask them where they feel it – tightness in chest, tightness in throat – when they bring it down to their center they feel calmness in their body.
I am not knocking head thinking. It is really helpful. These are all things we have learned. But that, in conjunction with checking in with your “knowing”, is really powerful.
Developing this different muscle takes practice and is incredibly worth it!