Happiness
“I have
time.”
Walter
Carrington
Walter Carrington is a
Master Alexander Technique teacher, and this is a mantra he
recommends his students use before beginning any activity. It is a
way to change the circuitry in your nervous system from one that is
conditioned to move fast to one that is present and calm. If you want
to feel less stressed, stop telling yourself, “I don't have time.”
I confess that this sentence slips off my tongue quite often. We city
dwellers live in a sped-up time warp where everything that moves fast
is valued far more than anything that moves slowly. Just yesterday,
someone passed me on a busy, two-lane residential street because I
was driving at the 30 mph speed limit. Fast cars, fast talk,
multi-tasking, rushing from one thing to another; we lead a hurry-up
life.
Just taking a good, deep
breath and repeating, “I have time.” switches on an alternate nervous system. Practice this one small step toward reclaiming
sanity, bringing your attention into the present moment, and you move
toward happiness rather than toward stressed-out and exhausted.
Sounds too simple, right? Well, that's another thing that keeps us
hyped-up. We think that “complicated” is necessary, and so we
make everything far more convoluted than it needs to be. We burden
our lives by trying to do too many things at once, so that we can
rush on to do some more things.
Our body is incredibly
intelligent in ways that our cerebral cortex, our thinking brain, is
not. The body operates smoothly almost all of the time. But when we
push it harder than it can possibly go, especially when we overload
it with stress messages, it becomes depleted and exhausted, and will
force us to stop all activity by becoming sick. That's
body-wisdom—its message is, “stop, rest, let me replenish my
reserves.” If we become conscious enough to respect our body's
wisdom, we will feel much happier in our thinking brain. When we're
living in our body, and not just in our head, we stay in the present
moment to a much greater degree. And joy resides in the present
moment. Give it a try. Repeat after me, “I have time.”
In the Spirit,
Jane
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