Take your gloves off but stay in the arena!

When a conflict arises there are traditionally several ways to deal with it. One is all out war! That means that a person isn’t willing to compromise and that he is absolutely sure that he is right – there’s no wiggle room. It’s a “take no prisoners” thought process and often leads to total destruction – of a relationship, a company, a country, or a person. War requires a willingness to live in a black and white world. For such a person the many shades of grey don’t exist.

A less extreme method of dealing with conflict is to listen to an opposing argument while acknowledging that the differing opinion might hold some validity. Being open to compromise can result in a solution where both sides of the dispute can find some kind of satisfaction. However, for some, the word compromise carries a negative aura. Such people equate compromise with defeat and failure.

Another tactic is avoidance. If she avoids any contact with the opposition, she can pretend that the disagreement doesn’t exist. It might be simmering below the surface, but there is no need to make any declaration or defining stance which might lead to an unpleasant interaction. Damage may be going on by using the avoidance tactic; however, it’s not easily discernible to eyes that refuse to see.

The most effective way to deal with a skirmish is to collaborate. Collaboration goes beyond compromise. Not only are the opposing factions willing to listen to the other side, they actively seek a solution that meets the needs of each viewpoint. This is the most mature way of dealing with discord. It can help create a harmony that is sustainable over the long haul.

On the road to a healthy lifestyle, a person can experience each one of the above conflict management styles. Initially, an individual will declare war on themselves – he is going to bombard his previous engrained habits of eating poorly and rarely exercising. Slam, bang! Never again. Nothing less than perfection going forward is acceptable. This all or nothing attitude, too often, results in destroying the best of intentions.

Compromise can work. If a person eats an unhealthy meal, then additional time spent working out can alleviate the packing on of extra calories. However, it’s a tit for tat kind of solution where a person spends a lot of time judging. Sometimes the individual is “good” and sometimes she is “bad”.

Avoiding the need for building good eating habits along with healthy exercise by pretending it isn’t necessary is a form of blindness. Perception may be reality but illness, heart disease and obesity eventually will cause a perception shift! What is happening beneath the body’s outer layer of skin will eventually surface.

The most effective approach to creating better healthy eating and exercise habits is to collaborate. Finding a solution that takes into consideration special life events like birthday parties and holiday feasts with the occasional bad weather days when outdoor exercise activities are cancelled helps a person to make adjustments without making judgments about themselves. By allowing the grey shades to enter into one’s life, it is possible to achieve the goal of health without beating oneself up. Collaboration between the conflicting needs and desires of life is the way to maintain a balanced body, mind, and soul.

© 2012 by Sheila Peters. All rights reserved.

Banish the Baggage

With a new year just around the corner it’s the resolution making season. Many of us decide our biggest priority will be improving our physical health. We want to get toned up, lose weight, and become stronger and more flexible. We know that if our bodies feel better, our approach to our lives will become more positive. Being positive is one of the most important predictors of life span; it helps create greater resistance to the common cold; it helps us cope with hardship and stress in a less harmful, more productive way; and it enables us to enjoy our adventures and personal interactions more fully.

Unfortunately, many of us have a lot of negative baggage about our bodies that weighs us down. We carry all our past grievances as we make these new healthy resolutions. 

My legs are too stubby.

I’ll look stupid because I don’t know the dance routine.

I can’t run very far.

Everyone else will be looking at me.

I look awful in those exercise clothes.

Pick one of the above and focus on it too long and we become defeated before we even begin. This is called enmeshing with the past. When we enmesh with negativity from our past, we don’t allow ourselves to move forward into the future. We lose out both physically and emotionally if we let this happen.

How can we stop enmeshing but still engage in activities that may hold baggage? We let go of the stories and the words. Getting physically fit isn’t about talking to ourselves; it’s about being in our bodies and feeling what’s happening inside of them on a non verbal level.

How deeply are we breathing? Do our legs feel like we can go that extra ¼ mile on the track? Where are our shoulders in relation to our ears? Can we feel our blood flowing through our veins and arteries? What feels different as we continue moving? We begin to listen to the changes that are occurring in our bodies and suddenly we are fully engaged with our physical selves.

It’s the attention on how our bodies feel right now that is going to carry us forward, not the mind’s thoughts and words of past negativity. Banish the baggage – it has no relevance in the present moment. Our bodies have an innate wisdom – tap into it by listening to how it feels.

How did we learn to crawl or walk when we were babies? We practiced. We toppled over and got up again.  We got right back at the task at hand. Without verbalizing, we paid attention to the movements that helped us achieve our goals. We did them repeatedly as we refined the process.  When we were tired, we rested. No stories – no words. Simply being engaged in the body ensured our success.

No stories. No words. No baggage. Simply engaged.

© 2011 by Sheila Peters. All rights reserved.

Holiday Memories

What do we most remember about our childhood holidays? As I was out walking this morning I thought about the scenes from past holiday seasons that are most memorable to me.

I recall singing carols around the piano after the big holiday meal with either my mother or father playing accompaniment while the rest of my siblings and extended family gathered close. We shared the words to old treasured songs, making our voices intertwine in beautiful, and sometimes humorous, sound. We would continue until the piano player grew weary or our stomachs called for dessert.

I loved making holiday cookies with my siblings. The shaping of dough with the beloved old cookie cutters; the invention of and mixing of the different colored icings; and the joy of opening all the sprinkle jars and adding them to the mix. The pleasure of eating our creations was secondary to the playing and joking around with those at the big kitchen table.

There are also many memories of crafting items with friends where we tried out different versions of gifts before we produced the final version. Macramé, knitting, crocheting, candle-making, sewing, drawing, writing, wrapping – each year brought a new craft to learn. Laughing at the less than perfect results and feeling pride when my companions thought perfection had been reached.

And, of course, the many marathon card games… the family game of Demon, a version of group Solitaire where each player had to use their own deck of cards, which spawned a diverse and large collection of packs to choose from. Each of us had our favorite “lucky” pack. A wild game would ensue, enhanced by the humming of the William Tell Overture as fast as possible to create even more of a sense of speed and urgency.

The common thread of these memories is the sense of community and camaraderie found in the group. Personal interaction, warmth, and a feeling of belonging are the important components of these gatherings. These are moments of people meeting and participating in a fun-filled activity. This is what we all remember.

So as you spend time alone driving to the malls and focusing on the ritual of unwrapping presents, remind yourself about what kind of memories you’d like to be creating for your family, your friends and, ultimately, for yourself.  So what if the house isn’t perfectly clean? Who cares if there is an ideal hostess gift given? How many hours have we squandered driving, parking and negotiating crowds to find that  the gift we were intent on purchasing didn’t really measure up to expectations?

Remember that community and good cheer with others is what gives meaning to holidays. It is the shared experience that we adore. Perhaps it would be better to use some of your hours listening and talking to your friends, laughing with your mother, playing a silly game with your daughter and grandchild.

Spend time at this yearend with those with whom you share interests; with those that you love; and with those with whom you can laugh. Happy holidays!

Copyright © 2011, Sheila Peters. All rights reserved.

The Storm’s Aftermath

Like everyone else this past week that lost power, I am tired. It was an exhausting experience. Not only did we deal with no heat, no electricity, no water and no internet, we also witnessed daily the destruction of the surrounding trees. It is the sight of those destroyed trees that most affected me.

The trees have been reduced to broken off trunks with all of their branches completely severed, lying in concentric circles around the trunk.  Even in their death, these trees hold beauty. I will miss them next spring and summer and fall.

The trees’ trunks were snapped off at the point of most stress – their trunks – or what could be considered their spines. We humans also find that our “trunks” bear our stress. In stretch and dance classes this week, my students discovered that the hardships of the past week were showing up in sore lower backs and tense, inflexible necks and shoulders.

It’s important to relieve these points of stress in our bodies to help us recover from the recent loss of power and the comfort of our daily routines. We need to spend some time focusing on our bodies and slowly stretch the parts of ourselves that feel tight, tired or inflexible. If we do not do this consciously, then we may carry the existing physical tension into the holiday season.

As full of potential joy as the holiday season can be, it also has its own pressures. We don’t want to pile more strain on top of an already stressed out body. Like an old injury where our bodies have changed our postures to accommodate the pain, we may continue to hold our bodies in the protective stance. Over-compensation of an old injury can lead to chronic alignment issues.

What most medical personnel don’t tell their patients is that they need to unlearn the protective stance as they are healing from an injury. This is also true when we are living through angst. Our bodies instinctively move in ways to help us deal with the anxiety and stress. We must unlearn those protective patterns in order to fully recover.

This week, as you pass by the severed tree trunks in your neighborhood, remind yourself that you too have a breaking point. Go within and relieve the tension of the past week – stretch, get a massage, spend some time consciously relaxing, and share some laughs with friends and family. Enjoy the beauty of your life in full health.

I work with clients on a one to one basis to help them become more flexible, to become more aware of their physical selves, and to correct any habitual postural misalignments. Contact me if you would like to experience a rejuvenating somatic coaching session. Email: sheilapetersdance@gmail.com

Copyright © 2011, Sheila Peters. All rights reserved.

Injury Prevention – Take a Dance Class

Last weekend I went on a hiking trip to the wilderness area in the mountains of Vermont with JP. The final hike was through some of the most beautiful country I’ve ever hiked in and a part of the famed Long Trail. The previous days’ treks had left us pretty tired but we were excited to finish out the vacation with this particular day’s 10 mile trip.

We were traveling through a forest filled with myriad shades of green moss when we began to hear the distant rumbling of thunder.  We had another 5 miles to go and began to pick up the pace, wanting to avoid the coming rainstorm. Suddenly a rock that I was stepping on moved; I slipped and fell to the ground twisting my ankle.

It was scary and quite painful. I sat keening for about a minute as the pain began to subside. JP encouraged me to drink some water, calm down, and eat an energy bar. Then I began to assess the status of my ankle by rotating the foot in a circle. It wasn’t broken! And though sore and tender to the touch, I also didn’t have a bad sprain.

After a little while, with the thunder motivating us, we decided to move on. I laced my hiking boots tighter and we started back on the path. I was hiking more slowly than normal and began to experiment with different ways to walk as we moved over the changing terrain. Going down a gentle downhill, I found myself stepping on the balls of my feet first, somewhat like walking in toe shoes. Climbing upwards, I pushed off using my calves and legs like I was extending my leg in a kick. Moving this way was instinctive from years of dance training.

Dance is what saved me from having a more serious injury when I unexpectedly fell. My ankle joint was extremely flexible and the muscles and ligaments surrounding the joint were strong and supple. The ankle was used to quick weight changes and had weathered many years of moving in and out of unusual positions. As we continued on our hike, whenever I landed on the foot in a way that caused a jolt of pain to radiate up from the ankle, I focused on moving more like a dancer.

Dance classes can be seen as a way to prevent injuries while participating in rigorous physical activities outside of the dance studio. It is the repetitive weight changes, constant increase in strength and flexibility, and the practiced ability to react quickly to change that builds immunity to breaks and sprains.

JP and I finished the hike with a sense of triumph. Dance had ultimately saved the day! JP had been spared the burden of carrying me the remaining 5 miles of the hike and we both had avoided getting drenched by the rainstorm.

Copyright © 2011, Sheila Peters. All rights reserved.