Maria Connolly, LPC
Centering refers to a relaxed yet focused state of mind that allows you to remain in your calm center amidst the busyness and stress of everyday life, which eases your path to greater clarity, focus, peace, flow and balance.
This may surprise you: There’s a vast difference between having centering practices and being a centered person. A centering practice can regulate your nervous system for a few minutes. An embodied center changes who you are under pressure. A centering practice is something you do. An embodied center is how you live.
What happened to my client, Laura (not her real name), illustrates this well.
You already know this… life is fast-moving, and often, not in the direction you choose. Your days are filled with problem-solving, managing demands, and meeting deadlines. Granted, you accomplish a lot. However, there’s a downside: it keeps you living in your head. And when that happens, you can stay stuck in reactive mode, responding on autopilot, leaving little time to check in with yourself. As a result, and I’ve seen this in my clients so many times, the quiet wisdom in your body is unheard. So this is an invitation to come home to yourself, to find your way back to the subtle signals your body has been offering.
“Embodiment is living within, being present within the internal space of the body. It’s something quite different from being aware of the body.” ~ Judith Blackstone
Think for a moment of someone that you admire because they are very centered and grounded... They’re living in harmony with their body instead of fighting against it. Would you like to feel that way? Are you tired of feeling like you’re always reacting to outside forces, instead of being propelled from deep within? Do you want to have more control and influence, but at the same time be more empathetic, and sensitive to others? If so, then embodiment coaching is a great tool for learning about yourself — many things you never knew or even thought about before.
“It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up space.” ~ Pema Chodron
Shelly, a client, is a person of action. Her brain is constantly whirling, and she always has something to say, which often causes her to superficially listen to others. And while she gets a lot done personally, she tends to either micromanage or shift between projects so fast it makes her team scratch their heads wondering what’s going on. To bring more balance to her life, together we worked out that she needed to engage The Power Of Pause to be more mindfully aware and present, thereby keeping her team in step with her. As a result, now they’re working cohesively and are accomplishing the goals they’ve set for themselves.
Could you benefit from using The Power Of Pause more often? Well, if you feel stressed (Who doesn’t?) or have said or done something you regret, then the answer is “Yes!” I think we all feel better when we mindfully learn to use this superpower more often.
“Happiness is the new rich.
Inner peace is the new success
Health is the new wealth
Kindness is the new cool.”
Anonymous
Do you ever read or hear something that speaks to you deeply? It happened again to me recently and I wish to share it with you in the hopes that it brings you as much inner peace, softness and joy as it did for me. I’m sure you’ll agree that now, more than ever, finding inner peace is something we can all use.
Because we live in such strange and harsh times, we do well to seek solace from within. When the world around us is not a soft and nourishing place, we must be able to rely on our own inner resources of gentleness, kindness, equanimity and peace.