An exploration of the inner experience of a challenging work situation, and the application of embodied inner resources to support physical, mental, emotional, and relational health at work. Exercises like these are facilitated and shared in small groups at Embodied Solutions communities and events.
My workplace is undergoing major changes. It turns out new ownership and management in the middle of shockwaves to the entire industry is not a great combination for my well-being, and unfortunately not the only contributing factors to the current stressors at work. It feels like I have a completely different job in a completely different work environment than less than a year ago.
It’s Saturday, and honestly I don’t even want to remember that I am in this situation. But it haunts me on the weekends and I don’t fully let it go even in my attempts to ignore it, so I’m hoping to face it without the pressures of the workweek, to reframe my perspective and see if there is a way I can support myself better moving forward. I am gently reminding myself not to force anything, I can wait until Monday to feel into the whole situation if that is best. I remind myself to maintain this step back and simply invite myself to sit in awareness that there is something causing stress that is too great to digest in this moment. I see clearly that I have been needing to disconnect from it as wholly as possible in order to feel some kind of relief, optimizing my life by compartmentalizing when normally I seek integration.
Initial Exploration
Surprisingly, the first thing that comes to mind are the parts of my job that I like and have always liked. I have been so focused on bracing for discomfort that I don’t think of what I like about work lately. I feel a little sadness, sensing into this contrast that so much darkness surrounds what has been a light in my life in the past. I like the variety of working with people but also using my mind, the accomplishment of completing projects and finding creative ways to make a meaningful contribution to clients’ goals and my team and organizational goals at the same time. I like it. It’s rewarding.
I feel a little tension in my upper back and shoulders. There is heat in my lower back, a pain around my eyes. A heaviness sitting on my chest makes it hard to breathe the longer I allow my awareness to accompany it. I feel myself retracting, wanting to withdraw within myself, wanting to stop thinking about any of it. I sit with that feeling and impulse for a moment, not wanting to act on it immediately, just aware that I was thinking of the good things about my job but even that engaged this mechanism of wanting to retreat and stop thinking about it.
Choosing an Inner Resource
I think today I want to practice embodied calm. That seems to be what my body and mind need. But I feel an incredible tension, it feels like it just grew and grasped onto the back of my neck. When I picture my work situation and invite calm it is a bit hard to breathe again.
The impulse to get out is strong, and like a safety net catching me is the instant invitation to embody relational attunement. This is very surprising to me. But there is comfort in my own compassion for people, in the deep care for the humanity in others. The hope comes that I can share some of the care for myself, too.
Deeper breaths are coming more easily now. I begin to picture the faces of those causing the most stress to everyone in my department. I feel that it is not intentional, that everyone is in an exceptionally difficult situation right now. I knew this with my mind but it feels like part of me is acknowledging this for the first time. I feel warmth reaching through my chest to the top of my abdomen. I want to repeat these words, something relaxed in me and it feels comforting. Everyone is in an exceptionally difficult situation right now. I feel sorry that I have not had the capacity to contemplate and consider this until now. In some way it seems like news to me. The warmth in my chest feels a bit more dense and heavy, like sorrow, but not overwhelming. I feel a settling in my back and chest and a deep inhale and exhale. The words again repeat: everyone is in an exceptionally difficult situation right now. I picture some of their faces, with a few more coming into view. A deep breath is even slower this time, and I feel pressure behind my eyes where tears might normally come from.
My attention turns gently to the difficult position I am in now. I feel a little tension, but the usual resistance within me lately is not present now. It’s surprising that no part of me is stopping this much detail in my awareness on a Saturday. I see my position not so disconnected from others’. The usual narrative comes to mind of negligence, of recklessness, of disregard for the exceptional difficulties we are putting our clients through, and yet none of this is overwhelming to me right now. It usually is. I do feel a constriction going up through the top of my chest into the back of my neck and my shoulders. It feels tight, but there is so much comfort surrounding the discomfort, it is not overwhelming or even intolerable as usual. It actually feels better than when I was ignoring everything because the comfort outweighs the discomfort. I feel like my body is full of warmth and care. A deep inhale and exhale come automatically as I write these words.
Thoughts come to mind of the ways that I know this situation ripples into the personal lives of my colleagues, and an awareness comes that it must also ripple into the personal lives colleagues in ways I don’t know about. And a well-wishing arises, for all of the humans involved and touched, for our clients dealing with stresses this situation creates. And it circles back to me. Well wishes for me, as I see how it ripples into my personal life, this Saturday morning, and suddenly I see how it ripples into these words being written at this very moment. The seemingly negative things can turn into positive things, or the positive that is already there without me noticing. The well-wish is glowing for me and my life, that the stress can be digested more and more.
Sunday
When I sit down to revisit this exercise I feel a hesitation. There is a little fear that some overwhelm will come erase the beautiful experience from yesterday. I remind myself as I did yesterday that nothing needs to be forced. I feel this subtle fullness of warmth in my center that seems to reach into the ground. Visually I can’t make much sense of this feeling, but I feel gratitude for the words to describe it because they solidify the experience for me. It feels resourcing. It feels like my chest can rest on it gently, and my breaths can breathe easily. I notice a hint of resentment in me, a part of me that feels like feeling good in this situation is a bypass, neglecting the stressed parts of me that experience so much tension regularly right now with the job. This feels familiar from other personal relationship dynamics. I just sit with it in my awareness. It feels like the longer I sit with it, the resentment itself begins to acknowledge it kind of doesn’t make sense. It can rest on the fullness of warmth too. I feel it settle, and become aware with this contrast that before it felt detached, like it was floating with nowhere to land. I feel a little sadness and a little anger present. There is some strange energy that is hard to describe with words but it feels like a mix of these two.
The thought comes that things have changed so quickly, and it feels like this situation is constantly at my side like a vacuum trying to suck the life out of me. I picture it on my right side, and I feel pain in the right side of my ribcage. As I take breaths it hurts, and I feel the tension and pain in my neck. My breathing becomes a bit gentler, as if my breath is aware of this pain, and it feels like it is grazing gently past the pain with the rise and fall of each inhale and exhale. I feel the pain in my neck and a pressure in my head much lighter now than they were yesterday. There is a pressure around my back at the same level as this pain in the side. My mind has emptied. I feel the satisfaction that these parts are aware of each other, known to each other, so they aren’t just in unconscious opposition to each other all the time. I want to take advantage of my mind being calm, and marinate in the fullness of warmth holding all that is comfortable and all that is less comfortable.
Read Part 2, Monday morning here.
