Episode 54 - Lighten Your Body with Forgiveness

Transcript

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Renee Stephens: Welcome to Inside Out Weight Loss.  I’m your host, Renee Stephens and together we’re accessing and adjusting the control panel of your mind, body system bring ease and joy to your weight loss journey and fullness to the rest of your life.  On today’s show, how to take the next steps to lightening your physical and emotional loads through forgiveness and how and why to go from tumbleweed to deeply rooted tree?  Also from the perspective of having felt good in my body, all is well, and then I thought well, what could this possibly mean that my weight is up two pounds especially when I was feeling really good last one that’s not fair, ever heard that -- heard yourself say that to yourself that’s not fair, it’s not fair, I’ve been good.  Only a naked heart can see that all around us each clump of grass, every leaf, twig, stone and flower is a blazing torch, incandescent with the one fire, which has no name except I am.  And then if you were to really get into their heads, if you were to take a moment and get into their heads to discover what their intent was in doing that behavior, I wonder what you might discover.  I remember I think it was from the movie to kill a mocking bird but I’m not sure and please feel free to let me know if I’m wrong here, but that great quote that says “you can’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes”.  Let’s go ahead and drop inside.  Take a moment to become present with you noticing that you’re dedicating this time from your day to this journey, and you’ve done so for a reason.  There are something that you’re wanting that you don’t have at this moment.  So let’s open up, open our hearts and our minds to receive what it is that we’ve been lacking or wanting.  Go ahead and drop inside even further now as you listen to the sound of my voice, aware of your breath and your breathing, noticing what you see around you, allow yourself to drop inside even more deeply now.  Becoming present to your experience, your physical experience, how does your body feel right now?  Becoming present to your emotional experience, well are you emotionally in this moment?  Are you happy or sad, feeling energized or relaxed, perhaps there are some stress or strain, some tension or tightness that you’d like to release and go ahead and on your next out breath allow that to drain form you, just simply allow ant tension or tightness, any stress and strain to drain right out of you, to pour out of you.  And as you feel your muscle softening and your breathing relaxing perhaps, take a moment to consider what you’d like to get out of today’s episode of Inside Out Weight Loss.  Take a moment to consider what you would like to add to where you are, perhaps it’s simple reminder of how far you’ve already come and how good you feel, or perhaps, there’s another step forward that you’re ready to take now, whatever it is, open up to it.  I talked so much about there always being something to learn, you may recall from the episodes on Plato’s on the role of Plato’s in our journey that there’s always something to learn where we are and I want to share with you a story from my recent experience.  This last month, I way myself by the way once a month and this last month I was feeling very relaxed and eased around food and all was well, no worries at all, feeling good in my body and then I stepped on the scale to just checked in as I do on a monthly basis and in fact, lo and behold, I was up, I was up in weight two pounds and I thought that doesn’t make any sense, how can this be, I’ve been relaxed, I am not aware of overeating, I’ve been exercising, eating good food, all seemed to be well, how can it be that I’m up two pounds?  And I felt a little bit of that old energy back and old energy spring to life, which was oh I don’t like to be up two pounds, oh my goodness that’s bad, bad, bad, bad Renee.  And as the first glimmers of that occurred I thought oh my goodness how silly I thought that was long gone, I’m really not ready for this, I don’t want that.  I thought well let me think about this from another perspective.  Well, first, two pounds is well within my range of weights that I like to be, it’s well within my comfort zone of weights, it’s all good.  No one would ever look at me and notice that I was up two pounds so from that perspective all is well.  Also, from the perspective of having felt good in my body, all is well.  And then I thought well, what could this possibly mean that my weight is up two pounds especially when I was feeling really good last month that’s not fair, it’s not fair, ever heard that -- heard yourself say that to yourself, that’s not fair, it’s not fair, I’ve been good, and I thought, I know immediately I knew when I asked the right question of what is there to learn here?  Immediately I knew the answer and the answer was yes, this is an opportunity for me to accept myself at an even deeper level in the face of a bounce up in weight.  I’m actually really good in accepting myself at a slim weight, we all are really good at accepting ourselves when our weight is down and so what’s the teaching now, what’s the lesson, what’s the learning there?  Not a whole lot, the learning is when our weight is up a little bit and so my weight was up a couple of pounds and I said you know I think that this is a call for me to take myself acceptance to a deeper level, to really appreciate and accept my body as it is today.  And in fact that’s exactly what I’ve been doing, I’ve been just sinking into my body and accepting it and loving it as it is today at this weight.  I encourage you to consider the same, if you find that your weight is up a little bit, how about simply asking yourself that question, what is they learn here?  And then allowing yourself to go to an even deeper level of acceptance because I guarantee you, you go to a deeper level accepting yourself at a weight that you do not consider ideal then you will accepting yourself in a way that you do because it’s more of a challenge.  For years we thought all will be well when, I think I talked recently about my friend Heather Dominic’s phrase the myth of arrival, the myth that all will be well when we are slim, when we have what we want.  How about all being well right now in this moment, how about that for a concept?  So as you continue to become present and aware of yourself and settle into your body, I’d like to invite you to bring your energy down in your body, bring it down and imagine your energy coming down through your head down through your neck and your body through your heart center, imagine it going all the way down through the souls of your feet into the earth, into the floor below you and whatever is between you and the earth, perhaps there are several stories, perhaps there is construction or concrete, allow your energy to go down, send your energy down, down, deep into the earth.  Imagine that energy and feel the stability that provides.  Feel the stability of sending your energy down into the earth, the cool grounding energy of the earth, imagine that.  Some of my clients have the experience where something goes badly in their lives, I have certainly been there myself as well, something goes badly and you feel like you are just buffeted about by the winds of life and I call it being a tumbleweed.  Its like being a tumble weed, when the wind blows, you blow with it.  And the wind blows the other way and off you go in the other direction.  There is nothing that grounds you that keeps you centered.  And so what I encourage you to do, what I invite you to do, if you have experienced tumbleweed living, to ground yourself by imaging that rather than being the tumbleweed you are like the great tree.  The great tree whose root goes deep and wide into the earth providing stability.  So, that when the winds blow, yes, they rustle through your leaves and you bend and bow with the wind and yet you are kept stable and steady by your root system that goes deep into the earth pulling resources and nutrients and cool earth energy into your body.  As you release toxins through the rest of your body, imagine that.  Imagine having that kind of stability when emotional upsets, when the ups and downs of life come your way.  To feel deeply rooted into the earth, rather than like tumbleweed blown about.  On that note, I would like to share a poem with you by an Australian poet named Veronica Littleton, it’s called “Sacred Ground”.  We are standing on Sacred Ground, that our hearts take off their shoes and come bear, trembling with awe into the presence which burns too bright and too close for ordinary vision, only a naked heart can see that all around us each clump of grass, every leaf, twig, stone and flower is a blazing torch incandescent with the one fire which has no name expect I am and only a naked heart can know that it too is a burning bush.  All of us caught in the one fire, we are burning into I am, brighter that a galaxy of suns.  Words cannot contain the moment but let’s take with us the feeling of awe and wonder in the sacred place, we feel, we may never wear shoes again.

I was really touched by that poem when I heard it and I wanted to share it with you.  I will post it on the blog at personallifemedia.com/renee.  Feel free to share your comments there.  Its actually time for us to take a break now and when we come back, I want to delve deeper into that selfish notion of forgiveness and I’m wondering if you did make that list, if you did your homework and made that list of those people that you carry grudges, or resentment, or anger or hurt about because we are about to transform that list, transform that load into a lightness that perhaps you haven’t experienced before.

This is Renee Stephens and you are listening to Inside Out Weight Loss on Personal Life Media. 

We’re back now.  Before the break, we’re going in to a deep place of grounding, imagining that we had roots that went deep and wide into the earth that pulled up cool earth energy and resources so that as the winds of life come our way, we feel grounded and stable and centered.

And now I would like to talk with you more about that very selfish notion that I introduced in the last episode; the notion of forgiveness that is traditionally thought of as a very selfless thing to do.  We think, oh yes, you know, I should forgive.  I know that, I know that the Bible talks about it or my religion talks about it or people say I should do it but humbug I don’t want to do it because that person really did me wrong.  I think that’s fine if you – the person doesn’t deserve to be forgiven because quite honestly it really doesn’t matter if they deserve it or not because who carries the load of your anger and resentment.  Who suffers, but ourselves.  We are the ones that suffer.  We are the ones that carry that load which can be a literal load of excess weight on our bodies.  So if you knew that by forgiving those that have offended you or upset you that you could release that load, would that change your opinion on forgiveness?  Who cares if they deserve it or not really, because that’s not the essence of forgiveness or is it?  Let’s think about this for a moment.  I invite you to consider the concept of positive intent.  I’d like you to take a moment to consider the notion that behind every behavior that every human being does is a positive intent.  Now that may sound crazy because you think, gosh! what about some of the really awful things that people do like murder, like rape, like stealing, breaking and entering.  Let’s think about some of those horrible things that people do.  Can there possibly be a positive intent behind those behaviors?  And I would say well of course there is.  There is absolutely a positive intent because if someone kills someone, what might they be trying to get for themselves.  Well, may be they are trying to relieve their own anger, resentment, fear.  They are somehow trying to make themselves feel better and somewhere along the way, they got a really crazy screwed up notion that by killing someone it would work.  They think, well you are the source of my problem so if I kill you then I will be better.  The behavior is horrendous.  The behavior is inexcusable.  And yet the intent behind it of feeling better is actually a positive intent.  The intent behind it is positive, the execution, pardon the word, the way that they carry out the means by which they are attempting to get their good feelings are really very, very bad and do not work in society.  But the intent behind the behavior is actually good.  Now what if we just presuppose as they do in Neurolinguistic programming that behind every behavior that every person ever does is a positive intent.  We are all just trying to feel good.  Sometimes, we use behaviors that work really well.  And sometimes we use behaviors that don’t work so well.  Using drug is a great example.  People use drugs because they believe that those drugs will make them feel good.  How about food?  We use food because we believe that it will make us feel good at least for the moments that we are engaged in eating it.  We think, oh, if I get to eat that then I will feel good.  If I have the sweets, if I have the chips, if I have the cake, then I will get to feel good.  So the intent, the deep intent is actually positive, all we want to do is feel good.  We want to feel good now as a matter of fact.  So the positive intent is there.  Now, let’s think about someone who has offended us.  If you have made that list or if you can think of someone right now that you resent or are angry at or carry some of sort of grudge at that person and you think what they did is just unforgivable really, really bad, I just cannot forgive them.  And then if you were to really get into their heads, if you were to take a moment and get into their heads to discover what their intent was in doing that behavior.  I wonder what you might discover.  I remember I think it was from the movie To Kill a Mockingbird but I am not sure and please feel free to let me know if I am wrong here but that great quote that says “you can’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes”.  Of course, you actually can judge someone.  The problem is that you may make a judgment that is unfair or based on inadequate information perhaps.  With my father for example who I shared in the last episode was both an alcoholic and a workaholic and I was very hurt by his behavior of spending very little time with me when I was growing up and by being emotionally unavailable and when he was emotionally present, he was moody and erratic and could be very mean at times.  And so I was carrying this anger and the resentment around with me until I actually wrote him a letter.  I wrote him a letter about what I was upset about and we sat down, after I had written a letter and he had read it.  We sat down and he shared with me his perspective.  Now, that was really fascinating for me.  It turns out that my father had been brought up in depression era poverty in Baltimore.  So my father was brought up in really abject poverty.  They couldn’t pay their rent, they moved from place to place.  There wasn’t enough to eat often times.  He didn’t have any parents around and he said to me that, “Now I had no role models Renee, but when I had my own family, I decided that the very most very important thing that I could do was provide for them.  I thought to myself they will never be hungry.  They will always have more than enough that’s what I set in my mind too because that was my highest value”.  And so he set himself to working like crazy to make sure that he provided for us.  And in fact he was successful at doing that.  And the alcohol really was a means of coping with some of the pain from his childhood.  Now, when I understood from his perspective why he had behaved the way that he behaved, suddenly my heart opened to him.  Suddenly, I was no longer able to judge him in the way that I had judged him before.  And my resentment and my anger began to melt away and open up to compassion and understanding.  And we created a bond through that conversation that I didn’t even think was possible before that.  So my invitation to you between now and the next episode of Inside Out Weight Loss is to consider the perspectives, the intent of the people or person who you have your anger or resentment against.  Just consider it.  You might want to do some writing about it.  And on the next episode, I will take you through a guided journey to really truly put yourself in the other person’s shoes.  I will take you through a guided journey to open up to their perspective in a way that perhaps you hadn’t done before and see what might open up, what might occur from that place, what you might release from your psyche, from your mind, and from your body that brings us to the end of the show today.

Thank you for being present.  As you know you will get so much more out of this journey than what you put in but you must put in to get out.  Research clearly shows that joining together with others is a powerful way to increase the probability of your success in reaching your goals.  So I encourage you to join the Yahoo! group.  You can access the Yahoo! group through the blog at personallifemedia.com/renee.  There are over – well over 800 members right now.  Another way to show your support for this show is to go to iTunes and cast your vote, give your 5 star reviews for Inside Out Weight Loss that propels the show to be featured at higher levels on the iTunes website which helps me help more people in the weight struggle and share their soul’s gifts.  This is your host Renee Stephens and I am on a mission to eradicate the weight struggle from the planet enabling you to share your soul’s gifts.  Join me as we evolve the world by evolving ourselves.  For other shows on the Personal Life Media Network, please visit our website at personallifemedia.com.  There is loads of great content to feed your mind, body and spirit.