Did you ever have that feeling when you were younger, maybe in your teens or your early twenties when the guy (or girls) that you had a crush on all of a sudden started dating someone else? The dread, the sorrow, the upset...and you'd soon find yourself putting on some music or a movie, perhaps.
The music you listened to, or that movie you watch was reflective of how you were feeling...the sorrow, the sadness. You listen to the words of losing someone; you listen into the words of heartbreak; you watch a beautiful romance come to a tragic end.
I wonder for a moment that it's, in fact, the feeling that's choosing the movie, not your mind. Your body wanting to continue that feeling, to continue feeding your mind with thoughts of sorrow and sadness so that our brain continues to trigger the release of those hormones into our body to feel more of that same feeling. And then we do it some more...
Not long ago I became very aware that I grew up on a lot of Bollywood movies, which included lots of fighting - fist to fist, shootouts, sword fights, throwing people through walls.
This is how I was programming my mind and my body with the emotions that I was feeling. I was programming myself that violence was quite normal. As I grew older, I found myself becoming quite desensitized and I watched a lot of bad/tragic news, I watched a lot of scary movies, horror movies and thrillers and anything that I felt that might move me, so that I would continue to feel the way that I had become accustomed to feeling. My body craved a certain state of being which meant I was consuming things that made me feel those same things.
And as I got older, the more and more I watched, the more and more desensitized I became. In fact, a few years ago I watched the movie The Conjuring, after a few of my girlfriends had said to me how disturbing and horrific the movie was, and when I finished watching it and I felt nothing.
This actually disturbed me a little to the point I wondered if I was a sociopath because I wasn't feeling anything!!
I felt very still in my body through the movie, no jumpy moments, no flinches, no anticipation even i just didn't feel scared.
Several years later of deep of work on myself to clear past programs, clear stuck stress in my body, stuck distressed out of my cellular makeup...now I cannot watch scary movies. I don't enjoy watching movies where people are fighting, don't enjoy listening to songs where they are singing about the sorrow of a break up.
Because I've moved into a space of so much love. I do listen to songs where there is a lot of joy and when it is a love song, I imagine that that love song is me to me, or the universe or God or spirit singing to me or me singing to it and it fills me with even more joy.
The difference now to teen version of me, is that when I'm sad or have some stress I still listen to these love, happy or energising songs because it connects me to a more elevated emotion rather than sitting in and wallowing in the sorrow that I am feeling. Through listening to these songs I've created a memory in my body of what they feel like, so even if my body may not want to, even if it takes a little longer to enjoy the song than it would if I were happy, I put it on because it helps me to create a shift in my state of being.
So next time, rather than succumbing to your body's craving of the chemicals of stress, next time when you're feeling a little bit low, when you're feeling angry, when you're feeling a little bit sad...I wonder if instead of choosing to sit in that emotion you could choose to listen to something lighter, to watch something more joyful. Even if it doesn't shift your state of being, at least you have told your body that your will is stronger than it.
And I wonder how this might create a different experience for you. Share your thoughts below and as always...
Be your best!
Bhavna xx
