What’s in a Story?
What’s in a story? Well, whenthey are our ‘old stories’ about ourselves that we are in a habit or pattern ofrepeating in conversation, they can be extremely destructive and don’t help usat all in our daily lives, especially when we are really wanting to let go ofour past and start to live life fully, for ourselves in the present.
Do you find that when you meet people you often embark uponwhat almost feels like a ‘prepared speech’ about yourself, and not expressingthe true you? Do you say things about yourself in conversations that belittleyourself, or pump yourself up? These canbe called ‘stories’, or “patterns of expression’, and they are like a series ofself-destructive little vocal bombs that we let off inside and outside of ourselvesevery day.
So how do we recognise these conversational millstones thatwe continually load ourselves up with? Well, it really helps when we start to feelmore connected to our body, which could be called being ‘present’, being awareof what we are truly feeling, and whatis ‘going on’ within ourselves and around us.
When speaking it is very useful to begin to be aware of howwe can actually feel the vibration of our words in our body. When kids start toexplore their voices its great to get them to feel their voices in their body.They hold up their hands and yell “wow” and yes, wow they can feel the ‘pulse’or vibration of their voice in their hands. Working with adults in a similarway, its not long before everyone can feel that their voice CAN be felt all theway through their body.
This really does open people up to a new awareness of theirvoce, What was always, in a sense, a ‘2 dimensional’ relationship with soundand voice, that is, it just comes out of our mouth and our voice box, is expandedto a more ‘3 D’ experience, that involves our whole body. This can also be thestart of re-connecting with ourselves and feeling a lot more of what is goingon within us.
It is not such a big leap then to feel that there is notjust a physical quality to feeling sound in our body, but also an energeticquality that affects us. Once we start to build a more ‘conscious’ presencewithin ourselves and our body, we can start to feel the effects that our wordsand conversations have.
Its like we are continually building up a restrictingenergetic deposit in the pipes or arteries of our expression, until our expressionitself becomes limited and damaging.
Neuroscientists can now measure that prolonged exposure tonegative expression in general literally peels away neurones from the part ofthe brain called the hippocampus, affecting 'neuroplasticity.’ Neuroplasticityis the ability of the brain to reorganise itself and develop new connections –literally our ability to be flexible and expansive, thereby affecting the waywe live, learn and evolve. In other words, continued exposure to negativeexpression causes the deterioration of the brain’s neuroplasticity and a ‘shutting down’ occurs.
What are your favourite stories? Just pause for a moment andcontemplate what you say about yourself (or others).Once we start to re-connectwith ourselves our body and our expression, we can start to identify thesepatterns or stories, and this starts to bring a great ‘spring clean ‘ effect toour words and speech. Our expression starts to feel lighter, we are notdragging ourselves down with our own words, and we begin to feel what it islike when we express from who we truly are ( the 4th dimensionaleffect.) And this is the start of a whole new world of expression.
