Claiming Your Power

Power isn't about ideas. And it isn’t about fighting. Power is a feeling. It's an inside job. And so much of the time we’re giving it away. When we get mad at the person who pulled out in front of us (regardless of whether it was intentional or accidental) we’re giving away our power. Instead, we can take a second and drop in and check in with ourselves in the moment and ask ourselves, “Do I really want to ruin this moment or my day because I’m letting this situation control how I’m feeling?”

Ultimately what’s happening is that we’re letting something outside of us disempower us when we let it upset us. We’re so busy paying attention to all of the things outside of us, we forget to pay attention to ourselves, and it's a habit that we can change if we want to. It's really about shifting our vantage point, or in other words, the outside versus the inside. It's not our fault. Really, it’s a pattern that we’ve repeated over time. We've been taught to pay attention to things outside of ourselves: to behave in a certain way, to meet certain goals, to look like someone else, to have what others have. When this happens, we get forgotten. We forget ourselves. But we matter. And it's really just that no one taught us how to pay attention to ourselves, to what's inside ourselves. Our inner being is where our power resides. It isn't outside of us, or at least it really shouldn't be outside of us. 

So how do we claim our power? It's about fixing the disconnect. By “in-sourcing” rather than out-sourcing (a brilliant way to put it per one of my community group members). We claim our power when we start to pay attention and plug in to ourselves. Where is our self?? Our self is within us. And after much searching and study, the best place to find it is within our body. When we center ourselves in our body, we start to claim our power. Why is this? It’s because we are mind, body, and spirit, one within the other. When we put them together, we get ourselves together, and it activates our inner superpowers. It ignites the fire of our being, and it can help us feel strong, more healthy, more patient, and more peace.

This mind to body connection, connects brain to body and allows us to respond more appropriately to things in our life. Our nervous system is wired for this. Our perception works well when we pay even a bit of attention to the inner wiring of our human body. It's a simple way to find and connect to our own center. If we center outside ourselves we’re paying attention to everything but ourselves. But when we center inside ourselves and orient to something good inside of us we start to shift and grow our awareness. It becomes a new fulcrum of orientation. We start to wake up parts of ourselves that are important. We wake up our ability for real self-care and self-regulation. And then we empower ourselves to live the life we want. 

You've already experienced this in different ways. An example would be when you've learned to take a deep breath in a stressful moment. You know it helps calm you down and bring you back to yourself. It brings you back to the moment. But unfortunately, most of the time we forget to do it. In reality we're breathing all day long. So what if we can stay connected to our breathing to our body, for example noticing it more often throughout the day? This is one simple way that we can claim our power. Claim our own ability to use our connection to our body to control how we feel. It’s an act of empowerment. An act of self love. And it feels good. We really can learn to empower ourselves in simple ways more and more and it just takes a bit of practice. I know this because I do it myself and I’ve been teaching my patients to do it for many years and it's amazing to see what happens when we do it.

These days a lot of people are talking about methods of doing “somatic” work, very often connecting to their body through movement, through movement, or yoga. But really somatic means body. This is why exercise feels good. Some people don't feel normal unless they exercise every day. But what if you could make that connection to your body without having to go for a run? We can. And there are a lot of ways to do this. But the simplest and most powerful way that I found after searching and digging for over 25 years is simply by dropping in. Feeling ourselves grounded in our own body changes things very quickly. It’s a good feeling inside of ourselves. This simple act of shifting our attention from the outside to the inside, from our head to somewhere more centered within us, gets us in our bodies. It embodies us. It empowers us. It reminds us of our being. It reminds us to feel. It reminds us to breathe. It reminds us to be. It reminds us that we have power inside ourselves and that we have more control than we’ve been led to believe.

And it's really about remembering to pay attention to our inner world. Our inner self. And it happens the most easily when we pay attention to our body. Our body is the vessel of our humanness and our spirit. So often we think that our brain is who we are. We’re a bunch of walking and talking heads. Heads with our body somehow separated from us. And I know you know this, but it's really helpful to remember that our brain is so much more than our heads. It's connected to all of the nerves in our body. And it goes from the top of our head to the tips of our fingers and toes. It goes deep into our gut. Where sometimes we get messages from gut feelings. So if we're looking for our mindfulness and our power, our whole body is the place to find it. Because when we're in our body, we are embodied.This word gets thrown around a lot but it's not really used to its full potential. Embodiment means we're living in our body. Embodiment means we’re using all of our internal resources. Our inner intelligence, the best parts of ourselves, and the truth of our being.

As I said, claiming our power isn’t about fighting. It's not about what everyone else is doing or making you do. Claiming your power is about you and what you’re doing in the moment. I like to think of a samurai. If you pay attention to a samurai, you see that they’re centered in their own inner stillness, their “inner zen”. They conserve their power. They only fight when they really have to. Because most of the time they’re centered in their being, mind, body, and spirit. They’re tapping into their inner wisdom. They’re empowered within themselves. Their power is within and it empowers them to better deal with everything around them. 

We can do this too. When we come back to our body and feel our feet on the ground, our breath dropping into our belly, or warmth in our heart, we bring ourselves into an embodied state. What I've realized is that so many of our problems are happening because of dissociation. This may not be a familiar term and it's typically used in psychology. a mental process involving a disconnection between a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. It acts as a defense mechanism often in response to overwhelming stress or trauma, and it results in a kind of detachment from oneself or reality, and it can be a really important coping strategy. What I've realized is that many of us are dissociating from our bodies and sense of self a lot of the time. Our culture, society, and often childhood experiences have taught us to do it and it's become an unconscious learned pattern of behavior that keeps us stuck. 

I’ve discovered in my work with patients that when their attention is in their head or on something outside of themselves, their muscles feel tense, they feel stressed and anxious, they feel out of control and frustrated, and they have trouble relaxing. It feels pretty lousy and our nervous system stays in a repeating state that is dysfunctional. But when I teach someone to drop into their body and feel their own center, their nervous system takes a huge sigh of relief, their muscles relax, their breathing slows, they feel better, and their body goes into healing mode. 

Why is this? Science is still catching up about how our nervous system works on so many levels but what I've come to realize is that when our focus is only on what everyone else is doing wrong, we keep ourselves separate from our own wholeness and its less than ideal for our nervous system. We feel disempowered because we're not living in our bodies the way they were designed to be lived in. We aren’t making the most of our human design that has all kinds of superpowers. We are so busy thinking we forget to feel. We're paying so much attention to all of the stuff outside of us that we aren’t remembering and empowering ourselves to center ourselves in our own center. In dealing with external stress, in relationships, on social media, when we read the news, we quickly get pulled out if we aren’t paying attention. These seemingly simple acts of attention outside of our body cause a kind of dissociation and disorientation and it’s disempowering.

However when, in the midst of something challenging, we center within our body it connects us,  mind, body and spirit to our own power. The simple shift of attention is what enables us to claim our power. We remember to breathe, our own embodied self. To pay attention to our own attention. We can choose whether we're going to let that thing disempower us or ruin our day. We shift the perspective from the outside to the inside, and it's so powerful. It was a lightbulb moment for me, when I realized how empowering it can be on so many levels when we plug into ourselves, living within our own bodies, and make a simple connection. So while power may seem like something elusive, metaphysical, magical, or dangerous, it's something that anyone can claim and use for a lot of good in our lives. When we claim our power, we remember who we are and we can do so many powerful things with it. We can calm our nervous system, support our mental health, put our body in a healing state, improve our self-confidence, access our inner knowing, expand our creativity, and deepen our spirituality.

I know that may sound exaggerated or too good to be true. So simple it must be stupid. Or too difficult to really do. But it's real. It happens everyday in those who learn to pay attention to tap into our body’s inner wisdom. What's beautiful and so powerful about what happens when we learn to drop in and center within our bodies, we empower ourselves to feel better. This happens because we are connecting and integrating the parts of ourselves that have been inadvertently disconnected. This is wholeness and empowerment. When our mind, body, and spirit can interconnect, one within the other, it feels good, and incredible things happen. 

Let's back up a second and talk about all of the things that I've seen happen when we're not connecting our mind to our body. One of my patients who was truly dissociated was complaining of cold and numb feet. When I taught her how to shift her attention into her body, her muscles softened, her sensation came back into her feet and they quickly warmed up. Another example is someone who was struggling with severe panic attacks and anxiety. When I taught him a simple method of feeling a pleasant sensation in his body, his panic attacks quickly stopped and he continues to use this method regularly in his daily life to feel better. Another made her chronic neck and arm pain go away just by simply shifting her attention from her mind to the lower half of her body. 

I know I’m making it sound easy and it isn’t always easy. That’s mostly because we have a habit of disconnecting instead of connecting. Of paying attention to the outside rather than the inside. So real empowerment happens when we remember, in the moment to drop our attention into our body and practice putting it into practice. This is truly claiming our power. When we do, it feels good. It can feel like peace, it can feel like strength. It can feel like inner knowing. A kind of potency within our being that can feel like spiritual light or warmth. 

So power is something that's very easily within our grasp. It's within us. Rather than artificial intelligence, its true inner intelligence. It can help us know who we are and what we want. We can claim our power through the simple act of remembering to sense our own wholeness: mind, body, and spirit. We stop overthinking when we bring the periscope down into our body and sense and feel. Or as one of my course participants puts it, “sink don’t think”. When we repeat this neurological plugging in, and learn to keep it there,, the connections grow stronger and more consistent. They become easier to make. Over time we can learn, by simple acts of daily practice, to stay in our own power. To control how we feel moment to moment. And be in the present moment. This is how we get ourselves together and keep it together.

Unfortunately human society has turned things upside down and created an imbalance by teaching us to think a lot and pay attention to everything but ourselves. But it doesn't mean that it has to stay that way. If you don’t believe me, ask my course participants. One of them put it really beautifully: “She taught me how to connect my mind, body, and soul – to use my breath to heal parts of myself I didn’t know were hurting, to bring my mind and body to the present moment, and to find the answers I was seeking in my life within myself instead of looking for someone or something else to tell me what to do. She showed me how to take back the power, my power, that I didn’t know I had given away to the world around me.” 

When we drop and center within our body, we create a counterbalance. We activate our inner superpowers that are wired into our human bodies. I've seen people heal old trauma, change their pain, stop stress and anxiety, make decisions more easily, drop habits that no longer serve them, deepen their spiritual connection, feel more fulfillment in their life. And just like anything, if you really want to rewire your nervous system, learn to play the piano, get stronger at the gym, it just takes repetition. It just takes making a new habit. And just like all these things, when we do something different, when we choose to empower ourselves by learning to orient to the powerful healing capacity and perceptual awareness that our human design offers us, we claim our power. It becomes automatic. It becomes easier. It starts to take root when we’re rooted inside ourselves. We feel better and better. A new normal. It's really about paying attention to what's inside us in a simple way. 

So please for your own sake, claim your power. This isn’t my stuff, it's your stuff. It’s in you just waiting. Waiting for you to claim it, not by thinking, but by feeling and by doing it moment to moment. You have the power to empower yourself. To embody who you truly are, and to make the most of all that you are here to do. So plug yourself in to yourself, through your own body. Your own embodiment is the place of activation of your wired interconnectedness. So drop in, plug in, and claim your power.