The Here and Now, not the Then and There
Most of us find it almost impossible to be ‘here and now’, we niggle at past problems and grievances, we anticipate future problems before they arrive. We fall into the habit-pattern trap. When we constantly re-hash our past events, which are usually painful or stressful, we revisit them both in mind and body. Remembering, or rather going over situations again and again, we entrench the original response more deeply into our nervous system. Whatever the situation was, the physical response will have included a pattern of shortening and tightening throughout your whole body. So as you worry about it, your neck stiffens and your breastbone sinks as you restrict your rib movement and clench your hip muscles. This tension becomes a part of the ‘memory’ and the more you go back to the past event, the more familiar the tension feels until the point comes when you may have forgotten the event, but you still have the tension, your body is not in the present, it is in the past. It is not in the ‘here and now’ it is in the ‘there and then’, or the ‘will be and maybe’. To come to a point where you can acknowledge that, enables you to recognise that your ‘here and now’ contains a lot of ‘there and then’ and it is not needed. Inhibition can be of enormous help in this situation, to inhibit that ongoing response of tension which drags you back into the ‘there and then’ or forward into an unseen fearful future allows you to genuinely get in touch with your mind and body in the present moment.
This isn’t always a pleasant experience. We layer our bodies and minds with veils of tension that we hide behind and becoming more mindful and aware of your present self can be challenging; but awareness is often a precursor of change and release, a transformational state that allows a different perspective to come about.