By Yoav Aftovitzer 
When Daria stepped into the room she had a look about her that reminded me of a doe entering a glade in the woods, looking around with worried eyes, fearing for her safety.
“I didn’t sleep last night,” she said. “I’m expecting a major company client today, and I’ve been thinking all night about how to make the best impression”.
“Where are these thoughts located in the body?” I asked.
“I feel it in my stomach.” Daria waved her arms near her stomach like engine pistons going up and down repetitively. “I feed my stomach with thoughts,” she added.
Running the world
Our bodies often try to tell us our story, but we rarely listen. If we slow down, and maybe even stop, a previously unseen world appears before us. With this in mind I gave the following guidance to Daria: “You might slow down this hand motion, and we could see how it affects the rest of your body.”
“I feel the tension in my stomach. I’m always running from one thing to the other, always busy solving problems. I don’t even rest when I come home. I turn on the computer, make phone calls, arrangements – until I collapse into bed completely drained.”
“There’s a sense of great life energy in that,” I say.
“Yes, it gives me a sense of power, like I’m running the world. But at the end of the day, when I crash into bed, I ask myself: where have I been? Who am I? I feel like I’ve operated on my reserve engine instead of operating from my core, which makes me feel like it wasn’t even me living that day.”
In Daria’s life, and for many of us in the modern world, there is no time for assimilation. We feed ourselves with massive amounts of information, pictures, thoughts, and worries, but we don’t take time to assimilate all the input. It is no wonder then, that when our “reserve engine” works relentlessly, we find it hard to be ourselves, and to get in touch with our core.
Taking Time Out
Most of us are so used to living a fast paced, hectic life that we have forgotten to do something that once was integral. Call it: time spent gazing, or dreaming time.
It reminds me of what a fetus inside the womb might experience, floating in a world that allows us to absorb and assimilate.
Physical psychotherapy shows us different ways of dealing with painful emotions. One of them is called “escaping into our thoughts.” Another way to define it is “continuous motion”, or “over activity.”
The fetus, and later the child and then the grownup, learn to activate their reserve engines in different ways like the survival mechanism that causes us to avoid pain.
Distancing ourselves from emotion, from the body, and from our quiet essence helps us to avoid pain.
What happens if we pause, if we are silent? Who are we without activity, without words?
In Daria’s case, the nonstop action, pressure, and never-ending thoughts allowed her to feel “alive.”
The ongoing activity is partially an expression of our will to live, an attempt of the body and soul to constantly feel alive.
But how can we stop the habit of continuous motion?
Observation And Identification
The first tool is ‘observation.’ When we observe ourselves we are able to identify where we really are. We can make the distinction between the ‘driver’ and the ‘vehicle.’
Observing is a kind of pause. While part of us continues moving, another part rests motionless and watches. Bringing awareness into the body can help us see.
The second tool is ‘identification.’ Observing allows us to identify what brings us down or lifts us up. Are we in touch with our good essence, or are we acting out of an automatic defense or repression mechanism?
When Daria slowed her motions down things became clearer. She realized that her constant state of activity gives her a false sense of power, and that she is not connected to her essence.
‘Waiting’ can also be a kind of tool. My teacher Yamima would say, “don’t be in a rush to understand.” Waiting, even if just for a short time, before we talk or jump into the next activity, frees us from automatic action. Yamima uses the phrase “waiting for understanding.”
The common thread linking the different tools that I have mentioned is attention. Paying attention is like putting the heart in its rightful place, making it the main access point, or in other words, transferring from our reserve engine to our nuclear engine – the heart.
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Translation: Yasmine Ariel