Bring Your Authentic Self to the Holiday Table
(Photo by Jordan Arnold on Unsplash)
Picture this: Candles are burning, music is playing, festive food is spread over the table. You are finally gathered with family to celebrate the holidays. You’ve been dreaming of exactly this moment for a while now. All is merry and bright once again.
So why are you feeling uncomfortable?
Your skin is crawling, you feel like you can’t breathe, you’re overeating without even noticing. It feels like a younger, less evolved version of you showed up to this meal. You’re saying things that you don’t say anymore and you’re reacting to things that usually don’t trigger you. After all the attention you’ve given to becoming more centered and authentic in your life, it feels like you don’t even know who you are while you sit with people who love you.
Ugh! It’s so frustrating. No matter how much you make up your mind to be different, you keep slipping into your old ways. And it sucks.
YOU’RE NOT ALONE
Let me share a little story that may help you. I’ve come across this in more than one spiritual tradition. A student comes to the teacher and says something like “ya know, things are going so well here at the temple. My mind is calm. I am so peaceful. I get along with everyone. I really think I’ve gotten much closer to enlightenment”. That’s when the teacher says: “You think you’re so enlightened? … go spend a week with your family and tell me how it goes.” And we all know how that one goes, don’t we?
FAMILY PATTERNS
Family can bring out the best of us and can be a huge challenge. There are patterns in our families that have existed for generations. When we go into our families, no matter how much work we’ve done to become more authentic, it’s so easy to get sucked back into old habits. And it’s not just you, everyone in your family is running on these patterns, mostly unconsciously. Again, you can do a lot of work on yourself, but if no one else in your family has done anything to shift their patterns, you may get pulled in before you even notice.
YOUR BODY CAN HELP
This is where your body can either help you or keep you stuck. When you’re not embodied you’ll stay in the old habits. When that’s the case you don’t feel the ground, you don’t notice your body, you become like floating head without attachment to the earth. You’ll notice that you say things you haven’t said in years. You do things that you thought you’d out grown. Because you’ve separated from your body, you’re not really present in the moment so you can’t make conscious choices about your behavior. Your body may try to help you get back in but that can result in over eating or drinking to try to find the ground.
That’s why paying attention to your body when you’re at the holiday table is so important. Your body is conscious and present to THIS moment. It is here and it is now. If your body is sitting, it is sitting right now. If your body is breathing, it is breathing right now. If your body is contracting, it’s contracting in this moment. By feeling into your body - noticing grounding, breath, and contraction- you bring your authentic self forward in the moment. And you allow your old self, habituated self, to move into the background. She’s not going to disappear, but she doesn’t get to run the show.
CONSCIOUS EMBODIMENT
The way back into your body is through practicing conscious embodiment. Try it in these three simple steps:
Get Grounded - Feel your seat or your feet and let gravity support you. (If you’ve been reading my blog I hope this feels familiar to you. Grounding is always helpful!)
Notice Breath - When you inhale think “I am breathing in”. When you exhale think “I am breathing out”
Notice Contraction - Scan your body and notice what is tightening right now. Don’t worry about letting it go, just notice it and see what happens. Maybe it’ll let go on it’s own. This one needs to be repeated over and over again. Don’t worry about it. Just notice when your’e contracting
You can practice conscious embodiment anytime and it will help you stay present. And if you want to bring that presence to the family dinner I recommend you practice before you pull up your chair. It will be a lot easier to remember and use these embodiment practices if you’ve done them before.
HOLIDAY PRESENCE
Remember the image of the holiday table from the beginning of this post? Now imagine sitting there feeling your feet on the floor and your breath moving in and out. Imagine softening as you look into the eyes of your loved ones. Imagine feeling deeply connected not only to them, but to yourself and really all of life. This is what’s possible when you stay consciously embodied.