I was emailing back-and-forth on a matter with someone who does tech work for our little team of Emotional Liberation merry makers. I was asking some questions about handling a particular thing that we had to deal with. His answer was an unvarnished:
“No that’s not what I said”
How do you present yourself to the outside world? Personally, I used to hide my emotional pain and look normal enough. Professional, successful, measured. But behind that facade lived my wounded self.
As a professional embracing the judicious use of cannabis in an innovative approach to trauma resolution, I often encounter individuals worried about the aftermath of “taking too much” cannabis. Typically, their concern is linked to an undefined yet deep-seated fear that something negative might happen.
Ah, the infamous “turkey neck” – the charming little souvenir that time bestows upon us as we gracefully age. It’s as if one day, I was confidently wearing a favorite necklace, and the next, contemplating turtlenecks in the peak of summer.
Breathing was something I didn’t really want to do for most of my life. Not that I didn’t want to breath to stay alive, but it was the breathing that meditation and yoga teachers nudged me to do… For years I attended yoga classes, and the breathing part was my least favorite.
This experiment is still in its early days – now in my 9th week, I’m fully immersed in what’s surfacing for me! My assignment is a full year – 52 weeks of paying attention, week by week, to the constant stream of self-judgment about my body and my face. And let me tell you, it’s eye-opening.
Panic and paralysis won’t save us as we flail around, trying to get out of the nightmare.
To this day I have a tinge of self consciousness when I wear my glasses – after all these decades of “shame work” I’ve done on myself. And that’s even after proving over and over again that, indeed, boys do make passes at girls who wear glasses! (But, of course, in this day and age, “boys making passes” is likely an outdated concept.)
Can I simply say that, he gets me? Stephen Dinan, the founder and president of the Shift Network said, “For a long time, I’ve wanted to find someone who could really teach us how to work with cannabis in a conscious way… show us how [cannabis] can be an ally in our growth, in our evolution, our emotional healing.”
I grew up in the era (or maybe it’s always the era?), where it was common to hear men say, “I’m a butt man” or “I’m a leg man” or whatever female body part was being singled out. But it seems the butt was a particular favorite … and according to this study, it apparently still is.