Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE

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Chasing the rainbow

When my computer failed to get a connection to the Internet this morning and I then spent an hour messing around with cables, phoning my ISP, de-installing and re-installing the modem software and eventually getting on-line, I was reminded of the the Norwich Union's slogan 'Normal is wonderful when you get it back'.

It's just a shame that 'normal' doesn't feel wonderful all the time, isn't it? .....as that would feel.......wonderful. But is it possible to feel 'wonderful' all the time? Surely after a while we get used to it and then we feel......well, normal?

How does it feel to get an increase in salary, beyond your expectations? Fantastic. We can then go out and enjoy ourselves, replace the car, go on holiday buy some clothes, or just pay the outstanding bills. After a few weeks, we are still receiving the improved pay-cheque, but does it still feel fantastic....or have we got used to it? This search for happiness can be like chasing a rainbow. It's elusive.

There is a lot of talk in press (and here on my blog) about how to find happiness, whether it's in purchasing new exciting things, seeking the perpetual external stimulus or whether it's to be found within if we look for it. But is it truly possible to be 'happy' all the time? Surely the sensation of happiness and knowing that we are happy is in comparison to how we 'normally' feel? Because if we are happy all the time, then we wouldn't recognise it as such and just feel.....normal. This may be experienced as 'contentment'.....possibly a notch up the happy scale from the mid-point.

But we are never completely happy or completely sad, and if we are, the high (or low) is usually temporary. If we remained at a low level of depression for any time we could become suicidal and end up in hospital. And sadly some people do experience this. But do they touch bottom or are the depths of emotion infinite? We don't go to hospital if we are chronically happy. The higher end of the depressed/ecstatic scale is what we search for.

So this 'Richter' scale of happiness has infinite variables, as night changes to day, as ice can melt and become steam, as silence can become deafening, or the lowest inaudible sound waves can change frequency upwards into our range of perception and then go higher beyond our hearing into infinity. But being human and having emotions, we tend not to remain constantly at any level. We vary from moment to moment.

Emotional states naturally vary enormously. In my practice for the Alexander Technique I work with people on their balance and co-ordination. Many who come initially can be physically quite off balance. They are either leaning, collapsing in stature, stooping or a combination of many other characteristics. Such habits affect the vast proportion of the world population to a greater or lesser degree. These habits tend to affect not only our posture and external appearance, but also our health and sense of well-being. With the Alexander Technique, we learn to let go of these unhelpful habits and restore 'natural' poise, as we had as young children. The quality is one of freedom and looseness, as well as becoming more upright, taller and broader to our full stature. We also become better balanced.

If we improve our balance and co-ordination so that we are more upright, and freer, we will also be breathing better and benefit from other improvements to our internal functioning.

As we become more physically balanced, we can also become more emotionally centred too.

It is not possible to be entirely secure in oneself if we are physically off balance, as the threat of falling over triggers our reflexes and we compensate by stiffening. This ultimately affects our functioning and sense of well-being.

If we are more emotionally centred, then any problems we encounter will be like 'water off a duck's back'. The problems don't affect us so greatly.

Being better physically balanced and possibly more emotionally centred as a consequence, means that we are less likely to fluctuate emotionally to the extremes of highs and lows. We maintain a more level, even-tempered emtional state. The swings away from calm centre are less pronounced and we can enjoy more of a level of contentment. But this then becomes our normal state of being. It may be a notch or two up on the happiness scale from the mid-point and then we experience variations up and down from there, depending on our day-to-day experiences.

So, can being 'happy' be something that we can feel all the time? I doubt it. But we can find a level that is more constantly pleasurable; a level of contentment. This can also come down to choice as I have written about before in The Happiness Formula

But having said all that, with regards to being back on-line this morning, 'normal does feel wonderful when you get it back'. And I'm able to write these over-long blogs.

I do hope you experience contentment in your day, today.

:-)

Ps, And as Jilly comments, it's good to acknowledge what we do have that we take for granted.....like running water! Noel.

Posted by Noël on August 18, 2006 8:46 AM | Permalink