Being Alive

Where would you rate your aliveness this minute on a scale of one to ten (one being “I am surprised I still have a pulse” and ten being “I am so excited to be alive that I can hardly wait to take my next breath”)? Do you remember a time when most of your days were lived at a nine or ten? For most of us, this was when we were small children of three or four. Remember when you could imagine you were a superhero or a princess and connect so completely with all your senses that, for a time, you became whatever you imagined? Do you remember how it felt to be a child? One minute you were happy and laughing, engrossed in your play, then something would happen that felt like the end of the world, and you were sobbing inconsolably—life was over. Then, miracle of miracles, life did go on, your tears ended, and you quickly moved on to a new set of feelings, engrossed in something else. You completely experienced whatever feeling occurred in the moment, released it, and then focused on whatever showed up in the next moment. The smallest new discovery was awe inspiring and wonderful. The world was filled with laughter and magic. At the age of three, you stated the truth of how you really felt. You laughed out loud, you yelled at the top of your lungs, you sang, you danced, you made messes and became one, you played full out until the game got called, and sometimes you fell asleep in your dinner.

Then what happened? You were taught to behave appropriately, in a socially ordered manner, that pleased the people around you, and in doing, so you learned to suppress and perhaps even be afraid of that intoxicatingly thrilling, but unpredictable spontaneity of being present, feeling everything, and expressing how you felt, fully, completely aware and engaged, living as if each moment were all that existed. As your socialization, education, and societal programming continued, you learned to suppress more and more of your feelings as being inappropriate.

Many of us grew into adults who have suppressed and shut away so much of our vitality and vigorous aliveness that we are no longer capable of fully experiencing ourselves, our aliveness, or our creativity. No wonder as adults many of us are prone to feelings of depression and alienation. Just talking about this is depressing the hell out of me!

But here’s the deal: this is not the worst of it. Psychoneuroimmunology is the scientific study of the interaction among emotions, the brain, and the immune system. Led by the work of Candace Pert, these scientists see the emotions as the doorway into the body-mind interaction. Their studies have demonstrated that different emotions produce different chemicals in our bodies. Positive, happy, joyous feelings produce greater concentrations of such feel-good chemicals as serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins, while negative, angry, stress-related feelings produce more cortisol-type chemicals that suppress the immune system and cause general havoc in the body.

However, just working to churn out as many feel-good chemicals as possible is not going to be of much benefit to us if we are also denying our negative feelings. The real damage to our bodies occurs when the body’s freely flowing emotional juices are blocked by buried thoughts and feelings, which interrupt the natural flow of the body’s autonomic processes, which, in turn, interferes with the body’s normal healing and regenerative responses. These studies indicate that we must acknowledge and claim all our emotions, not just the positive, more socially acceptable ones. Emotions like anger, grief, and fear are essential to survival. When these feelings are denied and suppressed and are not processed, they can become toxic to the body. In other words, stuffing our feelings or denying we even have negative feelings creates interruptions in the flow of energy in the body down to the cellular level and lays the groundwork for disharmony and disease in the body-mind.

Well, just great! What are we supposed to do about this? We were all able to do this once, be in the moment, feel every emotion fully and completely and then release it and move on. Remember? What would it be like to live life the way we did when we were three years old? That kid holds much of our power, our spontaneity, and our ability to respond in the moment. He or she can also freely access our creativity and the vast power of our imagination. When we grew into adulthood, most of us mistakenly put away all the things of childhood, including all these powers. We began the process of slowly—or, for some of us, not so slowly—killing ourselves by taking life more and more seriously, suppressing more of our authentic selves and our passionate aliveness and the glorious panoply of all our diverse emotions in the belief that we must make these sacrifices to be responsible, successful adults. Ugh!

No wonder we are going around depressed, disillusioned, burned out, and popping antidepressants like popcorn at the movies. When we put away our toys and quit playing and forgot that life is only a game, we lost access to the best part of ourselves.

Reclaim the power of that three-year-old! Start to play again. Restart the flow of your emotions by playing in your life as if it were the game it really is. Plato said, “Life must be lived as play.” Playing reconnects us to others and helps us lighten up, instantly reduces stress, reestablishes our emotional flow, and easily moves us into present time, heightening our awareness and reconnecting us to our creativity.

Attitude is very important to healing and remaining well. Being interested, curious, and playful is a proven formula for living longer. Surround yourself with people who honor these values. I require my dentist to give toys. Kids shouldn’t be the only ones being rewarded. I insist that they provide good ones, too—no cheesy fake vampire teeth.

Your three-year-old could also be counted on to tell the truth, most especially about how he or she felt about things. By acknowledging and being present with all your feelings as they appear, expressing them, then releasing them, you honor yourself, your right to feel, and ultimately, you free yourself to become the full expression of your authentic self.

One Sunday, when our children were small and I was still invested in being the perfect mommy, I was going to make waffles in our new waffle iron. I’d had problems with it sticking before but was sure I had the problem solved. After picking out all the stuck-on dough with a toothpick and carefully oiling it, I was sure I’d make perfect waffles. The dough stuck everywhere. I cleaned it again, which took forever, while the kids were carrying on about being so hungry they could die, making noise and being generally obnoxious. This time, under severe pressure, I pulled out all the stops, put more oil in the batter, used cooking spray on the grids, made sure the temperature was exactly right. It was going to work for sure . . . when it stuck this time, it triggered something in me. I unplugged that waffle iron and took it out to the back deck, grabbed it by the handle, and threw it like a discus as far as I could throw it. It hit the back fence and broke into a hundred pieces. I felt such joy and freedom. Woman versus stupid machine! We had pancakes for breakfast, and the back fence became the graveyard for crappy appliances that didn’t work. It was great! My inner three-year-old was cheering up a storm, and the kids thought it was awesome!

Recapturing the power of our inner child invites us to view the world with that sense of wonder and possibility that makes every day exciting and worth exploring. Engaging with the world from a child’s honest willingness to tell the truth, feeling all that is there to feel, then moving on may be the most powerful gift you can give to your life and your health.

** This article is one of 101 great articles that were published in 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health. To get complete details on “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health”, visit http://selfgrowth.com/healthbook3.html