Hey dear Reader, Happy New Year to you! Hope you are well. I have found this great explanation of floating on a forum and want to share it with you. Floating can ease your tension, and loosen the hold that anxiety has on you. It takes practise and an understanding of what it is for it to work, but it works wonders. Here´s the article below! Best, TrueVoice ¨Claire Weekes: Float Through Anxiety What did Claire Weekes mean by that? Heres how I understand it. How Do You Swim? Its complicated. You have to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and head to propel yourself through the water. You also have to breathe without taking in large quantities of water. And you have to keep going in the right direction, even when water gets in your eyes. If youre like most people, it took a lot of practice to learn to swim, because there are so many things you have to make happen, and so many techniques to master. How Do You Float? You dont really have to learn to float. A block of wood can float, and so can a person. What you might have to learn is how to not get in your own way, how to simply let floating happen. The block of wood doesnt have to make it happen, it just floats, as long as its in water. People will float too, if they just lay down on the water. But people, unlike blocks of wood, often find it hard to let go and trust in their bodys natural ability to float. Their mistrust and apprehension will lead them to do things to try and stay afloat. Thats not floating, thats sinking! To teach someone to float, you might have to give them a few instructions - lay back, lay your head on the water, lay your arms and legs out, lie still - but the most important part of the technique of floating is...do nothing, let go, and let time pass. Float versus Swim When anxious clients come to me for help in dealing with anxiety, they usually expect that I will offer them the swimming kind of help: lots of specific ways for coping with anxiety, and many techniques to keep them afloat. But what they really need is more the floating kind of help. They need to learn to let go, rather than to make something happen, or prevent something from happening. Thats the surest path to anxiety relief. What did Claire Weekes Mean by Floating? First and foremost, she meant to convey the opposite of fighting. The way to regain a sense of calm is to go along with the sensations of anxiety and panic, rather than oppose them. She described floating as masterly inactivity, and said this meant: to stop holding tensely onto yourself, trying to control your fear, trying to do something about it while subjecting yourself to constant self-analysis. Thats a tough sell! Claire Weekes knew that, of course, and wrote: The average person, tense with battling, has an innate aversion to ...letting go. He vaguely thinks that were he to do this, he would lose control over the last vestige of his will power and his house of cards would tumble. Claire Weekes Knew it was a Trick The aversion Claire Weekes referred to is the result of the Panic Trick. Its the idea that a person is just barely holding himself together, and that if he relaxes his grip even a little, he will fall apart. In fact, its his struggling to keep a grip that maintains the anxiety! What I like best about the notion of floating is that it avoids two common misunderstandings about overcoming anxiety. The first one is the idea that you have to struggle against anxiety, fight it, and overcome it. And the second, related to the first, is that you have to arm yourself with all kinds of techniques and objects in order to enter the fray and confront anxiety. In reality, youll make much better progress when you let yourself float through the anxiety, not striving to overcome anything, not struggling to employ techniques, but simply allowing the sensations to pass over time. The best kind of help, in my opinion, is the floating kind. Its help that assists you to rediscover your own natural abilities to cope with whatever comes, rather than arming you against potential adversity. (Masterly Inactivity) to give up the struggle to stop holding so tensely unto yourself by trying to control your fear, trying to do something about it while subjecting yourself to constant self analysis. it means to cease trying to navigate your way out of illness by meeting each obstacle as if it were a challenge that must be met if recovery is possible. it means to bypass the struggle, to float and let time pass. the average person tenses with the battle,they never will do this floating. They feel they must stand on guard, keep control and (hold thereselves together) all the while this is giving more power to the problem. (Loosen your attitude) Practice masterly inactivity and let go -- if your body trembles - let it tremble - dont feel obliged to try to stop it. Dont try to appear normal.DONT EVEN STRIVE FOR RELAXATION. Simply let the thought of releaxation be in your mind, in your attitude toward your body. Loosen your attitude dont be concerned because you are tensed and cannot relax. The very act of being of being prepared to accept your tenseness re-laxes your mind. And relaxation of body gradually follows. You dont have to strive for relaxation you have to wait for it. When someone says i have tried so hard all day to be relaxed-surly he has had a day of striving, not of re-laxation.¨ Taken from: tmswiki.org/forum/threads/lessons-from-claire-weekes.3873/
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 23:01:26 +0000
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