Increments of Change: Trying Something Different

There are days - particularly when the thermometer in the kitchen says three degrees, as it does today - when the idea of movement and change feels like just too much. Take your yoga class, we think, your trips, your enlightenment - I'll be here under the ugly red blanket watching The Bachelor.It isn't only that the effort feels demanding, but the stakes feel high. What if, we wonder, change jeopardizes all this? What if the battleship of the small manageable now gets sunk by opening, by unwinding? No, thank you. Pass the popcorn.The thing is, there may be something between the small curled up ball on the couch and the running-through-the-field fantasy of freedom. The increments of change we invite can fan out over time - that tiny angle of difference becoming (in hindsight) a wide ray of change.One of the reasons this work is endlessly interesting to me is that I get to witness this kind of change at the level of tissue. As muscles release I see how my clients' shoulders open, how they breathe more deeply. It takes courage to allow movement back in, but the return is bountiful: They get more information from their own bodies.  That is, they get more of themselves and their own aliveness.A question I often hear from clients at the end of the session is, "How do I stay open when I'm off the table? How do I stop from tightening up all over again?" And my usual answer is, try something a little different. Stretching is good. Water too. But small things that move us out of habit and into attention - that's movement too. You can still watch bad shows and eat popcorn, but becoming aware of patterns - places where we've forgotten choice - is a lovely way to stay open.

Here are 5 Ways to Step Out Of Habit - but I bet you could come up with 11 more:1. Do you habitually cross one leg over the other? Switch it up.2. Take a different route home.3. Eat / make / order  a food that surprises you - one that you normally overlook4. Introduce pauses in your day. A few minutes in your car before you head into the grocery store? Totally okay.5. Slow your gait. Just a little. Notice how your arms swing, your feet fall, where your eyes are.Habit can take so many forms - movement, talking (to ourselves and others), silence, belief. And it can become so much like that old crack in the ceiling: We stop seeing it. Friends, you are so brave with your selves - why not change things up a bit, just to notice how far you've come?