Vulnerability Project - Week 2 Transcript

RC:

Welcome to week two of the Vulnerability Project. As always, Id like begin with
a check in. Id like you to check in with yourself as you begin to watch this video
noticing what youre feeling in your body, sensations, emotions, the quality of
your overall energy. Are you more contracted, expanded, somewhere in the
middle. What kind of thoughts are you having? Is there a particular quality to
whats going on in your mind now; is it more edgy or smooth? Is it more
accepting or critical? Just see if you can take a moment and breathe into all of
that, relaxing into presence, allowing it all to be just as it is.
Im doing the same thing myself, noticing that theres a lot to take care of here in
making the video, are the lights right? Is the mic right? Will I remember exactly
what to say? Im honoring that slight sense of overwhelm I feel and also at the
same time, just doing my best to allow a little flutter, a little concern and just
trusting as I relax in the presence that all will unfold just as it needs to.
In our phone call last week, towards the end we talked about, what is an emotion?
We focused on the physical aspect of an emotion, that any time you ever feel
anything; it arises, moves shifts and ultimately departs from your physical body.
We talked about how its supposed to work and then also what gets in the way.
We also spent a little bit of time with each of you sharing about one or more
emotions that are particularly difficult for you to feel. Thats right where were
going to pick up with this video.
When Im giving talks about this topic in person, I like to begin with a survey. It
goes, raise your hand if when you were growing up in your family, you got a great
education in how to recognize honor and experience your emotions. When I ask
that question as a survey, a few people start to snicker and then people feel freer
to laugh. Soon they come to realize it wasnt actually a legitimate question. In the
many years Ive been asking that question, I think there are only five or less
people so fortunate to raise their hand and answer yes to that question. Thats the
predicament that most of us face when we come to our emotional life. We either
didnt get any significant training or we got all the wrong kinds of training, which
we have to spend years and countless visits to workshops and therapists and even
online programs like this to try to unlearn.
However, Im here to tell you its not your parents fault. Deep in our culture is an
allergy to emotions. I came across this in a really interesting way when I was
doing research for my book, The One Thing Holding You Back. In doing that
research I found that of the seven so-called deadly sins, all of them are emotions,
anger, pride, greed, lust, envy, sloth and whats the last, gluttony. Think about it,
if emotions arise unbidden into our consciousness, if we dont choose when and
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how they arrive and seven of them are deadly sins then were in trouble right out
of the gate. It gives a whole new meaning to the idea of original sin.
Its not even culture or religions fault. If were looking for something to blame,
we can go straight to evolution because theres a glitch in our brains courtesy of
evolution that creates this whole deeply embedded, generations-long allergy to
emotions that I was describing. You might wonder, Well, why is that so? Why
would we be created in such a way? Im not an evolutionary biologist or
psychologist and Im not an expert but I do know that evolution moves forward in
a messy way, one step sideways, one step backwards, two steps forward. Thats
why there are vestiges on humans that dont make a lot of sense, that they dont
usually need, same thing with other species. It makes sense that we would, at this
point in our evolutionary process be imperfect and I guess you could say that
would always be the case. When it comes to emotions, this is especially key.
In order to describe this glitch that evolution brings to us, I just want to use a
model that was first [posited] by Paul McLean way back in the 50s, its called
The Triune Brain, that simply means three parts. Over all these years of research
and just great leaps forward in our understanding, the basic model still holds.
What the model says is that the first part of our brain that developed was whats
sometimes called the reptilian brain but what I like to call the primitive brain.
That seems to give it a more general sense. The primitive brain is all about
survival; its constantly assessing in any situation the degrees of safety and danger
so that it can try to keep you safe. We need it all the time and it functions not just
on a survival level like when youre facing down a saber tooth tiger but in every
moment like a party or a work environment or even at the dinner table. The
second layer of the brain that developed was the limbic system. The limbic system
is primarily about memory and emotions. The third level is the neocortex. The
neocortex is the home of abstract reasoning. These are the three basic layers of the
brain and now Im going to describe the glitch.
When the limbic system generates an emotion, basically it has a command for
you, it says, Feel this. It needs you to feel it fully in your body until youve got
the message of that emotions sensations so that the emotion can then dissipate
and leave you in an expanded state. The primitive brain cant distinguish between
an external threat like footsteps in a dark alley and an internal threat like jealousy
or grief or longing. What this means is that the primitive brain actually considers
difficult and challenging emotions as life threatening and therefore when the
limbic system generates that emotion and says, Feel this, the primitive brain
says, No way, and it blocks the emotion right there in your body with, and this
brings us back to last week, a contraction.
Thats right, a contraction is created by your primitive brain, that fight, flight,
freeze response and its designed to keep you from feeling an emotion that your
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primitive brain deems life threatening. This is huge to understand because in

means that once you contract around an emotion, you are at cross-purposes. One
part of your brain is telling you to do one thing and the other part of your brain is
telling you to do the opposite. You really are stuck and you will repeat patterns
over and over and over again out of that stuckness until you rewire your brain.
Thats the great gift of evolution, that even though it created this glitch for us, it
also creates an opportunity through our consciousness to rewire that glitch so that
all the different parts of our brain can work well independently and also
interdependently. Therefore, we can function much more of the time in a fully
expanded and therefore present state. In a moment, Im going to talk to you about
how we do that rewiring but first a quick word about the neocortex. Did you
notice that I didnt mention that in the glitch? It does play a part.
The neocortex is a great aspect, a wonderful part of being human. Our ability to
reason, however the neocortex sees everything as a problem to solve and it thinks
that it has the answer to every problem. Therefore, what happens when we have
an emotion generated from the limbic system that is troubling, the neocortex sees
it as a problem to solve and wants for us not to feel it but it wants to help us get
rid of it. As weve covered, that just doesnt work. What happens in this situation
sis that the neocortex goes into a kind of alliance with the primitive brain to try to
keep that emotion at bay. This is the source of great blind spots. Youve probably
known someone or you might even have bee someone who, youre so bright, you
see things so clearly and then theres this one topic or issue. Everybody says, Oh
my gosh, why cant this person see it? Its right there in front of his/her face.
Thats a tale tell sign of the neocortex blocking the emotion and therefore not
being able to see clearly.
This leads to a really important maxim that I share everywhere I can, which is, if
you want to get the best out of all the parts of your brain and really function
harmoniously, its great to feel first and think later. Once youve actually
reconnected to any feelings that youve blocked consciously or otherwise, then
youre expanded and present and you can trust the powers of your neocortex, you
can trust your analytical thinking. Feel first, think later. If you want to know when
the later comes, its when youre expanded, when you feel mostly open and
connected and present.
Now lets move on to rewiring the glitch. In order to talk about how we do that, I
need to discuss surfing and I mean surfing for real in the ocean. When someone is
surfing and they wan to get a great ride, whats really important is first of all that
theyre relaxed on the board. Theres no trying or straining to stay on the waves
because that tension will immediately knock you off, so a soft gentle posture. The
next thing is that the surfer needs to be in exquisite connection with the wave and
knees so that every subtle shift of the current is matched by the movement of the
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board. If that happens, that exquisite connection, then the surfer will get all the
way to shore and have a wonderful ride. If the surfer has a particularly harrowing
moment and then starts to think about that, Whoa, that was wild what just
wipeout. If the surfer is worried about that rock up ahead, When am I going
to wipeout.Similarly, even if its a great ride and the surfers really relaxed
and looks up at the clouds and says, Whoa, that kind of reminds me of a
wipeout again. You get the picture; its the ongoing connection in a soft and
flexible way that keeps the surfer and the board connected to the way and makes
for a great surfing experience.
Now, lets take surfing in the ocean and turn our attention towards surfing you
emotions. When youre surfing emotions in your physical body where they exist,
your attention is the surfer. Your physical sensation is the wave. What you want
to do is place your attention right up close on the sensations, if its here, if its
here, if its here because of course, you cant surf a wave from the shore. This is a
mistake that often the [0:15:29 inaudible] can make a first when theyre wanting
to connect to their emotions. They are used to sitting back and watching the
movie display itself on the field of their consciousness kind of from a distance. It
doesnt work with emotions, they need us to up get close and personal, right there
at the crest and follow the experience that way.
By follow the experience, what I mean is, stay with the sensation as it moves and
shifts and changes all the way until it gets you to shore, which is in this case
expansion. Maybe you have a tightness in your belly and you bring your attention
there. At first, it just seems like its just sitting there, nothing much is happening.
You get a little closer, right on the wave so to speak. Now you notice its swirling
counterclockwise. Suddenly some sensations move up through your diaphragm
into your chest and you notice a tear wells. Now youre surfing the emotion.
Thats what we mean, just that. Its simple, it really is simple. Of course its not
always easy but surfing your emotions is about staying with the sensations and
letting them do their thing while you pay attention and follow along with them in
a non-interfering way. Thats what makes all the difference.
Theres a couple of things about surfing in your body that are different from
surfing in the ocean that I need to let you in on. The first one that very often when
youre surfing emotions in your physical body, youll start with a contraction,
thats how youll know somethings afoot. Youll feel a tension in your shoulders
or a pressure at your forehead and that will give you an alarm, you need to surf.
Heres the good news about that, no matter how intense the contraction is, in all
of my years of experience Ive never found one in myself or anyone else that
doesnt release just by you paying attention to it. It releases and allows you to get
in touch with the emotion that was being blocked in the first place. Thats when
the really important surfing can begin.

Heres whats happening in that moment. By you putting your attention there
purposely, your primitive brain is reminded that while its important and has a lot
of power, it doesnt actually run the whole show by itself. With that attention on
the contraction its as if the primitive brain is saying, Oh, oh, what? We are
doing something different now? Hmmn, I dont know if I like this. Ill stay over
here, Ill watch for a few moments and I reserve the right to shut this whole thing
down at any moment if I dont like whats happening, but it does give the
opportunity for something else to happen. When you get in there and you surf that
abandonment or rejection or humiliation and you actually get a chance to ride the
wave to an expanded state, the primitive brain says something like, Oh, rejection,
not footsteps in a dark alley, not something that I have to shut down so hard, so
fats and so long about.
The next time you feel that rejection, probably the primitive brain will still
contract but as I say, not that hard, not that long. Itll be much easier form that
first moment of triggering to surf your way back to openness. Every time you do
surf a difficult emotion, youre actually rewiring your physical brain and youre
changing the circuitry in that brain in a process that allows you first to become
more fully functioning but also more integrating and we can even say more
healed. Through this simple, but not easy practice of surfing, youre not only
getting the benefit in the moment of going through directly to that greater opening
and presence and wellbeing, but youre also changing your whole physiology and
neurology for all the days and weeks and months and years ahead. Thats why
surfing your emotions is so incredibly powerful.
The last thing I wan to talk to you about in this weeks video is that when you star
surfing your emotions, and were going to have a lot of practice with that coming
up, its easy to make an error of perception. Its easy to think that when Im
asking you to surf fully and allow and welcome and flow with these sensations
that you are also therefore supposed to believe the verdicts that sometimes come
with them. For example, lets say failure comes and it seems like just a sucker
punch in the gut, Oooh, its hot, its like a poker stabbing me. In the midst of
that, a thought might arise, Youre such a looser. Accepting and flowing with
the physical emotion isnt the same thing as agreeing with that verdict.
When that verdict comes, we really have three choices. We can say, Yes its true,
Im a loser, and then therefore glue ourselves to that verdict and get taken down
with it. We can fight it by saying, No, Im not a loser, I need to have better selfesteem, but when we meet resistance with resistance, we just create further
resistance and therefore were still stuck to that verdict. The third way is to
acknowledge it neutrally without engaging, something like this, Yes, I heard that
but Im doing something else here so well get back to you later, and then stay
on the wave.

That reminds me, I forgot to mention earlier, the other way that surfing your
emo0tions is different than surfing in the ocean, when you get wiped out on a
wave in the ocean, youve got to paddle all the way back out to where the waves
are breaking. You have to wait, it could be a minute or an hour or maybe the
waves are even done for that day. When youre surfing your emotions, the only
wave that matters is the wave of this moment. If you wipe out, which you will,
over and over and over, all you need to do is turn your attention back to your body
and notice what is happening now. It doesnt make any sense to say, Oh, I was
riding a great wave of sadness and now where is that? Ive got to go get back on
it.
Its not here any more. Anything you need to be feeling will show up in this very
moment so gently and patiently, you turn your attention to your body and you
wait and you see how youre called and where youre called and you begin
surfing right then and there. What that means is, if a verdict like the, Oh youre
such a loser, I was describing before, if it knocks you off, one two, or ten times,
it doesnt matter because you can just go right back to the next wave of the next
moment and begin surfing again and all will be well.
Now theres one kind of PS I want to add, something a little extra, something
hopefully that will inspire to keep going in our work together. To do this surfing
well, to rewire your brain for all the benefits I described earlier, you can go
through the whole process without ever knowing what exactly youre feeling. You
dont need a name for it. In fact, sometimes looking for what it is, trying to find a
label throws us off the board and into our neocortex and makes it harder. The
names are what I call lies of convenience because the truth is, for example, if I say
Im sad right now and I turn my attention to the wave in my body, I might feel a
pressure in my heart as if my heart is going to break. Five minutes from now if I
say Im sad, I might feel an emptiness at the core of my belly. Those are two very
different experiences that for convenience, we call one thing; sadness.
When were surfing and rewiring, its a moment-by-moment, microscopic kind of
experience. Thats what does the trick, being so attuned to what youre feeling
moment by moment by moment, theres no abstraction, not even a name. That
doesnt mean if a name comes, its wrong or a problem. You might know right
away, sadness or loneliness or fear. Thats okay but dont get caught up in looking
for the name or worrying about the name once you find it. If you can just get right
back on the wave in this very moment and just surf that, all will be well.