I recently had another IFS session on an elliptical, and this time it led to an unexpected encounter with my inner narrator.
TRANSCRIPT
I did an exercise today on the elliptical. These should be called the elliptical diaries, really the old grandma diaries or grandma workout diaries, but there’s just something, you know, because I have this lower back pain and I don’t want to do free weights right now.
And I don’t feel like going to BGG. I’m just careful. As long as my lower back feels so tight, I don’t want to fuck around with it. Yeah, I know. I thought it was elliptical. And then the other thing I love about it is that now I’ve, I started and I play this online, this audio course, and I close my eyes and this, the other thing you can just do this with eyes closed the elliptical, right?
It’s no other machine, maybe on the bike, you could do the same thing where, you know, nothing can happen. You don’t have to look anywhere. Right. You don’t have to have eyesight. So I do that and I do it quite intensely. And then I start breaking a sweat and I don’t know why, but it feels religious. Like it’s kind of the, this audio course, which is quite intense.
And then my sweat dripping down [00:01:00] and my eyes are closed and I go really, something about is really nice. I don’t know. I’m having a great time. I don’t know exactly how it looked like to the other people in this gym, but I am having a great time. Right. I’m I’m thoroughly enjoying myself and. Yesterday. And today I did an exercise that’s called the pathway and yesterday it was a very interesting experience, slightly challenging, and because of some of the challenges that I had with it, I knew I wanted to do it again.
And then today I did it again and it was very different from yesterday and very refreshing, kind of awesome. So I wanted to talk to kind of talk a little bit about that.
So the exercise is fairly simple, but I’ve found it to be powerful where you know that you do the typical kind of setup, where the beginning, you close your eyes, you try to like be embodied being in the present moment.
And then you imagine a path, the beginning of a pathway. Kind of the, the [00:02:00] base of a pathway. And yesterday, the moment I was instructed, imagine the beginning of the base of a pathway I instantly was in a tunnel and on train tracks. And I could see outside the tunnel that the train tracks led into a forest.
There was instant inner conflict about it. That was sort of a feeling of this is not, I mean, first there was one voice that was thinking this isn’t a path pathway. This isn’t the base unit fucking choose a better vision. Right. Choose a better image or a better place in your imagination. And then obviously that was overwritten by, well, this isn’t it curious.
Why did I choose, why did this come to me? Right. Let’s just stay here. it must have a reason to just stick around here. Not don’t try to find a better place. This is the place that must be. And then there was a lot of discomfort about being in the tunnel and on train tracks. Yes.
[00:03:00] Of danger. Like there might be a train coming this isn’t quite a safe place, but funny enough, I didn’t want to leave the tunnel and go outside. That felt even more dangerous And in my mind, again, there was one part of me that was trying to debate with this and said, this makes no sense. You can just go down the tracks and then the train would just pass you by.
It’s not that dangerous, a train. You would hear it. You would see it. You don’t see or hear anything. That’s not that dangerous. And. Even if it is dangerous, it’s probably much more dangerous to be in the fucking tunnel than be outside. But then there was this other part of me that was not rational at all, and just felt had the, the general sensation.
This isn’t safe, better stay here. This isn’t a good thing. Like what, where, where we are and what is going on right now, he is not safe. That was the, the overall sensation. And then there was another part of me that was just amazed at this. Just curious and interested and surprised. Huh? Isn’t this interesting.
I wonder [00:04:00] what this means, right? I wonder why, and I wonder what I’ll learn here and what will go on coming back to the exercise at the beginning, you imagine the base of a pathway and then. You imagine in whatever way inform you can, the different parts that I inside of you that are part of who you are at that base with you and you asking those parts, if it would be okay, if they let you go on this walk on your own.
One of them was some of them isn’t okay with it. Then you can explore and ask why and what they would be afraid of. And if they’re okay with it, you tell them that, you know, you gonna come back and it’s safe and they should trust you. And that you want to do this on your own. And you’re just going to go on this, walk on your own or explore this pathway on your own.
And so I did this exercise and when I do these [00:05:00] visualizations, it’s never, I don’t know for anybody, maybe some, some people are probably very incredibly visual, right? Anybody that’s an interior designer is probably like ninja like abilities in imagining hallucinating things into rooms and places. But I don’t, I’m not that visual.
And I don’t see these arc types of characters, crystal clear in front of me. They’re not like real people. They’re not even just half real. Sometimes it’s just a sense of an energy. Sometimes I do see a shape, but it’s always slightly blurry and it’s not like visually, you know, HD or something like that.
But that was one of the parts.
Okay. Felt like a, I dunno like a motherly energy of sorts. And that part was very afraid. For my safety and wanted everything and everybody to stay here in the darkness where it’s also not really safe, but [00:06:00] we know the spot. We don’t know what’s out there. And it took a little bit of convincing to, you know, ask if it was okay for me to go.
And then all the other parts, I couldn’t really grasp that much. So I was thinking, I think it’s fine. I can go. And eventually you start imagining walking on this pathway on your own. And as you walk, you just pay attention to a number of details. Right? Number one, are you seeing everything? From first person from a first person viewpoint, or do you see yourself walking?
If you see yourself walking, you’re probably not in self, but you’re probably in some part of yourself that imagines all this, right? You’re not like fully embodied. Then as you walk, you just try to pay attention. Are there any weird sensations in my body? Is there any discomfort? Are there any thoughts [00:07:00] that are popping up?
Is there some agenda that I’m having? Is there something I’m trying to get to something I’m trying to accomplish? Something I’m trying to experience here? And if you notice any of these things, it usually points to that. You’re not on your own. There are parts still with you on this walk, right? And so, as you notice these things for me, you know, at some point as I started noticing a part that was.
You know, concerned about certain things that I’m experiencing on this, on this pathway. You know, as I had noticed some concerning thoughts, I go, oh, okay, this is a part of me. And I’m asking that part, Hey, can I ask you to go back to base and let me keep going on my own. Right? And then again, you go basically through the same kind of exercise of seeing if it feels okay.
And if it’s not okay, being curious and trying to understand what’s the fear and you know, what, what is truly going on? And I had a number of like, it was [00:08:00] interesting as I was walking out of that tunnel, I was walking on those on a kind of an old, real track. And I feel a little while there was a, almost kind of a broken down construction site and there was a, you know, what would you call it?
You know, those, those. wooden signs. They put somewhere when they’re doing road construction work or something like that. Right. It’s like made out of wood and they place it that to block the street basically. So there was a, a, a thing like that on it. And for a moment I had to consider, you know, do I walk around it?
Do I, what do I do? And then eventually I just saw myself jumping over it and that kind of felt good. and I had, you know, the, the, the critic showed up and I had, that motherly part show up again, and like these different parts that would show up and anytime it showed up, I would just ask, Hey, you know, is it okay if you go back and you [00:09:00] just trust me?
And I like, keep walking on my own and
then. Eventually what you’re paying attention to is you’re trying to see and sense if you feel a greater and greater and increasing sense of self, as you’re on this visualized path, as you’re going down that path, do you feel an increased sense of self which can manifest itself by feeling lighter, feeling more embodied, feeling a sense of energy, a sense of peace serenity, being more in the moment.
And so having not having thoughts, not having an agenda, feeling sometimes a tingling in the body and the hands and the feet are somewhere else feeling maybe an opening of the heart or, you know, joy or gratitude, any kind of these, any kind of these states, if you sense an increase in any of these or all of these.
That can point to [00:10:00] a more spacious, more occupied part of yourself, occupying a greater and greater part of you during this pathway. And that’s part of, kind of the, the idea behind this exercise. And eventually, I, you, you ask if you get to a point where you feel like you have, you’ve been allowed to carry less with you and be more in self you ask, or you can open yourself up to any kind of message that the universe or yourself, or whatever God has to offer you.
Right. You can just like open yourself up to any kind of message. If there’s some that you should be aware of and. I, as I considered that, or as I opened myself up to that, I sort of arrived at the end of the pathway, which the train, the old train tracks had stopped and there was a large tree and that felt kind of [00:11:00] cool.
And now we come to a weird part of all of this, which is that, and I’ll first say it, and then I’ll add some context to it because that’s less comfortable for me than doing it the other way around, which I could, but I choose not to. So as I arrived at that tree and I asked myself, is there any message? I see a white envelope in my hand, and it’s a very kind of shiny, very clean, big white envelope.
And as I opened the envelope, there’s not really a message in there as much as it looks like a. Like a birthday card or, yeah, it looks like a birthday card for a little child and it has, I don’t remember what that show was called, but there was a show when I was a little child that had these little bears that were living in the clouds and could like, I don’t know.
They, they had [00:12:00] like, almost these rain rainbows, these rainbow rays that came out of that chest when they were combating bad things. I mean, it’s a to DV show for small children. I don’t know what it’s called anymore. And again, it’s very, kind of very bright, very imagining little bears that can shine rainbow rays out of their chest to combat bad things in the world or something.
Right. It doesn’t even matter what that is. It’s a show for my childhood. I’ve not thought about that ever. I wasn’t even a great fan. If I remember correctly, I just saw it a number of times as a child, but it was a birthday card with two of these bears on it. And with this kind of this re the rainbow race coming out of their chest and those rainbow rays hit me and it just felt good.
I can’t even say. What it meant, it just felt good. Right. And it was very colorful and very three light and friendly [00:13:00] and, you know, kind of like a happy birthday, you know, I want to say happy birthday motherfucker, but there was no motherfucker in there was just like happy birthday, isn’t it? You know, like children’s birthday vibes, almost like just good, excited, positive energy.
And that felt great. And that was that. Now having said all this in the middle of this exercise, as I’m on the elliptical, I’m sweating profusely, I’m having my eyes closed. I’m going through this deep inner work spiritual pathway journey. There is a. Workout class that is starting in the gym, and this is a gym that’s part of the apartment complex.
So it’s an open floor. There’s no room for these classes. So they just happened in the SA in the same room that you’re in. And there’s this trainer, that’s a drill Sergeant and he’s blasting the loudest hip-hop you can imagine. And there are 20 people from the apartment that are grunting and [00:14:00] sweating and screaming, and he’s screaming out loud, 30, 31.
And this is like the roughest. The unholy is rap music that you can imagine is blasting. And this is both a terrible background drop backdrop for what I’m doing, but fairly amusing to me at times, like I’m going in and out of being amused of just using the energy to walking on my elliptical a bit more energetically, right?
Like I’m swept up in the energy, but it’s in strong contrast to this voice that I’m hearing in my ears. And now ask your inner child can, I know it’s like very, very different energies. And I, at this point I’m just improvising, you know, I’m just like, I’m going with it, whatever, like, I am not in the camp.
Am I doing this right or wrong? I’m just doing it, whatever way I do it. I do it right. By the way. When you, when you, when you’re doing this exercise, do you like [00:15:00] hit pause? No, no, no. You just play and then, okay. It’s like real time. It’s just real time. Okay. And sometimes, you know, the voice, he goes on to some other little thing or comments on something and I noticed another part and I’m like, it’s, it is guided by that at times I’m out of Cinco.
At times I’m busy with something. When he’s already ahead with the next thing and that’s fine, you know, it’s just like all flowing in some way. But it’s in real time any, and it’s, it is recorded in a way where it’s real time. So there’s long kind of breaks in between the different suggestions made.
It’s not one thing after another instantly. Right. But at times it was difficult. It was a bit more challenging to not lose focus because there was so much going on around me. And I did feel in the beginning that there was a good amount of resistance from parts to let me go on this [00:16:00] path on my own.
And I did feel that for most of the journey that I was walking, there were still were parts showing up. So I had to do a lot of asking to go back. And in hindsight, I don’t know if I, yeah. Let me say, in hindsight, I wasn’t quite asking these parts at times, even when I was asking it was more a telling, asking was more, come on, let me, let me go on my own versus a I’m honest, which will let me go on my own.
And if the answer is no mineral right then no, right. I was a little bit rushed at times. Let’s say that right. A little bit of, okay, let me go on my own, man. And then I would just keep going and don’t know if I was, you know, what the opinion were. I didn’t really stay to have a conversation. I really didn’t listen that carefully.
Anyhow. I end with the exercise and I feel pretty okay. And I feel actually pretty good. This was kind of fun. Interesting. I was, again, just having fun with being [00:17:00] surprised at what happened. Why was I in a, in a. Old train tracks, tunnel. Why was a walkout in the woods? Why was there, you know, construction and why was there a big tree and why did I get a fucking birthday children’s birthday card with rainbows flowing out of it?
I don’t know. I mean, I have some theories, but all this was definitely not premeditated or could not be allocated to things that I have done recently. So I’m like, oh, of course these are the images that are being generated in my mind. So I’m delighted about these new explore inner explorations of sorts.
But then I get a notification that my picture arrived with a better mic. I am thinking, all right, I’ll go down and grab the mic. I go down, grab the packages, come up, open up all the packages. No, Mike. And that was the beginning of me being irritated. And then [00:18:00] it take a shower and I have, you know, half an hour.
So before we did our recording and then at half hour, I was just feeling really down, just really unhappy. I couldn’t quite shake it off. And I knew part of me knew maybe this is something to do with the exercise, right? Maybe I don’t know, something was a bit rushed. Maybe there’s a part of me that wasn’t happy about what I experienced.
Maybe there’s a fear. There’s something going on inside of me, but I kind of put it aside. We start recording and very quickly we got into a flow. We had a good time, was laughing, wind our call. I’m in a great mood. I’m reading a bit of dune. I go to sleep all good this morning, I wake up. I’m in a terrible mood.
And again, it took me a while to try to let go, okay, like at 11:00 AM or something, I’m thinking this [00:19:00] might have something to do with the exercise I did yesterday. It seems there’s something unresolved there. And also towards the end of the exercise that workout bootcamp got so loud and out of control.
It’s kind of tough to keep it altogether. I should do this exercise again today, but then it took me many hours before I felt ready and willing to do it, to go and do the exercise again. And eventually I went down and this time the gym is empty. It’s early in the day. So I know there’s no bootcamp happening in the middle of my thing.
And I started listening to the same exercise and the pathway starts. And the first image that comes to mind when you says, you know, imagine the base of a pathway, the beginning of it, I’m on some mountain and it’s all snow. And again, my first reaction was how, like, how did this come in here? Like, it’s just, [00:20:00] it’s amazing to me when these images pop up, because I can’t, can’t really say, you know, oh, this makes sense.
Every day I’ve gone off on a walk in Austin, along the Ladybird river, the nice hiking trail along the river. If I saw that, that would make sense to me, but like being on some mountain and in the snow, I was surprised by it. I’m like, all right. And then again, you know, it’s like, look at the, all your parts, ask them if they’d be willing to let you go on this.
Path on your own. And it felt like, yeah, like this time around, I felt I had more time trust and there was less fear. It still seemed a bit adventurous, but it didn’t seem dangerous. My first sensation was when I was in that train tunnel and I start like seeing myself walk through thick [00:21:00] snow, kind of up up a mountain.
And I’m just, I’m looking for whatever reason. There’s something about the image of my feet. Kind of stumping into this one. Like this fresh snow. It’s still somewhat soft, but it’s kind of, you see no mark, no footsteps anywhere, no markets. It’s just, everything is just pure perfection, white snow, and I’m just stomping through it.
There’s something satisfying about it. Like I get this feeling of satisfaction. I get very quickly got this surge of energy and just felt enthusiasm and just like, felt great. And then I would have thought very early on that, wow, I’m super in self because I feel so fucking great right now, but I could not deny or ignore that I had lots of thoughts.
And these thoughts were around two themes.
Mostly one [00:22:00] was how I’m going to tell, like, imagining what I’m going to tell you in our recording session today about the experience. Yeah. And so when that first popped up, I was like, oh, what kind of part is that? Maybe that’s my, my storyteller part, which is almost always activated.
Right. Everything I experienced, I put into some narrative, there’s always narrative building that is happening in my background CPU. And I said, I get that, you know, this is exciting. We’re walking down this adventurous path. Could you, would it be cool if I, if I can just walk alone? And there was surprisingly a lot of rigidity and
there was pushback and it was asking, well, what is it that you fear? Like, why wouldn’t you want me alone here? And it was a, well, how are you going to tell how are you going to, [00:23:00] how is this going to be valuable if we don’t work on knowing how to tell the story of what we’ve just experienced or experiencing.
And that was so interesting to realize that that, that, that part of me was like, I’m not gonna let you just be fully in self in the moment. Just you experiencing something. I need to be there. Brainstorming how we gonna turn this into a story or what this is so we can share it with the world, because that’s how, that’s the main point.
Like, that’s what will create value. If you just do this and you just do this, how are we going to tell everybody about it? And it’s like, well, what if we don’t tell everybody about it? It’s like, well then why even do it? It’s like, well, maybe just to experience it. You know, it’s like, no, like no, no, the values in the telling, not in the experiencing.
[00:24:00] Interesting. Yeah. So that was kind of fun and interesting. And I, a number of times I was like, let me just, just trust that me experiencing this might enrich me in ways that will later allow me to tell great stories, but just let me just be here fully. And that part stopped. And let me walk a little bit on my own and they would catch up to me again, right.
That part was not ready to fully go back to base and just letting me do my thing in self. It was interesting. And. There was another part. And I couldn’t quite tell, you know, there are two distinct parts or if it was tough to say, but let’s say it’s another part, which was kind of the teacher part, which is very closely related to the story telling part, which was the, well, if we I’m not here, then we won’t be able to turn this into something valuable.
We can teach it. [00:25:00] And again, I, uh, did some convincing and I did a little bit of like having a few conversations around this, but he could just, well, anytime they would call back and I would just feel a bit more free, a bit more energetic. I was like, I’m just experiencing it. Yeah. After, you know, a number of steps eventually there’ll be this voice that was narrating.
What I’m experiencing, or that was brainstorming ways to package this, right? Like microseconds naming a podcast episode, you know, about this, like, things like that, which just pop up in my mind. I would go, oh, he caught up to me again was like walking behind me and is whispering these ideas, you know? It stops stuff, but it’s also taking you out of it.
It is taken out of being there is projecting me into the future, into what I’m going to do with something I have not yet [00:26:00] experienced. Yeah. And making you less engaged with the present moment. Yes. And it’s also nervous. It’s not nervous in the, oh my God. I’m nervous. Will we be able to tell a great story?
It’s nervous in the there’s no,
there’s no groundedness. To know, we can experience all of this and then think about what we’ve experienced. And then later think about how we share this with the world, right? There’s time. There’s no hurry. There’s a certain, no, we have to think about this now because it takes a lot of thinking to make this great.
And we want to immediately, once we’ve experienced it, tell it to others because we’re going to forget or whatever, right? The magic has to instantly be transformed into storytelling material, or it will evaporate into nothingness that kind of nervousness or restlessness was there and he was not willing to let go.
And it was just so interesting. Again, not surprising in hindsight, but if you had asked [00:27:00] me, Hey, if you do this exercise, Today. If you could imagine one part that would not leave you alone, I wouldn’t have thought about this, right? No way. I’ve not been thinking about my storytelling part at all for the last couple of weeks.
You know this, because I tell you everything and have never talked about this part because I never thought about it. It didn’t come up in any of the sessions. Yeah. This time, this time is a inner critic season in a critic. Yeah. Right? Yeah. What are you doing with a narrow tip? Yeah. And but you know what?
It, it was still awesome. Like, it wasn’t a problem. It was not, I was not annoyed. It was not a battle. It was just an observation. And I still was thoroughly enjoying myself. And eventually you get to the point where you’re asking yourself, Hey, if there is a message from the universe, I’m open to receiving anything and everything that could be useful, right.
That I should know. [00:28:00] And as I was walking through the snow, I was having such joy walking in fresh snow, marking something that’s unmarked, like walking new territory of sorts,
that there was no message, no nothing appeared, but I received the message, which was, you know, the incredible life energy that is to be gained from walking in self and walking in new ways into new territories. I was going on a walk that was so energizing and refreshing. And part of it was because I was
going somewhere in a way that I haven’t gone before. And there was, there was a, and this is a poor, see, this is the cost of sending away. My narrator is that I can’t express it as beautifully as I experienced it. But every footstep that was feeling and [00:29:00] imagining was the message. Like I, it was, I was embodying learning something or receiving sort of a message, downloading a message.
It felt like that was not a symbol, but more the experience of walking onto a new path. We alone, right. Alone being in this case in self and not as a blended version of me in other parts of all my parts with me, you know what I mean? It just felt awesome. And then
on my way back eventually, you know, you go, okay, if it feels okay, you can start heading back to the base. Again, if you want to, you can notice your feelings and thoughts, blah, blah, blah, this, that the other. And as I was walking back in my imagination to the base, I asked myself, oh, I said to myself yesterday, I feel like I neglected one of you.
One [00:30:00] of my parts. That was something that happened yesterday that I missed. Today, I’m open for it. Right? If there’s, if there’s something there, there’s a part of me that wants to talk to me or communicate with me, I think I want to know, and I’m here, I’m present for it. And in that moment I had a shiver, you know, when you kind of goosebumps of sorts and now that fitted well with the I’m walking through snow, it didn’t fit at all.
Well, maybe it did feel well with the sweat, sweaty as hell. At this point, I’m like sweating profusely and there’s the C on, in the gym or something. Right. But the timing was, the timing was distinct because it happened exactly the moment where I was like, I’m ready to receive any kind of message. And I get this shiver and I think, oh, okay.
What is that? I don’t know. Is it a fear? Is it a feeling cold, left alone? I couldn’t fully place it, but it [00:31:00] felt like a much younger part of me. And it felt almost, almost like I left a child in the base and the child was cold because I left, you know what I mean? Like, I don’t know this is now, now I’m very much interpreting because it’s not what I saw.
It was not clear to me a sense almost more. Yeah. It was more a feeling of like, I’m cold. And then I thought I’m cold. I thought, yeah, I’m can call them I’m alone. There’s nobody around. There’s no warmth around me. And then I thought, oh, that feeling feels young. And that was it. I kept going and I thought, okay, this is, you know, thank you for showing me something.
Even if I can’t like fully grasp it perfectly. Super sharp shapes. And I just thanked that part for,
you know, trusting me to show when I, when I said, Hey, I wanna, I wanna see what’s going on in the moment that I had this, like a little bit of gratitude for it. I had another kind of wave of kind of a shiver [00:32:00] and goosebumps. And I was like, huh, this is kind of cool. And that was it. I went back to the base.
There’s some other things, you know, you ask those parts how they feel when you were gone. One beautiful thing that he says the beginning, when you are about to leave the pathway, he says, you know, ask if there’s any part that doesn’t want you to leave and maybe even ask if there’s a part like that. Maybe some other part of you can comfort them.
Right. It can give them courage or make them feel okay about it. And both times I didn’t experience it, but I thought, oh, what a sweet image? You know, when you allow, or you even imagined that different parts of you could comfort and help other parts of you, it doesn’t always have to happen from the self perspective.
Anyways, when you come back, you ask how these parts felt about the experience of leaving you. And if they have anything they want you to know about, are they experienced all that? And then you kind of wrap it up and that’s that. And I did all that and I just [00:33:00] felt great. A sense of freshness, sense of energy.
optimism, which is interesting because yesterday night and this morning I had a sense of hopelessness, you know, unexplainable to me like without con without anything. Happening in the outer world that would make me hopeless, but I had this inner feeling of hopelessness. And then it was such a turnaround in my state doing the exercise today, where I just felt so energized and energetic and so hopeful and so positive that I thought that was super grateful that I did the exercise again.
My only, my only regret being that I didn’t do it in the morning, you know, that it took me till the afternoon to get the courage together and the energy to go. I’m going to go and do this again, you know? But it was a, it was a really sweet and beautiful experience. And one thing that I thought and found very useful in this exercise is that, you know, I mean, I I’ve [00:34:00] done many, many meetings.
where, you know, you sit there and you focus on your breathing and any kind of thought that pops up. when you notice those thoughts, you tell those thoughts, you know, you, you just refocus on your breath, you kind of do this back and forth, right. You focus on the breath, you’re in the breath. And then there’s thoughts that come up and then you realize the thoughts and you go back to your breath and that’s super useful.
And a kind of really valuable exercise. What I liked about this, the kind of pathway metaphor was that even when you go through this kind of this beginning, where you are attempting to tell, or you’re talking to these parts and you’re telling them, Hey, I want to go on this walk in self present. It creates this rich inner world that is all symbols, basically where you are as a symbol and a message who these parts are, that are popping up.
What Feelings you have, like, at the beginning of my walk, I had difficulty [00:35:00] swallowing a couple of times. It’s not totally unusual, but I had like this tight throat and I interpreted that as, oh, maybe there’s a part of, there’s a part here, tight throat, a nervousness of fear, you know, just, and even wince, once you get to a point where you feel pretty good and pretty kind of in self and in the present moment,
it was very distinct when thoughts would pop up, you know, much more, much more immediately apparent to me than in other practices that I’ve done before. Like immediately when I would have the first thought I would go, oh, there’s a part like this. There’s a part that’s with me still. Right. And this metaphor of fading, these parts, when you feel these sensations, I have these thoughts that you tell them, Hey, is it okay if I keep going on, on my own, go back to base.
I will come back. You know, there’s nothing to fear. You can kind of go back and you are just fully [00:36:00] immersed on your walk and on this pathway, and even how the pathway unfolds and where you are in it is making this such a rich world that, you know, at, at a time today, I’m in the snow and I’m like enjoying this.
And then the next moment I am organizing reorganizing a call tomorrow morning. And the shift is so big that I don’t miss it. I’m not like in thoughts for, I wasn’t able to be in thoughts for 30, 40 seconds and then catch it. You know what I mean? Like I’m literally in a mountain walking snow, and then all of a sudden I’m in a.
At a desk at my laptop and I go, I oh, okay. This is, this is my organizer part. And then I’m back in the snow and I say, Hey, you’re really valuable. I really appreciate you. Don’t worry. This won’t take forever. Please. Can you go back to base? And I keep walking and I’ll call back and then we can organize tomorrow.
But those kinds of parts, [00:37:00] feelings, thoughts that would show up, I would instantly be present for them. And they would be very, very noticeable, and that I found super useful, like very powerful actually as an experience. And I don’t love visualization exercises. I do them, but because I’m not a super.
I have not yet had many experiences where I felt like I’m very, very visual. It’s sort of always felt and seemed kind of half-assed. And so whenever there’s a close your eyes and imagine this place and go there and do things, I do it, but I never fully enjoy it because it’s not that easy for me, but this exercise, now this might be because I’ve done all this stuff beforehand and I’ve been deeply immersed in ifs.
The last couple of weeks, or it may be the exercise itself, the framing of it that works so well for me. But yesterday and today, both days even with its struggles, the exercise was beautiful [00:38:00] and it was enlightening and it was refreshing and it was very interesting. And so I loved it. I’m like, all right, I’m definitely going to do this more often.
This felt. Great and interesting and fresh, and I loved it.
Okay. I also liked the, the, kind of the tone for internal communication, the internal family systems kind of sets that just from listening to you or how you, how you kind of address these different parts and co and communicate with them. You know, I, I honestly have to say, I like it. I find it much more Zen and like, Buddhism, ESC, then the metaphors that you often hear in, that are like, you know, you know, you want to be in self and present.
And your thoughts are so, uh, almost like these annoying flies they’re swarming [00:39:00] around you. And anytime you notice a fly, just like, you know, just hit it with your hand, wave it away with your hand and then try to refocus again. Okay. Let’s focus on the breath. And then this is annoying. Fly, go away, go away, fly.
Right. Well this idea that these, the, these voices that we have, these feelings are the ego, right? And we have to transcend the ego to get to self. And so whenever the ego pops up with to like, let it go return to the highest self and all that can work really well. But I find the ifs metaphor much more gentle because none of these thoughts since they are manifested in this model is.
Parts as almost characters within you, none of them needs to be waved away. None of them is annoying or bad. None of them has to just go away. And your goal is [00:40:00] not to just, you know, just any time any of these things show up, just stop thinking about it, ignore it, have them overcome them, overcome them, get rid of them, ignore them, focus on something more useful.
And I have to say, I’ve done all this, like the ignoring, the focusing on more useful thought and that shit isn’t working that well, it just isn’t, it’s still fine. Right? You could still, like, I think the breath as an anchor is genius and beautiful and magical, but this just don’t think those thoughts are just go these thoughts I’ll use.
I’ll stop thinking about this. I don’t need this tomorrow’s office doesn’t matter. That’s not that useful. Because often time just like flies from these thoughts return and the waving is not like a real strategy to get rid of the flies. And in this [00:41:00] context of format, you basically try to identify what is it that is drawing this fly and what is it trying to do right now?
And then you look around and you see, oh, there’s a bit of honey here. Let me clean this up. And then you sit and meditate. And when you hear another fly, you open your eyes and you wonder what this is. And I mean, maybe the flags EMBL is not great for ifs because this is internal family systems. So these pots, all your family and not just like external insects, you know, that we will never love and want to integrate in our lives.
But the. The approach. The tone is very gentle and is very open curious. And even in this exercise, in the pathway where you don’t try to totally micro analyze why you, why these parts don’t want to let you go on me, you ask and you talk to them, but you basically just keep offering a wish. Right? You keep telling when the, when you [00:42:00] notice these parts, you just ask, Hey, would it be okay to go back to base?
And let me go on. I promise I’ll return.
yesterday. Remember when I had this this is another recording. There’s so many recordings. We’ve never published. It’s crazy. But we had this one recording ones where I felt almost like I’m losing my mind right away. This voice show up this part of me, this fear. Am I losing my mind and yesterday this is something I forgot.
At some point there was some part that popped up. I don’t even remember what it was. And I asked, you know, what are you afraid of? It was like, I don’t want you to lose your mind. And then the next thing was like, I don’t want you to lose any of your mind. And that was interesting to me [00:43:00] because my instant response was, I promise I’m not going to lose any of you.
Right. I’m not going to lose any part of my mind.
Which in this model oftentimes speaks to the kind of fear of, of this, these parts that we have when we do change work, there’s a fear of, you know, Who will we become without this part or for the, for the parts themselves. Sometimes they have their own need of existence. What happens if we transcend me?
What where’s my place then? Okay. But I, I find this model of looking at our thoughts and feelings.
Okay. A big family inside of us as trail heads that lead us to fears and to developed internal characters that are playing out roles to protect us or to help us with [00:44:00] things. I find it. As you said, like it’s a very, the tone of it is very gentle. It’s very curious. It’s very open and it produces very interesting results for me.
Like just very different answers, very different insights super interesting stuff,