Get Control . . .

Get Control . . .
of Your Muscles, Nerves, Joints & Fascia
by Letting Go . . .
of Muscle Tension, Negative Stress & Habit Patterns
with DSL Let-Go Yoga . . .
Physical/Mental/Relational & Therapeutic Yoga

On other pages of this website, we look at the central place Muscle & Nerve Tension plays in many of our issues in life.

Please See the Following Page for a Description of this:

==> C.E.M.&.N.T. (on Chronic, Excess Muscle & Nerve Tension)

Over the years, we develop these accumulations of tension, stress and habit patterns, and eventually, we think we want to get more control over them. That way, they won't bother us as much. Well . . .

Years ago in his talks on mental yoga, Joel Kramer used to ask the Big Question:

Who wants more CONTROL in their lives? . . .

Most everyone said they did.

But it was a Trick Question . . . (He had a LOT of those.)

He would then start asking about those times in life when people were feeling the most in touch with life, having the most fun, being the most passionate, feeling the most loving and loved, and so on. In short, when you were having a Really Good Time, how In-Control did You feel?

There was usually silence for a while, then, people would acknowledge that, you know what? . . . My best times in life have been when I did NOT feel much in control, AT ALL!

So then we get back to the Question: How much control do you want in or over YOUR life?

Joel would then talk about Centering and what our sense of that was. Again, after some rethinking of what we thought we wanted, he would say . . .

The totally Centered person's energy is totally out of control. … However, their Response-Ability is so good, they don't get into trouble.

. . . Joel Kramer

So therein lies a Great Paradox. Or one of them, anyway. . . .

If we really look at it closely, we really do NOT want more control in the more restrictive sense of the word, but we don't want to get into trouble, either. And there are a whole lot of ways to do that. And it usually feels or looks as if the only way to not get into trouble is to exert more self-control over our lives.

Everyone is seeking more control over everything in their lives. Yet, when we take a close look at it, being in control is not that much fun, and in fact quite possibly the reason why we feel so out of touch with the Flow of Life.

The fact is that exerting control usually involves exerting some sort of force upon ourselves to push or restrain ourselves from doing what we should or should not do. But in the 9 Natural Laws, we initiate the discussion of how ALL human expression, and most metabolic function, arises through the neuromuscular system. When we exert willpower, or force, upon ourselves, of any kind, we must include muscular contractions — tension — to do so. These contractions can range from the imperceptibly subtle to the extreme.

(Please see a discussion of Hakomi Body-Centered Psychotherapy on another page of this site. One aspect of Hakomi is exploring the muscular tensions that we have exerted upon ourselves throughout our lives to gain and maintain control of some kind or another, mostly over ourselves.)

The very act of controlling something, or at least trying to, usually includes exerting muscular force, and doing so on a repetitive basis leads to increasing levels of muscle tension. The more we do it, the tighter we get. Certain experiences – such as a car accident — accelerate this accumulation dramatically.

Being In Control too much may actually turn out to be much of why feel so lousy, or sick a lot. It might actually be blocking the flow of Vital Energy in our lives. Being too much in control is one reason some people are attracted to weird sexual practices in which they give up control to some other person, to an extreme. It's a way of attempting to balance their internal energy patterns and exertions.

Ultimately, to give you a clue as to possible solutions, the issue revolves around Learning and Discipline.

So we need to look at a number of issues here.

• What is Control, really, and how do we get it?
• What is Being Centered, really, and how do we get it?
• What is Response-Ability, really, and how do we get it?
• What is Discipline, really, and how do we get that?

Joel used to say that among many other things, Yoga is a Way of Looking, a Way of Learning, about Being Human, and about Life itself.

And that when it comes to discipline, the root meaning of the word is

Disciple: One Who Learns.

The challenge is to discover how, and begin, to use Yoga as a Learning Process, as a way of looking at and examining life in all its dimensions, at al its levels.