The extra stresses of making this happen have been wearing me down somewhat these last couple of weeks. Okay, a bunch. I was thinking about this at T'ai Chi class this evening, while I should have been concentrating on the postures. The concept of the bubble came to me then. This is by no stretch a new idea, but I'm putting it in a new context. There is a martial arts technique known as 'pung' (the U is kinda pronounced the same way as in fun). It is a way of 'setting' your body to ward off an incoming attack. It's a way of not letting someone in (and ideally not using force to repel, but to redirect energy), and I think this is analagous to how I've been dealing with recent stresses. We all have bubbles around us. Call it personal air-space, emotional barriers, whatever you like- you can see where this is going. Some have rather thick and unflexible barriers, where nothing ever touches them. Others have very fragile and small barriers, where the simplest word could send them into a dire emotional straight. Neither one is ideal, to me at least.
I think my barrier has been taking some nasty dents as of late, and I haven't really realized the extent of it until this evening. All these set-backs, delays, things not going as I envisioned they should, personal disagreements, and everything else have compressed my barrier until it was within my body. It wasn't doing much good protecting me from regular, normal stress. I'd like to think it was merely a 'resetting' of my personal/ emotional space and I'm all better, but there's more to it than that. I know that my outlook needed to be recentered. My family, my girlfriend, my friends; these are who I look to to keep me on an even keel. Sometimes I can get bogged down with self doubt and fears, but with such a support group (even if they don't know they are helping), I cannot go wrong. It is a wonderful feeling knowing there are people that care for you. It's this knowledge that keeps the everyday stresses at bay, and reminding myself of this does fantastic things to my barrier bubble. I can feel it expanding beyond my body, out to a comfortable distance once again. It's about keeping the unnecessary things from getting under my skin, while being open to allow the important things to enter my heart.
I need my feet to feel the grass, the rains to touch my skin. The colorful glow of the sun shall fill my lungs.
