Any advice on how to open myself up more?

[Spiritual Warrior]

I think that this is the next puzzle piece for me. I want to open my body up more so that I can feel at ease in all situations and surrender myself to the experience. I find that my body will tense up a lot of times and I'll be unable to authentically act myself. The cause of the tension in my body is that I am afraid that I will say something incorrect or hurtful or stupid or embarrassing if I don't tense up my throat / stomach / shoulder areas. I have a list of things to work on, but any advice from you guys would be much appreciated. Also, if anyone else has a similar issue, might be useful to share your struggles / insights. Thank you in advance.

Some ideas for how to deal:

1. Yoga - good for opening the body up

2. Read Peter Ralston's book Zen Body Being

3. Consciously let go of tension in the body during meditation practice

4. Affirmations / Visualizations : "I feel at ease in my own body", "I enjoy speaking freely and openly", "I am able to surrender my body to any and all experiences", Visualizing opening up to another person, visualizing speaking freely, saying whatever is on your mind, shmoozing with people, freely moving around the venue at work

5. Free talk exercise: Say random things for 5 minutes a day, practice having no filter

[Waves]

15 minutes ago, Spiritual Warrior said:

I want to open my body up more so that I can feel at ease in all situations and surrender myself to the experience

This intention is all you need. The ideas you came up with also will help to build that reservoir of relaxation (I would add Qigong).

Then it just comes down to actually being in the body, noticing and accepting whatever is present. Once a particular tension (or voice) is seen and allowed to be here, it will eventually melt. Your job is to bring your attention to the body as regularly as possible with a soft and gentle touch, and without being so militant about it it feels like a chore, or a 'should'. 

Then you can carry this beingness (or the reflex to come back to beingness) into situations where you tense up and slowly develop ease by shedding all those reactions and sinking more and more into the body. Spaciousness and ease are the result of relaxing into tension. 

[itsadistraction]

Same, weird how well you described my experience also. Glad to know it's not just me.  I wonder if it has something to do with social hierarchy within groups. For example I bet you would feel different if you were the oldest and richest and perhaps best dressed in the group. This may sound superficial and shallow but  human groups usually operate on these primitive principles. Or perhaps if you had more experiences in the world than you would also feel more confident. 

So it boils down to confidence that you get from having experience. Like if you hardly go out and are an average or below average person in most domains of life, you could feel unconfident in a new group of people. 

[tezk]

A few recommendations:

- Practice letting go through the Sedona method. Learn to feel your emotions and then let them go. Practice outside of social situations & find moments to practice inside of them.

- Radical honesty with others could be powerful. Therapy, or talking to close friends & family about what you are experiencing. 

- Kriya Yoga can certainly help clear blockages - did for me.

- Cold approaching strangers / women

- Combine with psychedelics, contemplation, self-honesty, and feeling.

- Make sure you are healthy & don't have any brain chemistry issues - this is how a lot of social anxiety can manifest. No technique will fix a physiological problem, you need to approach that from a medical route. Diet, etc.

In my experience, it was the combination of a few different tools that helped release social blockages.

I found affirmations to be useless. For me it felt like I was trying to shove down another story rather than address the truth of why I feel the way I do. Everyone is different tho - do what you resonate with.

Edited July 17, 2023 by tezk

[Ulax]

@Spiritual Warrior Yoga nidra, non-directive meditation, sensate focusing meditation, Trauma release exercises, Gestalt/ IFS, stretching.

These are some practices that come to mind for me.

[Yimpa]

12 hours ago, Spiritual Warrior said:

if anyone else has a similar issue, might be useful to share your struggles / insights. Thank you in advance.

I’ve found that when I don’t stand up for myself and let other people run the show, I essentially surrender my own autonomy and let everyone else make decisions for me.

This may work in the short-term, but in the long-term it has made me weak. I had a very long period of blaming the world for all my problems, and it’s something I’m still working on.

People are very good at sneakily corrupting your mind, and it’s your full responsibility to not fall for or give into their games. You should not expect others to snap out of their delusions, but you certainly can snap out of your own. That’s when you’ll begin to see the world and yourself profoundly different. You will move mountains while everyone else is kicking stones.

[tezk]

I forgot to mention the place where I came from.

I was neurotic to the bone. Extremely noisy mind socially. Anxious and panicky. Thoughts were constantly racing. Totally absorbed inside the stream of endless negative thoughts and self-obsession insecurity. I had an undiagnosed medical condition at the time, so probably different from your situation. But once I healed the medical condition and subsequently the bad brain chemistry, I had to fix a lot of the social blockages I had from undergoing such a dark low period of my life. From there I did a large range of techniques and the ones mentioned above were the most successful and effective ones.

Now I am back to my former extroverted self, especially around work mates, family, school mates, etc. Still working on building up my self-confidence around women through cold-approach, but this foundation has definitely made that progress a lot quicker too.

[Sugarcoat]

Opening up the body is a very direct thing.
 

You’re trying to figure out how to set up some scheme ~in time~ to do it, which for me just seems like operating from the same level of mind that is associated with the very tension in your body you’re trying to release. Why not the opposite opening body up first, aka releasing some of this tension, which is accessible to do ~right now~,  THEN figure the rest of it out like routines and stuff with this new found depth or you might just be running around in mental loops 

Edited July 17, 2023 by Sugarcoat

[Spiritual Warrior]

Thank you for all the advice - lots of interesting and unique perspectives.