It’s Saturday morning and I just had some unexpected time to write you, and I have been meaning to, so here it is.
I want to explore the practice of looking up. Not neck-aching up, not out-of-this-world up, not get-me-off-this-crazy-planet up, not blissed-out-transcendent up…..just simply raising your view a little bit.
I have been taking a course on Healing through the Vagus Nerve. The Vagus nerve is one of our twelve cranial nerves and connects the Heart and the Gut to the Brain. The theory and study says that our modern way of living and cultural norms have a profound effect on our Vagus nerve function, and that dysregulation of this system is associated with a wide variety of physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and relational challanges. (Anybody not sleeping well? And, how’s your digestion?)
While we naturally move through various states of vagal tone throughout our day, we can get stuck in nervous system patterns such as the Fight/Flight or Shutdown/Freeze, instead of coming back to Rest/Digest/Connect. We may benefit from some practices to bring more balance to our nervous system states and allow a more easeful flow between states. That’s the simple explanation. I will put some additional resources at the bottom of the email if you are interested.
But what does this have to do with looking up?
One of the most helpful things we can for ourselves and our Vagus nerve is to simply look up and around.
Take a break and….Look up. Look up from the computer screen. Look up from the phone in your hand as you walk down the street. Look up from your work as you sit at a desk. Look up from grading papers, or checking out at the grocery store, or chasing your child around, or averting your eyes from another person, or looking for something that is definitely down there.
This looking up and around is what mammals do all the time to assess their surroundings, receive cues of safety or of danger, and make decisions about how and where to be.
I’m wondering if the high levels of anxiety and depression, particularly in young folks, might be related at least partially to how we, as mammals, have stopped looking around our environment. We aren’t doing the basic thing — scanning and orienting to our world — that tells us we are safe. We are looking down for connection. But our bodies don’t work that way.
Here is a practice that is **so easy** to put into your day:
First stop: straight out at eye level view straight, look and see what is right in front of you. Just 1 foot away, then a few feet away, then out the window. Take it in.
Then, lift your gaze up just enough to see some sky — if you can’t see sky where you are, walk to another spot find some, or just work with your imagination or memory, with eyes open.
And while you’re at it, just look all around, scanning your environment gently and fully. It happens naturally. Take everything in, without working at it, with soft eyes and a relaxed gaze — and don’t forget to look behind you. Take in your surroundings. Notice what catches your eye, perhaps in a way that draws you in to beauty, to detail, to color, to composition. You’re working with your deeper senses, your 6th sense and gut, allowing that communication between the Gut, Heart and Brain to flow.
When we look up just a little bit, we spiritually raise our view from our smaller self to our higher self. (No judgement of either our smaller or higher self — all are necessary for our life here.) A higher state is THIS CLOSE to us at every moment. Simply one muscle movement away, powered by a bit of will and heart.
According to Maurice Nicoll in commentaries on the teachings of GI Gurdjieff, it is like we are on a ladder with many rungs above and below. Everyone, every human being on the planet, is on a particular rung of their own ladder, everyone has their current level of being. This ‘ladder of being’ is different from our understanding of time, that horizontal line that runs back to our remembered past, holds us in the present moment now, and runs forward to our imagined future. A higher level of being lies just one vertical rung above us at every moment. Not in the future when things get easier or we are more relaxed or we have more stability/time/money/comfort/health/spiritual practice time/fill-in-with-your-favorite-thin-you-don’t-have-enough-of.
What does this mean? A higher level of being?
Perhaps, slightly more LOVE, just a bit more PATIENCE, a tad more KINDNESS, a measure of GENTLENESS, a dash of SELF-CONTROL….what’s on your list?
Lately, my own practice with looking up has been to look just to the tops of the trees by the driveway at my cottage. There are whole worlds up there. Each tree holds a home for little creatures, insects, small mammals, birds, other plants. Sometimes Owl or Hawk or Eagle stops on top, for the view and maybe a rest. I wonder. I can see how windy it is by how the branches move, or don’t, up there.
Then, whatever is weighing me down in my mind and my heart becomes a little bit lighter.
There you have it.
I hope you find this helpful, and I wish you many blessings on your path.
LOVE Elizabeth
PS If you need an intuitive energy balancing session, herbal consult or other support in my toolkit, I am here for you. Please be in touch here or via my website www.elizabethcombs.com . Take care.
