Learning from Old Dogs

There's some truth in the expression You can't teach an old dog new tricks. The lesser known rest of that is that Old dogs will teach you what they know.

As M&M have settled into their new life with me, I've noticed a few things:

• They know how to behave in a house. No puddles to clean up!
• They are used to being petted and loved.
  
• They don't beg for food, in fact, even if I drop something on the floor, they leave it alone.
• They are very comfortable with being outside. They are happy to plop down in the grass & hang out. I suspect that they were outside during nice weather. Perhaps they had an invisible fence?
  
• They are both leash-trained. No tugging, and they walk along side or slightly behind.
• They don't enter a doorway ahead of me. They wait and then follow. I never knew about this rule until my brother told me that dogs are supposed to enter after humans. Then I saw it on the Dog Whisperer.
• They know not to chew on anything.
• They don't root thru the trash.
• They will, however, drink from the toilet. Eeewww!!!

In addition, they've learned a coupla things from me. I give their vitamins/meds in a glob of cream cheese. I always say, "Oh, boyeeee...." before I give it to them. Now when I say that, they start to drool. Hahaha I also massage them in the evening when I watch TV. Now when I go to the living room and turn the TV on, they go and plop in their beds.

It's interesting to see what patterns of behaviour they have, and what new ones they can adopt. Even if they're old dogs. :-)

It's not you . . .

Scene from Seinfeld: Girlfriend breaking up with George

GF: It's not you, it's me.
George: Are you giving me the It's not you, it's me speech? Because I invented the It's not you, it's me! Let me tell you something: if anything, it's me, baby!

I heard a new one recently: it's not you, it's your patterns. Nothing personal, it's just the patterns you're running. Or are they running you? What's so automatic that you aren't even aware of it until someone points it out? And then if they do, do you see it? Or do you tell them how they're wrong? What keeps showing up in all your relationships? That's a clue.

And by relationships, I'm not just talking about people. We have relationships with everything: our house, our finances, our work, our car. What kind of patterns are you running? Do you see a common pattern linking everything?

What if your pattern is procrastination? Things pile up: laundry, dishes, bills. Your houseplants are thirsty and your friends think you've forgotten their birthday until they receive the belated birthday card. One pattern threads its way through all your relationships.

Patterns are neither good or bad. As Dave would ask: Are they useful? Dave used to say that most people are resistant to change. It's much easier to outgrow a pattern than to change it. It's much easier to update yourself than to change. How do you go about updating? The first thing is to become aware of it. As John says, Notice when it shows up. Awareness is the first step to throwing in the clutch. And then you can get curious about how to create a more useful pattern now.

These patterns are installed by our amateur parents & others as we're growing up. That's not a license to blame your childhood, just recognition. As adults, we're given consciousness so we can choose. How's it working for you? It's not you, it's your patterns. Choose a different pattern, and have a different life.

Pattern Interrupts

Dave Dobson used to say that everything is patterns. We have productive ones & less-than-productive ones. Useful & non-useful. Bruce Lipton says that for the first 2 years of life, our brain waves are predominantly delta waves--that v. deep, unconscious state. It's a time when we soak up learning--and patterns, at a rapid rate. Eric Jensen says in Brain-based Learning that the brain needs to feel safe before it can really learn. Credit that to the only part of our brain that is fully formed at birth: the amygdala [uh-MIG-duh-la] It records everything.

Which brings us back to Dave: the primary concern of the unconscious mind (Other-Than-Conscious, as he called it) is to keep us safe. Patterns develop as a safety mechanism. And then we run them like a computer runs a program. OR:

They run us.

What do you do when you become aware of a pattern that you find less than elegant? Dave said there are no good or bad patterns. They all had a purpose at one point in time. All you need to do is to update the pattern. John Morgan says that awareness is the first step in creating a wedge between stimulus & response (pattern). And then you do something to interrupt the pattern. When I was training with Doug O'Brien in Ericksonian hypnosis, he used a v. simple pattern interrupt. He would say, Do you golf?

I have been looking at the pattern of how I make decisions. Or, to be more accurate, how I don't make decisions. I have created a sense of urgency where there needn't be one. It's something that I'm becoming aware of. It's something I need to update.

Perhaps I should take up golf.

Interprelation

Imagine the daffodil saying to the crocus, “The only reason you bloom before me every year is so you can get the attention of the other flora and bees and show off.” ~John Morgan

This is a quote from John’s blog yesterday. He was writing about the meaning we ascribe to events. We can laugh at it because it’s about flowers. It loses it laugh-appeal when you replace flowers with people, and becomes a bit more...serious.

Here’s a for instance:
I was watching a young mother with her 14-month-old daughter. We were in a living room and the baby was doing what babies do: crawling all over and exploring. She had already been banned from the child-sized chair. (NO! said Mama with a pat-on-the-ass on the third time). Baby then discovered the video shelf and began to pull a video…NO! Mama said. She pulled her away from the videos and took her across the room and set her down. Now, what do you think Baby did? That’s right. Back over to the videos. Again with the NO & back across the room. I lost count of how many times this happened, but what I found curious was what Mama said after one of these episodes.

She’s doing it just to defy me. She knows I don’t want her to go over there.

Really? I am the last person to judge other’s parenting patterns. We all come in with our karma, and barring torture, it is not my place to tell people how to parent. Unless they ask, which Mama didn’t.

So I laughed. She did not think it was funny. I said, “Do you really think that’s what she’s thinking? What if she sees shiny new things to explore and discover? That’s what babies do…they crawl around and explore and put everything in their mouths and that’s how they learn. I don’t think her brain is sophisticated enough to calculate an action just to defy you.” (So much for not giving my opinion)!

It doesn’t matter the event, it’s how we interpret it. This event = this meaning. For Mama, her baby’s behaviour means defiance. Unfortunately, she’s setting up that pattern. She will insist that Baby do x NOW, do x her way or stop doing x NOW…and eventually, what choice has she given Baby? And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy where Mama can say in later years, “She was always a defiant child. Had to have her own way. Wouldn’t listen to me.” Yikes.

Mamas don’t let yourselves grow up to be daffodils.

Offended

I have had the occassion this week to offend a few people, especially with Monday's post. And in turn, I have been offended--sometimes in response to offending someone. But this a.m. I woke up thinking about all this. One of don miguel ruiz's 4 agreements is not to take anything personally. A person's behaviour is theirs, not yours. It is easier to look at a 2-year-old having a tantrum and recognize it as such, than to see it in an adult. Both behaviours are a pattern. As adults we get caught up in the content of a behaviour, instead of looking at the pattern. Cue Dave Dobson: At one time this pattern had a purpose and got a desired outcome. What worked for you at age 5, may not be a useful response as an adult. I wonder if you can get curious about updating those patterns....

Back to being offended: The question is, Who is being offended? Not the me that is connected to universal consciousness. It's the ego-me that needs to be right--and self-righteous. Even if I'm interpreting a behaviour as "mean," even if the intent from the person is to be mean, it doesn't matter. What matters is my response to the situation: how much emotional energy am I going to waste on this? How am I going to respond? Sometimes the best response, is no response. In that place of stillness, where there is no separation, what does it matter? It doesn't.

Eckhart Tolle said on Monday's webinar with Oprah that you can't force enlightenment on someone. You can fill-in-the-blank with enlightement. You can't force an opinion, a feeling, an idea. We all have our own lessons to learn. We all have our patterns to outgrow. Or not.

P.S. I am venturing out into the world this weekend so will most likely not be posting til Monday. Have a GREAT weekend!

P.P. S. Today is the LAST DAY to enter The Grasshopper's drawing for lots of cool *free* stuff from John Morgan! GO SEE.

Perhaps

"You sure like books," he said. We were standing in my little library, and I was showing my visitor around the house. Ron was the original owner and builder of my river house. Super-nice guy and I felt like I already knew him from stories my friend Fisherman Willie has told. I was so happy to meet the person who created such a beautiful place here and to be able to express my gratitude. Thank you for the pantry in the kitchen and all the wonderful workspaces. Thank you for the huge back porch and for the front porch, too. Thanks for the wood shed with 2 years worth of wood! There is so much I am thankful for, being here.

"I hate to read," he confided to me. This is so sad to me. As a book-lover and teacher and parent, books open up worlds of new learning and possibilities. In my family when I've not talked to my sibs in a while, one of the first questions is: What are you reading?

This is what I would surmise about a book-hater, based on my experience in the education field: he has a learning disability OR he had crappy teachers. Or both. Strong feelings, positive or negative are created through conditioning. My nephew announced that he hated art last year. Who could hate art? Someone with a v. mean teacher. Yes, mean. Not even well-meaning. My nephew who is brilliant and smart and funny and whose favourite book when he was 6 months old was Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?

Hating books is not the same as hating raw green pepper. Perhaps we hate what we're not good at. Perhaps we avoid those things where we feel less than. Perhaps we are stuck in a pattern from a previous experience, and whenever we think about it we are transported back to all those sensations we initially felt. Perhaps it's helpful to think of resources we have now that could help us work through and create different associations now to those things we hate. And perhaps, we will then update ourselves into a new appreciation. For books or art or whatever. Perhaps.

Good Touch, Bad Touch

I like to think it's because I'm a massage therapist that I'm so sensitive. But then, I've met some pretty insensitive bodyworkers. So perhaps I became a massage therapist because I'm sensitive. Touch is so personal and subjective. One person's deep tension-relieving shoulder massage might be another person's torture. Or someone's deep tissue massage might be another person's tickle. Everyone's different, and it is my job to make a person as comfortable and relaxed as possible in a session. Once I'm working on someone, I'm looking for the "Ah Stroke." Again, it's different for everyone. For a stressed-out teacher, it might be a deep stroke across the top of the shoulder. For a computer athlete, it might be getting under the scapula or working the chest muscles. I had a golf client with lower back pain and his Ah Stroke was a slow elbow up along the spine. No matter who's on the table, I can feel when they sink into that place of deep relaxation and peace, and let go of the tensions, stresses, and worries of the day.

Being sensitive like this is helpful in the healing world. It makes it a bit more challenging when I'm just out in the real world because I'm tuned to all the little nuances and details of an experience. My chiro-friend Catherine gave me a book a few years ago called The Highly Sensitive Person. Before I read it, I thought it was about someone who overpersonalizes things. But it's not about that, it's about the sensory experience: sights, sounds, smells, touch, etc. When I walk into a room, I sense temperature, lighting, clutter, cleanliness, textures. If people are in the room, I'm reading the mood and energy of the room. John has pointed out that I go right from seeing something to having a feeling. This may be why I won't watch violence on TV. It doesn't matter if it's real or not, I feel it. And it is not a pleasant sensation. On the other hand, when I watch my favourite You Tube video Hugs in Tel Aviv, I SMILE everytime. Watch the baby in the stroller offer his cookie to Hugging Guy. So sweet.

I say this all as a preface to an observation. When I'm massaging a client, I tell her to say "stop" if there's anything I do that's uncomfortable. It doesn't matter if I think she needs me to work a particular muscle in a certain way. It's not about me, it's about her. She knows her body better than anyone. And she needs to know that she can trust me that if she says stop, that I will. Immediately. That trust allows her to relax fully and allow for some deep healing to take place.

So perhaps I am sensitive to that word. STOP.

Stop means stop, no matter who's saying it. And just because someone is laughing, doesn't mean they are enjoying the experience. So pay attention all you well-meaning uncles & aunties, moms & dads & other adults in a child's world:

Tickling is FUNny, until it's NOT.

Pinning them down to the ground with your ginormous-to-a-child body is threatening and overbearing. Forced touch of any kind is a violation.

Oftentimes adults are quick to discount a child's feelings just because s/he is a child. STOP. A child's feelings are no less real than yours. Ridiculing, cajoling, or discounting a child's feelings can get interpreted so many different ways and set up patterns for a lifetime. Patterns like:

"What I think doesn't matter."
"People don't listen to me."
"Other people's feelings are more important than mine."
"Other people are more important than me."

As for the tickling:

"I don't like being touched."
"I can't trust others to touch me in ways that I would like."
"Touch is not pleasant."
"I am powerless."

I used to be a nanny half my lifetime ago. And I used to tickle little Gabe's feet and he would giggle which would make me giggle. And even then, before an education degree or hypno-training or massage school, I would stop when he asked. And he would say it like this: STOP...do it again! And I would. His body, his choice.

We are such a touch-deprived nation. And worse, not only have people not had positive experiences with touch, they've had negative experiences. Let's make an effort to create positive touch in the lives of the people we come into contact with. And while we're at it, here's another hug from Juan Mann, the guy who started the whole Hug Campaign. Have a LOVEly day.