We all have our stories, our beliefs. This is the season of believing, is it not?
Unfortunately, if you’re like me, this time of the year might reveal some of those not-so-nice beliefs. And that’s not surprising given that many of our entrenched stories began within our family of origin when we were young.
My New Christmas Story begins like most stories, with the status quo. Every Christmas: I have to choose between what I want and connecting with my family.
My coaching colleague, Kristina Turner, and I jumped at the chance to explore this story as an opportunity to play while discovering something new. Continue on to read chapter by chapter as I write a new Christmas story or you can watch the whole transformational play session straight through on YouTube.
Kristina begins by asking me to state the facts, just the facts. Even with years of practice, I am still sometimes challenged by this task.
Chapter 1: The Facts
Then she asks me to bodify what was niggling me. Bodify was made up by Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks and it means to express anything with your whole body using movement, gestures and sounds. Niggling means to cause slight but persistent annoyance, discomfort, or anxiety. We love bodifying our niggles because it allows us to quickly and playfully get to the source of old stories without the struggle of trying to figure it all out with just our brains.
Chapter 2: What’s Niggling?
Here’s where the old stories emerge, beginning with a classic, Why do I have to choose between what I want and connecting with my family?
Chapter 3: Three Ghosts of Christmas Past
You can see in the above clip that I sound very young. How old would you say I sound? About 5 years? It’s no wonder then that 5 year old me launches into a REALLY familiar old story… “I don’t know what I want.”
And I don’t stop there. It seems I’m like Benjamin Button, getting younger and younger. 2 year old me asks, “What about me? Why doesn’t anyone want to come to me?”
Kristina then asks me the money questions: “What’s your new story?” But I answer from my pouting 2 year old’s perspective.
Why don’t I just shift into a new perspective?
Because I haven’t changed anything about my body. And in the words of body intelligence genius, Kathlyn Hendricks:
The quickest way to change your mind, is to change your body.
Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph. D., BC-DMT
Bit by bit, body part by body part, Kristina coaches me into new movement choices. New choices that spark my aliveness and tickle my funny bone.
Chapter 4: Move It
NOW I’m ready to discover my new story…
Chapter 5: Back It Up
As I back up (beep beep), I discover that my new story is waking up on Christmas and dancing my way to what I really want to do. As a final step, Kristina invites me to take one creative action to move toward my new story.
Chapter 6: A Letter to Santa FutureMe
In 10 minutes of transformational play with Kristina, I shifted out of an old story that wasn’t getting me what I wanted and took action toward a new story. We said YES to what I was experiencing in the moment and then added incremental ANDs, like those small movements. This is an example of how Kristina and I improvise and play our way to new choices.
If you desire a playful field where you can come as you are and received focused attention from Kristina and me, we invite you to join our group coaching adventure, New Choice! We’ll meet weekly beginning Wednesday, January 13th 3:30-5:00 pm Pacific. Registration begins January 1st. Be sure to join my mailing list below or Facebook group to get a reminder to sign up!
