I learned this very cool technique called “Shackles On, Shackles Off” from life coach Martha Beck. (Martha Beck is an author and a life coach, with Oprah being one of her famous clients.) The technique is for helping to decide if something, a decision or choice, is right for you. Imagine your body covered in chains and shackles. (Think the ghost of Christmas past.) What would this feel like? Heavy, uncomfortable, tiring? Then, imagine those shackles being taken off of your body… what would this feel like? Light, freeing, more like yourself? Are you getting the visual picture and the imagined feeling of both situations?
So now, think of a decision you are getting ready to make… does this evoke a feeling of Shackles On or Shackles Off? What does it feel like in your body?
There should be an immediate answer. See, our bodies are wise. Our bodies don’t lie. Our minds can tell us untruths, fake us out, or lie to us; but, our bodies cannot lie. Our bodies are truth-tellers. That’s why this technique is brilliant. What if we just relied on this way of going through life? We would trust what our body tells us. If we get that “oooh that feels so bad, heavy in my body,” the answer is clearly ‘no.’ Or if you get “this makes me feel like I could fly, I’m light as a feather,” the answer is a definite ‘yes.’ Would we always be making the right choice? Could we defer to the wisdom of our bodies over the wisdom from our thinking minds? Try this experiment for one day and see what happens. Only go with the Shackles On, Shackles Off way of deciding. Notice what happens. Did you feel good about your choices? Was it strange? Did anyone notice you were acting not like yourself? Would you do it again? Was your mind ‘screaming’ at you to do the opposite thing? What did you learn?
This concept of our ‘bodies are wise’ was first introduced to me in coaching school. I had not considered it before. See, most of us are absolutely living in our heads during most of our life. If we get a pain in our knee, we think “oh well, just push through it.” If we keep pushing through it, our knee may get worse and worse until the pain (which is the voice of our body) screams at us. It is then we realize we need to see a doctor to have it looked at. It all has meaning: that pain, that uncomfortableness, those sensations in our body. Are YOU listening? WHAT can you learn from it?
