4 questions

when i was in grad school to become a therapist, i learned a lot about cross-cultural healing.  in many ancient and tribal cultures, if a person was sick, unhappy, or stuck in life, they would visit the village elders.  the very first thing the elders would ask were these 4 questions:

1. when did you stop singing?

2. when did you stop dancing?

3. when did you lose interest in stories, particularly your own?

4. when did you become uncomfortable with silence?

i love these questions because they speak to something which brings so many people into 

therapy - healing your inner child.  think about it.  children are pretty passionate about every single one of those topics - singing, dancing, stories {particularly their own story}, and while they may make a lot of noise themselves, they are certainly not weirded out by silence the way adults are {i've had several clients under the age of 12 who spent many of our 45 minute sessions in perfect silence}.

  

there's something that happens between early childhood and adulthood.  we make all sorts of assumptions about ourselves and the world around us, which in turn, teaches us to close ourselves off from our feelings, from taking risks, and consequently, from true joy.  think about those 4 questions again.  each of those topics asks us to embrace an attitude of openness toward experiencing all that comes with living a full life, and often times these experiences involve facing our inner critic.  how many of you read the first question and thought "oh but i can't sing!" or something along those lines?  that was your inner critic. if you'll look again, the question is not "when did you stop singing well?"  it doesn't matter one bit what you sound like! singing benefits ALL of our souls.

the good news is, we can heal our inner child.  we may have learned faulty lessons when we were young that caused our inner child to become wounded, but we don't have to wait to unlearn them in order to embrace these 4 joys of life.  by choosing to sing, dance, tell our story, and sit in silence, new beliefs will replace the old.  don't wait until you FEEL like taking action - that may never come.  but acting despite the lack of feelings will transform you into a new person... shiny happy people dancing! and all that.

who's going to sing today?

who's going to dance?

who will tell their story?

who will take time for silence?

i will. care to join me?

{dance, stories, silence, sing}