Rocking the Worry

By Dee Wagner, LPC, BC-DMT

Check out Elyane Youssef's beautiful article on worry. Me being a dance therapist, I got to thinking about the movement involved in what we call worry. What we call our monkey minds chatter because they are designed to look for danger and solutions. That kind of thinking is useful if we can get the monkeys out of the trees. If we ground our worry into the earth, it can rock us as we consider our options...on the one hand...on the other hand...and then, in the rocking we can m...ore and more feel gravity holding us to the earth. When we "worry" a knot, we roll it between our fingers to see if it will loosen. Back and forth movement helps us in many ways. Rocking slowly and becoming more mindful of gravity in the process seems to help us find "the wisdom to know the difference," which is the third part of the Serenity Prayer. The quote at the beginning of Elyane's wonderful article says not to be upset, like a table is upset when it is knocked on it's side. Instead of letting life send us scurrying in the trees monkey-calling or knock us on our sides like an upset table, can we learn to groundedly move back and forth or side to side, to practice the healthy, grounded-monkey way to worry?

Click here to read the article.