The 3 A’s. Years ago in the mountains of Taiwan, my mentor gifted me this model of embodied living.
First written September 2021
The 3 A’s
Acknowledge (weclome to arise) what is coming up for you right now. Close your eyes and feel into the feeling in your body as much as you feel safe to do so. I like to set a timer on my phone (with a relaxing timer sound) for two minutes however you may choose to sit with this process for as little or as much time as you wish. Two minutes is the approximate time it takes a biochemical molecule to circulate your bloodstream. The exercise is to simply feel the feeling, as feelings exist so that we can feel them; they give us precious information.
Whenever you get distracted into telling stories with your thoughts about why you are feeling this way, kindly bring your focus back to simply feeling. The mind may be trying to tell you stories about why this is someone else’s fault or that you are not good enough; every story triggers a new wave of emotion(s) and circulating biochemistry in your bloodstream, distracting you from our practice of feeling your initial response to this situation. Bring yourself back from the distraction of thinking about the situation, to the feeling practice. You may notice with curiosity where the feeling is in your body, if it is moving or if it has a name or names. It may be easy to name or not, it doesn’t matter either way.
Use your breath to support yourself during this process by breathing slowly and deeply into your chest. Allow the chest to be more physically spacious by relaxing your shoulders back and down.
You could use these words from Buddhism: Welcome to Arise. They carry a real sense of goodwill and kindness towards ourselves: this feeling is welcome, whether it is painful or pleasurable. The intention is that I welcome this feeling as it is precious information and it wants to be felt.
During the two minutes the feeling may seem to get more intense as you get more curious about it. Usually by the end of the two minutes there is a sense of the feeling subsiding somewhat. You may even find that having focused really closely and curiously on it with kindness that suddenly there is a release and you are laughing! Or you may be crying, as the body sweats and the mind cries - it can be a really helpful and healthy releasing process to cry.
Accept it (welcome to be). Accept that this was true right up until this moment. ‘This’ stands for the feeling, the trigger to this feeling and the surrounding context or story you are telling yourself. In surrendering into total acceptance that this has been your experience right up until this moment your resistance subsides and the feeling is often lessened or released; again sometimes laughter and happiness springs up out of nowhere. You may find you spend a few more seconds, minutes, hours or even some days walking around your life in this stage of ever greater relaxation into this acceptance, until the experience fades away or is released.
Be kind to yourself: there is no rush. Accepting your experience of this response is not condoning anyone else’s behaviour (if that is relevant in this situation). In the Acknowledging, Accepting and Allowing process we are focusing on our own internal reactions.
Welcome to Be: we are not accepting in order to try to get rid of the feeling (which won’t work anyway as we will start telling ourselves more stories about it thus it will linger for longer as we amplify the experience in ruminating). We are accepting that this was so in order to surrender fully into acceptance as a practice.
Allow yourself to relax and let go (welcome to go). Four slow and deep breaths in and out of your chest and abdomen can help you to relax back in to this new moment. In allowing, we relax and let go into the vast spaciousness of being ourselves in this new moment.
Welcome to Go: in its own time, without me clinging on to this (now old story) in the retelling and reliving it, I allow it to go and I allow myself to move on into my future.
There is no pushing it away here - that is not effective. Letting go if very different from pushing. Sometimes, it doesn’t feel like anything has changed or shift - just yet. It might take time to allow all of your intelligence (intellect, body, emotions and intuition) to start to let go and that is okay. Here we have laid the ground work and set the intention. And so be it.
As many times as you feel the need to and safe to, go back to the beginning and cycle through this process again, as many times as it feels right to you to do so.