This section addresses the following questions:

• This exercise gave me some precious tears, and I felt my emotions or feelings inside start to loosen up and kind of wobble (the whole package at once), like a soft jelly pudding. Afterwards it was stable again. Makes we wonder about what can happen, and when?
• I just tried to do this exercise. But when I put my legs into position with my feet standing up, I began to cry. So I put my legs back down again and waited a few moments, and then tried again, and the same thing happened. I cried for quite a while, I don’t know why, and now I just feel sad. Would you recommend I skip this exercise?
• I have a growing irritation/frustration about not really having any reaction to any of these diaphragm exercises. Irritation with myself, with the program, with other people, as this irritation carries over to other activities.

It can be surprising, what we uncover when we start to pay attention to ourselves in ways that we haven’t before. Feeling things shift and change on the inside, feeling those emotions burble up with no apparent cause — that’s a lot of what these explorations are about. Finding those new and surprising experiences is really great.

If just having the intention of doing this lesson, and then starting it by standing on your feet, brings on a lot of emotion, that’s ok. Just start with that. Welcome the tears, and find out what they have to say. A great sentence from Peter Levine is, “if your tears could speak, what would they say?” I think this is probably a great lesson for you to do, just take your time, and allow for the emotion that wants to arise to be expressed and cared for. Then try again later or the next day.

If you find you are getting frustrated because you aren’t noticing anything, I would suggest noticing that you are frustrated! Seriously. It sounds like this lesson actually stirred up some anger, which likely means there is something there to work with.