Feelings: How to shape the ones we want

For most of us, falling in love with the absolute wonder of being alive is a distant dream.  Nonetheless, changing how we feel is the goal of most self-help courses, a great deal of therapy and most of the routes that lead to alcohol and drug abuse.
Suppose we could do it intelligently, with a generosity-of-spirit that allows us really to fall in love with the act of living.  So that each moment of life becomes a wonder, however it is lived?
In this final podcast of series 1, we take a look at this ultimate sticking point in our society. For many of us, feeling just isn’t safe and feeling good is either self-indulgence or self delusion.  Or at least, that’s what we’ve programmed ourselves to believe.

But imagine a world where everyone was in love with living every moment of the day. Where we knew as a felt sense, that life was inspiring, and there to be explored. Where the magic of the days touched every interaction with ourselves, other people and the world around us.

None of this is impossible. Childhood trauma notwithstanding, we do have the ability to choose how we feel, moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day. I can open to the things that make my heart grow – or I can recycle the things that make it shrink. (With the coda that for some of us, our history of trauma is too great and we are hijacked by the impact of that on our bodies – therapy is a key resource and one to be used if at all possible.)

For most of us, though, we let our default feelings define the tenor and thread and weave of our lives. And we don’t have to. In fact, we need not to do this for any longer than we can help.

In this podcast, we explore the ways we can shift out of our defaults to something that lets us flourish. Because the world needs nothing less from us now.

Jonathan Haidt - the Righteous Mind   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0141039167/ref=sr_1_1

Bessel van der Kolk - The Body Keeps Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma  https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00IICN1F8/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0

Peter Levine: In an Unspoken Voice: how the body releases trauma and restores goodness   https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009BVWRLO/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2

Stephen Porges: Polyvagal theory: https://www.stephenporges.com

Jonathan Franzen - What if we stopped pretending? https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending

Jem Bendell - Deep Adaptation: http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf

Rupert Read: This Civilisation is Finished: https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Civilisation-Finished-Conversations-Empire/dp/0994282834/ref=sr_1_1