Are you willing to feel good all the time?

I’m hanging out at LAX , waiting for my flight home. I’m sitting across from an adorable family (dad, two little kids) who are transfixed by their Pinkberry treats. Dad is doing a great job of keeping the drips from landing on his kids’ shirts.

I’ve just spent two days in Planet Hendricks, the last two days of Katie and Gay Hendricks’ Five Day training in Conscious Living. The question Gay posed to us was:

Are you willing to feel good all the time?

This seems like such a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to feel good all the time?

It turns out that very few of us are willing to step into such a revolutionary life. Katie believes that the average span of time that people are generally willing to feel good is about 4 seconds. We let ourselves ride the wave of feeling expanded and open about that long before we create a thought that brings us back to the more familiar territory of feeling afraid, or irritable, or judgmental.

No wonder we surround ourselves with treats. Indulging in something sweet—Pinkberries (I think it’s a frozen yogurt place), the variety of electronic devices that scatter around this waiting area for us to play games or read our email. these all give us a quick experience of “feeling good,” which generally means getting out of our minds long enough to not tune into the next scary thought or out of our bodies to not notice our numbness or fear or irritability.

Walking into the room with my Hendricks playmates was enough to remind me of this other potential. The one where moving, breathing, and loving what is opens me up to ever-expanding waves of well-being, exhilaration, and sense of possibility. Where, truly, the only “real problem” is Upper Limiting, blowing the body’s fuse with all of this powerfully moving energy.

Gay talked about birds, how they soar and rest, soar and rest. They don’t soar and then come crashing to earth, only to drag themselves up to try to fly again.

I’ve been soaring—I recommend it. Let’s start a revolution of feeling better and better, more and more continuously. Of demanding of ourselves lives that are all about feeling the best we are able to feel.

Would you like to Add the Body to your psychotherapy, coaching, bodywork, clergy, or other practice with people? Come to Adding the Body: A New Paradigm for Coaching and Psychotherapy, with Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph.D. and Julia Colwell, Ph.D., March 4-6. Go here for more information.