DTOP #44: Releasing Attachments With “The Little Stick Figures” by Jacques Martel

Hello, dear friends. Welcome back to another episode of Doing Things On Purpose, the podcast that empowers women to take charge of their time, health, relationships, and money by doing things on purpose.

This is episode 44. I am your host Suri Stahel, a self-love and self-empowerment coach for moms, heart-centered rebels, and women who serve.

By the way, if you are listening to this and you are trying to pitch me a guest, just know that I’m not currently accepting guests, but thank you so much for your interest.

Mom check-in

So let’s start off today’s podcast by a mom check-in. As usual, I’d love to know how are you doing, how are you feeling? How has the season been for you, whether you are having spring right now or moving towards autumn?

I wanted to share with you a self-regulation exercise that I learned recently, which I thought was very interesting. So the exercise is about. Calming your nervous system, as I mentioned. So the first step is if you can have a moment to yourself, imagine a dot behind your eyeballs and a dot behind your navel, and there’s a line connecting those two dots.

And so now call in your attention wherever they may be. Spread into the dot behind your eyes.

And once it’s there, just slowly move your attention from that dot energetically downwards down the line, towards the dot, behind your navel. And then once you reach that dot, just move. Upwards again, slowly, as slow as you can, back up. And so you can repeat this exercise maybe up to 10 times. 10 upwards, and downwards movements or until you feel your pulse slowing down.

You know, when something riles you up. See if you can come back to center. Because I really believe that we can always find the best response if we can just come back to this grounded state.

And again, there are so many tools you can explore, and this is just one of the tools that I thought was really interesting. It was in something that was shared in a course that I recently joined.

My introduction to “The Little Stick Figures”

Anyway, welcome again to episode 44, and today I would love to teach a simple exercise for those of you who are struggling with releasing attachments. Attachments are when we are too invested in someone else outside of ourselves. Whether we are too worried, whether someone’s doing well or not well, to the extent that it is affecting us… whether our stress levels or it’s just crossing a boundary where we can’t function, or we can’t thrive in our own lives.

And for a lot of parents, this can be a guilt feeling. That you think, I have to be attached to how well my children are doing, because I am responsible for them. But I would love to invite you to think about this in another way, that if you can.

Detach yourself from their lives, right? Whether they will be successful in life, whether they’re going to get an A or a B or a C. Then you can more objectively hold space for them, where they are right now.

So, yes, maybe they’re struggling right now, but we are not going to project into the future and already imagine a life of them unable to do any calculations, and then getting kicked out of school, and then never finding a job, and then never having a happy life, you know, and so on and so forth.

This is what our mind likes to do. It likes to go back to the past and collect evidence from there, or go to the future and project something that hasn’t happened. And we worry and we spiral out of control in these states, which is not the now.

As with many of these mindful practices, it’s easier set than done.

You can do meditation to try and bring your thoughts back to center and just practice, not letting your mind spiral out of control. Or there can be other exercises that you can try, and this is just one of them.

This exercise actually came into my life over two years ago. I was doing a personal investment course called Portfolio Heldin. And Heldin is German word for hero. So portfolio hero or heroine, by Corinne Brecher.

And she was inviting us to question our beliefs about money and our limitations. And she introduced this little exercise. And I didn’t really think about it too much until recently, when I was holding a session with a client.

They were telling me that they’d gone through so many theories, psychological theories, in trying to work out some attachment issues in their lives. And they were asking me if I had any magic tricks up my sleeve.

And I had to be honest, that for me, a tool is just that: it is a technique that you can use in the short term. It can help sometimes. And sometimes it doesn’t help. But it is no substitute for long-term practices right?

Like it’s great to know how you can calm your nervous system when you’re going haywire, but at the same time, you wanna be building your life around a regulated state.

You wanna, for instance, let’s say exercise regularly or eat a balanced diet so that you can be healthy and not have to go into extreme dieting because you had gained too much weight.

Or, you know, you had to go to physiotherapy because you hadn’t exercised, and broke something or stretched something. So with that context in mind, I would like to teach you now this exercise because it’s very simple.

It takes, just a few minutes and I invite you to try it and see how it works. Again, it’s about detaching from someone, but in a healthy way. So you’re wishing the best for yourself. You are also wishing the best for the other person.

So we don’t know where our path, our growth is going to lead, nor do we know that for the other person. And so we’re just wishing everyone well and wishing our relationship together to be well as well.

So we start with that basic intention in mind.

How to do the “Little Stick Figures” exercise

So the exercise is called The Little Stick Figures by Jacques Martel, and this is the book, his book, which I recommend you buy to learn about this technique more in depth because it really has a lot of examples that I find very useful. As well as more detailed explanations, on the nuance of using this technique.

The tools that you need is piece of paper. You need a pencil and you need scissors.

Alright, so… If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that one of my primary relationships is my relationship with my husband. So I’m gonna do this exercise with him because I definitely wish the best for me and also , the best for my husband.

And I wanna use us, because we have a strong relationship, and to show you that this is not about cutting him off of my life, right? It’s really about how can we create a healthier relationship with each other without attaching too much about whether the other person is doing what we are saying or whether they are, taking certain actions in their lives that we approve of because we don’t know what’s best for them.

• So let’s just begin by drawing a little stick figure (on the left-hand side). So I’m gonna draw myself. Okay, and if you’re seeing this on video, I will show you the picture. So a simple figure.
• And I will write down my full name (underneath). So my full name is Suriya Stahel. And I’m taking this seriously. I’m not just writing Suri. I’m writing Suriya.
• And then, on the other side of the paper – so on the right side of the paper, I’m going to draw my husband. Again, smiley face, little stick figure.
• I write his full name (underneath), Ueli Stahel.
• And then I draw a circle around myself and my name.
• I’m going to draw, lines like sunshine lines outside of this circle. This is me wishing the best for my growth, the best for myself, all my hopes and dreams, all of the things for the future that’s good for me, and my sovereignty, of course, as a human being. So there I go.
• And then I draw another circle around my husband, and again those light lines outside of his circle so that he’s also doing well.
• Then I draw a huge oval around us both. Don’t worry if it’s not a perfect oval. And then rays of light shining out of this oval.

So if you’re doing this with me in real time, that’s great. If not, you just have to wait a moment while I finish this drawing. And if you’re trying to find the video for this, just go to YouTube and search for me Suri Stahel.

• And now we’re going to connect our chakras.
• So there’s the root chakra, which is where your tailbone is and his tailbone. So I made a little dot that spot. And then I’m going to connect the root chakra, my root chakra and his root chakra. So if you have the little stick figures, this is the point where the legs meet the body. So just connect from my figure root chakra to the other person’s root chakra.
• And then we have the sacral root chakra, which is between the belly button and the pubic area. So I’m connecting those lines.
• And then the solar plexus, which is above the belly button below the chest. That’s the third.
• The fourth would be the heart chakra. So I just draw it where the arms meet the torso. So that part from my side make a line, towards the other figure.

Okay, and then we have three more.

• The next one is the throat chakra, just around the throat area. Just gonna draw the line there.
• The second last one is the brow, just between the brow area above my eyes. And connect that to the other person.
• And then the crown is just at the top of the head, connected to the top of the head of the other person.

So this is how the completed picture looks like. If you’re on YouTube, you can see it.

Alright, so I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 lines.

And now what I do is I take my scissor and I will just cut through this line. And every time I cross a line, I would just say thank you.

I say thank you and it is done.

Applying this exercise with people, animals, and beliefs

So I’ve done this exercise a lot in the past month. The main relationships we should do it with obviously, are the relationships we have at home:

• Whether it’s with your spouse, your children
• Maybe your parents, your brothers and sisters, your parents-in-law. 

Or anyone in your life:

• It could be your best friend
• It could be even your pet.

And what I find is that I’m less triggered, when I’m in relationship with another person.

When we are communicating, when we are having differences in opinion, when we are just telling each other about our day, there is more peace in the conversation.

It’s almost like I can see them as their own human being and I can feel this almost cute loving sensation as I just witness them going through struggles in their lives or just sharing something.

And I find myself being much more respectful of their own experience in life, and I can keep to my business more than overstep into the other person’s business.

A tale from the book

So in the book, Jacque Martel also includes some letters from his fans who have used this technique. And one caught my attention.

Which was somebody who was holidaying with their grandparents in France. And then they had this problem with flies. The flies would just be all over the place and really messing up his holiday.

And he said, “I did the exercise with me and the fly, and then my grandparents and the fly individually, I told them how to do it.”

And then strangely, the next day, the flies just kind of laid down and, you know, he swatted the flies. Before they were just buzzing away when you try to get them. And for the rest of the summer there were no flies anymore in that holiday home. Which seems kind of crazy. But anyway, I have an open mind.

I’m like, it doesn’t hurt. Why not try?

My little experiment

So we have two cats who have been interrupting our sleep at five o’clock in the morning and also six o’clock. They’re supposed to have their wet food at seven. They’re scratching the door or they’re climbing over furniture. And so I thought, why not do this exercise with them?

So I did myself with one of the cats, which is called Picasso. And then another one, myself and Miro, which is our second cat.

One thing I want say is that every time you do the exercise, it can only be done between you and something or someone else. So you can’t do two other people without you in there.

And so I did these two exercises separately. It’s been just two or three days ago. And the first day they scratched once on the door. And the second day they were kind of just, you know, walking around in the morning. I could hear them walking around, but they weren’t bothering anyone.

We could even sleep in. I woke up at nine on the weekend and I was wondering, did anybody give the cats food? This is really weird. 

And this (now) has been the third or fourth day that they have been very well behaved in the morning.

So I don’t know if this will last, but I just wanted to share an example of something that happened kind of, unbelievably. I have no idea if it has just to do with the weather or something else.

But, they had been scratching and bothering us for a really long time in the past month or more, and it was really getting on our nerves. And I just wanted to place that it is not scientific proof, but maybe it motivates you to try this exercise.

You can also do this exercise with beliefs. 

So just to clarify, if you do it with your cat, you can still draw a human figure and just put your cat’s name underneath. If you’re doing it with a belief, you can draw a square instead or a rectangle and put your belief in there.

I don’t really wanna go into too much detail. I highly recommend that you buy the book. It’s not a hard read, if you’re interested.

And let me know if you try it and how it has worked for you, or if it hasn’t worked for you.

Let me know if you try it

So that is my episode today. I hope you give it a try. If you need personal support from me as a coach, you can contact me at suristahel.com.

And if you would love to follow me, I’m on social. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. As usual, click like, subscribe, all of those things so people can find my work.

And I will catch you again next time, and please let me know if you try this and um how it went. Till next time, bye-bye.