Back in the 80's, when I was learning about body psychology, I attended a weekend workshop given by John Pierakos, who was the well-known and respected founder of BioEnergetics. He was an MD and his specialty was approaching psychological issues through the body. Someone in the group asked him what he thought of the current body-building craze that had just started to get off the ground. He somewhat sadly said that he thought it made it much more difficult to do psychological work, driving and suppressing feelings deeper into the subconscious, making it harder to bring awareness to them.
I had a client a few years ago who was a personal trainer and body-builder himself. His chief issue was that he could not contact his feelings. I told him the Pierakos story, but he said he couldn't stop training (addiction?). We did try a few accelerated breath sessions, which seemed to help. The intense experience of the rapid breath tends to cut through the body armor which lifting supposedly creates. At first, we had a breakthrough and he thought he had found the answer, but after a few sessions the results seemed to lessen. This might be something to try however, if you can locate a Rebirthing, Holotropic or other breathwork practitioner nearby, but I think nowadays this is hard to find. Unfortunately, it's not easy to do it on your own, one reason being that the effort tends to make you drowse off, and you need someone there to just keep you awake. I talk about it a little in the EC book. If it works for you, it could be a monthly part of your routine, although it's kind of a band-aid approach to the basic problem.
Since you seem to be saying, especially in your third question, that you're not getting to the emotion, it seems highly possible that the lifting is interfering. But there's no way to prove it, except by taking a sabbatical from lifting to see what happens. Would stretching counter the tightening of the body while continuing to train? It would certainly help, but if you're still not getting to the feelings, then it's not enough if lifting is in fact the culprit. An ideal approach would be to stop lifting for 2 months, maybe continue with reasonable aerobics or swimming, shelf the goal of increasing muscle mass for a while (you've probably got enough) and continue with a hatha yoga stretching practice, which I believe will keep muscles toned so you don't lose what you've got. Don't fall into the power yoga trap, do something like the sequence posted on the emclear site - just gentle stretching while maintaining your focus on body sensations. Of course, I recommend yoga to everyone as a primary means to uncover suppressed negativity, which to a large extent is believed to be trapped in the body.
However, other factors that enter are that men in general have a hard time connecting to feelings. This might have to do with the heavy body mass compared to women, and the left brain mode most men are in. So you're not alone in having difficulty finding the feelings. What we are trying to do is evolve, however, and part of this means coming into a left-right brain, inner male-female balance. You have to determine if extreme body-building, which is primarily an aggressive, materialistic, masculine, left-brain endeavor can co-exist with this coming-into-balance agenda, and find out exactly how much of a negative influence heavy lifting is on the feeling, intuitive, right brain world that you should be developing as part of your consciousness growth.
Other questions:
1. That's great with the lightbulb. This is a concept that is not understood by most New Agers - including healers who ignorantly keep pushing the 'just change your beliefs' idea. Everything is good in this paragraph until 'Both times I found myself meditating on the idea of total acceptance and that I am enough and that I don't need to be anything more than I already am at this moment.' You want to include acceptance as part of the ECP steps, but when you're in acceptance, you're not thinking about it, if this is what you mean. Thinking about anything is more or less the state of non-acceptance, or resistance. When you drop the resistance, the mind stops, and you enter the other zone of being - being with the feeling with no thoughts about whether it should or shouldn't be there - it just is. You have to cultivate the experience of being, of shifting to another zone, and that's why we work with the Third Eye. Then, you don't want to be thinking that you are enough, etc., when you are processing. This is more thinking and another attempt to recondition yourself - what you want to go beyond. It's true that it's not easy to get to this point, but that's what you're learning. I put the sections on affirmations in the book because when I wrote it, affirmations were more popular than now. But now, I rarely advise clients to use affirmations. They can easily become misused as a reconditioning tool, it involves too much mental effort, and this is not what we are about. Continuing patiently with the process is enough.
2. As we sit with feelings, hopefully we will build the capacity to be in the moment at all times, and be able to process as feelings come up, but this is usually more difficult than sitting and giving full attention to it. Sitting with the feeling also gives you more time and opportunity to go deeper, to connect to other feelings, etc. The difficulty in bringing up the feeling when sitting seems to relate to what we have discussed.
3. You're doing well with objective awareness about your core issues and chakras, so you are doing good work now, which you should not overlook. Just becoming aware of these negative beliefs is having a helpful effect. However, it is desirable to eventually connect to specific feelings. You want to get to the core feeling in the body of 'not good enough' not only the intellectual belief. This feeling will be behind other associated emotions, for example, the emotion of depression, discouragement, or maybe even chronic fatigue. The lower body chronic pain points to possible lower chakra suppressed issues like anger, fear, sexual energy issues, power issues that will eventually be uncovered. Keep in mind that Vipassana meditation teaches you to stay with the body sensation. They believe that focusing primarily on the body is enough to clear the 'sanskaras' - their term for suppressed negative energy. So while it would be good to connect to emotional feelings, and you might consider some life-style steps to move in this direction as discussed, I would suggest you be content with awareness of body sensations alone, and assume that you can do adequate self-healing. There are a few certified EC Facilitators who actually prefer sticking with body awareness. Focusing on the body requires the same cultivated concentration as focusing on feelings. Maybe research Vipassana - Goenka. Combining the ECP tools and concepts with it I would say extends its effectiveness.
