Are You Willing?
At a recent visit to a chiropractor, I revisited a set of useful questions I ponder when I’m feeling stuck or attempting to move through a deeper dynamic in my body. Are you willing to feel what there is to feel? Are you willing to allow what is present in the body and the mind to be there? Are you willing to hear the story that emerges and feel the sensations in the body that are associated with that story? And most importantly, are you willing and ready to let it go?
My experience tells me that I won’t be able to move forward until I experience the truth of whatever has its grip on me. I often find myself working with people who have been unable, for whatever reason, to feel the truth of something. Perhaps that pain stems from an event in childhood, an absent father or an alcoholic mother. Maybe the source of the issue is something as seemingly insignificant as falling off a bicycle and being ridiculed by the neighborhood children.
"The more you go into the very center of the sensation, the more it seems to dissipate until eventually, it disappears."
The first step is identifying what the issue is and how it occurs for you in the body. For one client in particular, the issue occurred as a result of a frequently absent parent. She located the energy of that experience in the vicinity of her solar plexus. Our work together was not intended to heal that energy or to fix her, but simply to be present to the questions: Where does that energy live in your body? Can you feel it? What does it feel like, and can you go right into the center of it?
When you focus on the where the energy is that you associate with an experience, something amazing often occurs. The more you go into the very center of the sensation, the more it seems to dissipate until eventually, it disappears. This may not happen all at once, but certainly the energy tugs less on you.
When you begin this process, you might also discover that there is a reason why you have been holding onto the energy in the first place. Perhaps it’s because you felt deeply hurt by an experience and want to hold it against someone. You want to justify your anger and prove that you are right—a very human response. But chances are, your need to make others wrong and justify your own suffering is costing you more of your own vitality than you know. You may also realize that blaming someone for something that occurred long ago no longer serves you.
This is when the work gets really interesting, because this is when you realize that you’re the one who’s holding onto the memory of that painful experience. You have cast yourself as the victim up until now, but you’re finally ready to cast yourself in a different role, one that is entirely up to you. You get to choose who you’ll become based on not what occurred in the past, but the future you want to create for yourself.
The process I’m about to guide you through may seem totally and ridiculously easy, but consider the power in this simple act. Pick up a pen. Grab it and hold onto it with all your might. Squeeze the ever-loving daylights out of that pen. Imagine that in this powerful grip, you are holding onto your painful memory. Next, simply allow the pen to drop to the floor.
Yep, that’s it. Just let it go, and imagine that letting go of your painful memory could be as easy as that. Imagine your painful experience dropping to the floor like the pen. Imagine that memory being forever separated from who you think you are, just as you know that pen is so clearly not a part of you.
When you go into the center of a feeling, you may experience some emotion. It might even get intense. Just keep diving into the center of the energy until there is nothing there. Keep dropping the pen to the floor. It might not always be so easy, but imagine what might be possible if it was.
Are you willing?
