Working with resistance
/Resistance can be a tough cookie. She’s not always pleasurable to be sitting with, and she’s usually the advocate for staying where you are, working hand-in-hand with stagnation. And yet when resistance comes around it’s usually a tall sign that you’re working with just exactly what you’re meant to be working with.
Oftentimes working with resistance for me means complete acceptance of starting just exactly where I am starting. That means, no matter how much further along in the process I want to be, or how frustrated I may feel with not knowing or understanding the ride I’m on, that I embrace with complete love where I am in the process. AND more than that, I must completely surrender to where I am in the process, with love, always with love.
It can feel heavy. It can feel overwhelming. It can feel expansive. It can feel daunting. It’s a dance. A dance between all the emotions that come through. A dance with yourself, your better half and your darkness.
There are two types of resistance that feel most prominent in my life: a) resistance in connection to my own healing journey and to the deeper wounds that I’m working with, or b) it can be resistance with the creative project I have in front of me.
If it’s resistance that I’m feeling when it comes to my own healing journey, I first FEEL IT. LIVE IN IT. SURRENDER TO IT. This surrender isn’t the waving of the white flag surrender, it’s the melt into it type of surrender. When I melt into the emotion and allow it to have its feelings, the emotion loses its total control over me which has usually lead me to the face-off with resistance in the first place. Only then do I begin to accept the nonlinearity of it all.
If it’s a creative project that I’m resisting, if it’s the creation of anything, whether this be in physical form or not, I sit down to write a list of the reason this idea, this creation has to come through me. The reasons I’m grateful to the project. Even if this doesn’t begin a flow of continued creation, it gives me a new outlook, a complete reframing encouraging my heart to feel fulfilled by the desire to continue the creation.
Resistance shows up in many ways and it does the exact same thing in breathwork. The idea is to not get defeated with resistance but rather learn to work with it. Whether that be pushing through it, past it, or sitting in it momentarily, it could mean breathing into it, claiming the resistance and doing the work anyway. The best way to work with resistance is to learn to see it for what it is, be willing to work with it, and let it stimulate all that you’re meant to be opening and working with.
