Less Resisting, More Resting
After a beautiful week in Costa Rica with a truly lovely group of women on my second Find Your Flow Retreat, my nose started running like a faucet as I walked toward the shuttle to start the journey home.
My system was registering the break it had evidently been waiting for the green light to take for weeks (isn't mind-body wisdom amazing? Our systems know when it's "safe" to relax), and I was laid low by a virus for my first few weeks back home.
While physically depleted and foggy-brained weren't my top choices of how I'd feel returning home, it was what was happening.
And thanks to the accumulated benefits of years of mindfulness and self-compassion practices, I was mostly able to surrender into Netflix marathons and lots of rest in my makeshift home wellness clinic without much self-haggling or "I should be doing more" guilt.
The experience was unpleasant and not what I wanted, but it was able to pass through without too much suffering thanks to fairly little resistance adding insult to injury.
But we humans are wired to buck against unpleasant feelings. To push away, distract, avoid and contract when things feel bad.
To resist things that feel uncomfortable.
To do whatever we can to try to get back to feeling good.
And while it's completely normal for our minds to try to move us away from discomfort, resisting what reality is presenting us with isn't the most useful approach.
In fact, the more we tense up and resist what's here, the farther we push ourselves away from how we want to feel, and deplete our energy reserves in the process.
You've likely heard the energetic principle that:
What we resist persists.
The more forcefully we try to resist what's happening in reality in any given moment, the more ensnared we get in suffering.
The equation used to illuminate this truth in the mindfulness realm is:
Suffering = Pain x Resistance
As a personal example (and counterpoint to the relative acceptance of getting sick), I'm plucking gray hairs one at a time as they creep into this soon-to-be-40 head of hair despite logically understanding they're just gonna keep coming ;)
Gray hairs arriving is, in reality, no problem. And even feeling a twinge of, "Ugh, things are changing as this body ages" isn't a problem in and of itself either.
Where things get sticky is when some part of us stomps its feet in an inner tantrum, trying to stop a natural process over which we truly have no control.
The "ugh" doesn't cause us suffering. It's the resistance to the "ugh" that makes us suffer.
This goes hand in hand with another concept you've likely heard:
Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.
Pain occurs in nature. It's a naturally arising phenomenon designed to help keep us safe by bringing our attention to some misalignment.
And no matter how hard we try, we're just not going to be able to stop pain's circumstantial arising.
So it doesn't make much logical sense to resist something that's going to come and go no matter what we do, right?
But the way these human brains of ours are wired, we try to resist pain and discomfort when we anticipate them coming our way anyway.
But the more we resist anything that's a natural part of the cycle of life, the more suffering we cause ourselves.
Byron Katie puts it this way:
"The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want."
So OK, if you're on board at this point with the notion that the less you "argue with what is," the less you'll suffer, the question is:
How can we move toward that center of equanimity — that space within which we can be OK with whatever’s happening — without being knocked off center by every wave that rolls through or exhausting ourselves by throwing fruitless temper tantrums trying to resist each wave?
First:
Slow down. Press pause.
Take a few breaths.
Feel your feet firmly rooting into the Earth beneath you.
And notice what's happening in your body in (just) this (one) moment.
And now in this one...And now this one...
Just acknowledge what's happening in reality in this moment; not as filtered through your mental narrative, but as felt as direct sensation in the body.
NEXT:
Allow whatever's happening right now to be happening.
No resistance, no clinging. Simply notice what's present and allow it to be as it is.
(*Don't worry, this doesn't mean you can't take action if it's appropriate at some point. This pause just gives you room to check out what's really happening so you can make a useful, conscious choice about that action when the time comes.)
THEN:
Breathe some space around any resistance or suffering — tension, contraction, shutting down — you notice in your inner experience.
A spoonful of salt in a glass of water would be too salty to drink. That same spoonful of salt in a huge clear pool would hardly be noticeable.
Imagine your mind and awareness are as spacious as that clear pool of water, vast enough to be undisturbed at the deepest levels even as ripples blow across its surface.
Then:
Extend yourself some compassion. It's natural that we struggle when we feel pain, fear, or discomfort. So offer yourself some soothing words like:
"It's OK."
“This will pass."
“I'm sorry you're having a hard time."
"I'm here with you."
Place one or both palms over your heart as you repeat these soothing words to yourself.
You're learning to regulate your nervous system in a moment of stress. You're starting to rewire your system's impulse to reactively resist what's present when it feels unpleasant or scary and starting to build faith and bandwidth and resilience around your ability to take steps forward even when it feels hard.
so then, last but definitely not least:
Commit to taking some aligned action steps every day in the direction you want to head.
Because aligned action is an antidote to resistance.
The way we dial back resistance is by proving to ourselves through consistent action that we can, in fact, actually do the thing that resistance was telling us was too hard or scary or impossible to do.
Or, if you'd prefer to keep driving yourself crazy, you know the shortcut:
Resist what's happening or hop on the mental hamster wheel of repetitive worry thoughts and fear stories about it.
The choice is yours.
And it's a pretty simple one once we slow down enough to really investigate the ripple effects of accepting, expansive choices versus resistant, contractive ones.
And if you knock just a few little letters out of resisting, you'll find yourself resting.
Right here, right now, in your naturally peaceful center and naturally loving essence.
Lots of Love,