Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
unpolished thoughts 6/17/2019
I’m pausing because my next action isn’t yet clear to me.
Then, a small, glimmering “maybe” appears, an unspecific impulse, but it’s something. It’s enough to follow for at least a moment.
I know that I don’t have to commit my whole being in the first instant.
So I move.
Until something goes slightly astray.
There I stop, noticing where the resistance was. Then I go back and return again. Yes, now it’s clear where that resistance was.
So I go back again and wait this time, wondering about my resistance.
Then I imagine not resisting.
Then I move again, this time with slightly less resistance. This time, the image is clearer, I know more of what I am doing before I do it.
So I move this way, back and forth, becoming a little more familiar with the feeling of not resisting.
Image, movement, feeling, resisting, and not resisting.
I’m slightly more whole now, because what I do is just the slightest bit more bonded to what I think, what I sense, and what I feel.
In the past, I only knew two things, resisting or giving up completely. No middle ground.
Now there is a third option, the possibility of pausing, asking a question, and trying something new.
It’s rare that everything resolves itself at once. But often there are small changes. Many small changes add up. Life becomes less miserable.
Over time, it becomes increasingly pleasurable.
Perhaps most pleasurable is to begin to understand what you do, which also means to understand what you think, sense and feel.
But sometimes it’s necessary to follow the thought and find out where the resistance is.
Is that thought your own, or did you borrow it from someone else?
Other times you might notice the place where you can’t sense the difference between one thing and another.
Is the thing you don’t sense in the place where you are looking, or in a place where you have yet to look?
Perhaps most difficult is to discover the things that you have always tried to avoid feeling.
What was your motive for not feeling? Does it still serve you now as it did in the past?
How often do you test your assumptions about what is comfortable to feel and what isn’t?
Safely and mindfully experimenting with new and old sensations can open up and refresh your experience of the world around you. That’s what we’ll do in my next online Feldenkrais program, Connecting Insides & Outsides, starting July 1.