Resistance

I'm in resistance right now to doing what I said I would do. And I'm doing it anyway. But I don't want to. I don't want to do my homework for my course, but I'm doing it. I don't want to go to Montreal tomorrow morning early and I'm going anways. When I don't want to do something, a little voice in my head goes off and comes up with really good excuses. "This is a dumb course." "You don't really want to finish it." "You're not going to make it anyways, might as well quit now."

And the truth is, if it weren't THIS course, it would be something else I want to do that's difficult. I've heard that voice before. It's not the first time. It's been going on for most of my life. I've learned not to always believe it. I loved the movie, A Beautiful Mind, for the part about how in the end the voices were still talking to him, but he chose not to listen to them.

My girls in the Eating Disorders Program watched that movie too. We have that voice that tries to talk us out of things. In Landmark they call it your "it." I used to believe it. "You can't do that. It won't work. You're not good enough." And that voice stops me from doing things that stretch me out of my comfort zone. It's not just yoga that stretches us. And yoga stretches aren't just physical postures.

Using resistance as a tool for self-awareness is very powerful. We've started the period of Lent and that's when traditionally people give things up for a while until Easter. So Tamsin for instance, is giving up chocolate. Not that it's bad to eat chocolate. She just wants to give it up for a while and watch what happens. Notice the resistance and the patterns that come up to be let go, and then hopefully it all settles and then the Easter Bunny comes and she'll get to eat chocolate again in a few weeks!

So giving something up, or taking something on, that brings us into some resistance, can be very useful. Of course too much of a good thing is not good. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about choice and commitment and not force or pressure. It's coming from within. And chances are when we look at what's stopping us in one area of our lives is what's stopping us in other areas too. And it's usually a part of ourselves - not our boss or someone in our family or some external factor that's making our circumstances awful - it's right inside us! People say we get in our own way. We do! So get out of the way! I'm moving over...