Feeling Resistance?

I’ve been thinking about how we all struggle at times with Resistance.. You know that feeling when your body starts to constrict and tense up.  Maybe you feel the tension in your jaw, shoulders, fists; the mind starts to close down at the mere thought of something you don’t want to face, you just want to run away or hide… Perhaps you might start to feel angry, frustrated, even ask people to stop looking at you.  Whatever form it takes, you just want whatever is going on in that moment to just NOT BE SO.  Well all of that is Resistance, in it’s lovely glory. And you may already know by now – what you resist – persists.

So what can you do when you are feeling that uncomfortable closed feeling of resistance, (which in itself you are probably also trying to resist)?  Well, about a year ago, friend of mine came up with an analogy about emotions being like waves in the sea and I thought it illustrates the point so well, I wanted to share it with you…albeit in my own words.

Emotions are like waves:

You know when you are out swimming in the sea and you see the ocean start to swell as a large wave starts to form? If you are anything like me, your instinct might be to panic a bit (I have a thing about Tsunami’s). You may now want to rush towards the shore, away from the wave… and as you swim away faster and faster, the wave starts to get bigger and bigger – until eventually it crashes over your head, sending you coughing and spluttering and gasping for breath. BUT, instead of running away, if you moved towards the swelling of the ocean, you would either be gently lifted up by the swell as it rolled on it’s merry way till it ran out of momentum, OR you could dive underneath the wave completely.  

Yes it’s counter-intuitive to move directly towards the thing that you fear most – but in this analogy, it is actually the fastest and easiest way to safety. Emotions are like that – when we try to turn our back’s and run, they hunt us down… we are filled with the anxious panic of not getting caught by this ‘dangerous thing’.  However, if instead, we turn and face it with our full courage, moving headlong towards it, we find instead of being over-powered by it – we are guided and lifted completely out of harms way by the very thing we feel threatens us most.

I thought it was such a great analogy as it’s so easy to picture, that I wanted to share with you and hope it may bring you comfort to keep that image in mind the next time you feel the resistance coming on.