Held energy

I started reading a book I bought a few years ago but had never finished and it was exactly what I needed to read right now. It's called Saying Yes to Change: Essential Wisdom for Your Journey by Joan Borysenko and Gordon Dveirin.

I'd like to share a passage that I particularly liked:

Life is renewed only when held energy can leave our bodies, often in the form of discharged emotion such as the tears of grief or the physical shaking of fear. Letting go is initially just this: a physical exhalation of held energy. Bioenergetic psychologist Alexander Lowen defined freedom as the absence of inner restraint to the flow of feeling. Imagine yourself as having an interior zoo effectively shut down by powerful elephants of restraint, and then imagine the enormous relief when that immovable power is finally set free.

Letting go or emptying our bodies of accumulated stress is essential so our barrels don't overflow. As Gordon Dveirin says: "life is a continually self-renewing stream of energy, charging and discharging". However, when energy or stress is not discharged, havoc can ensue. That's why body based therapies, and therapies that include the body, are so practical and effective. As Arthur Ashe said "Analysis is paralysis". We're not going to solve everything with our mind or brain, the body is a huge resource in our healing journeys if we honour and listen to what it is saying.

Are you trying too hard?

Usually, whenever we feel an urgency or desperation about doing something we need to stop doing whatever it is (except when it is a genuine emergency of course).

If you find yourself struggling, trying, trying, trying and getting beyond frustrated, it's time to give yourself a break. Take a walk on a beach, look at the sunset, meditate on your breath. Keep it as simple as you possibly can.

When we're feeling like this it's usually because we're either trying to fix ourselves, another person or a situation. We've lost our faith and trust that things will work out. We feel we have to push harder so that things will work out. If we don't, they'll fall apart. But sometimes things need to fall apart. Sometimes the crisis has to happen and you trying to prevent it only serves to exhaust you even further.