“You can’t solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.” -Albert Einstein
I haven’t written in a while now because of a challenge I have been having lately. Maybe you can relate.
I have many things I want to express…feelings, opinions, thoughts and inspirations. But when I sit down to write or say the words…I shut down. It’s like my throat chakra has so much that needs to come through that it just gets clogged and nothing is said.
My mind is looking for the right, appropriate words and the “right time” to say them. When I approach things in this way, my authenticity gets blocked and only a small piece of what I want to say comes out.
This is a tendency of mine, but it has only increased since our world got rocked by the coronavirus and everything that has unfolded thereafter. It seems like everything became unstable and even more uncertain than it already was.
When we go through stressful and traumatic experiences our bodies’ mechanism for keeping us safe is our fight, flight or freeze response.
This is the way humans and animals have survived for thousands of years. Now we are seeing this all around us.
Some of us are fighting through rioting, protest and taking action. Some of us are fleeing through distraction, avoidance or addiction. And a whole lot of us (myself included) are freezing. We are in shock. It takes us a while to integrate what is happening and move forward.
We may have a tendency to respond in one of those ways, or we may tend to respond in all three ways depending on the circumstances.
We may not be in control of this response at first, but once we are aware of it, we are conscious...and it shifts.
It is important for us to learn to manage the energy and emotion that has been brought up by the stressful or traumatic events, not subdue or repress it.
We may need to learn to contain the energy and emotion through processing and being aware of our feelings rather than reacting from them. Or we may need to discharge the energy that we have stored through movement like martial arts, yoga or dancing.
We may need a good cry, we may need a good scream, we may need a good laugh. Whatever it is, once we become aware of what we are doing we have the power to give ourselves what we need.
When we get stuck in any of these patterns...we CALL IN THE FIRE, the element of transformation. The controlled burn of a forest fire clears the brush, debris and trees from land to clear space for new growth. The ground is fertilized by the remains of what came before.
We can use our own inner fire in this way. There may be places within us that are “dead.” Thought systems that no longer serve us, beliefs that are no longer true for us and ways in which we approached life that are no longer working. These ways of being may have been keeping us safe. But if we are to expand and find the depth of who we are we need to burn through the barriers to see beyond…to new potentials.
Like a scuba diver in the depths of the ocean we find a new depth to ourselves, uncovering hidden treasure. And like lifting up in a hot air balloon with the expanse of sky all around us and the clouds at our fingertips…we find new perspectives and an expanded view. These are our new potentials, our new growth that has been fortified by our path thus far.
When I realized the other day that all the thinking in the world was not going to get me unstuck I was reminded of Albert Einstein’s quote, “We can’t solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.” I realized I was looking in the wrong place.
I was waiting for my mind to change things, when really my mind was creating the barriers. I needed to go beyond the mind to the wisdom within. I recognized that I could use the practices of breath, yoga, meditation and grounded action to burn through my stagnation and get unstuck, unfrozen. I lit my inner fire and was able to express these words to you.
I have included a Solar-Plexus Yoga Flow for you to use to ignite and harness your own inner fire. We have the opportunity in each moment to be reborn into who we authentically are and I invite you to make that choice.
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, let’s use the power of this time to explore new depths and expand to new potentials.
