Will I Ever Change

Mar 04, 2011

By Allison Bachmeier

Years ago I used to wish that I would simply be free of my body and be in a wheelchair so I didn't have to experience the pain of its constant betrayal and so I could simply focus on the area where I excelled, the intellectual academic game. Gone would be the harassment to exercise, eat more, look normal, and compete with others in sports.

I used to view my body as the complete and ultimate enemy, something which I had to put up with and tolerate. Through BreakThrough and FreeFall I have found both courage and strength to step into and make friends with this body and to live wholly, by embracing this so viewed enemy and finding the tremendous joy enraptured within that I had been keeping separate from myself.

The beauty is that no one did it for me, and it so embraced the nature of the lone journey yet did so in a space rich with support and opportunity for transformation, that I was able to not just find but to trust these places within me that I had so harshly condemned as war-torn.

There is a common misconception out there that if you 'do' BodyTalk or BreakThrough or FreeFall that life somehow magically becomes more 'peaceful'. This is not so. No-thing can provide that for you, except for you. These seminars are tools to examine conflict to arrive at a different perspective – not just an intellectual one (which is the first step and initially helpful but useless unless really embraced fully), but an experiential one. Just doing BodyTalk/BreakThrough/any seminar or session for the sake of doing it doesn't actually help you the individual to move in any perceived desirable direction. After the intellectual understanding of the material comes, then the real work of living it starts. Once it becomes deeper and deeper experiential, then true perspective changes can occur, as does your experience with your world.

If you're asking 'can it ever change?', the answer is yes. If I was to ask you to define this 'better place' you've been struggling to attain or perhaps retain, you'd likely answer something along the lines of: healthy, joyful, positive, happy, peaceful, etc (insert your own specific words here). This, as well as any, type of balance is an impossible illusion to attain – and thank goodness it is! If you had balance all the time without any ups and downs your diagram of life would be a straight line __________. This is actually a diagram of death, if a nurse saw that flat-line in the ER they'd get pretty worried. The irony is you need the ups and downs to live fully, yet struggle against them and beat yourself up when you're 'out of balance', which is actually an odd way of saying you'd rather flat-line than experience life, whether it be 'good' or 'bad'. OR, with a shift in understanding, life's rollercoaster nature with ups and downs can be embraced totally with fully experiencing the good, the bad and the ugly. That way harsh judgments of yourself can finally cease, along with judgment of others – when that happens, life is experienced as less stressful and then a much truer sense of health can be experienced.

Anything that gives you the opportunity to examine yourself deeper, whether that be the latest seminar or conflict in one of your relationships, can allow you to really become aware of the parts that perhaps you thought were 'gone or neutralized' that obviously haven't been addressed fully, otherwise you wouldn't be experiencing what you're experiencing. Pain/stress/conflict is there as a sign, telling you that you have the opportunity to gain awareness, and that it's critical that you do so. The only way your body can communicate that is by giving you symptoms that you listen to, and at whatever intensity that catches your attention. At first it can seem that an 'issue/identity/etc.' disappears when you're temporarily not experiencing it, yet if it rears its head again it's clearly showing you that it hasn't gone anywhere and in fact, is in need of further attention so more awareness can unfold. The discomfort is the tool for awareness. In fact, no-thing actually goes away – it's the shift in perspective or awareness that allows you to experience something other than suffering, even in the presence of the identity/idea that formerly 'caused' distress. It must be understood deeply that no-thing actually goes anywhere – where would it go if we're not two, not separate, all as one?

There is an end to the pattern; it starts with the end of the struggle. The more you beat yourself for 'not progressing', the more the struggle will continue, which would be the perfect recipe to ensure the continuation of your current 'struggle'. Avoiding the struggle will also ensure its continuation. I wonder what would happen if the struggle could be seen as an opportunity to experience what hurts and see what it's telling you?
Come find out at a Life Science class near you:

FreeFall 1 Saskatoon, SK Jan 14 0 16, 2011
BreakThrough 1 Regina, SK Jan 21 – 23, 2011
BreakThrough 1 Saskatoon, SK Apr 8 – 10, 2011
FreeFall 1 Regina, SK June 10 – 12, 2011

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