Toronto Chiropractors - Lifesource Chiropractic Studio - 426 Adelaide St. W. Toronto, On - (416) 977-8165
Surrendering, Letting Go & Control
... and then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud, was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
-Anais Nin
We all fear being out of control, worried that things will not work out if we aren't actively working on them. Much of healing is about the opposite: surrendering or letting go. It's about letting go of all the shoulds and should haves from the past and all the mights or coulds from the future. In this way we become aware of the present and can actually follow the rhythms of what is happening in our life right now.
When we feel safe enough to let go, we can surrender our own need to make things happen and have faith that things will work out as they need to be. We can honour the time and process that things need to take. When we control, we often end up forcing things to happen. Conversely, when we work with the rhythms of a situation we can be authentically powerful, rather than just forceful.
Worry about being out of control leaves us in a state where we can't be present to what is happening in a situation. We see only those things that are not happening. There is a sense of urgency, that things need to happen now or that there is not enough time. There is a lot of resistance to what is happening and no resonance with the situation. We tend to freeze when it comes to action or we over-react, working hard to fit what is happening into our current perspective. Surrender allows you to become flexible and change your perspective to respond appropriately to what is happening in the situation.
Think of a team of people working on a project together, a situation we have all been in, be it in school, a work situation or a family event. If we fear being out of control, we need things to look or happen in a certain way. There is no openness to other creative inputs, constructive criticisms or ideas. Other people become uncomfortable and don't feel they can express themselves and you don't get honest contribution. The project doesn't have a chance at being improved, the creativity of others is stifled and no one is satisfied. The focus is on a particular result, rather than the process that leads to that result. While surrendering requires vulnerability, it also results in sharing the work load and more equality of contribution.
In terms of physical health, we can look at the need to control symptoms from this perspective of surrender. When we let go of the need for symptoms to change, we can take an objective perspective and see that these are part of the healing process. When we reconnect with what is happening, we can move through the symptoms more easily and often with greater speed. As the saying goes, "what you resist, persists and where your attention gos, energy flows".
Resisting what is going on leads us to denying that the symptoms are part of our own body. We end up describing them as something other than us. If we can accept and embrace all our parts, including the ones that aren't working as we might like them to be, we acknowledge our wholeness and enhance the healing process.
Network involves the process of letting go on many levels. In addition to letting go of the more traditional meaning of symptoms as a negative thing, there is a physical aspect to letting go. While having an entrainment, letting go of your body and letting it respond as it will lets you get the most out of being here. While this is not always easy, particularly for those who haven't had this experience before, it does become more natural over time. Those who have been under care for 6 months or more have usually developed this ability with some fluency. They describe the inability to differentiate what movements they are consciously making and which ones their body is making.
Surrendering is not something you can try to do; it is something that you must allow to happen. The need for control is usually acknowledged and then put aside consciously so that we can move forward and be present to the things that are really going on. If we can do this more in our lives, there will be less friction, stress and our health will flourish!!!
