Religion

Guided Meditation on Resistance

Touching earth or touching something that touches earth, send your awareness to how you are part of this earth and how earth supports your whole being. Breathe with this awareness for a while.

When you feel tuned into your awareness of connection with and support by earth, start to turn your awareness to where you are holding resistance. Where are these places in your being? What are their qualities? Breathe with noticing where you are holding resistance for a while, until you grow curious about one of the areas.

Once curious about the resistance you are holding, invite the resistance to greater presence and awareness. Now we notice not only the location in our being and the qualities, but we also become more aware of why. Resistance is often protective. What are we protecting ourselves from? Are these perceived threats true and real and present now? Sometimes we choose resistance as protection. Sometimes we have resistance as a protective habit.

As you breathe with your learning about the resistance you are holding, you have choices. Perhaps you want to keep the resistance and even strengthen it. Perhaps you want to soften the resistance or even release it. There are lots of choice points between these decisions and probably choices I have not imagined but you can. Now, we are breathing practicing discernment, holding the choices, the potentials, and imagining what flows from pursuing one of those choices, comparing them and how they feel.

As you breathe, noticing your choices and possibilities, eventually you might arrive at a decision you wish to try. If you decide you need to strengthen your resistance, how can you do this in helpful, supportive, non-harming ways? If you decide you need to keep your resistance, what are the most nurturing ways to hold this so the resistance protects but does not harm you or others? If you are choosing softening around the resistance, how can you encourage softness, easing, or more permeability? If you are choosing releasing resistance, how can you honor the resistance and how will you let it go? Are there physical movements to accompany your decisions?

As you complete your time with greater awareness of how you are or were holding resistance, perhaps return to awareness of earth. Earth’s solidity offers us resistance as we wheel or walk around, allowing us to travel through our lives. Earth’s permeability cleans and stores water, nurtures mycelial networks and plants, literally allowing us to breathe, to eat, to drink, to survive. Resistance is a practice and like the changing qualities of earth, we can change to employ resistance more skillfully in our lives.

Breathing in and out softly, thank resistance, thank earth, and thank your breath as you complete your practice.


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Rev. Naomi King

teacher of embodied spiritual practices

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