What do you ignore, or pretend it isn’t happening? Both of which can be a forms of resistance. How do you feel about changes in your body, whether due to ageing, injury or sloth? How do you deal with those uncomfortable feelings? My personal favourite is eating, not very happy? Eat something, angry? Eat something, cross? Eat something. You could add drink something, exercise like crazy, workaholism, take drugs, smoke. We all have our own personal favourites.
If someone asks “how are you?” how do you answer? Now sometimes saying fine is appropriate, but do you rarely tell people truly how you feel? How does that bottling up make you feel? Who do you talk to? If you tell someone how you feel does it make you really recognise how you do feel and have you been avoiding thinking about that, maybe by stuffing your face or working extra hours.
What stops you from admitting how you feel, maybe treating yourself with a little kindness and compassion. You maybe scared about things that your body now cannot do without pain, do you hold onto how it used to be? Resistance! Telling yourself that you can no longer do x, y or z Resistance. Can you modify how you used to do it? ‘Oh but it’s not the same’ Resistance. ‘I’ll be giving in’ Resistance.
Adapting what you used to do to help you deal with the current situation is not giving in, it is acceptance. If you think about resisting something notice how your body feels, tight, stiff, unhappy I would guess. How does acceptance feel? You maybe sad but I think it is a softer/kinder feeling.
Resistance takes energy, acceptance can be like getting into a warm bath or having a hug it’s much more sustaining. Resistance can wrap you up in layers and layers and make you stiffer and less responsive to everything. It may protect you but it also cuts you off, which is not a happy place.
Go and have a chat with a friend, tell them how you are, be nice to people in shops, engage try to melt through the resistance. Above all be kind to yourself, see how it makes you feel.
Letting go of resistance