How to Transform.
We love a sensation as much as we love instant gratification.
We get hooked on the drama and magic of things. I’ve found our response to healing to be no different.
We want the work to transform us and the world - and it does.
But we expect that transformation to be loud. To be bold. And to hit us all at once.
Like an epiphany.
I am also a sucker for epiphany. A good lesson hitting me all at once.
So I know firsthand that for that, we work very hard. For our big audacious transformations. For our epiphanies.
Yet one of my favorite things about this work is that healing doesn’t need you to work harder and it does not need you to be loud and bold for it.
It does not need for you to work it all at once because trust me it has no interest in working you all at once.
Wreckage happens that way. Blooming is a gentle process.
You cannot rush this work.
You can only open yourself up enough to allow your body to carry you forward.
And it will only carry you as fast as you’re willing trust it.
It honors your capacity this way, no matter who you hire for support.
Because the “healer” doesn’t dictate the work. The body does.
The body is always the greatest teacher in the room. And yes, the body includes the mind.
What I’ve learned about the body is that it tends to ask you to focus on the one thing that’s holding you back right now, and work that.
It is often something so simple we miss it. And we’ve usually manufactured a bunch of chaos around it, for the love of fear.
It can take a little digging to find what we’re really looking for.
Like how we think we need to leave the relationship. So we focus on the relationship. We spiral about the relationship. What should I do? Why can’t I leave? What’s wrong with me?
We think leaving the relationship will be the thing that proves something to us, so we fixate on it.
Not realizing the thing we’re searching for is the exact thing the relationship is distracting us from.
And that once we shift our focus to that, we will have proven that we’re capable of leaving.
The smallest shift in focus brings us just enough peace to step away.
Often enough we only need one tiny shift like this to let the the air into spaces inside us that are suffocating.
As if the transformation is already inside you. Your work is to find it and let it breathe.
And my work as the practitioner is not to provide answers for what anyone needs to think or do differently.
Not in session.
In session, I don’t have answers. I am not the teacher.
The body is.
My work is to invite you to listen to what’s happening inside your body and find the thing it’s trying to show you.
Perhaps a wound. A step. An answer. A way.
Whatever it is, my work is to help you learn to hear, feel, discern, trust, and work with that message.
And I do this in large part by giving you opportunities to question the narratives that got you to stop trusting your body in the first place. And more opportunities to find your way home to it.
I try to keep it simple.
Sometimes all I ask is that the client gets curious.
They have contempt for their anxiety. I get curious about their anxiety.
I invite them to join me in this curiosity. Now they’re curious about their anxiety.
Next session they don’t hate their anxiety.
Now they have compassion and curiosity for their anxiety.
I let go as they lean in. Sometimes my work is to know when to get out of the way.
This path they’ve started on is the path to loving these parts of themselves. And those parts soothe as a response to feeling loved.
This aspect has its turns and twists, but a lot of it is like clockwork.
Other times we experiment.
I ask clients to work a practice and see what comes up.
I genuinely have no idea what’s about to come up.
But I do know that I’m about to sit back and observe the practice do its work on them.
Sometimes they come back with clues that lead us to another practice or something else to get curious about.
Other times they come back changed.
Feeling more. Owning more. Leading more. Trusting more. Daring more.
Breathing more.
Doubting less. Spiraling less. Criticizing less.
Being, more.
Any one of these shifts starts with a practice as simple as “every morning over the next week I want you to ask your body this question before starting your day, and see what comes up for you.”
That’s it.
We want sensational answers to get sensational changes.
To have the answer slap us in the face and reverberate through our whole body.
I do love those moments, too. And maybe sometimes that’s the move.
But the deepest, most transformative work is often found in something else.
The deepest, most transformative work is found when you tune into the small shifts the body is asking you to make.
And trust them.
A shift toward curiosity. A shift in focus. A shift in perspective. In how you listen and how you see. A word. A movement. A way of breathing and being with the body.
And allow that shift to open you up as it creates the space to move through you.
Rooting for You,
Tori
P.S. I have 3 spots left in my 12 week flagship program, where you can get weekly, small shifts that have a tendency to make way for big transformations.
Click the bookmark below to see more about it.
Tori Reid
Member discussion