Handling Pressure: Lessons from an Egg, a Carrot and a Cup of Tea

“Which one are you?” This was the question in a recent Qi Gong class in Seattle to illustrate choice in regards to how you meet challenges and pressure. Are you the egg, the carrot, or the cup of tea?

With the Chinese lunar calendar starting a new year, we are currently beginning the transition into spring. One of the key components expressed through this season is flexibility. This is the ability to expand and stay open while listening to the integrity and wisdom of your inner world. In doing so, it includes the capacity to go within to re-energize, restore, and grow from your experiences.

 

The question makes sense in relation to how you meet challenging situations in your life. Like these three examples, when boiled, each responds differently.

The Egg

When an egg is boiled it not only has a hardened shell on the outside but its interior moves from soft to hard, resulting in a hard-boiled egg. Like the egg sometimes you armor yourself during a difficult situation to protect our emotions. When this happens you can see it ripple into your beliefs about yourself, others and life. This can lead to closing yourself off from anything or anyone that reminds you of the original challenge or pain. It can also lead to a sense of walling off and isolation. When you resonate with this perspective of life it is difficult to see any other option or possibilities. When left unchecked this can be internalized throughout your body-mind system as grief and depression.

The Carrot

Carrots are hard when put into boiling water. However, with the heat, they become soft and sometimes mushy throughout. In life, this can show up as difficulties with setting boundaries or becoming a doormat for the requests of others. It can feel difficult in setting loving boundaries with yourself and with your time. Planning and decision-making might feel close to impossible as you are literally in a state of frustration and confusion while processing frustration that clouds your inner clarity.

The Cup of Tea

The herbs that make tea come from drying, chopping and extraction from the original plants. The leaves, roots and flowers are literally taken from their home.

In the process of boiling them, however, they release their color and flavor while expanding to the cup or container in which they are placed. While doing so they retain their character within the tea bag or tea ball while infusing the water in which they are placed with their medicine. This is accomplished with the flexibility of inner integrity in the environment or container into which they are placed.

When you clean up tea leaves, roots, and flowers after making tea, the original particles are still intact, even though they are now wet. However, in the process of making tea, they have been transported into a creative medium of healing medicine through the process of the simple act of expanding and being flexible in the midst of a boiling situation.

In life, it is important to acknowledge your own inner space and wisdom from life’s lessons or challenges allowing you to expand and compress when you need to based on inner discernment as well as flexibility. Allowing contribution and healing in the process to permeate your experience while retaining your inner space is vital to your wellness and well-being.

Meeting a Challenging Situation

There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself meeting them.~Phyllis Bottome

Each of these examples speaks to an aspect of meeting challenging situations. Taking care of yourself may, in fact, involve a time of noticing what is going on inside your experience. Taking care of yourself and giving yourself permission to acknowledge where you are right now allow you to meet the challenges you are facing.

Identifying your current attitude, belief, and concept of time-related to what is happening also imparts greater support to your process. Instead of taking your life in the moment as a tattoo, if you will, feeling isolated or depressed, or frustrated and confused, acknowledge with loving-kindness where you are in the moment. Perhaps there is a mindful awareness or kindness that you can offer yourself to expand, or the need to go inward to release or heal what is keeping you stuck.

Or, perhaps there is a deeper message that comes with making a cup of tea through the inner process within the container of your being in the world. You are still your original self within, no matter where you have been cut away or extracted. To reclaim more of your inner light, take time to replenish your inner reserves to renew for growth that comes like spring. Allow yourself to truly love the person that you are becoming~ through your self-talk, eating whole foods, and taking care of your body, mind, and spirit. Take time for yourself to replenish your reserves. Take care of what you take in through your eyes. Plant new seeds of observation and self-reflection in your life to nourish all of your life for more optimism, love, and inner growth.

 

I’d like to invite you to explore how Resonance Repatterning®can make a difference in your life.  Experience a session by phone, Skype, or in-person with Windows to the Heart Repatterning.  Set up a session time here: Contact Page

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