Posted by Kimberly Rex
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
Sign up for our monthly newsletter here: Newsletter and Exclusive Re-pattern Your Life Events with FREE eBook entitled Eight Natural Modalities for Navigating Stressful Times.
Share this:
Posted by Kimberly Rex
Fall & Metal Element: Inspiration While Letting Go
In the same way that trees are letting go of their leaves in the fall, the process involves unseen forces of inspiration. The leaf buds set for the coming spring push this season’s leaves off the trees. This is done with a celebration of color and beauty in the process of both inspirations while letting go.
With the return of activities associated with the arrival of fall, and wind down from trips and vacations this summer that created refreshment and different perspectives, it’s an opportunity to take harvest, to discern what energizes you and what no longer serves your wellness and well-being.
It can sometimes be challenging to sort through life experiences to find important lessons. It is still another step to find the gems or higher message from the seeming stumbling blocks along the way. At this time of year on the Chinese Five Element Wheel, the Northern Hemisphere is moving into Metal Element. This element supports you in this process by strengthening your connection to Source and your life purpose.
Metal Element on the physical level is related to your Lungs and Large Intestine. Your lungs, of course, connect you to breathe and that which inspires life energy for your daily activities, goals, and relationships. The Large Intestine is about letting go. This includes all levels: emotional, physical, mental, and your core essence. This happens in life by letting go of unhealed images from the past that create patterns that no longer serve your life today, acknowledging regrets openly and honestly so you can move on.
Where there have been injuries to your self-esteem, confusion, or the feeling of being cut-off from life due to the experience of trauma, critical or degrading messages from others, a feeling of loss and depression, Metal Element supports you in experiencing a greater sense of integrity, self-worth, respect and value in your life.
The Reptilian Brain, with its survival or “watchdog” function, is alerted by events or situations that remind it of the previous danger of unresolved stress. Your Parasympathetic and Sympathetic Nervous System, when reminded of previous stress can respond in a way that does not make sense in the present, and this leads to confusion and inability to experience life more fully in the present. It’s like living life always looking in the rearview mirror. Resolving the stressful impact from past experiences benefits your wellness and well-being through calming your body-mind, and creating greater opportunities to create something of value with your life energy today.
“The beauty of life is while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it, and change. So that every moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear, or anger, but in wisdom, understanding, and love.” ~Jennifer Edwards
There’s a difference between always looking over your shoulder, and using your past experience for positive change. Everything that happens in your life can create change in the same way that a stone is polished or becomes precious from the journey of many challenges. Metal Element allows you to connect to your true essence with more honesty so that you can experience life today with greater inspiration and connection to your inner wisdom. This element teaches you the importance of connecting to quality of life and life energy through looking at your own self-talk, habits, and patterns to let go of that which will allow you to manifest your life purpose so that you benefit from being resilient.
Resilience to Create Inspiration while Letting Go
Factors that contribute to healthy resilience include:
- Close relationships with friends and family
- Feeling in control or the ability to make things happen
- Seeking resources and help
- Helping others in your life (children, family, pets, groups, your favorite cause)
- Taking time to problem-solve and communicate your needs in a way that allows compassion for self and others
- Managing and self-regulating strong feelings and impulses
- A positive view of yourself and confidence in your skills and strengths
- Coping with stress in healthy ways while avoiding self-harming or non-coherent coping strategies that damage your wellness your well-being
- Seeing yourself with the capacity for resilience rather than just being a victim by drawing on inner strength and memory of a challenging situation you managed well in the past
- Cultivating gratitude daily.
This is your personal invitation to cultivate resilience with inspiration while letting go by shifting unconscious material that holds you back from stepping fully into the present to create new possibilities for your life.
Experience a personal Resonance Repatterning session with Kimberly Rex, MS to energize, motivate, and create momentum for resonating with your life purpose, build mindfulness and resilience into your daily life. Repattern your life to experience greater integrity in your wellness and well-being.
Kimberly Rex, MS is an Advanced Resonance Repatterning® practitioner, Master Wellness and Well-being Life Coach, and Person-Centered Expressive Therapist. She works with clients by phone, Skype, and proxy with individuals and groups all over the world.
