Noticing Resistance

 Happy Monday! Noticing the different ways we resist has been my practice recently. It started with my clear resistance to meditating last week while my daughter was visiting for spring break. My resistance was coming in the form of excuse making and then harsh judgment about my excuse making. My inner critic tapped into my imposter syndrome and it was a powerful combination.

We have an intricate system we each create in the mind to resist.  Sometimes we avoid, or crash up against something. We use excuses, judgment or some combination of those strategies.  We are super adept at it because we know exactly what to say to get to ourselves!

The practice gives us the opportunity to step back from the resistance in order to be able to notice it. In the noticing comes an inherent softening that can take some of the intensity out of the resistance. After a few days of that bad cycle, I tasked myself with just that; noticing the story. I didn’t push myself to meditate, rather my meditation became noticing the resistance around it. One of the main reasons I became a meditation teacher was to teach people different ways to utilize meditation in their daily lives; we don’t have to sit on a meditation cushion in the quiet to meditate– anything we put our full attention into can be meditation– including noticing our thoughts. 

We practiced this idea on the mat as well… noticing when we experienced resistance in the body and then softening into it a bit. What we resist, persists and if we soften into resistance the resistance often softens back. 

The noticing became a really strong practice for me and even spilled over into my tennis game. I noticed when I gripped the the racket too tightly (resistance) my shots suffered and when I softened the grip; still firm but not clenching, my shots greatly improved. It’s that balance between steadiness and resistance that creates the balance we all look for; in Buddhism it’s called “the middle way”. The balance is the practice and we can find it in all different ways. I am grateful to have you all practicing along with me.