Falling and Emerging
It’s always the last event of orientation weekend. They save it, for good reason. They know that many are facing inner battles, still coming to a place of peace with their decision. At least for me, that was more than true. I still wasn’t sold on the fact that I’d driven 10 hours to begin Chiropractic school, having never met a Chiropractor nor ever being adjusted—my decision was based off of being “called.” I said it was God who’d called me, but how could I have been sure? You could say I still needed confirmation, well, more of it.
Trust Fall
Folks were called forward, three on each side. Each person was asked to stretch their arms out and stagger in between one another. “Catch with the person falling with your legs,” the lead facilitator yelled out and instructed. We were asked to think about what we needed to let go, to let fall away as we landed in the arms of our peers. I thought long and heard about mine. But really, it all came down to a simple point: for once in my life, I needed to trust me. I needed to trust what I heard, what my instincts were telling me. And, I guess, in doing so, I needed to let go of my need to compare or make sense of my life and exprience. Each time I heard the logical stories of my peers, how their parents were Chiropractors, or how they had this life changing healing experience that prompted them, from that day forward, to become a Chiropractor—I became consumed by anxiety.
As I fell, the things I idolized and believed in more than me fell too.
Stumbling
It would be nice to share that after that day all of those insecurities and fears just went away: poof! But, in reality, I have had to fall over and over again. Each time though, I grew stronger. Eventually, you do arrive to a place of peace and stability on things—but it doesn’t happen over night. I like to think of that one to two year old as they are learning to walk, learning to get their balance and the rhythm of what it feels like to walk. They are stumbling. They are reaching, grasping for things to support them. They cry, laugh, and sometimes just give up and return back to crawling. All of this, though, is the process, its part of the learning experience as they learn to carry their own weight upright against gravity, a totally new experience and way of engaging and being the world.
For years, I stumbled. I stumbled and fell. But I kept going. I kept stumbling and kept on getting back up too.
Emerging
Later, we debriefed the trust fall; we each went around a circle and talked about our experience. The nature of what we all had to surrender to and what we had to trust varied drastically. There was though, a common thread that stood out in every story: each person felt a change, a shift in who we were as a person, in how we saw the world after that experience. Yet, it was only in confronting those things—being honest about them, then letting them fall, that we were able to see and experience ourselves and life differently.
The version of us that emerged after was clearer, more assured, more confident, more available, and more willing.
Falling, Stumbling, Emerging…Repeat
I had to confront my fears. I had to confront my insecurities. I had to confront, shake, poke and prod my ego. I had to come face to face with things. All of this, we must do first. Hiding from them, denying them—oh, it only delays the process. When a woman is going into labor, its known that fears and trepidations (especially emotional and spiritual) can delay delivery. Once she confronts and lets go of those things, labor progresses quickly and naturally.
So, what is it for you? What do you need to confront because it is preventing you from giving birth? What do you need to face, let go of, surrender to? It may be the greatest of all paradoxes. This idea that when we stop attempting to hold ourselves up, our lives, our homes, our identities—when we step back and away form all these things that are inspired by fear and anxiety, that we don’t get the worse outcome, but a better one. You see, I realized that much of my journey in reconnecting to my true and highest self has been about letting go and seeing how my fears were always wrong. Much of what I’ve had to do was in direct contraction to the life and way I thought things needed to be. I thought I needed this formal story of going to Chiropractic school. Nope, my experience has proven valid and, most of all, as mine to cherish and own. I would have never imagined that little old me, first generation college student, not coming from a family of Doctors—would have been able to open my own practice in Washington D.C., without any loans, with a formal Chiropractic table, with nothing but my hands and an off-brand instrument I purchased in school because I didn’t have the money to buy the “name brand one.” If you’d told me this would be the way it would all happen, I would’ve never believed it. And yet, it was. It was the way it needed to be.
Life will take you. Life will take you to the places you need to go, in order to grow, in order to grow stronger in your knowledge and understanding of yourself. And, little by little, as you do this, you grow stronger, you grow wiser. You grow more compassionately. You begin to see your true and highest self emerge.
Join the Fall Series of The Unfolding Tapestry
Falling & Emerging
Nourish our senses as we root back to our sacred self. As we re-emerge, we will reconnect to our deepest desires.
Location: Sense 3111 Georgia Ave NW
Dates:
October 12th at 7pm – workshop
November 9th at 7pm – break out groups
December 14th – 1:1 w
Sign up here
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-unfolding-tapestry-a-series-threading-together-grace-for-the-collective-tickets-417743962437