Are you caught in the rip (of life)?

I was at college over the weekend. I started it in a pretty funky headspace. Had the weight of the world on my shoulders. Felt overwhelmed. Unsure. Disconnected.

And then of course after 2 days of learning new balances I left a new woman. Feeling light, with perspective and more knowledgeable than before.

One thing I’m learning more and more is to be receptive. To embrace the yin energy and let go of the yang energy.

Yang energy is all about taking action. Yin energy, about receiving. It’s the feminine. The Yang is the masculine. The chinese believe that in order for us to flow through life with grace and ease we need to have these two sides of us energetically flowing as well. This means a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Balance.

In order for us to effectively manifest we need to do this too, we need to believe AND take action. We need to be yang (believing, action), but we also need to chill and allow life to bring what we want to us (yin).

I like this awareness. It makes me slow down. It makes me sit back. It makes me relax.

Coming to these awareness though, can sometimes feel like I’ve been run over by the bus. Not just hit by it. There are certain things I find hard to hear – like slow down and stop doing. So I resist. As a result as the balances work their magic, as the resistance starts to shift I can sometimes feel like I’m being run over.

After chatting this through with a fellow student she likened her experience to being caught in a rip.

‘How so?’ I said.

She described the feeling of being pulled in all directions. Coming up for breath, gasping and then being pulled underneath again. How exhausting and terrifying this can be.

Sometimes life feels like we’re caught in a rip. And for anyone who has been caught in a rip it’s certainly a mixture of terror, panic, worst case scenarios dominating thoughts. And then it has moments of I’m ok, this is going to be ok, I’m moving towards the shore. Pure relief.

And so I realised. When you’re (literally) in a rip, you have a few options;

• You put your hand up and ask for help. Same applies to life.
• You resist the rip for a bit and try to get out yourself. You realise it’s futile to work against it and so you surrender and move with the rip until the current gives and you feel yourself being released from mother natures deathly grip and you move towards shore. Same applies to life.
• When you do neither of the above – You drown. Same applies to life.

I liked her metaphor. So much so I exclaimed, ‘there’s a blog post in that’!

And so here is it.

Do you feel like you’re caught in a rip at the moment? Is it time to put up your hand and ask for help? Whether it be from a friend, partner, other human, or simply from the Universe?

What do you need to surrender to? To let go of? Where do you need consciously create space to receive? To allow that yin energy to work its magic?

This was my lesson over the weekend. It’s time to stop doing. To stop striving. To stop going with the yang energy. Instead it’s time to be receptive. To tune into the feminine energy. To let in.

And I tell you something, with these new awarenesses I feel closer to the shore than I have in a long time.

If this post resonates and you need a little assistance letting go and letting in. Book in for a Kinesiology session. It’s magic. Pure magic.