From Behind the Redwood Curtain

Kinesiology was a bit difficult. When I heard Soyka reiterate that we would need to be memorizing all the insertions and origins for the muscles, I felt overwhelmed. And my standard pattern in the past when feeling overwhelmed has been to check out, give up, dismiss, run away, or otherwise avoid or get out of doing whatever it was I felt overwhelmed by. Certainly my response has hardly, if ever, been to "give it my all."

"Give it my all." The phrase triggers me mildly. The wording is ripe for me, really good fodder for EFT or other tools. Sitting here I realize that the phrase itself feels scary and overwhelming. I see imagery of getting swept away in a wave, or becoming a victim of momentum, caught up in lack of control. I'll be keeping my "all", thank you very much.

Much to think about, but much already identified to shift.

I've been stuck in feeling unable to ask for help since Week One... when Soyka looks at me, I feel like she thinks that I "get it", most of it anyway, and I feel so behind I haven't wanted to show her the truth about it.

Today I realized that as much time as I spent, in 13 years of public schooling, being good at "getting it", I also spent a lot of time learning how to cover up what I "didn't get". In school I learned how to be inauthentic, because it wasn't safe to not have the right answer. Having the right answer, or rather the answer the teacher was looking for, was what it was all about.

In school I had a reputation, and that reputation kept me not only safe, but privileged, and and that age, that place in life (one of very little power, skills, or experience), I knew just enough not to let a little thing like the truth stand between it and me.

During my time with Surya, I affirmed, "I'm going to ask Soyka for help," but in this moment I see how that can be refined a bit. "I ask for the help I need." might do... at least it's in the present tense.

As for time, I am loathe to admit that I do much better with some structure around which to schedule. What this means is that, up until now, I have been unable create and live my own schedules. I spent several years self-employed and doing very little work... which is what happened when I could set my own work hours. As my intention is toward private practice, I absolutely need to shift this pattern if I'm to be successful in the future.

When I looked at my weekly calendar today, I felt so much better looking at the four days of classes. Those blocks of time are the cheekbones on which the face of my schedule hangs. Without them there is no beauty, only ugliness. All right, so I'm being dramatic. Fact is, I look at the remaining three days, WIDE OPEN prairies of peril, and feel fear, discomfort, apprehension, and judgment. My internal critic waits in the wings for a chance to tell me all the ways I'll "fuck up" and "fail to be productive" during those times.

Surya had me determine how much time I need to work outside of each class to be successful. I've done this in the past, before Heartwood, with at least one difference: I used to ask my mind. Today I asked my body, came up with numbers my head didn't believe, and I wrote them down anyway. We looked at how they could fit into the schedule, and I wrote them down.

Making out the weekly schedule is easy. Manifesting it is another thing. But, I'm not without support, tools, and resources. The Master Plan, the Polarity and other bodywork sessions, the self work all come into play. And Surya mixed another bottle of Bach Flower Essences for me.

It sounds like hocus pocus, but she used her pendulum to "say hello" (as one says in Surya-speak) to the papers with my Master Plan and weekly schedule on them, then used it to pick the perfect Essences to support me in them. For those familiar and interested, the pendulum indicated Beech, Chicory, Gentian, and Mustard.