Filling the storehouse.

People are always being encouraged to ‘let go’ – of old patterns, unhelpful behaviours, grudges and resentments.  We’re meant to do regular clutter-clearing.  A gutter clogged up with leaves is likely to overflow and there’ll be a mess to deal with.  All this is true, and we all know that we carry stuff around in our lives that we’d probably be better off without – whether it’s unresolved family tensions, relationships that have long passed their sell-by dates, jobs that make us ill …

The trouble is, if letting go of things was straight-forward, we’d just go ahead and do it, wouldn’t we?  After all, who wouldn’t choose to feel lighter, brighter, less burdened?  So it’s important to understand why we might hold on to things that are the opposite of life-enhancing for us.

Years of working as a therapist, and really getting to know and understand the people I work with, have shown me clearly that sometimes we dare not let go of things because we don’t know what will happen with the hole that’s left in our lives (whether our external circumstances, or our inner emotional world).  Better to keep hold of the familiar, if painful – than let it go and face an unknown reality.

If you recognise yourself in any of this, my seasonal recommendation for you is to fill up your emotional, or experiential, larder with good things.  That could literally be the laying down of supplies – tomorrow I’m going to be making chutney and converting some of my tomato glut into oven-dried tomatoes to use over the year to come.  It could mean noticing where your life is bountiful – with good friends, an unexpected rainbow on a rainy day, a cheerful conversation with someone waiting for a bus.  It could come from doing that self-help exercise where you write down at the end of the day several things you’ve been grateful for.

I’m not talking glibly about telling yourself you’re so lucky (although that might work for some) – as trying to do that when you’re down can often lead to feelings of inadequacy.  I’m talking about consciously defining to yourself even small positive things as nourishing, something that can build up your emotional supplies and give you a feeling of satisfying fullness.  An inner smile of awareness, as it were, that when you do manage to let something go in your life that is no longer serving you, you’ll be left relatively uncluttered, but well-stocked.  Like when you clean your fridge out and can see the good things more easily because the less ‘desirable’ debris has gone!

I’ll often encourage people to take what they need from their Zero Balancing session, or acupuncture treatment – and that can represent true nourishment.

So call me on 07970 295177, and take advantage of this generous time of year to get the most out of treatment.