Go with the (current/)flow...........

I was talking with a friend the other day about human energy, and how we can flow with another's energy, or we can fight against it. This is akin to right fighting, and we all know I have some experience with that. Lately, I have been stepping back to observe the life energy around me, letting it flow as it may without trying to control it, and overall have been extreamly pleased with the results.

Take, for example, our new resident. It had been reported that she had agressive negative behaviors. I even witnessed a couple of them the first twenty-four hours she was in my care. Instead of jumping in and "fixing" her, I stepped back and let her "be" her. Guess what happen? She fixed herself! (Not that I am saying she was broken and needed fixing/to be different than she was. Read on.) By this I mean given an environment of unconditional love and exceptance, she was able to stop using her energy as a defense against the perceived threats in her life, and her energy became calm and peaceful, and loving. She began to mirror the energy that she was receiving. (Which makes me think that she had simply been mirroring the energy she had been receiving all along, and the Hospice social worker is looking into that.)

Maybe you have witnessed the same with a small baby. Baby becomes upset, mom tries to calm him/her. Baby gets more upset, mom begins to get more upset, baby gets, etc... When my oldest was an infant she would go through this crying hour EVERY single night. Being a new mom, I tried everything to get her to stop. Looking back on it, I was probably adding to the problem with my need to "fix" her. What I finally ended up doing, was putting her in her crib and running the vacume so I couldn't hear her screaming. After about five to ten minutes she would go to sleep. I always felt so guilty about doing this, but figured it was better than losing my temper and shaking her. As it turned out, once she began to roll over she stopped doing this nightly screaming thing. I deduced that the crying was her only way of getting rid of her pent up energy so she could relax and go to sleep. Once she had other avenues of using up her energy resource, she naturally transitioned to using those instead of the more stressful one. (By the way, twenty-seven years (As of July fourth) later, she is still a bundle of energy, and has trouble relaxing..... Just like her mother!)

I am sure that you can think of many other examples of ways in which figting another's energy created problems for YOU. The key then, is to learn to recognize when we are doing so. As with all of my "advice" comes the disclaimer of "saftey first," but beyond that is there really, really, really, only one right way of doing anything? What if we say "NO!" to that question and see what happens? Maybe we wil be having so much fun with the tickle game that we don't notice the shirt is on backwards, and the shoes are on the wrong feet. Maybe we will get to go for a walk at lunch time, and discover that our assistant could indeed figure out AND fix the problem with the presentation projector. Maybe a luke-warm relationship will start to spark and sizzle again. What do we have to lose except excess stress and tension? Pick something/someone, and give it a try.