Recently we taught Resistance class to our Clairvoyant students. In preparing the class I moved some of my own resistance energy. As usual, I was reminded how powerful a simple exercise can be.

Resistance visits us in every area of our lives. I was deeply resistant to meatloaf when I was growing up. There’s a kind of shoe that rings my bells. You may be resistant to small things, but they can lead to huge realizations. For me, the meatloaf was about being denied a voice in my family. All along, I thought it was really about how meat is mushy when you add bread and ketchup is gross! But truly, freely saying yes or no to a food is permission to be who you are. The meatloaf remained a monolith to the wisdom of staying silent.

One of my clients expressed growing resistance to her new job. She hadn’t sought it out; a headhunter approached her. She was deeply interested in the job and it was at a level she aspired to, but she lacked the experience. She expressed this honestly to the company, thinking it would be the end of the story. But then they offered her the job. At first she dug in her heels, but then she accepted. After a while her supervisor raised her pay and there was discussion of a promotion. She noticed her resistance was growing.

We walked her through a simple resistance exercise. First, she put the job in a big shiny bubble, where she could really look at it. There it sat, her beautiful new job, all neutral and unconcerned. Her resistance was so palpable, it made her stomach hurt. She was resistant to the resistance exercise!

I encouraged her to look at the new job and ask herself, what am I resistant to? The first thing that came up was a former job that had ended badly. Would it happen again? She put that into a rose and blew it up. Okay, I said to her, what else are you resistant to? She recalled a time when a partner left her because her hours were too long. What if it wasn’t possible to have a job and a partnership? She created another rose and moved that energy out. Fantastic! I told her. What else?

This went on for a bit; she blew up a few more roses. But there’s a moment when the person has cleared enough energetic clutter to be able to answer the question: when was this pattern set up? And there it was! She recalled how, long ago, her mother had a job she loved. She was hired by a company she admired and began to build her skill set. She was the first woman in the family to have a career; it would mean more freedom and stability for the family.

Then the other adults began to weigh in. My client’s father, his father – and then the grandmothers. The verdict came in; my client’s mother would be best served by remaining at home with her husband and children! A lone aunt was quietly in favor of the job. My client realized she herself stopped voicing her needs around this time; it was more important to ease her mother’s path. By the time all the children were off to college and her mother was free to do as she wished, her time had passed. She felt that she would no longer be welcome in her field as an older woman, for a variety of reasons. She hadn’t kept up with developments in her discipline.

As we talked, my client realized her ability to really relax and enjoy her work was tangled up with her mother’s disappointment and others’ expectations about what a woman should be. It gave her a lot of material to work with. There would be layers to release, but she had conscious awareness of a root cause and that was huge.

Resistance! Woohoo! It’s the gift that keeps on giving, in surprising and valuable ways. Try this easy exercise with something little, something insignificant, and see what it yields.

Blessings,

Katie and Trish

Rt. Rev. Katie Heldman is the Co-Director of Psychic Horizons Center, and wrote this article for the August 22, 2022 eNews.