Courage

A few weeks ago I was reading my book, enjoying the balmy weather of a summer's night, when a movement out of the corner of my eye distracted me. As I looked to follow the object that had caught my attention, I noticed a small spider, not bigger than the tip of my pinky finger. I saw it crawling down an almost invisible thread from a light fixture on the wall to the patio table where I was sitting. Now, I am not a fan of spiders to put it mildly and I was prepared to gently whisk it away, but instead of coming down to bother me, it went back up the way it had come. He was in the middle of making a web and using the table as an anchor.

I put my book down and watched with amazement how a web was spun. It was fascinating. This little guy worked steadfast and without paying any attention to anything that happened outside the web. Nothing could take him away from the task at hand.

As I was watching this spider, something about Nature became very clear to me. I realized that I could learn from my little friend here. He did not care that I was watching and this didn’t make him all of a sudden more self conscious, striving for perfection to get my approval. He wasn’t attached to how the web looked, as long as it did the job. He also wasn’t attached to the web being there permanently. I realized this when the next morning, I went outside to have my breakfast and noticed that the web had been destroyed. However, that same night, a new web had been spun, this time bigger, stronger and in a slightly different location. He learned the lesson and had simply started again.

Watching the spider, I had to look at myself. I too am a part of Nature. Do I have the courage to simply be, and do what naturally arises to sustain life and keep going no matter what life throws at me? Am I able to listen to my inner voice that will direct me in ways that are life affirming rather than going against it by resisting, trying to control or wanting, wanting, wanting life to be different?

When I watched this spider I realized something about Nature that is so simple and so beautifully in flow. There is no pushing or pulling, simply being.

It is something I see in my practice as well. When the mind stops controlling and the person on the table surrenders to the flow of Nature (the healing energy that is inherent in our own biology and all around us), the tissue relaxes and softens, and long held patterns in the body start to shift.

When I treat people in my Craniosacral therapy practice, I treat those areas in the body that are not relaxed, those places that feel tight, hard and constricted and where the body’s own healing energy seems to be moving in a disorganized pattern. Allowing the body’s own wisdom to re-organize and re-align these patterns and pockets, allows Nature to simply do its job and allows healing energy to flow freely and abundantly.

It is usually our own fears, attachments and need for protection and preservation that prevents healing from happening. Where in fact there is nothing to be afraid of, as energy cannot be created nor destroyed according to Einstein, we resist our body’s own healing energy from doing its job.

In the same way as it took the little spider courage, focus and determination to build his structure that would ultimately sustain his life, we too have to have courage, focus and determination to be healthy and free of pain. That, in combination with an absolute trust in the unbridled power and intelligence of Nature can create miracles in our lives.

This blog will published in the September issue of Parvati Magazine: http://parvatimagazine.com/