Beyond managing

Control mechanisms that stabilize and neutralize

It is often considered a high achievement to manage or control conditions in our lives.  In fact this is what we have learned that success is and this is the basic premise of our entire medical system; conditions looking or being a specific way.  Whether those conditions live inside of our body or in our seemingly physical world, management brings seeming stability to chaos and can neutralize conditions that previously seemed completely out of control.  This is the place that most people strive to get to when things seem overwhelming or when we feel lost or confused.  It is an important step and can feel empowering, but it is not the final destination as it comes with many constraints and limitations that usually require us to not engage in certain behaviors, or on the flip side, that we have to do certain behaviors in order to manage our conditions (aka symptoms when looking through the lens of the body).

The truth is that sometimes we do need to stabilize, however if we stay at a particular level of stability for too long we flatten out and there is no growth, further healing, or maturation of our being.  What tends to occur though is that people get here to this place of neutrality or stability and they feel like they can rest for a few moments, and then a few moments becomes a few more moments, and they start to get comfortable with how good the rest feels and they are now fully in their comfort zone.  When we are in our comfort zone there is little hunger to create instability or novelty, which would bring more energy into our system, but would also create change which may threaten the safe (yet controlled and limited) nest that we have created.

You can recognize that you are managing or controlling your conditions in life if you are making choices based on how you think something you do or don’t do will affect you later on rather than on what feels right in that moment.  It can also show up as a rigidity in what you allow or don’t allow, or the inability to be resilient in your choices.  To be totally empowered means to have complete free agency.  To follow that impulse, feeling or knowing, without the underlying worry about all the potential negative side effects it may have later on for you, but instead following your truest alignment in that moment even if it doesn’t make sense to the logical mind.  

Living outside the boxes 

The walls of limitation falling away

Managing and controlling our conditions means that we are living in certain boxes and are often in unconscious agreements with how we believe the universe works for us.  If we maintain the boxes we are safe and agreements seem to be upheld, mostly, unless the universe (our soul, higher self, etc.) says its time to wake up to another level of ourselves.  When this occurs the first perspective that we typically have is “something is wrong” or we focus on what we are seemingly losing (balance, health, safety, love, comfort, support, current desires, etc.).  

The awareness that we have this perspective occur while we are having it is the first step in starting to see that we are living in a particular box and this is life’s way of telling us that the walls of this specific box need to come down for the next step in our evolutionary journey.  If you recognize this you can begin to halt your managing strategies from taking over in attempt to keep you the same or eliminate any instability or chaos in your body-life-reality.  

What’s there when we aren’t trying to manage or control it?  At first typically immense uncomfortableness, sometimes confusion or feeling directionless, or it can feel unstable and frustration can arise as we attempt to control again.  As you find this place more and more it begins to simply feel like emptiness or you may notice a sense of relief.  With increasing time and practice here you begin to find a sense of stability within the instability.  Then, simply put, you “experience what is”.  When you are with what simply is you become present, in the moment.  This is where the most aliveness resides and is the birth place of all possibilities.  

The birth place of all possibilities is where its at!  This goes beyond the conditioned things that we’ve learned about ourselves, who we think we are or how things work.  Its where free agency (aka liberation) lives, along with total freedom from conditions despite what shows up.  We are not impacted or influenced by the conditions, but instead see them as risings and fallings within our awareness.  We don’t identify the conditions as us, nor do the conditions determine what’s possible.  To go beyond managing is to open up into the world of infinite possibilities without being attached to what of those possibilities is made manifest into the physical-form reality.  Its moving towards what feels best and in the most alignment at each and every moment.  Its trusting the orchestration of it all without having to manage it or make it happen.  Boundless energy arises when you live here in this present unfolding moment.  

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado