The many parts of you 

All of your facets 

We tend to identify with certain aspects of ourselves.  Perhaps you see yourself as kind, gentle, fiery, accommodating, wise, giving, helpful, stern, dedicated, anxious, angry, hard working, nurturing, caring, etc.  These are the aspects you most see in yourself in every day life so you believe that they are all of who you are.

The truth is that in each of us lies a little bit of everything.  For everything you can identify yourself as being the opposite (or polarity) of that exists and lives inside of you too.  Some people find this impossible to believe, however in order to have one side of the polarity you must have the other as well.  Meaning if you are kind, you also have mean parts, if you are giving, you also have parts that take, if you are hard working, you also have lazy parts, if you are anxious, you also have calm parts and if you are angry, you also have gentle parts.

The tendency is to only look at one end of the spectrum, that being the end in which you are more comfortable in knowing yourself as.  If the polarity or opposite part arises in your experience of yourself it tends to come along with judgment, shame and blame.  For example say you see yourself mostly as kind and helpful, however a situation arises where you say something you perceive as mean or you choose to not help someone.  What typically happens is that you begin to feel bad about yourself, or go into blame of others.  This is because you reject this opposite part of yourself and  deem it as unacceptable.  You in essence alienate a part of yourself and perpetuate separation (aka suffering).

Learning to live with all of your parts

Parts become a whole

So how do you learn to live with all of your parts, not just the ones you most identify yourself as?  You must recognize your tendency to judge yourself and others.  When judgment arises it’s a sure sign that you have gone into polarity and are seeing from a single perspective.  Once you recognize that you are in polarity bring in the opposite part.  Acknowledge that you are both what you believe yourself to be and also the opposite of it.  You are what you are judging; kind and mean, gentle and harsh, calm and anxious, right and wrong.

Once you acknowledge and accept both of these parts of yourself you can relax into a larger perspective of yourself and life.  A lightness comes into your experience as opposed to the harsh, heavy, serious judger.  Being able to see from an expanded perspective always brings with it more options.  You begin to get to choose which parts get to play and participate, and rather than being reactive your ability to respond develops.

SRI Stage 2

The more quickly you can embrace all of your parts the more empowered and free you will feel and be.  Stage 2 of Somato-Respiratory Integration (SRI) teaches you how to recognize, acknowledge and eventually accept all of your many parts.  Learning how to be relationship with all of the parts of you is vital to your health, personal growth and evolution.  Through embracing the parts you move into wholeness.  Just like each piece of the pie is required to make a whole pie, so to all of the parts of you must be included in order to embrace and realize your wholeness.

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