Change always involves challenging what is familiar to us and daring us to question our traditional needs for safety, comfort and control.

Change is often described as a painful experience.

When we’re going through challenges in our lives, we feel emotional pain. The ground is shifting under our feet and we want to feel that there is something to hold on to.

There’s a reason that you may be feeling some emotional pain right now – because it’s part of your growth. Even though you may not like the feelings, you can learn to sit with them and face them if you want to see where they come from.

Once you face your inner disturbances, you will see that your pain has always been there – lodged in your heart. This pain is so uncomfortable to your individual sense of self, that you have spent your entire life avoiding it. You have built your life around ways of being, thinking, acting and believing that were developed to avoid this pain.

Real growth happens when you decide to deal with this pain. To stop avoiding it and be with it.

When you do this, you are on the path to freedom.

Our inner pain is always there, hidden by our thoughts, emotions and busy life.

We feel it most when our hearts go into turmoil, like when the world does not meet our expectations. We’ve spent our life avoiding this pain, and our psyche has built into its foundation, a fear of pain.

Check in with yourself – if you are doing something to avoid pain, then your pain is running your life. All of your thoughts and feelings and the way you structure your life, will be affected by your fears.

You will come to see that any behaviour pattern that is based upon the avoidance of pain becomes a doorway to pain itself.

The heart is where our pain rests. Once you look inside yourself and begin to understand this, you will see that you have two choices. One choice is to leave the pain inside and continue to struggle with the outside. The other choice is decide that you don’t want to spend your entire life avoiding inner pain – that you would rather allow it FLOW towards freedom.

Most people don’t realize that they are spending their lives avoiding feeling any pain or discomfort.

Do you really want to continue carrying your pain inside and have to manipulate the world to avoid feeling it?

What would your life be like if it wasn’t run by pain?

You would be free. You could walk around the world completely free, having fun, and just being comfortable with what happens.

To live at this level of freedom, you must be willing to take a risk – and not to fear your inner pain and disturbance. As long as you are afraid of the pain, you will try to protect yourself from it. Your fear will make you do that. (I have written a few posts recently about getting close to your fear).

If you want to move from pain to freedom, you can begin to process and work through your painful experiences and make sense of them with a trusted professional. You will begin to understand that your unprocessed inner pain can be seen as a temporary shift in your energy flow. There is no reason to fear this experience – you can learn to FLOW through it instead.

You may be going through a deeply painful experience in your life now. Allow yourself to be supported and to make sense of your pain. You can allow the pain to FLOW through you by being with it without judgement.

Together, we will work through your emotional pain towards peace and freedom – and allow your heart to relax and remain open, vulnerable and fully alive – even in the presence of pain.

You are loved – keep going.

Work with me – www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com

Join me for one of an upcoming workshop, like this one:

The Yoga of Self-Acceptance & Self-Love – Get Grounded in Your Centre – Two-Part Evening Workshop –
April 13th & 20th, 2015