What You Resist Persists - Exploring Resistance

Resistance prevents us from mindfully accepting the reality of the present moment. Essentially, the struggle happens when we believe or want our moment-to-moment experience to be different from what it is.

In this guided reflection, we will explore resistance and the importance of bringing mindfulness to this aspect of our experience for greater ease and less suffering.

Transcript

Welcome to this guided reflection called what you resist persists Before we begin I want to say a few words about what resistance is and then you'll have an opportunity to explore it in your own experience So from the perspective of mindfulness resistance is a really important not only concept to understand,

But it's really important to recognize it in our own experience and Unless we take a mindfulness course or listen to a guided reflection such as this one Often resistance can go largely unnoticed or uninvestigated So what is it exactly and why is it important to recognize?

So resistance prevents us from mindfully accepting the reality of the present moment Essentially it refers to that struggle that we can feel and that occurs when we believe or we want Our moment-to-moment experience to be other than the way it is right now And we might experience or know Resistance as a sense of aversion or not wanting Maybe pushing away experience experience there may be physical tension in the body There may be worry or rumination There might be wandering attention or desperately seeking distraction Overeating there may be overworking or even unnecessary anger Without resistance we'd be overwhelmed by the intensity of ordinary experience So resistance does help us to function in daily life But resistance can also have negative long-term consequences.

There's a saying that what we resist persists For example by fighting anxiety we can create panic by fighting grief We can develop depression and by fighting sleeplessness we can create insomnia There's a formula that Shinzen young came up with in 2017 that says pain times resistance equals suffering and What this means is that pain is an inevitable part of being a human being We lose loved ones we get ill we experience all kinds of challenges whether relationship or financial difficulties But when we resist the reality of the present moment we usually make things worse and so we suffer and Most of our suffering is due to all of those ways that we cling or we hold on wishing that our lives are other than the way they are right now and most of our resistance is unconscious and So mindfulness allows us to bring it into the light of awareness so that we can recognize it And perhaps soften around it a little so that we cause ourselves less suffering And so let's begin this guided reflection now to explore what resistance feels like in your experience And so just beginning now by finding a comfortable posture that feels relaxed yet awake Closing the eyes if that feels right And it might also feel right to take some deeper than normal breaths here just as a way to release any unnecessary tension in the body Just allowing your breath to resume its natural rhythm So let's take a moment now to consider habitual resistances in your life Is there some situation or task?

Or maybe an event that you commonly find yourself faced with but that you really don't like and It could be something as mundane as taking out the trash And so that would be a domestic task Maybe there are things like parenting tasks or work-related or social activities or tasks That you really don't like and so the main thing that we're looking for here is this quality of aversion Of I don't like of not wanting And also the repetition of it that is something that you find yourself faced with repeatedly That you really don't like And there may be many things that are coming to mind So just settling on one now for the purposes of this exercise Once you've settled on one just taking a few moments now to call up this resistance with as much detail as possible And as you hold the image of this resistance in mind Let's begin to explore it mindfully Beginning by noticing what's happening in the body There may be tension or tightness There may be clenching contraction a closing down feeling heaviness maybe shallow breathing or bracing And it might be that you can't detect any particular sensation in the body.

That's okay There may be an overall unpleasant feeling that you're aware of and next Consider any collateral effects in the mind perhaps negative thoughts or rumination There may be emotions or imaginings Maybe fears or frustration So just watching these thoughts and trains of emotion That arise as you explore this resistance And now taking a moment to explore how you're relating to the resistance What's your usual reaction?

Do you do it grudgingly?

Do you try to distract yourself?

Avoid it or escape it somehow Or maybe you shut down as you do it And now doing your best to stay with the immediacy of the resistance Recalling it again if it slipped out of memory And now let's begin to work with this resistance So one of the things that we can do is to name What's happening and so we might simply Name or note that this is resistance Or this is what resistance feels like and so by naming it we're Recognizing it and we're acknowledging it Seeing it for what it is And so just exploring naming or noting the experience To see if this recognizing and acknowledging of the resistance allows it to soften even just a little Perhaps allowing it to become more equalized Just by holding it in awareness And it may be that it doesn't soften And so if that's true for you You might now explore Seeing if it's possible to make space for whatever ripples of reactivity or resistance Might be here And so not struggling with the resistance or feeding it But rather Seeing if you can allow or accept Whatever is here Whatever is here right now You might even say Can I allow myself to open to how it is right now?

Or This is how it is right now.

This is how resistance feels Can I allow things to be as they are because?

This is how they are right now and Sometimes the reactivity or the resistance might feel quite stuck or solid and Perhaps carries with it a difficult emotion And so if there is a difficult emotion there too.

This is really where it can be very helpful to bring kindness and compassion into the practice To see if we can meet the difficult emotion That may be coming up with kindness and care with support And so there are different ways of doing that and for some of you you might resonate with soothing touch and this is a Matter of perhaps placing a hand over the heart or elsewhere just as a Reminder that you too are worthy of kindness Care and support And so just exploring how that feels And it might also feel right to offer yourself some words that are supportive Some examples might be Something as simple as ouch.

You know,

This is really difficult It's not easy being a parent right now Or it's not easy to have to go to these meetings every week every week or if it's a more significant challenge You know,

How can I support myself through this difficulty?

Can I be kind to myself right now?

This is not easy And you might also imagine what you would say to a dear friend who's experiencing the same problem as you What would you say to this person and then see if you can offer yourself that very same message?

And so continuing in silence for a few moments to explore these various tools that I've offered so the first again was naming or noting that this is resistance and Here,

We're simply recognizing and acknowledging what's happening and sometimes that can be enough to soften around the resistance Other times it might be a little more sticky and it might need a little bit more And so we may need to be reminded that Allowing the resistance or the difficult situation to be here Because it is is also an important aspect of not feeding the resistance Allowing it to be here because it is This doesn't mean that we have to like it.

We're just allowing it allowing the present moment To be as it is these are the conditions of the moment and if that too still continues to Result and reactivity or the sense of the Resistance being quite stuck you can also explore Whether there's any difficulty motion there that might need a little extra kindness and care compassion and then exploring using the compassion wing of the practice through soothing touch or supportive words So offering some silence now and so to end I'd like to share The story of the two arrows with you.

It's a parable about learning to meet our challenges and stress more skillfully And as the story goes when we experience stress or pain or a challenge of any sort Two arrows fly our way The first is receiving the pain from the first arrow and the second is Receiving the pain from our reaction to the first arrow And so in life we can't always control the pain of the first arrow But we can control our reaction to it And by how we're relating to whatever is arising and so the second arrow suffering is optional and Most of us shoot ourselves with the second arrow whenever we have an unpleasant experience But with regular mindfulness practice we come to see that we can't avoid pain But we can avoid suffering by how we relate to that unpleasantness And so we do this by learning to stay with the unpleasant experiences long enough to investigate them and to understand Our habitual tendencies to resist and react against the original pain is what causes the suffering So there's our formula pain times resistance equals suffering And so one of the aims of our practice is to learn to be more responsive to the pain and less reactive