2018 - the year to step into your own
It's my first post of the year and it's the first post for a long time (soz - life has been getting in the way and quite frankly, I didn't have anything worthwhile to post).
The topic of today's post came to me whilst I was on the train heading home from my biodynamic craniosacral therapy seminar. That topic is expectations.
However, before diving into that, let's just start off with what I feel the energy of 2018 is like. It's a year of anticipation and a time to step into your own self sort of thing. I feel like it's the year where you can get on with what you really want to do, and have a pretty good time at doing it (i.e. the Universe has your back.. which it decided to remind me this morning when I woke up in the middle of the night and was prompted to look at my mobile phone after initially resisting and the time was smack bang on 4:44am).
For me personally, I have been struggling to get a decent night's sleep since we stepped into the year. I understand from an astrological perspective there was and still is to be a lot of stuff happening in the Universal energies but I tend to not necessarily let that dictate my own life. In the current stage of my life however, I do feel that this year is the time to "get on with it" and the seeds that I planted last year are beginning to sprout - hence the anticipation and feeling that this year is gonna be a pretty good year!
Part of my "getting on with it" involves the continuation of my never-ending studies and diving in my work. This week marks the beginning of my studies again and I've been deep in biodynamic craniosacral therapy studies over the past 2 days. The good thing about this study is that we get to learn about new things and work on ourselves. A lot of healing gets done over the 5 days, and it's a time to really focus on ourselves when everyday life tends to, for us healers, mean that we focus on the health of others.
Now for me, when I am the receive of a biodynamic craniosacral therapy treatment, I don't normally feel emotions when things come up to be processed. My awareness tends to be drawn to the mechanical/tissue and energetic sensations that I feel in my own body. However today during my treatment, a memory and some associated emotions bubbled up to the surface (but not to the extent that I was physically crying or anything like that). That memory was concerned with the topic of today's post - expectations.
We are constantly expected to meet someone elses' expectations. As a child, I'm sure most of you grew up in the shadow of what your parents wanted you to be, and any loving child would do anything to keep their parents happy, so most would try to meet those expectations thinking that it was what the KID needed to meet in order for the kid to be happy because, you know, parents know more and we know nothing. We're taught as a society not to necessarily question things and as a result it's pretty difficult for us to discern whether things are certain truths for ourselves or are they a projection of another's expectation on us.
For me personally, I grew up being shaped as the perfect child of my parents. Fantastic grades, musically talented, I wasn't a rebel and stayed at home a lot, I liked my studies and I was the good Catholic who went to church every single Sunday. This led me to choosing a career as a lawyer (coz you know, Asian parents tend to want their kids to be doctors, lawyers or dentists because they earn heaps of money and money makes you happy) and then later on coming to a roadblock in my life where I started to ask "who am I and what is it that makes me happy?".
Of late whilst I was working on my clients, a very familiar sensation would come up that I would feel in my clients which was the feeling of suffocation or compression. The common theme was that they didn't feel like they could fully express who they were and felt suffocated by work, partner, etc. Now as you know, like attracts like. So clients will tend to present similar conditions to what I am experiencing myself - and the irony is that I didn't actually realise that it was an issue I held in my subconscious until today.
Today whilst I was lying on that table, I began to feel very uncomfortable. My right jaw felt like it was being pulled out of my face, my right sacroiliac joint was moving around like crazy, and I could feel like someone was pushing down on my chest making it difficult for me to move and breathe. I have done enough work on myself to know that I finally had to face this so I let myself dive into the feelings instead of running away from them, and I asked the question "what does this relate to"? When that question was asked, I was flooded with the emotion of being incredibly pissed off at everyone in my life who placed their expectations on me and expected me to live THEIR lives instead of my own. It took me back to my childhood and I was mad that people were from that stage already being the architect of my life without giving me a choice whatsoever about the matter. And now as an adult, when you would think I could be given the freedom of choice to be who I am, I still get the feeling of disappointment from those same people because now the expectations have not been met. I broke away from those expectations when I gave up the law to become a healer, and in the process my relationship with those people has suffered and it pisses me off because I just want them to take back their stupid expectations and accept me for who I am.
Now with the benefit of hindsight, I know that the expectations projected onto me were because they all loved me and wanted the best for me. But my experience today shows how deeply it was ingrained in my psyche and that it took 35 years of that crap for me to finally process it. No doubt that there are still other layers that need (and will be addressed), but the process has finally started on that particular topic.
All I can say is - fuck the expectations. It doesn't feel nice to be the subject of the expectation, and therefore it's probably not the best thing to make someone feel like shit either. Easier said than done I know BUT when you can let go of expectations, life is SOOOO much easier and flows a lot better.
So this is the year to step into your own, take those shitty expectations that other people have placed on you and give it back to them. Say "thanks but no thanks". Don't give you power away to other people - you deserve to use that power to be you and there's nothing more than that. I just hope that one day when I eventually have a child, I'll be able to let them grow and figure themselves out without projecting onto them the type of child I want them to be. Slap me if you see me do it.
The topic of today's post came to me whilst I was on the train heading home from my biodynamic craniosacral therapy seminar. That topic is expectations.
However, before diving into that, let's just start off with what I feel the energy of 2018 is like. It's a year of anticipation and a time to step into your own self sort of thing. I feel like it's the year where you can get on with what you really want to do, and have a pretty good time at doing it (i.e. the Universe has your back.. which it decided to remind me this morning when I woke up in the middle of the night and was prompted to look at my mobile phone after initially resisting and the time was smack bang on 4:44am).
For me personally, I have been struggling to get a decent night's sleep since we stepped into the year. I understand from an astrological perspective there was and still is to be a lot of stuff happening in the Universal energies but I tend to not necessarily let that dictate my own life. In the current stage of my life however, I do feel that this year is the time to "get on with it" and the seeds that I planted last year are beginning to sprout - hence the anticipation and feeling that this year is gonna be a pretty good year!
Part of my "getting on with it" involves the continuation of my never-ending studies and diving in my work. This week marks the beginning of my studies again and I've been deep in biodynamic craniosacral therapy studies over the past 2 days. The good thing about this study is that we get to learn about new things and work on ourselves. A lot of healing gets done over the 5 days, and it's a time to really focus on ourselves when everyday life tends to, for us healers, mean that we focus on the health of others.
Now for me, when I am the receive of a biodynamic craniosacral therapy treatment, I don't normally feel emotions when things come up to be processed. My awareness tends to be drawn to the mechanical/tissue and energetic sensations that I feel in my own body. However today during my treatment, a memory and some associated emotions bubbled up to the surface (but not to the extent that I was physically crying or anything like that). That memory was concerned with the topic of today's post - expectations.
We are constantly expected to meet someone elses' expectations. As a child, I'm sure most of you grew up in the shadow of what your parents wanted you to be, and any loving child would do anything to keep their parents happy, so most would try to meet those expectations thinking that it was what the KID needed to meet in order for the kid to be happy because, you know, parents know more and we know nothing. We're taught as a society not to necessarily question things and as a result it's pretty difficult for us to discern whether things are certain truths for ourselves or are they a projection of another's expectation on us.
For me personally, I grew up being shaped as the perfect child of my parents. Fantastic grades, musically talented, I wasn't a rebel and stayed at home a lot, I liked my studies and I was the good Catholic who went to church every single Sunday. This led me to choosing a career as a lawyer (coz you know, Asian parents tend to want their kids to be doctors, lawyers or dentists because they earn heaps of money and money makes you happy) and then later on coming to a roadblock in my life where I started to ask "who am I and what is it that makes me happy?".
Of late whilst I was working on my clients, a very familiar sensation would come up that I would feel in my clients which was the feeling of suffocation or compression. The common theme was that they didn't feel like they could fully express who they were and felt suffocated by work, partner, etc. Now as you know, like attracts like. So clients will tend to present similar conditions to what I am experiencing myself - and the irony is that I didn't actually realise that it was an issue I held in my subconscious until today.
Today whilst I was lying on that table, I began to feel very uncomfortable. My right jaw felt like it was being pulled out of my face, my right sacroiliac joint was moving around like crazy, and I could feel like someone was pushing down on my chest making it difficult for me to move and breathe. I have done enough work on myself to know that I finally had to face this so I let myself dive into the feelings instead of running away from them, and I asked the question "what does this relate to"? When that question was asked, I was flooded with the emotion of being incredibly pissed off at everyone in my life who placed their expectations on me and expected me to live THEIR lives instead of my own. It took me back to my childhood and I was mad that people were from that stage already being the architect of my life without giving me a choice whatsoever about the matter. And now as an adult, when you would think I could be given the freedom of choice to be who I am, I still get the feeling of disappointment from those same people because now the expectations have not been met. I broke away from those expectations when I gave up the law to become a healer, and in the process my relationship with those people has suffered and it pisses me off because I just want them to take back their stupid expectations and accept me for who I am.
Now with the benefit of hindsight, I know that the expectations projected onto me were because they all loved me and wanted the best for me. But my experience today shows how deeply it was ingrained in my psyche and that it took 35 years of that crap for me to finally process it. No doubt that there are still other layers that need (and will be addressed), but the process has finally started on that particular topic.
All I can say is - fuck the expectations. It doesn't feel nice to be the subject of the expectation, and therefore it's probably not the best thing to make someone feel like shit either. Easier said than done I know BUT when you can let go of expectations, life is SOOOO much easier and flows a lot better.
So this is the year to step into your own, take those shitty expectations that other people have placed on you and give it back to them. Say "thanks but no thanks". Don't give you power away to other people - you deserve to use that power to be you and there's nothing more than that. I just hope that one day when I eventually have a child, I'll be able to let them grow and figure themselves out without projecting onto them the type of child I want them to be. Slap me if you see me do it.