One of the most powerful lessons in integration I received was when I threw out my shoulder. I went to a healer for help. She worked her magic and at the end of our session, I started to feel around to see if the pain was still there.
“Don’t go looking for it,” she said. “Allow things to settle.”
She went on to explain how looking for the pain would reinforce the pain pathways and muscle memories, which we just worked to undo.
Throughout the week, and especially each time I caught myself contorting and testing if healing actually happened / was happening, I kept hearing her say to me:
“Don’t go looking for it,” she said. “Allow things to settle.”
This experience is one that I think about often. It comes up when I find myself looking for something that I perceive as off or needing fixing. This also comes up when I have a new aha, healing or consciousness shift that’s positive but uncomfortable to hold. Basically, this comes up anytime my ego, old patterns, habits don’t want to let up their power and do something differently.
We are in such an interesting time in history, where we have more information and learning at our fingertips than ever before. Consciousness is shifting rapidly as well.
We are all undergoing transformation in various forms and on various levels.
It’s easy to get inundated.
I know I’m guilty of running from one course to the next, one book to the next, one teacher to the next, one project to the next.
(And, I don’t want to knock this process. I think there’s beauty in the desire to go deeper and continuously learn and to grow).
But one thing I’ve found I’ve needed to do for myself is to practice integration. Practice settling. Just like I had to do with my shoulder.
I could have experienced the most proud healing, lesson, or awareness penetrating experience, but if I’m not taking the time to let it land in my body, put it into practice, and run it though my own energy system, then I’m missing the full richness of the experience.
Integration is about pausing. It’s about breathing, reviewing, reflecting and settling into our beingness. It’s about allowing new pathways to form.
For me, when I move quickly and don’t take the time to intentionally practice integration, I slip back into old patterns. I go through the motions, consume a ton, but don’t enact real change. My ego looks for the old way, the comfortable pattern, the pain, whatever it’s used to.
Just like with my shoulder, it got used to being out of whack and I needed to challenge myself to not go back to that discomfort, which had become so comfortable in it’s familiarity.
For me, I’ve had to work on integration practices. Here are a few thing that have helped me and I invite you use some of these if they resonate and / or to find your own:
- Take literal space before starting something new
- Identify how new shifts land in your body
- Spend time in nature
- Journal
- Create art
- Go inward
- Tackle one thing at a time
- Ask yourself, what do I truly think about this?
- How does this energy feel?
- What part of me wants to go back to old ways? What part of me wants something new? Dialog between the two
- Ask for a dream
- Make an offering of gratitude
Living in such a fast paced world, we can easily feel like we’re falling behind, or settling into comfortable patterns. However, the more we take time to truly practice integration our experiences, we allow our work, whatever that may be, to filter through our wisdom, energy system, and body. This is its own alchemical journey. Once we allow the work to work us, it becomes uniquely our own and we show up in the world more embodied, present and whole.
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