News Drop offers principles and practices for living in alignment with nature. For living osteopathically, in flow.

When we align with the forces of the natural world there is no limit to the sanity, ease and grace we can experience regardless of what is happening.

I can’t think of a more relevant conversation. Ready to dive in?

Nature has shown me that life is a constant flow of change.

Recently when listening to Zen stories, one teaching came through louder and more clearly than the others. It felt like a laser beam that penetrated with power and precision into my bones.

A student was struggling with his meditation practice. When he went to his teacher, the teacher said, “this will pass.” The student persisted in his attempt to be present with his experience. His state began to shift, and before long, his practice blossomed. He went back to his teacher with this news that his practice had finally become deeply satisfying. His teacher said, “This will pass.”

We create a lot of unnecessary suffering and work for ourselves.

I resonate deeply with the principle this story reveals. Osteopathy and nature have shown me that life is a constant flow of changing experiences, and that nothing, whether pleasant or painful, is constant.

I have been shown again and again that what goes up must come down, that both directions are essential, and that neither are good or bad. I have also seen, again and again, that when we try to change the cycle we’re in, we create a lot of unnecessary suffering and work for ourselves. Hmmm.

I lived this when I first began doing healing work. I noticed that when energy was shifting, there were both moments of intensity and moments of stillness with both in person and remote practice. Some of the intense moments were mild, others were uncomfortable and even painful. Initially I was concerned. It was extremely confronting as a young provider to contribute to discomfort in another.

As I watched these peaks of intensity come and go over and over again, I eventually saw that these fleeting moments of intensity are potent and inherent and necessary aspects of change, including healing.

The insight didn’t exactly lift my blahs, but it did bring me peace.

More on the cyclic nature of all things. Around the same time these insights were happening in my healing practice, I began to notice them in life. When I would go down into stuck or gloomy places, I started stepping back and noticing, like an observer, that expansion would inevitably follow these periods of compression.

One day when I was feeling very low I realized I was in a trough. It was exciting to anticipate the shift I was certain was coming. The insight didn’t exactly lift my blahs, but it did bring me peace. It also allowed me to surrender to the process and even savor the experience in real time.

When we want unpleasant things to go away, we add a layer of suffering on top of our pain by judging it and wishing it were different. This habit of ours is something like trying to hold back the tide with our hands — it doesn’t work.

Could it be a storm before a calm, or a contraction before an expansion?

The next time you find yourself rejecting a challenging experience, or trying to hold on to a great one, consider expanding your awareness and becoming deeply present with the moment you are in.

Knowing that this too shall pass invites us to go with the flow, be here and now, and savor the fleeting beauty of the very moment we are in regardless of what is happening.