Conflict, the unwelcome, persistent monster that it appears to be, throws off our enjoyment of minutes, hours, days, weeks or even years. As BodyTalk practitioners, it affects how we interact with our clients. It’s nearly impossible to drop into the zone, or be in tune with another person when we’re feeling the confusion and discomfort of conflict.
As a result of conflict, we react in predictable ways: find a sympathetic ear to tell our tale of woe to; have a battle with whomever we feel is responsible; attempt to ‘stuff ‘ it, ‘sit’ on it, ‘deny’ it, ‘run’ from it, take it out on someone else, or think of the right comeback too late and have a brilliant conversation in our own heads that the one we’re mad at can’t hear. It feels impossible to face conflict from a centered place. That would be like experiencing calmness while watching a tornado touch down nearby. It happens on rare occasions, but it’s not our usual experience. In the face of conflict, we are not clear, we are confused and it will show up in our BodyTalk sessions and in our relationships.
Conflict in the mind is the tension felt when one belief is challenged by the opposite belief. The opposites are always at play in a never-ending attempt at moving us from the extremes towards the center, on any given issue. Take the opposites of chaos and control for example. If you were raised in a chaotic home, and felt unloved because of it, the belief, ‘chaos = not being loved’, then what will play out in your adult life is ‘control = love’ and you’ll set out to control everything and everyone around you in an attempt to find ‘love.’ The opposites are attempting to create a balance and demonstrate that all our beliefs are perceptions only and that if given a minute, we’ll change our mind. Most of us would agree with the above scenario, but we’d also agree to the opposite: control does not equal love at all. In this case, chaos and control will continue to support each other and we’ll feel thrown around between them. When things feel controlled, chaos will appear to balance it. When things appear chaotic, control will settle it all down again. The opposites, in all cases, are supporting each other for the purpose of brining us into better balance. Better balance means being able to better observe a better balance in another during a BodyTalk session.
Beliefs are driving us around our lives causing turmoil and using up our vital energy. In the chaos/control example, there will be a belief that works overtime: ‘I am unlovable.’ If you feel you are unlovable, the opposite, ‘I am lovable’ will be pushing for equal time and you may notice, if you look, that you are attempting to be lovable, perhaps by pleasing others.
These are our conflicted points of view and lead to minor or mass confusion. The ability to do a BodyTalk session largely relies on clarity, not confusion.
In BreakThrough, conflict, that nasty intruder, becomes a door to discovery. The secrets on the other side of the door are simple: conflict is responsible for the ‘aha’ whenever and however we get one; conflict is never avoided, just shuffled around in the mind or body; conflict is a need to prove and that alone is proof of doubt; conflict demonstrates our own personal lists of how life and others should and shouldn’t be; conflict veils an attempt to control and manipulate.
We are never upset for the reason we think we are. The state of discomfort we experience is the brick wall that we find we’re facing even though we’ve been dodging the bricks that life has been throwing at us. There is a deeper meaning waiting to be uncovered, and it seems it must come out, because the bricks get bigger and heavier and harder to dodge as time goes by.
Applied within the context of BreakThrough, we begin to see that conflict is what brings us to awareness. In step one, you must have a conflict to come to a new awareness by step seven. The new awareness means you will react /respond differently the next time the situation presents itself because the ‘acquired information’ that is the ego aspect of the self has shifted, so our perceptions must shift as well. You’ll have to react / respond differently for the same reason you would when you uncover any new information about any issue. Once you know that the jagged edges on texas gates ruin tires, you can’t unknow it. You’ll drive with more caution across them. Once you feel the unbelievable experience of knowing that all human beings are equally acceptable and cannot feel judgment, you can’t unfeel it, so your experiences change. We will have to react / respond differently because the information base has changed.
All conflict has ever been trying to show us is that it is one path to clarity and since we can’t seem to avoid conflict no matter what we do, it makes sense to look at it – that’s what BreakThrough does.
Imagine sitting down to a BodyTalk session and being able to tune in with all your subtle senses to observe what’s happening in the other’s bodymind – it’s like listening to a radio station with perfect sound – no fuzzy static. What station are you tuned into when you do BodyTalk? Does your mind relax and allow or do you flit from thought to thought like a fly buzzing against the window pane, thinking about being someplace else?
Conflict, when it’s looked at through the seven steps process, allows for play – it lightens the load. Imagine feeling the kind of joy you’ve seen on a child’s face; the pure joy caused by playing with a plain old cardboard box. Imagine that’s you when BodyTalk becomes joyful, magical, play.
By Brenda Miller, CBr1, CBI, RMT, ParBP
