Dropping The Rope: Shifting From Fear To Faith

 For most of my healing journey I was efforting. I was working hard at healing myself. Reading, meditating, changing my diet, taking supplements, focusing on the positive, shifting my identity, and trying to touch down to my soul’s purpose. I believed through all this I could unlock the key to my physical healing. I did and still continue to believe that all of those changes and efforts were necessary. However, I came to realize that I alone was not in charge of the timeline nor the means in which I healed. While we as people hold a lot more power in our lives than we appreciate, there are also powers greater than ourselves at play. I soon realized that I needed to make more space for those powers. This is when I decided to “drop the rope.”

I learned the saying “drop the rope” from a psychotherapy intervention called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. When we are faced with uncertainty, the threat of losing something, or unpleasant circumstances/happenings, we tend to respond by grasping tighter to the metaphorical “rope”. The rope is anything we do to try to control or avoid a certain situation or outcome. The harder we grasp the rope the more energy we expend in the direction of the unwanted outcome, often increasing the likelihood that this outcome will happen. So what happens if we drop the rope? Using my situation as an example, when I decided to drop the rope it didn’t resolve my physical health issues. It didn’t make my challenges go away. But, what it did do was create an energy of surrender and allowing, freeing up space to receive rather than control. It also let me off the hook. I alone did not have to figure this out. I allowed others to take the reins and for God and my angels to step in. With this shift in energy and effort many blessings poured in. 

It is worth noting that dropping the rope is not a one and done thing. It is something I practice and remind myself every day. Sometimes many, many times a day. It is very easy to fall back into a default mode of wanting to control and force an outcome. However, what I have found is, when I remind myself to drop the rope a feeling of warmth and peace washes over me. I am energetically freeing myself up to receive.

It is also worth noting that dropping the rope doesn’t mean you completely stop all efforts in the direction of your goal or desired outcome. For me, I continue to do the things that strengthen my mind and body. However, I no longer do them with the expectation that they will heal me but, rather, support optimal circumstances for any healing that is available to me. This allows me to stay the course with the things I find most beneficial to my overall well-being and leave the rest up to flow and timing of life.

Are there areas in your life that are full of tension, grasping, or anxiety? Are there areas where you are holding on so tightly to a certain outcome that there is no space for possibility or happy surprises to come through? These might be good places to practice the energetic shift of moving from grasping and control to surrender and allowing.

The Role Of The Heart In Healing

The power of the heart comes up over and over in our lives. The beat of our mother’s heart is the first thing we hear in the womb and we reference our heart when we experience some of life’s most emotional experiences like falling in love, heartbreak, having a child, etc. We say things like “My heart is completely broken” or “My heart is so full.” We see our heart as the place from which love emanates. Many view it as the seat of the soul and inner wisdom. When you are on a healing journey, the power of the heart and love come up quite a bit. Many prominent authors and speakers in the field of healing, both physical and emotional, emphasize the importance of being connected to your heart and experiencing positive emotions such as love, peace, and joy. This is viewed as vital to restoring health in one’s life. But, why? What is so magical about the heart that it is core to who we are and the vitality we experience as humans? This article hopes to uncover some of the mystery around the heart’s importance and how it supports one’s healing journey.

We often think of the brain as the control center of our mind and body. However, you might be surprised to learn that the heart and brain have more nerve connections to each other than any other system in the body and that about 90% of those nerve connections actually flow from the heart to the brain. This means that the brain is getting a lot more information from the heart than the heart is getting from the brain. So, what type of information does the heart send the brain? Well, the heart is a complex, highly evolved information processing center. Given the complex neural network of the heart, the heart is considered to have its own functional brain that can communicate with the brain in our heads in various ways. This communication comes through nerve impulses, hormones, neurotransmitters, pressure waves, and electromagnetic fields. 

One way the heart communicates with the brain and other systems of the body is the heart rhythm, or pattern of heart beats, and heart rate variability (HRV), or variation in time between each heartbeat. The heart rhythm can be regular or irregular and fast or slow and optimal health is associated with greater heart rate variability. The pattern of both the heart rhythm and HRV reflects our current emotional state and insight into what an individual is feeling at a given time can be gained from these two measures. 

Heart rate variability is controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS is a vital system in the body that controls involuntary physiologic processes like heart rate, digestion, respiration, to name a few. The ANS also gets a lot of attention because of the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches housed within it. In a culture and world overrun with stress, we talk a lot about this part of our nervous system. Our parasympathetic nervous system is our rest and digest system. This is the branch we are trying to activate through stress regulation exercises and to support overall relaxation in the body. The sympathetic nervous system is the fight, flight, freeze system. This is activated in times of stress, fear, and anxiety. The sympathetic nervous system is necessary for survival, however, chronic activation of this system, or as we commonly call it, chronic stress, can lead to poor health. So, negative emotions can create disorder, or incoherence, in the ANS, while positive emotions can lead to order, or coherence, in the ANS. This has a direct impact on our HRV which then impacts signals being sent to the brain. Oof, you still with me? 

This is important for healing because, by finding coherence or order in the heart, we can have an overall positive effect on our mind and body. Coherence or a coherent state in the body occurs when there is a shift in the autonomic system toward more parasympathetic activity (rest/relaxation), allowing for more rhythmic and ordered heart rhythm and greater HRV. This allows for more sync between the heart and brain and greater harmony among different physiological systems. From this place, the body functions more efficiently and is able to engage in its natural healing and regenerative processes. We also experience greater emotional and psychological resiliency when our body is in a coherent state. This frees more cognitive and emotional resources for healing. 

The heart is also a powerful source of energy, producing the largest field of electromagnetic energy of any organ in the human body. Whoa! The heart’s electrical field is about 60 times greater than that of the brain and the magnetic field is 100 times greater than that of the brain. It has been found that the heart’s magnetic field can be measured up to 3 feet away. Oof, okay, now we are really starting to see some hard data for the power of the heart! When we experience positive emotions, the energy field around our bodies is greater. Our positive energy can be felt by others, it is contagious, and it draws more of this energy into our field. This is a space from which we can bring in more love, light, and opportunities. In contrast, when we are in negative emotions, this energetic field shrinks, stifling our ability to create, heal, and bring in new positive experiences. 

It is clear that when we are on a journey of healing, staying connected to and bringing coherence to our heart through positive emotions is an important key in the process. This has a profound impact on the messages being sent to the brain as well as overall harmony in the body. Staying positive and heart-centered can be hard when we are trudging through loss, grief, depression, sadness, anger, etc. An important part of a healing process is going through, not away from or around, these painful emotions. However, by doing so, you begin to open up more space for positive emotions to come back online. In the meantime, the Heart Math Institute, the leading institute on the science of the heart, has developed easy exercises to help you feel more heart-focused at any point on your journey. 

One of my favorite Heart Math exercises is heart-focused breathing. This simply involves focusing on the center of your chest and imagining your breath flowing in and out of the chest. To bring feelings of warmth and love into this area of your body, imagine a person, animal, experience that brings you feelings of love. Continue to keep this image in your mind as you focus on your breathing in your chest. Allow yourself to breathe at a rate of 5 counts in and 5 counts out. You can start with just a few minutes each day. To find more heart coherent exercises or learn about their handy sensor and mobile app, visit their website at heartmath.com.

References: 

Heart Math Institute. (2015). Science of the Heart (Volume 2). Heart Math Institute. 

Dispenza, Joe. (2017). Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the         

Uncommon. Hay House. 

Starting Your Healing Journey

As you embrace your healing journey, it can feel overwhelming, confusing, and scary. From my work as a psychologist and from my personal journey of healing, the below is in hopes of offering you some guidance on where to start. It is very commendable to be embarking on this journey, rather than staying stuck in anger, hurt, disappointment, fear, or grief, so give yourself a big pat on the back for your willingness and insight. While it may be tough, it is a worthwhile part of your story.

1. Connect to your intuition and inner knowing. This is going to be your biggest ally on your healing journey. If this journey is prompted by a physical illness or injury, you are going to get a lot of input from doctors, family, friends, and the internet. It will all be so overwhelming to navigate if you don’t have a connection to your inner north star, or intuition. Same goes for an emotional or spiritual healing journey. You will question yourself, second guess your experience, and wonder if you are doing this right. Your connection to your knowing can be your guide here. Connecting to your intuition and inner knowing can be a process, for some, it will be longer than others. It is a process of trust. A process of learning to trust yourself. If you have spent a long time not trusting your inner emotions, thoughts, beliefs or were told they were wrong by significant people in your life, building this trust muscle will take time. 

Here is how to get started: Set aside quiet, uninterrupted time to connect with yourself each day. This can be meditation, journaling, meditative prayer or all of the above. When you sit down for this daily time, tune into your experience in your body. What catches your attention? Do you notice anything that you haven’t before? Begin a dialogue with yourself. Ask your body questions? What do you need right now? Listen up for the little voice inside that will answer. If you journal, allow yourself to freely write, no judgments, no edits, just free flow. This process is about being curious with yourself and seeing what shows up. 

When you have hit on your intuition or knowing, it can sound like an inner voice speaking to you or it can be a felt sense that you have hit on the right thing for you. It should feel calm and clear. It may not always tell you what you wanted to hear but, regardless, it should feel aligned for you and support a feeling of being grounded in your body.

2. Reframe your thinking around this period of transition as an opportunity, not a hardship. I know, easier said than done. Trust me, as I progressively lost my ability to walk, it was hard to see the opportunity in that but I did. Life is meant to be lived. Part of living is being human, part of being human is the full human experience - pain, loss, joy, happiness, disappointment, excitement, etc etc. Whenever you are facing a tough season in your life, know that this is an opportunity to grow. It pushes you into the uncomfortable places. It forces you to dig up things that are no longer working for you. It challenges you to grow, find purpose, and connect to yourself and others in more meaningful ways. As much as I loathe the tough periods when I am in them, I feel worse for those who don’t get the opportunity to experience the depth of them. If you embrace the change, you will come out stronger and more whole on the other side. 

How to reframe your thinking: This one requires consistency and discipline. Identify the negative thought loops that perpetuate feelings of being a victim to your situation. Know what they sound like and feel like. And then, every time you notice yourself getting lured into this negative thought loop, pause, take a breathe, and reframe your thinking. The reframe can look a few different ways. It can be a mantra that pulls you back into your power, such as “I am exactly where I need to be.” It can be a direct reframe of your thoughts, something like, “I acknowledge that this period is extremely painful but I embrace it because it is leading me to a better version of myself.” It can also be naming 1-2 positive things that are coming from your struggle, something like connecting more to others, allowing suppressed emotions to be released, or taking more time for myself. 

3. Begin to unburden your body, mind, and spirit. In order to heal and grow, there needs to be fertile ground to do so. So much of our modern day lifestyle burdens the internal systems of our body and mind in such way that most of our energy is used to combat stressors, toxins, poor diet. This leaves us with little left for healing and growth. In order to free up energy and resources in our body, we need to remove what is weighing it down. 

How to unburden your body: This is a multifaceted area that will look different for each individual. But here are some major areas our body and minds can be overburdened. Take stock of your own, seek out testing if needed, and begin to address each one. 

1. Chronic stress 

2. Poor diet and nutrition - Standard American Diet - need I say more. 

3. Poor sleep 

4. Environmental toxins - found in food, household products, skin and haircare, plastics

5. Illness and infection - you may have illness and infection present in your body that you are not aware of. Functional medicine can be a great place to start to get testing done to identify any infections or imbalances in the body. 

6. Lack of support 

4. Open your heart and open your mind. Healing and growing will require you to feel things you may not want to feel. It will require you to let go of and grieve things, people, places that are no longer for you. It will require you to open your mind to new ways of thinking and seeing yourself and the world and maybe others in your life. I encourage you to practice willingness to new experiences, to practice surrendering to the experience, and to find trust that the Universe is working for you, not against you. 

How to open your heart and mind: This one is not a straightforward task but rather something to remind yourself of often. Asking yourself, “How can I view this from a place of love?”, “How can I surrender to this experience?”, “Can I allow myself to open my mind to new ideas and ways of viewing my experience/the world/others?” Sometimes, when things feel extra tough, I might repeat “surrender” in my head, allowing a warm, calm feeling to wash over my body. You can also practice breathing into your heart space, allowing energy and openness to flow here. 

5. Seek support and be patient and kind with yourself. Support can come in many different forms - online, in person, personal community, professional help, a place, books, podcasts, etc. Open yourself up to support and you will be guided to the right content, people, and places for you. Most importantly, continually practice patience and kindness with yourself. This can be tough when things are not moving as quickly as you like or when you get into the really messy bits but find a way to come back to a place of love and comfort for yourself. You’re doing great…even if you can’t feel that right now!

How to find support and practice self kindness: From your daily meditation or journaling time, take note of the areas in your life or body that seem to need some attention. This can be a guide as to what types of support you need. As I mentioned, support can take so many different forms so just naming the areas you want help with and opening yourself to receive, you will begin to find yourself stumbling on the right type of support for you. If not, I find books, podcasts, local wellness studios, and/or psychotherapy to be excellent starting points.

A daily self kindness or self compassion practice can be a wonderful way to build this muscle. Check out self-compassion.org for a library of self compassion exercises to try.

Hope this information was helpful. Check back regularly for more content and resources to support your healing journey.