Home, not alone: seeing our blind spots

Blind spots.

If you look at the tip of your index finger, you can see it. But bring it up to touch the tip of your nose and it disappears.

You actually can’t see what’s right in front of your own nose.

Oftentimes, we are unable to see the blatantly obvious thing right in front of us. 

Ever since I set out to become a reflexologist, well over 15 years ago now, and probably before, I’ve tried to explore the balance between ‘Push’ and ‘Allow’, between trying to make something happen and allowing it come to be.

There are a galaxy full of aphorisms and platitudes proclaiming that we should ‘live in the moment’ or ‘seize the day’, counterbalanced by as many exhorting you to ‘go with the flow’, or that ‘the universe will provide’, or that ‘what you resist, persists’.

I studied the Japanese martial art, Aikido, for many years. One of its central ideas is that if you meet your opponent’s force or energy with force then there is conflict, a clash.

An adept Aikido practitioner will blend with an attacker’s movements and direct, as gently as possible, their opponent’s energy for the purpose of controlling their actions with minimal effort. 

An Aikido master sits in the space between push, making an outcome happen, and allow, allowing the opponents energy to flow through. 

If she uses all push, it becomes simply a contest of strength. If she uses all allow, she gets clobbered. The softer she is in that space, the less she is affected, the better she maintains her own harmony. 

As a natural therapist, I have to try to work in the space between, too. Reflexology, more than many other therapies, works best when we don’t try to impose an outcome, to try to ‘fix’ the patient. 

Which isn’t to say that we’re not trying to achieve an outcome. Certainly the patient is expecting that their tinnitus, or morning sickness or back pain or irritable bowel or whatever will be relieved.

My experience has shown that outcomes are much better if I trust that reflexology will do it’s thing and the patient will balance themselves as they need to rather than me imposing my will on them. 

There is a spot of stillness, a point of perspective where we are actively still, where we are between working hard to make something happen and passively trusting that it will appear. This is flow. This is inspiration. This is ease. 

A wonderful knowledge.  

But completely blind spotted when it comes to my own kids.  

No clue. Couldn’t even think to see it.