Why can going deeper in our own energetic work feel scary? | #064

When we take that step and want to move more deeply into ourselves, especially with energetic practices, this is when (at times) it can feel scary. Depending upon what we're wanting (needing) to clear in ourselves in order to elevate our frequency, old patterns, fears, etc can begin to arise that cause us to resist.

When we try to control what's moving within us, we begin to create restriction and over time can be extremely draining. But when it's time to tune in to ourselves and step into the aspect of ourselves that is ready to let go, it is one of the most empowering gifts you can give yourself.  Thank you for joining me in this episode.

Transcript episode #064 | The Art Of Tuning In Podcast with Maria Furlano

0:00

Intro -Welcome to the Art of tuning in podcast with Maria Furlano, sharing insights, tools and conversations to inspire your energetic well being. Hello, everyone. Welcome. This is Maria Furlano.

0:14

Thank you for joining me today on the art of tuning in podcast. This is episode number 64. "Why going deep can be scary," and we'll get into that in just a moment. It's a big week this week I'm recording this episode on November 16. And this coming Friday, November 19. We have a full moon, lunar eclipse. And if you are curious about practicing Qigong during an eclipse or doing energetic work during an eclipse, there was an episode I recorded a few months ago, episode number 49. And it is called "Should I practice Qigong during an eclipse?" And so if you're curious about that, it's a really short episode, I think it's about 10 minutes. And it just goes into the different dynamics. And so if you're wanting to listen to that, just go ahead to Episode 49. And, and you can learn a little more about the eclipse. I'm so glad you're here.

1:15

And if you're new here, again, my name is Maria, and it's great to have you here. Thank you for finding me, I'm a physician of Chinese Medicine, a doctor of Medical Qigong. And my passion through Eastern medicine and energetic practices is to usher people into a deeper relationship with their mind and body energy. So they can actually cultivate emotional balance and align with their divine wisdom. And I've been working with people for over 20 years, and I just love it.

1:47

And it was this work, this week in my membership and working privately, where this topic of going more deeply, and how that is scary. And why is that scary? And what does that mean? It all came up all about resistance, all about letting go all about our ego, pushing against, control was huge. So I want to bring this up, because I know also right now, there is a lot of tension in the world. And when we have tension and stress in the world, what happens is that we can tend to hold on in our life more tightly, we can want to control our own world, so that we feel safe, and this is normal. But what happens is that we can be using so much energy, to be holding ourselves to be trying to keep ourselves protected, holding ourselves tight, you know, being in control that we're truly exhausting ourselves.

2:54

And so sometimes when you begin to do energetic practices such as meditation, Qigong, Tai Chi, practices that really connect you, with your mind, with your body with the soul, relaxation is really necessary. Allowing the energy to flow and moving into a different space, moving into a different frequency so that you're actually expanding your energy in new ways. But in order to do that, we have to be able to let go. And as we do more and more practices that really get us to that point where we really begin to tune into ourselves. So there's relaxation. And that's wonderful, whenwe get to a point where we can actually relax our energy.

3:46

And speaking of that, I wanted to mention that if you are dealing with a lot of stress right now, please know that if you go to my website, www.theartoftuningin.com, I have for you a free download that is four minutes long. And it's a guided practice that you can use any time to help you ease anxiety, and calm your mind and you can sign up for free access to that. You'll see it right there on that homepage, go to www.theartoftuningin.com and it can really help you to root your mind...

4:24

And what I mean by that is when we get very overwhelmed or we have a lot of anxiety or a lot of stress or we're trying to control things. We become kind of like a pressure cooker inside where our energy begins to rise. It's like I always explain it to my private clients and students like It's like we have a tea kettle on the stove and you're warming up the tea kettle and the water is beginning to boil and it's turning into steam and that steam has to rise, it has to escape and it makes pressure And that's why of course, when you have a tea kettle that whistles it whistles because of the pressure.

5:05

Well, if our energy in our body begins to get compressed begins to move in directions, that is not it's normal and healthy flow, pressure in the body energy can rise. And when this energy begins to rise, we can feel a lot of anxiety, our breath changes, our throat closes, we can get a headache, we can feel off balance and kind of foggy. And all of this is just miss direction of energy flow due to our emotions that are trying to keep us safe, but that are in essence kind of working against us because we're not releasing them. 5:45 When this happens, we can want to control it more, because we don't feel very good or we feel a little off, or really what we start to feel as out of control. So we try to control and compress how we feel. So maybe people don't notice. So maybe we feel stronger. But what this does is it really begins to drain our energy because it takes so much energy to actually do that. And we become more exhausted and more depleted, and very confused, because we cannot figure out what's wrong with us. And this can be this cycle that happens. But it all stems from not being able to let go. And of course, you know me, I say this all the time. None of this is a criticism. We all do it. But it's a learning process, when you begin to learn to tune into your energy, when you start to do these beautiful Eastern energetic practices such as Qigong, meditation, breathing, body alignment, all of this work, that is changing the flow in your body. And in order to do that, we have to be able to let go of what we're holding, that doesn't serve us.

7:00

And that sounds wonderful to people. And then when they start to do it, in the beginning, it feels really good because you start to relax. And now, you know, we're starting to soften our body and calm and we're relaxing on a nice level, right, we have a nice relaxed meditation, and that's beautiful, and that feels good. And then for people who want to continue to cultivate their Qi (Qi is energy), you begin to go deeper with very different kinds of breathing practices and different kinds of focus in different movement. And this begins to bring you very much in the center of yourself. 7:48 And when you come into the center of yourself, I mean, that is an amazing thing. But when you are starting that practice, there is a great deal of letting go that's involved. And what can happen is that people can begin to get very scared, and their body, or if you want to say their ego begins to hold on, because they're used to controlling their energy. And in order to be able to really let go to a deeper level, we have to have a lot of faith and we have to be able to surrender. 8:26 And in our culture, when we talk about the word surrender, a lot of times people associate that with giving up and that of course in Eastern medicine and in an energetic healing that is not at all what we look at as surrender. We look at surrender as a true letting go as a letting go of another layer as being able to release what doesn't serve us. So that our true nature, our true energetic wisdom, the all of the energy that can come forth through us in our reserves that are hidden in our cells that are hidden in our body, get to be let go and released and and have the energy and the support to actually do their job. So that's a very different viewpoint of surrender than perhaps the Western viewpoint of surrender, meaning that we give up, or that it's something very scary or that we'll never be able to have control again.

9:28

And so again, this word control comes up all the time. And if you, because I've had different things in the past couple of weeks come up with with private clients and in my membership and classes that we're teaching. We were talking about energetic chords this week. In energetic chords, when we want to release chords, there is a surrendering and relaxation and an easing process that happens because because when we are energetically corded to someone or something, the more mental focus and emotion that's put into the chord, the stronger the chord gets. So there is a releasing and a relaxation and a letting go process that's truly needed if you want to dissolve the chords. And there can be an opposite reaction when somebody feels overwhelmed or full of anxiety is again, they hold on tighter.

10:32

But we often have no idea that we're doing this until it's pointed out to us, we have no idea that we're trying to control our surroundings, because we've done it all of our life. And we think it's normal. And so it can really knock you off your center. 10:49 And I'm saying this just to give support out there. Because I know that if you're listening to this show that you are someone who is interested in energetic alignment, and maybe you have your own practices that you do. And when you get to certain levels of going deeper in that practice, there is a surrender process that is so necessary. Otherwise, you will stay at a plateau and sometimes move away from practices because you're resisting that so much because it brings up fear. When I say going deep can be scary... What I mean is that the deeper we go into our own self, the more honest we become. And the more we connect with who we really are, not what we think we should be, or what others have told us we should be. And all of these questions can arise for people, things like what do you really believe in? If you're dealing with faith questions like spirituality questions, you know, you might have been raised in a certain faith or spirituality or belief system? Does that belief system serve you anymore? And if it does, that's wonderful. But if it doesn't, how do you feel about that, and what does supports you spiritually? Those questions begin to arise when we go in ourselves, because we realize that everything is different, we're looking at things from a completely different viewpoint from within.

12:31

But also want to say that sometimes we don't know that we're actually resisting. And when we're working on our own self development, our own spiritual practice, maybe we're doing energetic practices, these things can begin to surface inner resistance, because we feel like we're losing control, or we have to hold on to control. So if we go to a deeper level, for example, in our meditation, it doesn't feel good to us, right? It brings up that anxiety, and we start to resist and not even realize that we're resisting.

13:11

Some of the signs of that are we stop our practice, we make excuses, we can become irritable and defensive, we can take out our emotions towards someone or something else. Because we're not looking at our own stuff.

13:30

This is also a really normal process that happens when we start to go into different layers. When we start to want to shift our frequency, we've been in a frequency (a certain frequency) for so long, that we've conditioned ourselves to be a certain way, usually, for a really long time.

13:50

If you're coming at these new practices from an adult viewpoint, there's a lot of things that we've carried around with us for a really long time. Our brain is rewiring our body is learning to sit, stand, move, breathe, feel react, respond in a totally different way. I just bring this up because people can get really hard on themselves.

14:15

This, of course, is why we have teachers, we need someone else's viewpoint that we trust, who knows us who has experience with this work to be able to look at us and be really honest with us in a beautiful, loving, gentle but very honest way about the things that could be going on so that we are not avoiding ourselves. Sometimes a really good teacher will say to you, you have to just go figure it out.

14:45

I remember when I was struggling. I had just reached this place where I couldn't seem to move into a different space through with my meditations and I felt like I would hit a wall. I could not figure it out. And I kept trying to push of course, which you never want to do. And I had a wonderful teacher who I went up and you know, and spoke to, and really was thinking, Okay, I'm gonna get some brilliant advice here. And he looked at me and he said, "Okay, yeah, you got to go figure that out." And he walked away. And I stood there feeling totally hopeless, angry, all that stuff. Sometimes you need someone to say that, because there isn't really anything to say, it's that you got to go do the work, you got to sit with yourself, you have to feel the feelings, you have to feel the resistance, and only you only your soul, your spirit, your emotions, your process your life, whatever it is that you've been through, only you have within you what needs to come up and out.

15:54

I remember going through that process, and I would sit and I would meditate and get frustrated and give up and I'd go back. And weeks went by, and I went outside, one evening. I was so frustrated, but I started to tune in, relax and meditate and all of a sudden, I just began to cry, tears just poured out of me. It was completely unexpected. And what was coming up in me, the emotions that were coming up in me, I really did not know we're there.

16:33

This is why I say we can't be hard on ourselves. Because sometimes we think it's going to be something totally different. But when we start to go within our own system, what surfaces is something that we've tried to keep hidden for so long, that we honestly don't know that it's there until it comes up.

16:53

And then of course, when it comes up, it can make perfect sense to us. It can, it can pull everything together, but it can still be a shocker. So the work the time of going within, but having someone who said to someone who I trusted, and respected say to me, yeah, you know, basically, this is normal, but you have to go do the work now and walk away from me and just leave me left me with my own choice of am I going to do the work? Do I want to go to that deeper spot? Which I did. And also the frustration of how am I going to do this? And you know, all of those things... Why are you not helping me? And what am I supposed to do? Because no one can really help you at a certain point you, you just have to sit and be. sit and be.

17:46

You can learn the breathing techniques, which of course are something to learn, there's very different ways to breathe. There's different focuses, of course, how we hold our body, all of those things are wonderful techniques and skills that definitely bring our energy to a different place. And they are necessary when we are training our energetic skill. But once you learn those, it's just going in and practicing and letting go and practicing and letting go and letting things come up and letting them go and letting things come up and letting them go.

18:22

And the biggest thing that I learned for myself during that time was I couldn't judge myself, it was about truly understanding that this was going to be a practice a practice of allowing my life to continue to evolve. And that there were always going to be things that I was going to be letting go, that it was never going to be okay, I did that practice. And I went to that space. And now I'm better. It's not. It's not about that at all. And that's of course, why we call it a practice because it is a practice. It's an evolving, it's an onion that that never stops peeling, and it does get better and better because you will have this understanding that you go into these places as like an exploration.

19:11

You become like a detective almost you go and you're you're meditating or you're doing Qigong or you're doing these practices and things come up, that maybe you didn't realize were there that you didn't realize were that important. And you're able to see things in a new way and your wisdom grows and you're able to listen to your intuition.

19:32

This is a big thing. When you begin to go deeply within yourself, your intuition becomes so strong because now you are in your wisdom. You are not looking outside of yourself. You are not listening to all that's around you all the time. You're actually used to being in yourself You're comfortable being in yourself, you're comfortable being quiet in your own wisdom. And when you do that, because listening to your intuitive wisdom, it's a very quiet process, when your intuition becomes strong, when you're used to listening to it, and when you have faith with it, when you know, it's gonna be there, you know, it's part of you, you know, it's your friend, it's loud.

20:26

But in the beginning, intuition is very soft. And people miss it a lot, not because they're not intuitive and not because their energy and their intuition and their inner wisdom isn't speaking to them it is, but it's because they're just kind of moving past it kind of bulldozing past it, because it's subtle, it's quiet, it's very powerfully quiet.

20:52

But if you are working with practices to develop your energy and to move through things, just know that quickly, as you release things, your intuition, that intuitive wisdom, that voice that knowing that hearing that seeing, you know, smelling, feeling all of the different ways that you may sense energy, become very real, and very loud. 21:16 And as long as you really listen and pay attention, and make a commitment to actually follow what it is that's being presented to you from your intuition, it will become louder and louder, and you will not want to ignore it any more, you won't be able to ignore it any more, because it will just be so real for you and your life will begin to flow in ways that are very different, then they may be flowing.

21:42

Now, if you're dealing with a lot of resistance, trying to control things being in a lot of anxiety and fear, which again, totally understandable, we need to heal and move through that in order to find this deeper place of ourselves.

21:57

So for today, an insight into why when we begin to go deeper into our energetic work, why it can be so scary. And again, the root of all of it is a need for us to control. And the opposite of that for the healing. And the letting go, of course is to learn to surrender to actually allow yourself to ease into the unknown, to ease into the relaxation to understand that you will be held by light. And that can take a lot of work to get there.

22:34

Those are beautiful words, I recognize, you know what I'm saying this is beautiful words being held by the light allowing yourself to let go. And I remember very distinctly how scared I got in the in the early parts of my training. When I realized that I wasn't sure if divine energy had my back. I wasn't sure exactly what I believed in because I had been disappointed in my life. And I had had things show up energetically that were scary to me. And so I wasn't sure what was happening. And when I let go, what was gonna happen? Was this just a ridiculous thing. And Was I being stupid, it took me a while to continue to move through that. And again, of course, this is why you have teachers. This is why you work with people with people who know what they're doing, because this is a journey, unfolding.

23:31

Your energy is a journey. And it's a wonderful journey. But it's a journey and how you focus in that journey. What you allow yourself to be able to see in that journey makes all the difference. And I will tell you so that we leave it on a positive note when I was able to surrender and I was able to really understand what it is that I believed in and what I knew had my back spiritually, the power, the internal power, and knowing and guidance that I felt in my life was indescribable. And every single person can have that. And even though we all go through times where we doubt ourselves, and then we tune in again, and we remind ourselves of who we are. And we get ourselves back on track because that's the whole point of all of these. Again, it's not to be perfect life is going to change all the time, things are gonna come up things that maybe feel shocking. Maybe they knock us off our center, maybe we're going through great grief, whatever it is, things do come up but it's about being able to stop and know that you have the tools to go back into your center to remember who you are to tune in to that intuitive knowing to that intuitive wisdom to really know that spirit has your back.

24:57

Those are the reasons why we practice and those are the reasons why we want to when it's the right time, go deeper in our practice, because when we find those places of true connection with ourselves, it is like no other feeling in the world.

25:17 So thank you so much for listening today and being part of this work and being in this world and shining your light. I appreciate you being here. I will see you in the next episode.

25:31

Outro - Thank you for tuning in. If you'd like to learn more and elevate your energetic well being, I invite you to visit theartoftuningin.com where you can learn all about our online studio. I look forward to meeting you there.