Kinks in the Core

Today, my 5-year old son made my brain do a back flip.

He ran to my desk with a miniature blue Slinky toy, hard-earned with Chuck E. Cheese tickets via an hour or two of intense SkeeBall competition.

“Mom, my thing-y stopped working!”

I groaned inwardly at the thought of having to tell him that once a Slinky’s done, it’s a goner. But his little boy face was twisted into the kind of sad expression that I typically reserve for funerals and war movies. So I stopped working and decided that today was the day I learned how to whip a plastic spring into shape.

I began twisting and bending that cheap little token of childhood, and each time I forced one section into submission, another one popped up in protest. I bent, and it twisted. I twisted, and it bent.

I fought, and it fought back.

I finally stopped in frustration and thought, “OK, what is this Slinky actually supposed to do? What did it look like before I created this mess?” I realized that it was no different than the springs on the Pilates equipment I use everyday. It had two ends and a middle. The ends were not the problem – the knots were in the center.

The issues were in the core.

In Pilates, we correct problems within the core not by going straight to the core itself. We begin at the end – in the feet. So using that principle, I held the Slinky at either end, and I gently pulled. It resisted at first, but then it seemed to have a little AHA moment…like it suddenly remembered what it was meant to do, how it was meant to perform, what its shape was before it became a twisted, knotted mess.

And with that realization combined with my gentle reminder, the Slinky suddenly sprung right back into working condition. Its shape was slightly off-kilter, but it worked again.

I turned to H, bursting with pride at not only my accomplishment but at the consciousness of my Self to see the spiritual lesson that could live within a mass-produced piece of plastic. I knew I had to approach the inevitable question of the toy’s new shape before a 5-year old breakdown occurred, so I gently tugged it to reveal the slight gap in between two of its blue spirals. I took a deep breath and said:

“When something breaks, it can be fixed, kiddo, but it may not ever look the same. It’s not bad, it’s just different. In order to keep working, it had to adapt to a new form.”

Shockingly, he didn’t give me the “What in the heck is my mom talking about?” look. He grinned, grabbed the toy, and yelled “Thanks Mom” over his shoulder as he ran back to his snack. He. Got. It.

I have been in a place of dramatic personal spiritual evolution for quite some time now. Just like with the Slinky, I struggled and fought and resisted and over-analyzed everything – my relationships, my business, my expectations – to the point that I viewed every single day as simply another opportunity for destruction. The more I continued to smooth out the kinks in my springs, the worse things got. The knottier my center, the less I resembled the person I was born to be and the less I performed the work I was meant to perform.

As everything in life deteriorated, I truly had that moment that many of us have: I wondered if God had left me. I thought maybe He was just on an extended vacation in Tahiti, but I was ticked that I had not even been invited.

Then finally, the fight became so hard, the circumstances so dire, the kinks so knotted, that I just felt I had no choice other than sheer surrender to the universe. I gave up, stopped fighting, and spent some time letting the knots in my Slinky Soul just BE.

And there God was.

The spiritual core is addressed exactly like the physical core is addressed- exactly like my child’s toy – the beginning and the end. In the physical, we have feet and the cervical spine. But in the spiritual sense, the beginning and the end lie within one place – God – the place life begins and the place life ends.

God is gently pulling my ends back into place, encouraging me to remember that my true Self requires less force, less fight, and more acceptance of my natural form. Reminding me that it’s perfectly OK to emerge from a battle with scars. Explaining that scars are the only way to identify true warriors.  And the sheer magic that is stirring within my core as a result is too delicious not to share.

I am growing, my practice is evolving, and my studio is experiencing a rebirth.  I am compelled to share this piece of my Self with you, as in truth, this piece is actually everything.

I am thankful.

xo

Lindsay