Resistance is about believing that you are vulnerable or susceptible to something not wanted and holding a stance of protection — which only holds you in a place of not letting in the Well-being that would be there otherwise. There is nothing big enough to protect you from unwanted things, and there are no unwanted things big enough to get into your experience.    —Abraham

 balk balk, verb:

1. to stop, as at an obstacle, and refuse to proceed or to do something specified (usually followed by at): He balked at making the speech.
2. (of a horse, mule, etc.) to stop short and stubbornly refuse to go on.
3. to place an obstacle in the way of; hinder; thwart: a sudden reversal that balked her hopes.
4. Archaic. to let slip; fail to use: to balk an opportunity.

I am interested in little resistances.  In the subtle strata of obstruction that sifts into each day, each hour, each activity.  I have been talking a lot about the big obstacle of losing my daughter.  In the midst of that, I have begun to notice little grains of resistance woven into my writing, my dancing, my thinking, even my breathing.  These resistances are actually distractions, ways of avoiding what is hard, what is demanding.  The body begins to reflect these small islands of tightness, breathlessness, mini-immobilizations.

Last night I did a teleclass on Embodied Horsemanship.  I talked a lot about softness, opening, allowing and breathing as the portal and anchor for bodily attention and feeling.  Being with horses is for me, the best way to dissolve resistance.  That is because with them, I am in a state of feeling awareness, a joyful state, a loving state.  Resistance cannot find a purchase there.  When I leave the barn, I feel like all the interstitial grit is gone.  I am rinsed clean.

Photo:  Jeffrey Anderson    Ingrid Schatz with Escorial (Pony)