Exploring New Ground

I'm back and I'm feeling a bit rusty this morning. I haven't kept up my writing over the past 2 weeks and I can feel myself fumbling for the thread of my next thought. Who ever said writing was an endless flow was, in my estimation - full of hooey!

There are days when I don't immediately feel the flow, when there is no pathway to grand thoughts present. On those days, my keyboard becomes my machete, clearing a path, exploring new ground all with a sense of wonder at what might lie just beyond the next sentence. Life is like that - at least living a life that is focused on moving forward rather than following the same well-worn paths- is like that.

Writing is often a powerful metaphor for how I live. When I feel stagnant, having travelled the same comfortable series of well-worn thoughts through my morning page journal or my blog, I find my life becoming stagnant too. I find myself slipping into mindless routine, watching too much gory TV and simply going through the motions. Thankfully, my tolerance for living that way is pretty low and sooner or later, I will create a diversion. Sometimes its with my full awareness that I change course and in years past, I have realized that I created many of my diversions completely outside of my conscious awareness. Catastrophe and crisis were my preferred leverage for personal evolution. All very intelligent in retrospect. Not only did this way of moving through my life shake things up, it also proved to me time and time again that I am both creative and capable of navigating anything that comes my way.

These days I am much more attuned to how my life ebbs and flows. Recognizing the repetition that set in while on vacation was soothing, I also know that its time to begin exploring some new routes again to see what new discoveries lie off my comfortable path. Certainly, that is what this entry feels like.

My first tentative steps in new exploration began around 3 am on one of my final nights in Mexico. Usually being anywhere near an ocean opens all kinds of spaces for discovery for me. Just as I was beginning to despair that this may not happen with only a day and half to go, I fell into a restless sleep only to awaken in the wee hours with the gift of a fully formed intention, right down to the nitty gritty of details such as complete business plan, 2 well written marketing brochures, a clarity about clientele and a list of needed equipment - all carefully filed in my head. Noticeable in its absence was the litany of thoughts that had been circling my brain like a quiet, poisonous mantra over the past year, in which I had been tossing up excuses as to why I shouldn't follow this particular path.

I have decided to return to Physiotherapy - but on my own terms. My terms being that I will be carving my path through the lens of autopoiesis rather than the density of a therapy model worldview. It invites me to redefine "physiotherapy" for myself in much the same way that others are re-defining "leadership", and "parenting". The letters making up these words are a quick sketch, a linguistic short-hand for notions that are familiar and based on history - a shift into the future potential they hold requires new language and a means to recognize them not as stagnant concepts but as bright, shining orbs of possibility that emerge just because we are willing to step into them with a sense of discovery rather than following those old, well-worn paths and patterns of engagement.

At the moment, I feel slightly breathless as I ponder "how" to move from the past into the future...and then I realize as I write, that I have already taken a step ..and that is into the "now". Just for this moment I can acknowledge that there is more available by being willing to consider physiotherapy differently - its not how I define myself any longer - I'm much bigger than this particular identity. Just for this moment, I can recognize that the fear of expulsion, sanctions, being thought to be crazy or some kind of heretic by my colleagues has held me in its thrall for a long time ... and its just an illusion that seems to have completely faded from view. Just for this moment, I can claim the surety and confidence and ease with which this moves through my body, unobstructed. Just for this moment, I can claim my first tentative steps off a beaten path as I fumble my way into new thoughts and insights. And in these moment, I can claim the creative, pioneering essence of who I am when I choose to stand alone and shape my world.

This shift feels like tectonic plates that began to come apart a few years ago have reconfigured themselves and are merging together creating an entirely new landscape for exploration. I can't wait to see what lies ahead as I explore this rich new territory. I am creating a new blog to publicly share my fledgling insights on health, wellness, and redefining what it is to be human. I invite you to track my journey through my new blog called Body Talk With Anita Allen and to share it with your health care providers, friends and families. Its a big conversation!