What the body knows about reality, resistance and receiving
I've always known how to push. Learning to soften has taken me much longer.
Chinese medicine has words for this: yin and yang. The words first described the two sides of a hill. Yin was the shady side. Yang was the sunny side. Same hill, different light.
Yang is fire. It's doing, pushing, producing, fixing. Yin is water. It's resting, receiving, softening, flowing. They're two halves of one whole, and we feel our best when there's room for both.
I lived on the sunny side of that hill for a long time, so tightly wound in a yang-dominated state. When I discovered ball therapy as a healing modality, it felt like a long drink of water after years in the sun. Think of it as a deep but gentle massage. My body was hungry for that kind of slow, steady pressure. It changed how I live every day, and it's a big part of why I do this work. I don't think I'm alone. Most of us rarely let the water in.
Receiving Reality
This past weekend, I had the privilege of leading a myofascial release session at Receiving Reality, a one-day retreat hosted by Clarehouse and facilitated by Dr. Jennifer Clark. Clarehouse is a true gift to Tulsa. It offers a loving home and end-of-life care to people in need, free of charge and funded entirely by donations. Opening a day like this to the public is one more way they care for our community.
The heart of the day was simple, and not so easy. A lot of our suffering doesn't come from what happens to us. It comes from fighting what is.
We like to sort life into neat piles: success or failure, joy or grief, certain or uncertain. We hang on to what we want and push away what we don't. But real life rarely fits into either/or. It keeps asking us to make room for both/and. Yin and yang are already both/and. Fire and water belong together.
The people in the room
I spent the day with an inspiring group, mostly women and one man. It was a unique mix of people: caregivers looking after aging parents, people grieving a loss, whether someone they love or the body they used to have, nurses and hospice workers who give so much to their patients and often very little to themselves, and a five-time cancer survivor.
I recognized something familiar in many of them: the instinct to keep going, to take care of what's in front of them, even when their own bodies might be asking for something different. I think most of us are grieving something, whether we've named it or not. And so many of us are better at caring for others than allowing ourselves to be cared for.
Where resistance lives
I'm a teacher, but I'm still very much a student. One thing this work keeps teaching me is that resistance isn't just an idea. It shows up in the body, too.
When your body senses a threat, it does what it's designed to do. It braces, holds its breath, and tightens up. The nervous system stays on alert. That's the sympathetic nervous system doing its job, helping us get through difficult situations. But when you're a caregiver, or someone who's been through a long stretch of uncertainty or loss, that state of readiness can become familiar. You stay prepared because somebody needs you. There's always something to do, someone to look after, something to manage.
You can't force a body to stop guarding. You can only offer it some safety and wait.
Fascia and grief
Fascia is the continuous web of connective tissue that surrounds and connects everything from head to toe. If you follow me, you know studying fascia is my jam. It's also rich in sensory nerve endings, making it an important part of how we experience ourselves from the inside.
Grief can show up in the body in ways we don't always recognize. It might be a tight chest, a belly you can't quite let go of, or a breath that never seems to get all the way down. Sometimes the body tells a story before we're quite ready to put it into words.
Making room to soften
All we used was a mat, a Coregeous ball, and a blanket. We spent time on the floor with the ball, working with the back, sides, belly, and chest. The ball is soft and squishy, and you don't have to do much. You simply let some of your weight sink into it and give yourself time.
Then we added diaphragmatic breathing. As the diaphragm moves down, the belly and lower ribs expand. With the ball beneath us, we could feel that movement against the gentle pressure. When breath and pressure work together, we begin to notice where we're holding, where we're bracing, and where we might be able to let go.
We also worked with a longer, unforced exhale, a little like releasing a valve. Slow breathing, particularly when the exhale is comfortable and unhurried, can help support the parasympathetic side of the nervous system. Heart rate can slow, and the body can shift out of that constant state of readiness.
Water plays a role here, too. Fascia is richly hydrated tissue. You might think of it as a sponge: pressure and movement influence the way fluid moves through the tissue, and as pressure releases, fluid can redistribute. Yin is water. In a way, so are we.
When the ball found a tender spot, I asked everyone to notice what happened. Did they brace or hold their breath? Could they stay with the sensation, breathe, and soften a little? That's part of receiving reality in a very practical way. Rather than immediately trying to change what we're feeling or push through it, we slow down, notice what's there, and give ourselves a little room.
I think that's one of the things I love about this work. Fascia, breath, grief, and the nervous system aren't separate conversations. They're all part of how we experience being in our bodies.
A little more than physical
Somewhere in all of this, the work becomes more than physical for me. In Hebrew, the word ruach can mean breath, wind, or spirit. I love that connection. Every long exhale is a small act of letting go and trusting the next breath will come.
We don't earn support from a ball, from each other, or from something greater than ourselves. It's grace. Maybe that's why receiving can be so difficult for those of us who are accustomed to doing. We're good at showing up, taking care of things, and figuring out what's next. Letting ourselves be supported is another matter. But we need that, too.
What they taught me
I came to teach, and I left inspired by what they taught me. These are people who spend their days holding everyone else up. For a little while, they let something hold them.
I've thought about that since the retreat. We spend so much of our lives trying to manage what happens next, hold things together, and keep moving. Sometimes we need a little space to breathe, to feel what's happening inside, and to allow ourselves to receive some of the care we so readily give to others.
If you spend most of your days on the sunny side of the hill, I'd love to share some water with you. Join me for myofascial release at Updog Yoga in Tulsa, Sundays at 4:00 and Tuesdays at 11:00, or reach out about a private session HERE.
