One of the best things we did this summer at the retreat for the Institute of Energy Medicine (AKA- The Healer Training Program) was an exercise called the Trust Fall. The basic idea is something we do in the Healer Training Program every year. You stand with your back to someone, cross you arms over your chest and fall backwards. You only have to fall back about a foot or so and the other person catches you.
In the retreat we upped the ante considerably. We set up a massage table, at the highest setting it could go, about four feet high. Under it were two mattresses and some pillows. All along the mattresses a row of people knelt with their arms out, to catch you.
For some reason, I volunteered to go first. (It’s a teacher thing… Plus I wanted to try it.) So I got up on the table and looked out on the lake. I felt more afraid then I thought I would. I am the teeniest afraid of heights and although four feet isn’t a far way to fall, you can feel the space underneath you.
The trick is to keep your body and hips very rigid and straight like a board and fall as straight as you can, backwards. You lean back with your shoulders and lead with you heart. It requires a moment of total surrender; of opening the heart and letting go of everything your mind tells you to do.
My mind said… “What are you crazy? I could DIE doing this! What if they don’t catch you? You are actually going to trust people? That’s nuts. I hate pain, you know. Plus, as your mind, I am shut up in the pretty fragile egg-like cranium that doesn’t like getting smashed on hard surfaces, by the way… (duh)”
Well, I have never been all that good at listening to my mind. It’s easier to listen to my heart. My heart, being a rather simple creature, just said. “Wheeee!” and back I went, without a hesitation.
There was a brief moment of free fall and whoosh, my peeps caught me and I was laying in their arms on a squishy mattress. I felt so tingly and alive. There was a huge rush of energy afterwards as the adrenaline left my system. I felt totally jacked and juiced on being ALIVE.
It totally made me get why people do extreme thrill seeking sports. Bungee jumping. Sky diving. Rock climbing. I get it. Pushing through your fear and your blocks creates amazing openings in your energy field. I felt totally cleared out, as if I just had a healing. And it lasted for days!
It was very interesting to see how the rest of the class approached this experience. Some people loved it. Other people cried, trembled and freaked out, in proportion to how hard it was for them to trust that they would be held. Could it be that they would be supported and that other people are actually safe?
Your body will tell you that it does not trust the process by making your butt stick out as you fall. The hardest thing to do is fall straight as a board, since it means falling heart open, heart first.
We would all watch, and if there was a bend in the waist at all, some one would call out, “Butt! That was all butt! Get back on that table and try it again!”
Everyone was able to do it and the people that who had the most fear and the most resistance also experienced the most exhilaration and freedom after pushing through their fear.
The trust fall was one of the best parts of the retreat. I wondered what it would be like to move through your whole life like it was a trust fall. Isn’t your whole life like falling back without seeing where you were going? Will the universe support me?
Ever since we did that exercise, I have been thinking about how trusting I am. It’s one thing to SAY you trust the world, you trust the process, or God or your own soul. But it’s another thing to put your money where your mouth is and really lay it on the line.
What would I do that I am not doing now if I could cross my arms, close my eyes and go? What messages am I hearing from my own guidance that I am ignoring since it would require that much trust to do?
Rhys always says that most people ignore their own psychic messages because we don’t really want to hear what the message is. Those real lightening flashes of spirit coming to you with a message almost always require that you do something dramatic, something that means you have to CHANGE.
For me it happened one morning years ago, when I woke up and while I was still in that hazy twilight zone between waking and sleep, I heard a voice loud and clear.
“You are going to get divorced. Get ready.”
It was a horrible thing to contemplate. My daughter was a baby, only a year old and the boys were three and five. I hadn’t worked in years. How was I going to do that? Plus, I loved my husband, didn’t I? I wasn’t the TYPE of person to get divorced. I didn’t believe in it. I was a working it out type of person.
I resisted and resisted. I wiggled and squirmed away from that truth. I did everything I could to make that not happen, couples therapy, workshops, books more and more therapy. And then three years later, almost to the date, I got divorced.
That was the trust fall for me. I had no idea how I was going to manage, it made no sense at all. I just had to close my eyes and jump off the cliff. I had a dream that I was standing on the edge of a cliff and I was going to step off. I remember the terror I felt, the fear of falling, failing and the unknown.
Then in my dream, an angel came to me. It said, “You have to trust this. You have to take a leap of faith. In order to get something different, you have to let go of what you have and embrace the unknown. There is so much out there, things you can’t even imagine, but you will never get there if you can’t let go. Let go. Let go. Let go…”
And so, I stepped off the cliff and instead of falling down and smashing on ground, I flew up. That angel was right. There was no way I could have imagined what my life is now, from where I was then. It did require faith. And it was so hard and so right.
What is your trust fall? What guidance are you getting that you don’t listen to? The crazy thing is, that if you never let go and try, you will never know…
