Resisting achievement

I. keep. hitting. my. elbows. on. things.  

I’m starting to get really tired of it.  

After I’d smacked my elbow on a door frame for the third time in two days, I thought, “Maybe my body is trying to tell me something.”  

Listening to your body

If foot zoning has taught me anything, it’s that our bodies are always communicating with us. When we need food, our stomachs grumble. When we need sleep, our eyes start to feel tired. When we need to cry, our throats get tight and our eyes start to water, but we don’t let the tears fall because we don’t want to show weakness (is that just me?).  

So, funny as it seems, after bruising my elbow a few times, I decided to investigate what emotions are held there.

Looking at emotions

There are two main resources I use when looking at where emotions are held: my foot zoning book from when I was a student, and “M: Collaborations with the Divine Doctor” by Jaclyn Taylor.  

Opening “Divine Doctor”, I flipped to the section about elbows. Skimming the page, my eyes got stuck on one of the emotions that could be trapped in the elbows—resisting achievement.  

I felt so called out.  

The past few months, I’ve been gearing up to launch this blog and fully commit myself to starting a steady foot zoning practice. I want to make foot zoning my full-time job. But at that moment, I realized something: I was terrified of succeeding.  

Achieving this goal would mean that my life would change. I’m not the biggest fan of change, as I’m sure is the case with most people. So, in an effort to avoid change, I was resisting achievement by dragging my feet.  

After realizing this, I recommitted to my goal of starting a full foot zoning practice and started taking steps to make it a reality. A few days later, I realized I hadn’t hit my elbow on any door frames since.  

Our bodies are communicating more than we think. Learning how to listen to what our bodies are saying and committing to act on what we discover can literally change our lives—and save our elbows.