Have you ever experienced steady progress or growth in an area of your life only to see the “progress” come to a screeching halt? If you’re like me, you most likely have experienced this in many different areas of your life at one time or another. It’s as if you’re traveling on an unimpeded highway, reaching various destinations along the path, stopping for a while to explore, then moving right along to see what’s ahead, and suddenly finding the road blocked by a concrete wall that you can neither climb over nor go around. The only way to progress is to break through the concrete! My guess is that some people may stand behind this concrete wall for months, years, or even a lifetime, because when we hit the wall, we can’t see a way around it based on our current perspective.
In order to break through the concrete and continue to grow in any area of your life, you may need to let go of old “things” that are denying you of your own power to chisel through the wall. This may mean letting go of old habits, beliefs, behaviors, material goods, physical toxins, or relationships that don’t serve you.
Over the past three months, I’ve had to let go of fake friends. I’ve had to change up my daily routine, establish new habits, and develop a new vision statement. By taking these actions which pulled me out of my comfort zone, my body broke through physical “concrete” and opened up to two new backbending poses that I had never even thought would ever be possible for me.
The point is that whenever your personal growth and progress come to a halt, you must let go of something in order to proceed. If you don’t clear the clutter yourself, something will likely happen in your life that will shake things up a bit until you learn to let go of those relationships, habits, beliefs, or material objects that are keeping you from realizing what you are truly capable of. No one and nothing can hold you back if you refuse to make them a part of your life.
In Chinese Medicine theory, when you hit a wall or a plateau in any area of your life (including healing), this is a symptom of “qi stagnation.” If qi (commonly translated as energy, though there is no exact synonym in the English language) becomes stagnant, it can physically manifest as pain, discomfort, menstrual irregularities, irritable bowel syndrome, or lethargy. If it remains stagnant for a long period of time, it can transform into “blood stagnation,” which can physically manifest as heart disease, cancer, endometriosis, infertility, Alzheimer’s disease, fibromyalgia, migraine headaches, or any kind of chronic pain.
The Chinese Herbal Medicine way to address qi stagnation is to use qi moving foods, herbs, and movement exercises to unblock the qi. For blood stagnation, very potent blood moving herbs are used. Moving the stagnation on the physical level can help you break through stagnation in other areas of your life such as your career, relationships, financial situation, or faith.
Likewise, changing some situation in your life such as starting a new career, renewing your faith in God, letting go of toxic people in your life, or manifesting change in your finances (setting a budget, paying off debt, donating money to charity, etc.), can help you break through physical stagnation in your body (stalled weight loss, health challenges, slowed athletic progress, injuries, etc.).
One way to move qi stagnation on the physical level is to do a cleanse that will assist your body in detoxifying from a variety of chemicals including Bisphenol A and phthalates(found in plastic), polychlorinated biphenyls (a banned substance used in oils, adhesives, and paints), insecticides, herbicides, mycotoxins, obesogens, and other substances you come into contact with every day. These substances get stored in your fat cells when your body’s natural detoxification methods gets overwhelmed by the amount of chemicals you encounter. When toxins that you have been storing for years finally get released from your fat cells and eliminated through your sweat, stool, and urine, physical stagnation is cleared and oftentimes long-term health conditions also get released. The cleanse that I recommend is a combination of six products described here: http://www.paleocleanse.net/21-day-detox-and-cleansing-program/. The products taste good and are loaded with whole foods nutrition to keep you from feeling hungry. They assist in detoxification by providing massive amounts of nutrients that support all three phases of detoxification involving the liver and kidneys.
