When I tell You You are Stuck

What do I mean when I diagnose someone as being stagnant, clenching or having stuck qi?  It sounds so foreign and so intuitive all at once. And I see it all around.  I've written articles with checklist of symptoms you get from it, I've quoted classical texts on the source of it, I've written countless reports of finding explaining how things get stuck, what happens when they are stuck, ways to keep them from getting stuck and ways to get them unstuck, yet until today I never took the time to feel, just with my heart and in my gut what being stuck is.  And I feel like I've been dancing with a partner for these last (how could it be!?) nearly 10 years and we've become pretty good partners... I know qi stagnation, I know the steps, I know the rhythm, I know how it moves... but today I feel something shifting inside me, and I feel as though for the first time I am letting go of thinking of the steps and instead feeling the emotion of the music, the heartbeat of this partner of mine and this is how the lub dub of qi stagnation is feeling to me:

When you are running from place to place, thing to thing, when your mind is two steps ahead of where you are right now, when your mind is ten steps ahead of where you are right now this is stuck.  When you feel like you are barely treading water and are going down if you don't keep going as fast and hard and with as much will as you can muster, this is stuck.

When you can't not do, when you can't shut it off, when you can't stop.  When you can't not...

When you want something to change that you are completely powerless to change, I mean REALLY change.  When you keep bumping up against the edges of something that you are trying to control and it doesn't give, and you bump, bump, bump, trying different angles trying different techniques; or when you keep slamming up against something that you are trying to control - trying pure force yet it is still unyielding or gives just enough to make you feel like slamming against it again is a good idea, you are stuck.  Maybe you know you can't change it REALLY change it, but you don't know anything else to do.  Maybe you don't know you can't change it and you just think you haven't figured out the magic combination, solution, cut out the right thing, added in the right thing, talked to the right person....

You are clenching. When you can't let go, when letting go feels like giving up or forgetting or walking away, and how could you give up, forget or walk away.  This is stuck. When you have so much history it has become you, even the parts you know aren't really you, or so much that you don't know anymore what is this and what is you.  This is stuck.

When you held something, but it wasn't long enough, when you aren't holding something and your arms and heart long to, when you don't want to hold onto something anymore when it is too heavy too big, too unwieldy and dangerous, you are stuck.  When you felt smaller and more wrecked and vulnerable than you ever knew was possible and can't get back to the place you were before because your world shifted. When you want to yell, scream, kick and holler because how could everything and everyone else go on when this is what you know and this is what you've lived and this is what you are living and why, why!? Why isn't everyone else...  This is stuck.

When it hurts.  Really hurts.  When things ache, when it is stabbing, when it comes and goes and catches you off guard, when it keeps you on guard.  When you can't move.  When you are painted into a corner. When this is in your heart.  When this is in your head.  When this is here, and here, and here and here too, when this is all over.  This is stuck.

When changing is too hard, you are too in a rut, it is too big, scary, dangerous, foreign, when changing feels too alone, when staying feels safe, when staying is what you know. You are stuck.  When you are one moment away from coming unhinged, all that pressure blowing up, exploding, hurting you, hurting others... this is stuck.

And being stuck is hard.  It is sad, frustrating, lonely, it can keep you up at night, make you want to sleep all day, make you want to yell and rant, make you want to bottle it up and shut it away, make you feel like a louse, make you feel disappointed in yourself and in others.  Scream, cry, sigh, sob. This is being stuck.

And I know the steps, I know the rhythm, there are ways to offset, to ease up, to prevent and to undo it.  But for just right now, listen to the heartbeat of what stuck is in you and honor that it is there and how it feels deep, deep in your body, in your heart, in your soul.  The steps will unfold, awareness is always the first step.