My friend and I created the School of Illumination, beginning with a six-month foundation to prepare participants for deep shadow work. The advanced training, Shadow Song: A Journey Into Illumination, invites students to dig deep, study themselves, and confront the shadow.
As we guide participants through the next 12 months, I’ve decided to journey alongside them. I’m choosing to put myself first, engage fully in the coursework, and once again face my own shadow. It’s important to me to become the best version of myself I can be.
The work includes daily meditation, journal prompts, and homework activities between our monthly classes. Our first journal prompt this month focused on resistance. As I reflected, I noticed something: I’ve been resisting sitting still to meditate each day.
Throughout my life, I’ve had a steady meditation practice — sometimes even twice a day — yet I feel resistance to simply being still and quiet. I teach walking meditation, and the Kundalini yoga I love combines chanting and movement with meditation, but even these practices have fallen away lately. Hmm… what is this about?
As I prepared to meditate today, I caught myself wanting to blow my nose, clean my ears, brush my hair. Was I distracting myself with little tasks to avoid the stillness, or were these small acts part of settling into my body before I got quiet?
While journaling about this resistance, I asked my wise higher self for guidance. I was reminded of a tool we shared with our students: box breath. This simple pattern — inhale for a count of five, hold for five, exhale for five, hold out for five, then repeat — can help calm the mind and body. I decided to use box breathing as I meditated today. It worked.
At first, I kept my attention occupied by counting, breathing, and holding. As my meditation deepened, I lengthened the counts to ten, drawing my breath more fully into my body. A calm, slow rhythm emerged.
Eventually, I stopped counting. My breath continued in the same pattern, but my awareness opened to the world around me: the rustling of leaves, a distant dog barking, birds chirping, the steady song of insects. The wind moved through the trees like the breathing of the earth. Occasionally, wind chimes sang, and I felt part of it all.
I’m grateful I worked through my resistance and allowed myself this moment of connection. I’m grateful for the peace I felt afterward, and for showing up for myself despite hesitation. Will this completely dissolve my resistance? I don’t know — but I’ve found a tool to help me meet it with curiosity and move forward.
Stacy Crep 