Over the New Year, I sat a ten-day meditation retreat at IMS in Barre, MA called Embodying the Heart of Wisdom. One thing I came away with was a renewed awareness of how fractured my attention has become—something I’m pretty much always reminded of on retreat. During those days of silence, absent of phones and technology, my mind widens and my attention regains its dignity.

It can be easy to believe that the “real healing” lives somewhere beyond the resistance—that the point is to push past it and feel the feeling, because that is what’s healing. Right?

I don’t think so.

Tending to whatever is most present is healing. Healing doesn’t mean pushing through, bypassing, or trying to get beyond it. The experience of resistance is part of our wholeness and has wisdom to share.