Finding Flow In Your Life

Restoring flow on the planet, and in your body

A few years ago, I went to a river restoration site in the USA. The facilitator explained something so simple and so obvious, that it landed in my body like a revelation. 

When the water curves in its natural S-shaped path, the ecosystem is diverse and alive. The slow edges become nurseries where salmon spawn. The deeper middles become steady migratory routes for fish swimming upstream. The gentle bends create pockets of rest, pockets of speed, pockets of nourishment. Everything works, because everything flows. 

If a human intervenes to place concrete on either side and force this river into a straight line, the water accelerates with unnatural speed - too fast for fish and plant life to be sustainable. The life disappears because the flow is interrupted.

I felt sad when I heard this. All I could think was: This is what humans have done to themselves. Anywhere you look on the planet, there are signs of human blocks. It is not from maliciousness, but from a profound lack of understanding - birds that lose their migratory patterns due to telephone lines, fish losing habitat due to industrial overfishing, entire forests so barren that the soil can’t breathe. Is there any system that remains unblocked by humans? 

Fortunately, life pulses and thrives with resilience despite the things that humans throw at it. 

I do not blame humans. I blame no one, and no thing. We must understand that we exist with serious limitations. These limitations are energetic, emotional, material, and physiological. We are trying to navigate energetic realities that are so saturated that sometimes, we do not know which way is up, and which way is down. 

For many years, my body and mind reflected that walled-in river. Fluids, nerves, cells, and muscles did not have a proper place to go with all the blocks in the way. It took me years to understand that my personal blocks were a microcosm of a planet stuck in a traffic jam. I thought the blocks in my life were “normal.” Blocked intuition, memory, energy, and ambition. The blocked ability to do simple tasks without feeling they were mountainous. I thought it was just a part of the human condition, but it isn’t.

Flow is the natural state, blocks are the interruption. 

Flow is not something you fight for, but something you must remove obstacles to reveal. Thinking back on that restoration project, I can see the inherent limitations in the project itself. People, under-resourced and low capacity, were showing up to push rocks aside without truly knowing what they were trying to achieve. Maybe it would have been better if they had stayed in bed, and processed their own internal blocks and existential pain. 

Flow can always be restored. Flow will be restored, long after we are gone, whether we like it or not. It is up to you to choose whether you move with the flow of life, or against it.