Are you flexible?

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Your worldview is hidden from your view, hidden from your awareness.

And it is, of course. Worldview is how the world IS for you, not how it seems.

If you have a fixed worldview, than all the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men Could Not Put a new worldview for you… unless you are willing to become flexible.

Cognitive flexibility has been more broadly described as the ability to adjust one’s thinking from old situations to new situations as well as the ability to overcome responses or thinking that have become habitual and adapt to new situations.

A flexible mind leads to more peace. You’re not as stuck in your ways, and can adapt to change. You don’t always think you’re right but are curious about other people.

Flexible Thinking is a very important social skill. The ability to think flexibly helps people to get along with others, helps groups to be more effective, and helps people solve problems and or try new ways of doing things. … Cognitive Flexibility is the ability to think about something in a different way.

And it’s key to our ability to solve problems. Flexible thinking (experts may call it cognitive flexibility) allows us to shift gears and think about something in more than one way. It plays an important role in both learning and daily life.

Stuck thinking is being unable to change what we are doing or thinking based on what is happening around us. If we are stuck in our thinking we might have only one way of seeing a problem or situation, or we might follow one rule all the time, no matter where we are or what is happening around us.

It is NOT the opposite of fixed mindset…

In the case of my students, it is being locked into a certain worldview, how the world should be… and when they were little, it wasn’t that way. They declared a private war on that, decided to fight it, fix it.

Unfortunately to these people, no wrong can be fixed, because there is nothing wrong in reality.

• People shouldn’t be nice to each other, albeit life works better if they are
• There shouldn’t be harmony in the home… albeit life works a whole lot better if there is.
• Parents shouldn’t love and respect their children, albeit children grow up healthier if they do.
• Children shouldn’t be treated equally, loved equally… and if they are, good. If they aren’t… it’s and issue for the “slighted” person… but I have a secret for you: children, adults whose dominant hurt emotion is “slighted” were born with a soul correction that predicts their dominant hurt emotion: they can be the favorite, and yet feel slighted.

If you are one of those people stuck in a worldview where you are always on the wrong end of the stick, you need to learn flexibility.

Interestingly, flexibility of mind and flexibility of body are intimately connected.

I go to exercise class for people over 60 twice a week.

I watch people, because it is part of my job.

I watch them especially when the move required is a flexibility/stretching move…

90% of either groups is not flexible.

Flexibility is about the connection between body parts, the joints. And especially in old age it is “normal”, as in accepted, that older people are less flexible than younger.

But Source says that the 90% number stands for younger generations too.

I watched Elon Musk dance on a Chinese stage… consistent with his behavior in life and in business, his dance moves were flexible. No accidents.

Really.

Not accidentally, one of the exercise class leaders emphasizes flexibility exercises… because she is not flexible.

Before you can be flexible in body, you have to let go of some rigidity in your thinking.

The other teacher never works on flexibility: he works on joy… I love his classes.

I know of one method that works on flexibility, and it’s called the Trager approach to movement… Movement as a way to agelessness. The founder, Milton Trager, called his work Psychophysical Integration.

Of course when I suggest that you dance 10-15 minutes a day, I have no idea what you are going to do… although I can tell if your dance going to be a sign of flexibility or rigidity.

A number of years ago I suggested to a student that she practice moving in life like a rope-dancer. A rope dancer always needs to be aware which direction gravity is pulling them, and move the other way… but they cannot be rigid…

A few years later I suggested a student that he take several breaks a day to dance.

Both students were rigid of mind… but my instructions were incomplete, and I just checked… they are still as rigid as they were years ago.

You could also call them people of a one-track mind… And if you look, all rigidity of mind people have narrow cone of vision: they don’t even WANT to see anything outside of the narrow path they stand on.

So, as you see, becoming someone of the 10%, of the flexible ones, the ones that can CHANGE THEIR MINDS about things, about right and wrong, the way to go about things, needs several capacities and skills to develop.

But most importantly, it requires one to see the benefits.

And this is where I think I’ll lose people…

Rigid people don’t really want to change. They want the world to change, but not them.

My mother was rigid, my father was flexible. My younger brother is rigid, my older brother is flexible.

I am flexible. The moment I saw the light I moved towards it.

In a relationship it is always the rigid party who dominates, controls, keeps the other under their thumb, keeps them in line.

Two rigid people will butt heads.

Two flexible people will build something to last.

• Being flexible allows you to deviate from the well-trodden path.
• Being flexible allows you to see things differently when you look at them through different filters.
• Being flexible allows you to let go of your hurts, demands, standards, ideals, and start living in reality where nothing is wrong and nearly everything is possible.

Is there a spiritual capacity underlying the skill? Or inactive in the 90%?

It is called flexibility. As all spiritual (DNA) capacities, they turn off unless they are needed and used.

If you want it activated, you need to persuade me that you are trying to use it, unsuccessfully.

Be in a Trager class, be in my Playground, or some other way you can invent for yourself…

Of course, if you are rigid, your ability to invent is very limited.

To help “diagnosing” yourself, the soul corrections I see as predictably rigid, are Building Bridges, Sharing the Flame, Circuitry, Memories, Silent Partner and Soul Mate. I have one person of these soul correction who, during her Playground, has managed to change into flexible. One, so far.

Of course you can be rigid with any soul correction.

To close this article, let me quote from what “rigid “student wrote to me

What I really want is to be free: free to express myself openly, free to give things a go, free to make a fool of myself, free of my past, conditioning, free to breathe, free of tension, concepts, fake morals, standards, wanting to be liked… I feel like I am wearing a straightjacket most of the time.

The actions to block getting what I really want are mainly resistance in various forms. I resist by:
• spacing out into my own dream world
• withdrawing from people
• being non committal
• avoiding responsibility
• avoiding too much intimacy
• avoiding challenges
• wearing my “polite and pleasant”, “poor little me” or “know it all” masks
• demonstrating my independence
• hiding behind an anxious and “I can’t” attitude
• hiding behind my physical weaknesses
• emotional eating

Is yoga a good pathway to flexibility of mind?

Muscletest says: no. But why Trager and not yoga? Because the essence of Trager is “find what is lighter, what is softer”, while yoga is in many ways forceful… accomplishment driven. Trager is process driven, yoga is project driven. A world of difference. Project driven is rigid… not yet, not yet, not yet… while process driven is joyful.

Want to know if you are rigid or flexible? Of body and mind…? Want me to continue this line of “self-improvement? Shall I add this to the Starting Point Measurements?

Please comment below.

Author: Sophie Benshitta Maven

True empath, award winning architect, magazine publisher, transformational and spiritual coach and teacher, self declared Avatar View all posts by Sophie Benshitta Maven