I moved 8 feet away from him and sat against the wall. I sat holding the intention of holding his ground and allowing him to be in a place where he was ready to ask for help. He has been fighting himself, figuratively and literally. His body was filled with anxiety and he couldn’t hold still. I had given him all of the gentle leading cues and questions but he was avoiding them, which he had done for most of his life. I knew that he was capable of doing the work, he had the tools, he had the support, he had the emotional and mental stability to look at the thing that he was avoiding and more than that, he had the desire to heal and live a different life.

In the space that I created both physically and metaphorically, he felt uncomfortable. I watched his body move differently. I watched his breathing change. I watched his surrender. He opened his eyes and looked for me, knowing that I was no longer sitting next to him. When his gaze found me, against the wall only a couple of feet away, he smiled and asked if I could come back.

This time, he was ready. He was ready to look at the difficult thing, the painful thing, the thing that shifted so much of his life and the way he showed up in the world. He was ready to run at this trauma rather than running away. We spoke about how he had already gotten to see what running away from the trauma did and I asked if running away got him the results that he wanted, knowing the answer already. He made the decision to try running towards the trauma and see if that got different results, ones that felt more aligned and allowed for the life that he wanted.

He closed his eyes, I placed my hand on his forehead over his third eye and he allowed himself to slip into meditation with the intention of seeing his childhood trauma and just like that, he picked healing over running away and just like that, his life began to change.