What are you carrying?

I don’t know what popped the idea into my head, maybe it’s the backpack that I have just carried across France, maybe it’s the children that will descend on their neighbours tonight hoping for a treat rather than a trick. But all day I have been pondering the different postures that we assume depending on what we are carrying.

Talk to an older parent about how carrying their children on one hip literally changed the shape of their spine. When we carry something for a long time it begins to shape us.

Children walking around the neighbourhood to collect treats might carry a basket with them. If so, they will need to keep it level so that the precious cargo won’t fall out. If they carry a bag, that will change the way that they walk. They won’t have to be so careful.

Bag or basket, there’s a high chance that the children will hold both hands out in front of them to receive the lollies. This is the posture of receiving.

Those neighbours handing out treats will also extend their hands to give their gift. There is a posturing toward each other when we exchange gifts.

However, if you’re carrying baggage around from the past, you have a few options:

Sling it around your shoulders and you will eventually develop uneven muscles causing tension in your body. Picking up that burden and carrying it with you day by day will shape you.

Carry it on your back and the weight of it will affect your energy levels. You might remain fairly even, but the extra weight will still create tension in your back or your hips – wherever you are stabilising the extra weight. You can put the weight down and reposition it from time to time, but if that baggage is coming with you, you have to manage the strain.

Carry it in a suitcase with wheels and you ease the burden somewhat. The thing is that you have to remember it every time you want to move. You can park it for a while but to take it with you, it needs to stay a priority in your thinking. The issue comes when the ground gets uneven or you’re trying to get into a vehicle or go through some sort of change; suddenly the weight of it makes those transition moments challenging.

If you come to a place narrow place, take care! Turn without thinking and the bag on your back or over your shoulder might swipe somebody beside you.

That suitcase takes up the space of a whole person when you’re wheeling it down an aisle or trying to get through a door.

From our travels recently, I can tell you that walking without baggage is so freeing!

At first it feels so light, but soon your body adjusts and walking without baggage becomes a new normal:

Your muscles can move without restriction. Any tension that you carried can be eased with stretches or a massage and your body can rebalance. Without the stretches though, your body will hold the tension that it developed by carrying the baggage, so be sure to move in different ways and allow your body to remember what moving was like before it got used to carrying the baggage. If it’s sore or restricted, take time to rub and stretch the tension out – with help if needed – so that your body can heal.

You will find that you have more energy. Without the baggage you will be able to move faster or make more progress than you could before. You still cover the same ground, but you can do it with ease.

Suddenly, you’ve freed up headspace. No longer do you have to reserve a spot for remembering that baggage, you can let it go completely, perhaps even forget about it every now and then.

When the road gets bumpy or a time of transition comes along, a chance to get in a car or navigate a train station with its steps and escalators. Simple. You can get where you need to go without lugging anything along beside you.

You are in a tight space and you need to turn. Amazing! You can turn without taking anyone else out.

These are the advantages of letting go of our baggage.

If you have been shaped by carrying a burden, consider the affects of that burden.

Sometimes we carry a burden for something positive either long term or short term.

In the long term, we carry that child until they are able to move about independently. We carry a dream until it comes to fruition.

Shorter term, we might carry a gift that we have prepared to share. Perhaps we are the support for another and we walk alongside them for a season. Perhaps we are gathering resources for something in the future and it involves to-ing and fro-ing and lots of short term lifts.

What is it that you carry?

Are you offering or receiving a gift with your hands extended?

Are you carrying a burden that creates tension, saps your energy, takes up your headspace and sometimes hurts those around you?

Are you carrying something of value that is worth the way that it will shape you and leave its mark?

We all carry things from time to time, it is a part of life. Those things leave their mark.

What is it that has shaped you? Is that something that you want to continue carrying and stewarding or is it something that you will put down and heal from?

What has shaped you in the past doesn’t have to shape your future. You can let go of the past and take hold of something that will shape you in a more positive way. Our bodies are always changing and rebuilding. You are not stuck with the way things have been.

What do you choose to carry that will shape you from this point forward?

Something to consider. This is my gift to you.