The importance of learning to receive

I grew up with the expression that it is better to give than receive. I don’t agree. While it is important to be a giver, to have a practice of giving, one of the things we are missing and needing is a daily practice of receiving.

To replenish yourself when you are feeling drained, you have to be able receive.

Receiving is what allows the giving. How can someone give to you if you don’t receive? There is an energy flow that is interrupted when the receiver does not allow the gift to land in their body, mind, spirit.

To receive is to allow oneself to be part of the flow that comes from someone else. This can feel like losing control, which is scary and one of the reasons we don’t celebrate and revel in receiving. We are in another’s hands when we are receiving. We have to trust.

But do not think receiving is passive. It requires our willingness to ask for what we need, our presence in the flow. 

The smallest things can be gifts.

I’ve been feeling drained and depleted. I went to the salon for a manicure and pedicure. I received the kind touch of women massaging my hands and my feet.

The end product was less important—the well-groomed hands and ready-for-sandals toes. I felt replenished with the receiving, allowing myself to soften with the touch, to open to the flow of the giving. I am vulnerable in that moment, susceptible to injury, no longer on guard, no longer defending.

When, in the small container of receiving a face massage, a manicure, or the sight of red roofs, I soften, then I am practicing the reciprocity that creates better, more generous givers, that creates more kindness, more love.

When you are feeling drained, when you are questioning how to keep going, how to refill your empty source, replenish yourself with receiving. Allow yourself to be held, to be touched and to be supported. To feel the hands of a friend massaging your shoulders or face slowly.

To replenish, to fill up what has been drained, allow yourself to receive.

What do you need? What can you ask for? What can you receive?