“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” Goethe.
I believe it was Nelson Mandela who said that …’.people must learn to hate, so they can be taught to love.’
Similiarly, people who learn to distrust can be taught to trust?
One of my daily meditation mantras is “may I and all others trust, and be trusted”.
The breathwork, movements, postures and meditations we have been practising as a group this passed few weeks will have helped explore our deeper sense of inner trust and self belief.
I received an email, this week which very much reflects how reconnecting with that deeper sense of trust and self belief can bring about transformational change.
Here is the email copied and pasted. Below the copy and paste, I have highlighted several points that emphasise the importance of trust, in relation to pain, but also to some of our life decisions.
Dear Stuart,
I hope this mail greets you well.
I wanted to take a moment to thank you for all your kindness, guidance, help and professional support during my difficult journey through the back pain.
You may remember meeting me with the sciatica and the stiffness of my body. I do smile when I think of it and your smile every time I met you gave me strength.
After attending your educational, inspiring and practical sessions, I have been following them in practice every day in my life and as a result I am now fully recovered and leading a better life. Can you imagine me walking straight, jumping, running, sitting, cycling, exercising and doing everything in peace. Just like you said ‘you don’t want to go back to how you were, you are aiming to improve and become better’.
I feel I am better in both body and spirit thanks to your support and I can’t thank you enough for it.
Please continue to spread the kindness, knowledge and wisdom you possess to others- it does make a difference. I am a testament of it.
With grateful sunny smiles 😊,
Ola
In last week’s Blog, I mentioned how the mind (ego) is absolutely brilliant at weaving a personal ‘rational’ narative that if we hear enough times, we eventually come to believe as our reality. It creates and shapes our identity, beliefs and ultimately our actions. It creates a story of what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot expect. The use of language as discussed in the previous blog, is a very important part of how our stories are weaved and then told.
I am of that age, where many of my friends are retiring or planning retirement. Many identify strongly with their job or profession. When asked what do you do, the reply is I am teacher, or I am a builder… as opposed to replying I work as a teacher/ builder. A subtle difference in the use of language. But if you take the teacher or builder out of your storyline, you may be faced with the age old question … who am I? Some of my friends have really struggled with retirement. The ego/mind is all at sea, it has lost its anchor, its identity. This is where it might be useful to tap in to a deeper sense of trust that is beyond the touch of the rational mind.
If we go back to Ola’s email I love the use of language around pain. She describes “the” back pain, “the” sciatica and “the” back stiffness, not “my” back pain and/or “my” sciatica, or “my” back stiffness. Again a subtle difference, but very significant in terms of managing chronic pain. By labelling pain as ‘my’ pain, it infiltrates our identity and becomes part of how we percieve ourselves to be. So we become - I am a teacher in pain, as perhaps opposed to, I work as a teacher suffering from pain. The first example, the pain and the teacher are indivisible, and the second, they are two separate entities.
This may sound knit picking, but the story we tell ourselves, can look very different depending on whether we connect into that inner trust. Whether that’s a story around pain or life’s transitions, some of our unhelpful beliefs, can be dismantled and reconfigured to work for us rather than against us.
“Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.” Goethe.
I guess what appeals to me from Goethe’s quote above is that believing in yourself creates possibilities. This is what enables a shift in perspective from threat to opportunity. This shift in mindset is very apparent in Ola’s email- ‘you don’t want to go back to how you were, you are aiming to improve and become better’.
The final point I want to explore is related to another quote by Goethe :
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
So knowing and doing are two separate things.
Reading Ola's email there is a real sense of commitment to making a change . To do something about it. A transition from knowing to action. This change in my experience of both life and working as a physio is unlikely to happen unless we are fully engaged with that deep sense of inner trust. That attitude of ‘yes I can do this’. Your ego/ mind will come up with a hundred and one different reasons why you might not , but trust trumps all of these. Trust sees opportunity as opposed to threat, action as opposed to inertia.
Trusting in your own capacity holds the potential to transform:
Overwhelmed to managing
Crisis to opportunity
Resigned to confident
Isolated to supported
Fear to wisdom
Mistrust to will power.
The workshop I am running in Ringwood on Saturday 1st March( 09.00 - 13.00) will expand on this sense of trust. It will cover movement and postures that will create space for an even more expansive breathwork programme. Once trust is established then we can move into our heart space to open and soften towards our challenges. It will inspire to change the way we look at things, and then the things we look at change": If you like the sound of this workshop , then that is good also. Because sound and its vibration can change our physiology. We will be exploring how we can use sound too to create space where previously there may have been tension and rigidity. Here is a link to book your place
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