August

Dear Friends,

We have a lovely Theme for August:

In preparation for this August I just could not not remember last August. I was on the high – or so I thought – working hard and with high level of success on a mathematical problem. The mathematical result was great, but on September check it turned out that in my gung-ho-ness I have burned out my thyroid… so the result was several months recovery… As if I have never read this part of Journey of Adjustment book:

“Whenever you are facing a potential challenge, remind yourself to detach from your self-image. If you don’t, you will find yourself having all your buttons pushed and you will pounce upon your prey with huge abandon and an almighty scream, stabbing passionately with your spear!”

Lady Elizabeth asked what anyway I’ve been trying to prove by nailing that math problem. ‘That I am smarter!’, I replied. ‘This would mean that you don’t really believe that, not so?!’. Yes, in the beginning once upon a time I did not believe I am any smart and now – despite my brilliant record – this belief has not changed much. This then is what I will be doing this month: erasing a bit of it! 🙂

Please enjoy Lady Elizabeth’s honest and poignant sharing!

With all my love,
(BH)
Milen

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Dear Friends,

Happy Month! Happy August!

As we are all in the throes of either summer or winter this month, let us contemplate that concept called erasing personal history that we have as our theme for this month!

So what is personal history as defined by Théun Mares?:-

“Personal history is the self-image a man has acquired because of his view of the world – an image which he projects into the world around him. Personal history is not what a man knows about himself. It is what he has led others to believe about him, because of what he thinks about himself. Consequently, concepts such as age, place of birth and parentage can only have meaning within the context of personal history.

We are all the product of our thoughts and feelings; that is, the product of our personal history; and the circumstances in which our fate unfolds arise because we have called them forth according to our view of the world.

In order to maintain our personal history we have to justify our every action, word, feeling, and thought to those around us. If, on the other hand, we have no personal history, no explanations or justifications are necessary, for people simply accept us as they do any stranger. People only tend to question when we have led them to believe that they know us, and it is through their questioning that they start to corner us into having to justify our actions.”

This past month our theme was “living with humility”. The most stark example I have experienced has been in the hot yoga class room. This year I have been dealing with an upper leg muscle injury that led me to compensate with putting undue pressure on my knee*. When it started unduly to affect my yoga classes and then climbing stairs, I resorted to a biokineticist for rehab exercises. This helped a lot.

And then I started travelling again and headed for Europe, once there preparing for and facilitating a course in Estonia and then back to Slovakia for accounting deadlines for 5/6 weeks. In those two months I experienced little active physical movement, in stark contrast to the months and years before.

As a result, on my arrival in Varna the beginning of July, I began to fear stepping back into the hot yoga room in case the injury came back. But after another three weeks I tackled that fear and have now been very happily and cautiously attending class again, as well as walking a lot.

It is in the yoga room where I have been reduced to experiencing humility very viscerally. My muscles have lost much of their strength, my tendons shave shortened , my joints are stiff – in short LOL! it feels like I am hardly a micro millimetre out of the starting block!

And then it hit me why I was viewing this experience as a humbling one! LAMOF! (laughing at my own folly)

“Are you erasing your personal history. Yes, you are! Just take care NOT to replace one history with another! LOL! Erasing your personal history also requires you to become UNPREDICTABLE, otherwise you will simply substitute one history for another. But just remember that being unpredictable does NOT mean being irresponsible in your actions! It simply means that no sunrise finds a warrior where sunset left him or her. Every day we learn more, and as we learn so we change.“

In the past almost two weeks of practising yoga again, I have been mentally comparing myself with and battling with my self image of the body I had in that same studio a year ago! I was strong and supple and flexible – and yet at the time I see I did not think so! Now with my limited range of movement I can see I was actually bloody brilliant! Lol!

So now my next class this week I am going to approach it with an intent of unpredictability! Expect the unexpected as I erase this part of my personal history!

Have fun with the theme this month, my friends.

With all my love and trusting the process,
(BH)s
Elizabeth

*Knee Joint		Lack of fluidity with respect to humility and understanding
Knees		Need for fluidity in perception/Lack of