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Streams flow into your head
It turns out that our intellect can appear in the places where it does not have to be, but it still has responded to us. The general message of this task could be formulated the following way: “My attention, return from the places where you are not supposed to be!”
While you are working on this task, you will feel the flow into your head while many different objects fall back into their place. They will be used as fuel for your body, and they may enter through the wide opening in your head and then move from to your body.
Such work can become useful not only at the level of your head, but also at the level of your soul.
Strength, given away by mistake, will flow back to your chest. It means that what used to “lure’ you, but was unreal, will let you be, and your strength attached to these emotions will be set free, too.
We will realize the following: “I am being filled with energy. It is being transformed into its original state. It feels so good and pleasant! I am myself again. My attention and my soul have returned to their place from numerous attachments and commitments. Now, I feel more like myself than ever before! I can invest my energy in the direction I choose, and that is great news!”
Putting the bone back into the joint again
Sometimes, the participants of the seminars when trying to concentrate find out that the energy of their attention is very far away, light years away. However, even in cases like these, nothing prevents you from deciding if this attention is justified. Getting your attention back into your body is always a very pleasant sensation. In some way, it reminds me of putting the bone back into the joint. The moment of putting it back requires patience and attention, but then everything falls back into its place.
In certain cases, when a person needs to get his or her soul back, they need to travel to the sky: feeling desperate to find happiness on earth, souls try to find it elsewhere. These are special cases.
If there are any complications
Getting to “see’ your sensations requires time. If it does not seem to work right away, you need to make the first go, then switch to another task, and then again return to self-observation, but it must be done without any tension or pressure. Your sensations will eventually show through. The whole idea of perception of one’s body and space is natural and available to everyone. Even if you have never practiced anything like this, you will quickly realize that your sensations are always close to you and you can see and understand the processes within the realm of your consciousness.
Tensions, caused by the fact that some of your needs have not been satisfied or by some unaddressed traumas, “muffle’ our finer sensations. Nevertheless, it not the reason to give up; it is an invitation to face those louder tensions and contour distortions and work them through. This is exactly what we are going to do now.
PEACE OF MIND AND INTEGRITY OF THE SOUL
Tensions and traumas
The soil and the seed
The information we learn can have a different fate in our body and it is not always fortunate. There is a parable about a seed in the New Testament.
Matthew, Ch. 13, 3—8
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. When the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown”.
This parable is about the fate of the word on the Kingdom of Heaven.
Turning a seed into a crop 100 times means being good soil capable of taking in the grain of truth, let it root and grow. “The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” (Ibid, v. 31—32)
We are talking about knowledge of the language. Its successful development means the same: 1) taking care of the soil so that it could accept the seeds of knowledge; 2) sowing these seeds; 3) subsequent cultivation of the tree to the moment “the birds of Heaven come’, i.e. till getting a visible result.
One needs peace of mind
Being successful in the learning process corresponds to the calm but active state of the central nervous system (CNS) and to the balanced functioning of the autonomous nervous system (ANS): both its sympathetic and parasympathetic parts. The latter system is also referred to as autonomic since it is responsible for energetic processes. The smooth functioning of different levels and parts of the nervous system contributes to the stamina in a learning process and life in general. However, chronic stress of the sympathetic part, so-called sympathoadrenal conditions and hyperexcitation, leads to fatigue, exhaustion, and decreases educability.
In practice, we sometimes encounter cases of extreme conditions when one is too exhausted and too reserved. In cases like these, learning something new is highly difficult even, if one tries really hard. In such a state, a person is like a stony dry soil from the parable as mentioned above. More than that, this soil can be “littered’ with weeds of harmful impressions, which crawled into our mind at the early stages of life and studying. You need to weed the field of our mind and expand it if you want to cultivate useful knowledge on it.
Two sources of stress
Stress has two causes: adaptation to the new and old trauma
Stress of adaptation is a reaction of mobilization, which appears in different periods of life when one finds him/herself in new circumstances without prior preparation for them. It does not concern dramatic events only. Starting school, which is natural absolutely, can turn out to be the cause of stress. When this event is long gone, your autonomic nervous system (ANS) “remembers’ how much stress it caused you and cannot calm down.
Congestive reactions of the autonomic nervous system as tension, anxiety, lack of confidence, irritability, anger, rage, and even fury can appear at different stages of life:
– separation from parents at very young age;
– entering kindergarten or school, changing schools or moving houses;
– changes in the family (death of the family member, separation and divorce, new members of the family, birth of a new member of the family)
– fights between parents and other specific conditions in childhood;
– changing physiology;
– entering university;
– starting a job;
– birth of a child;
– changing jobs and positions;
– information concerning health problems;
– retirement (also the cause of stress).
These seemingly regular events disturb our nervous system; adapting to them does not happen right away and results in prolonged energetic “restlessness’, which appears once and then automatically remains there.
Another category of conditions that consumes body energy is the consequences of psychological traumas such as fright, deceit, betrayal, and loss. These are more serious situations than simply facing something new and adapting to it. These are the situations when a body is affected all of a sudden and reaction to them remains in the autonomic contour of the person, even when the events are long gone.
Atlas of emotional experience
Consequences of psychological trauma and chronic stress tend to “settle in’ our body and then build up. Each of such experience has a corresponding set of sensations and levels of the body that it affects. As a response to the lack of competence, we get a lack of confidence; when a problem remains unresolved, we worry; when our future looks uncertain, we experience anxiety; and when we get frightened, we have fear. We feel annoyed because of someone’s constant moralizing; we feel offended when we are disappointed, and our expectations do not match the reality; we experience anger and rage when someone is rude to us; and we want revenge when someone betrays or cheats us.
Fig. 11. The head: anxiety in the forehead, irritation in the temples, control in the occiput; the shoulders: the burden of responsibility; the throat: resentment, self-pity in response to disappointment, deception; the chest: worry, indignation; the stomach: fear, anger.
Fig. 12. The direction of impact received during the trauma.
Traumas are the following: fright, disappointment, offence, betrayal, infidelity, and loss.
The tendency of its progression is the increase of tension till it reaches the level of “sympathoadrenal status’, which may even lead to “the syndrome of burnout’, a condition difficult and sometimes even impossible to restore from. A person gradually turns into a “squeezed lemon’, and in these circumstances, learning something new is absolutely out of the option.
Fig. 13. Gradual loss of balance, accumulation of stress in the course of life.
One needs systematic work
Both stress excessive activation and traumas are to be worked through. The way to do it quickly and efficiently is described in my books “Objects in the Body” (Ermoshin, A., 1999, 2004, 2007, 2013), “Geometry of Emotions (2008, 2013), “Phobias, Disappointments, and Losses” (2010, 2011, 2014). We will recapitulate the key moments in this book as well. The general algorithm of work in its updated version is adduced in the Introduction.
In order to “harness’ stress and return the body to its peace, one needs to perform a series of tasks. To restore the balanced functioning of sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic nervous system and brain, one has to do a number of self-regulation episodes by the method of psychocatalysis where each of these episodes brings you closer to the normal condition.
Fig. 14 Gradual recuperation of the normal functioning as a result of successful self-regulation by the method of psychocatalysis.
In this book, we will focus on the cases connected with education, and we will analyse only a couple of cases of general de-neurotisation and de-traumatisation.
Setting oneself free from stress and trauma when working with languages
We will concentrate our attention on the following aspects:
– Working through the consequences of the first encounter with a foreign language and the stress of the early stages of developing linguistic competence:
– Traumas and reactions connected with the perception of the language.
– Traumas and reactions connected with the attempts to speak and with practice in general.
– Working through the traumatic experience of communication with teachers.
– Working through basic neuroticism with its roots in personal history.
– Working through the negative influence of the ancestral and national experience.
Stress of the first encounter
The first encounter with a new language is dumbfounding. There is nothing to hold on to when you try to understand it. All you have is the sound, which does not make any sense.
Ta-ta-ta
This is how Italians describe the sound of the Russian speech: “Ta-ta-ta.”
There is yet another phenomenon: when we are faced with something big, even if it’s breathtakingly beautiful, it can make you feel dizzy. One feels unwell primarily because of the amount of the new information. A big exhibition can cause such a state. One needs time to get a grip, calm down, and then “consume’ it step-by-step.
Hit by a ball in the stomach
Lyubov describes her first encounter with the language as being hit by a ball in the stomach. The ball bounced back. She did not have time to react and couldn’t catch it. The feeling of tension remained.
Some years later, being an adult, she returns to this topic, she understands that she could have taken in the language not as one big ball, but as many little ones. The tension goes away22.
Almost everyone experiences the stress of different intensity at the beginning of learning a language. This stress is written into our psychosomatic contour, even years later, as a kind of “background.” That is why many people, even when they already have linguistic experience, try to avoid situations when they have to speak or understand. Here are a couple of examples.
A plate in the forehead
Datse sees her fear of making a mistake as plates in the upper part of the forehead. She had to “stand on them’ with her attention to make them melt23.
Feeling tense
Another participant of the seminar whose name is Eugenia, confesses: “I do not allow myself to make any mistakes. I don’t speak: I feel embarrassed, I feel tense and lost. I create this stiffness myself as I don’t let myself say anything unless I know it perfectly well.” The importance of the task is much higher! Communication has the highest priority, as well as the resolution of any practical issues; it’s not a competition or exhibition of linguistic achievement.
This conversation sets the beginning of working through the fear of making a mistake24.
Along with stress, traumas can also be possible. I will describe a couple of cases together with the way we worked through them. This will prepare us for further work together.
In the introduction, I mentioned that a conversation with an English teacher killed my interest towards Italian. Here is a short summary of this story.
The rooster is killed
When I was learning Italian and was feeling quite enthusiastic about it, I told one English teacher about it. She started saying that learning English was much more important, necessary, and more promising.
After this conversation, I suddenly felt that my interest towards Italian seemed to have died out. The textbook, which I thought was so nice and lively, lost its magic.
I began my internal observations to find out what had exactly happened because of this conversation. Italian had been developing as an energetic rooster in my stomach; it actively absorbed everything that had to do with this language: words, expressions, intonations, etc. What did I see with my inner vision? The rooster was killed!
I had to take the dagger out of the rooster, bring it back to life, and learn this lesson: language teachers can experience some sort of jealousy; do not tell everyone about your success, do not share too much! Share your achievements only with those who can feel genuinely happy for you! (If there are such people.)
When your skills become advanced, then you can tell everyone!
“No matter how much effort you put into this, you will never speak like a Russian”
A participant of the seminar in Moscow, her name is Svetlana, has been trilingual with Russian, Ukrainian, and Arabic though Russian has never been her primary language. She has been carrying a phrase once said by a teacher whose opinion was very important to Svetlana: “No matter how much effort you put into this, you will never speak like a Russian.”
We confirm the situation.
“Where did that phrase go and what does it look like inside?”
“It’s like a splinter in my heart.”
“What is your plan: will you continue carrying it or have you had enough of it?”
“Of course, I’ve had enough.”
“Then observe what is happening.”
“It has fallen into pieces and come out as bubbles through the top of my head.”
“It looks like it has left you the same way it came in. Quite often people seem surprised that everything negative comes out through the head, the top of it. It’s like a hatch, which opens up, and then everything that got inside by mistake comes out.”
“The wound on my heart is healing.”
“It sometimes happens that closer to the end of the healing process, there’s the sensation that someone touched the wound with a brush, and then everything smoothed.”
Svetlana draws another breath. I ask her:
“Where is the new understanding of the situation? You speak Russian very well, and with every new day, you will speak even better.”
“It’s like a light-coloured cloudlet above me.”
“Isn’t it time this cloudlet came where it belongs, to your suffering heart?”
Svetlana observes how the cloudlet envelops her, gets absorbed by her skin, and then reaches her heart.
Svetlana feels calm. She opens her eyes25.
What do we do to update the state we are in?
Here is a template for such kind of work. In order to work with the discovered unnecessary formations, we use the following questions: “Is there anything that prevents me from speaking the language I need? Where is it? What does it look like?”
If there is anything that seems disturbing, you will find it in a particular place and in the form of a particular object.
Then you decide if you want to keep nurturing it or it is time to stop. If you choose to stop and you do not want to nurture it anymore, then you observe how it dries out to its original state: whatever came from outside will stay, and whatever you added to yourself will be taken back. The rest of the “foreign object’ goes away the same way it came in. You will calm down.
When you calm down, it means that you observe the redistribution of energy on your body. Your arms and legs get warmer and have a pleasant heaviness; your head feels lighter, and the forehead cools down; your chest and stomach feel free, if before that you experienced any heaviness or compression; and they fill in if they used to seem empty. At the end of this process, you make sure that the place where trauma used to be is clean and calm. “The wound’ has healed, everything has smoothed, and there is no “scar’, no “inflammation’ left.
However, you need to be able to distinguish between the two classes of the condition: trace stress due to the lack of competence, which easily melts during observation; and the injury itself, that is: consequences of fright, ridicule, etc. In such cases, one needs to observe how the feeling that has damaged this person in the first place leaves the body.
Another step is looking for the necessary experience in the space around you. The goal of this experience is to help you develop a new attitude to what used to hurt you: it may look like a little cloud above your head of some sort of condensation inside your head, and then it goes in the form of light, fog, or a more concentrated stream to the damaged place.
Remove the splinter and move on
As for the lack of tact or stupidity of other people that often hurt sensitive people, then there is an old Russian saying for that, even if you don’t sow fools, there’ll be enough of them for the next hundred years. A certain percentage of people of this kind always exist among us. Sometimes, there are more of them, sometimes there are fewer, but they always exist. It is silly to expect that one can live a long life without meeting foolishness or evil. It is more practical to understand how different people are and that it is impossible to expect everyone to treat you nicely and with tact, even if you try to treat everyone this way. Moreover, if you got hurt, do not dwell on your pain, remove that splinter as soon as possible, get wiser and move on!
Now, you can address difficult situations in a mature and business-like manner. No one can keep you from increasing your competence!
You may have already succeeded in doing this part of work following the instructions. Just in case, there is a brief algorithm presented in a more structured way.
Exercise 5: Working through internal tensions and traumas received during the learning process
Read the first step of instruction, close your eyes, do the part of the exercise, then open your eyes for a while and read the next step.
– Where are the feelings, left from the first encounter with a foreign language? The first time you heard it, the first attempts to understand and speak – where and what impressions did they leave?
– What do you feel like? Do you feel happy and ready to work (which would be great)? Do you feel some mobilizing tension or even feeling traumatized?
– In case you feel calm, comfortable, and confident, just reinforce this state, let your body feel and spread this awareness, too.
– If you feel some tension or even some damage, wait for the moment when you feel where the element supporting this tension is: is it at some distance from your mind or has it gotten inside? When did this damaging signal start? Did it hit you in the head, the chest, or the stomach? Is every cell of your body suffering? What does this wounding element look like according to your sensations?
– Wherever these damaging elements hit you, wherever it is now, and whatever it looks like (whether it is a rock, a pin, or some unpleasant powder, you need to decide if you prefer to keep carrying it around or if you have had enough of it.
– If something wounded you, observe how this object or energy leaves you in reverse trajectory. Whatever got inside without invitation, let it go without any regrets; it will come out the same way it came in.
– If this is something massive, then you should try to relax and calm down, and take back all your energy from it. This object will dry out; it will get smaller and smaller, and what is left will disappear completely or will fly away.
– Residual inertial tensions melt, and a pleasant warmth and heaviness softly spread all over your body from the centre to the periphery. After this, your mind will get clear. Your arms and legs will get the sensation of being filled; your head, chest, and stomach relax and calm down.
– When you feel that the space of your mind has cleared, and internal filling is even; there is an overall feeling of integrity, purity, and balance, and then you should wait for the realization of the way you should treat similar potentially stressful situations in the future. This understanding may appear right above your head in the form of a little cloud or sun, or it can already appear in your head, on the forehead as the concentration of something radiant.
– Then you decide whether this is the destination of this work. Do you need to look at a deeper level? Understanding of the situation is becoming a part of your body: it flows down into your body as light or water; you accept it, and your body absorbs it.
– You get used to feeling calm when you have to use the language. You imagine how you act easily and in a business-like way.
– When you feel that this process has reached its end, open your eyes.
The following typical stories can also be of help to you.
On a pin
After first encounters with the English language, Serguei thought it was too difficult, and it felt like being pierced by a pin in the area of a lower back. Below this pin, there is a little carnivorous animal with a bushy tail, which looks like an arctic fox: this is an image of hidden anger. He took the pin out. Internal opening closed. That little animal hid away. He had the sensation that English flowed down easily like water from the head to the body and found its place in the stomach26.
Tatyana the violinist
Tatyana is a professional musician. She told us the story about how she went with her orchestra to England for the first time when she was 17. According to the contract with the host party, she was supposed to be in a homestay. They were going to a provincial town for some festival.
Tatyana did not speak much English. Starting from customs clearance, she remembered the feeling of embarrassment because of herself and the whole orchestra; 42 people in total could not speak English.
When it was time to meet the hosting family:
“I didn’t understand much,” – Tatyana continued. – “I felt dumb with a spasm in the throat. I felt very confused and very uncomfortable. People were very warm and welcoming, but I was incapable of expressing my gratitude. I felt like an idiot. My head seemed completely empty. I had already started believing I was a complete fool.”
“I am an intelligent person stuck in a ridiculous situation!” That would be a much better way to think about the situation. Tatyana and I begin to work together
“In order to avoid such situations in the future, it would be a good idea to study without any stress. What is happening in the head now, with the way it is filled now?”
“It feels better.”
“What about the rest of your body?”
“Either” – Tatyana confirms.
She understands that there is some knowledge she has already acquired, and she let it become a part of the body. She is much better equipped than when she “felt like an idiot,” and nobody can stop her from making further progress. The reaction Tatyana had during her first visit when she lacked linguistic competence was natural absolutely, but it did not make this reaction necessary to experience. It was time to leave this reaction behind. What kind of reaction was that, and what did it feel like? It was a sensation of a big compression, a strong squeeze at the level of the body.
In the course of observation, Tatyana noted that her tension was melting, new competence flowed into the body, and now she can imagine a new trip in this newly renewed state27.
A thin chainmail and a helmet
“I am wearing a thin chainmail, and at the level of the nose, there’s a metallic plate. It’s my protection” – Irina tells us.
“When we communicate with a native speaker, we never have the vantage point. Our linguistic knowledge always loses to that of the native speaker. And it often makes us take a defensive position” – I comment on Irina’s description.
While we pay careful attention to the sensation of energy invested in the formation of the “chain mail’ or other spontaneous protective mechanisms, be it a shell, a whole house and even a fortress, as a rule, this energy then returns to the circulation and undergoes reverse development. One begins to feel the ability to lean on the internal strength and competence, which are located in the stomach, in the chest, in the head; after that, one can move on from protecting one’s own self-esteem to building the strategy of how to achieve results.
Irina “calls back’ the energy she invested in protecting herself, and she begins to feel free. Her new protection is her competence, that is: the knowledge she absorbs during studies28.
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