Thinking about how we heal, I remember my Tai Chi teacher in Beirut, Amira Chouaib, and how she handled her sprained ankle. It was a bad sprain. What strikes me as I recall this is her attitude. She guided her regular classes, week after week, being careful with her injury, but always with a smile.
She did not expressed anger or frustration about it. Nor did she display over concern. It was more an attitude of acceptance and trust. I remember being touched by her grace about the whole issue, as she was in pain and unable to do what she usually does. And yet, there was full acceptance of the situation, no resistance to it at all. There's a saying in the field of therapy that goes along these lines. What we resist persists. Healing requires no resistance. I saw the same thing when my Tai Chi teacher in Dubai, Yasser Belgrami, had to deal with a complicated eye retina injury that required surgery and compromised his movement for a while. He had to avoid strong light and avoid strenuous effort. When I visited him for classes, he was totally relaxed, accepting, trusting. There was no sense of heaviness around the ordeal. Rather, so much spaciousness. I mention these two examples, strong powerful people who are, in a sense, trained to kill, because I was amazed that they did not express rage and frustration about their hurt and limitations. It was a learning that I felt very deeply because they embodied it so genuinely. Zero anger. No 'Why did this happen to me?" or 'Damn it! When is this gonna heal already?' These are people who know how to express fierceness when needed, and gentleness when needed too. On the other side of the coin can be an attitude of negligence and denial. But that's not what I saw either. There was no pretending it didn't happen. There was no override and carry on anyway. No, there was a proper care. Without over concern and with the necessary adjustments. As another remarkable fighter once told me, be careful not to exaggerate. Keep it real. I saw my teachers meet injury with acceptance. Recovery was infinitesimally gradual, organic, and that's what they trusted. There were no extra layers of pressure or emotional resistance. And, bit by bit, there was full recovery. Each regained their respective capacities, were able to move freely again, to train, and even to exceed the capacities that they had before their injury. Slowly but surely. I wonder about that internal quality of trust that allow us to accept injury and integrate it as part of life - not separate from life. I wonder how we can surrender to the experience of letting recovery happen without adding any pressure to its organic process. Like a closed bud of flower, you can't force it to open, it will bloom again when ready. And the best thing we can do is keep providing warmth, care and protection - to ourselves! - so that the internal magic of healing can happen.
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AuthorA fellow human, tuning in. Archives
May 2023
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