10-14122012
When I was a child I was physically in
poor shape. It was the result of the accumulation of a many things:
anxiety leading to eating more, using sugar as escapism, negative
experiences during school gym classes. To put it simply, I ate too
much and exercised too little, and all the more sloppy my body became
the more I was ashamed of myself and alienated myself from my body as
I wanted to escape it, not standing within myself and thus causing my
whole physical being to collapse.
All the while I was in poor shape,
which has been most of my life, I have wanted to be something else
but didn't know how to get there. Whenever I tried out some new diet
or form of exercise I gave up soon after, because the results weren't
instant – this indicating that my starting point was still to
escape myself, to get a quick magic fix to what I had become, and
that I was rejecting myself instead of actually facing myself and
seeing what actually needs to be done to make my physical healthy
again. I tried to force the change from the outside when I needed to
first change from within.
-- Exercise --
I hated exercise for a long time and
even stated that “sports are evil” - mainly because of the shame
and mocking I faced during school gymnastics, but also because I saw
the whole concept of competing to be empty. Even if there were tiny
sparks of simply enjoying the movement they were quickly suppressed
because of self-judgement (perceiving others to judge me) as I
compared myself to the other kids in my class. I wasn't one who would
be defined a “sports person” - I had no background in sport, only
in dancing and roaming outdoors – whereas other girls did and thus
they were preferred by teachers as well as other students.
I realize that I was probably a very
difficult student for the gym teachers; I remember noticing this
during junior high when we had a really nice teacher who tried to
give everyone a chance. As my attitude was already rotten I was
refusing everything that was offered, except dancing lessons and
orienteering. It must be quite the task to teach and inspire for the
gym teachers who recognize this problem with the system where others
are brought down and a selected few glorified – because year after
year a new load of suppressed and collapsed kids are rolling in, and
the teachers have to try and treat
the symptoms when the problem itself hasn't been prevented in
the first place.
In high school I started to go out and
enjoy nature again. I took walks, but that's pretty much all the
exercise I had besides theatre and dancing. Even theatre wasn't
always that much of an exercise, depending on what kind of a play we
were working on. So I still exercised very little.
It was sometime around my early
twenties (19-21) when I started to go out into nature to climb. I
still wouldn't make it anything more than walking, but I was starting
to get a hunch of the enjoyment there is to be found in exercise. The
problem was, no matter how much I moved I remained in a poor physical
state. The reason to this was finally revealed about a year ago when
a blood test showed I had been anemic for a long time, possibly
years. Around the same time I received medical assistance for that,
we started working on a play that was physically very demanding, and
in addition to the rehearsals I started jogging, did more climbing
and learned to jump. (Lol, sounds simple, but it was the next step
for me.) And so I exercised more and more as I enjoyed it a lot,
because for the first time in a long time my body was no longer
anemic and didn't try to kill me every time I ran, and surprise
surprise – my physical condition improved, I lost fat, gained
muscles, my posture straightened – overall I felt healthier than
ever and rediscovered the joy of moving. To me this was exhilarating.
So now to go through my relationship to
exercise – I now see that ever since I started to go to school my
view on exercise changed from being a natural form of action and
movement (from not having an “opinion” towards exercise, as it
simply existed, into having an “opinion”) into something that I
was really uncomfortable with because of how I compared myself to
others. I then created an impenetrable personality towards exercise,
through which I treated “sports people” with disdain and
bad-mouthed all sports, turning my fear into aggression. I
generalized all exercise to be a part of this “sports phenomenon”
that I created in my mind – generalizing it all together into one
“enemy”, one object, made it easier to refuse all of it and thus
escape my fear of not being as good as everyone else – fear of
being the last – fear of being the worst. I then defined myself to
be “bad at sports” - in other words, physically unable – and I
have been living within and as this self-definition and
self-limitation for most of my life.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to escape myself by not accepting my physical
state as it is at any given moment as that which my body is at that
moment, rejecting myself through shame as I did not want to admit to
myself and face myself as what I had accepted and allowed myself to
become.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to abuse myself by making the choice to not face
myself over and over again, thus continuing the cycle and causing the
state of my physical health to deteriorate accordingly.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize the reason I am stuck with an
unhealthy body is because I have not faced and admitted it is of my
doing and my responsibility, and that I could change it all by simply
stopping it.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself, instead of facing and admitting the state of my
physical body and my responsibility over it, to abdicate my
responsibility to carry myself and deal with the consequences of my
own accepted and allowed patterns and habits; to not seek for actual
solutions because I did not understand and did not want to understand
the problem; and to thus look for a quick fix that would transform my
self-image into a positive one; and to believe that changing myself
externally would be enough to transform me into the ideal I wanted to
be – not realizing that change does not occur by living within and
as pictures, as pictures are two-dimensional and thus aren't of this
physical moving world of 3D – pictures do not move, and movement is
required for change, as all change is purely movement.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to live as less than who I am by believing I am
“less than” the image I perceived I was “supposed” to be and
by thus not carrying myself and then allowing my physical being to
collapse, freeze, get stuck, shut down, turn inwards and become
immobile.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to define myself according to my childhood
memories of gym lessons.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to define myself according to my childhood
memories of bullying.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself as a child to look at what others did during gym
lessons and define it as something that requires “skill”, and
then when I tried to do it myself feel disappointed when I failed and
then define myself as “less skillful” and the others “more
skillful” - or rather them “having skill” and me “lacking
skill” - not realizing that the reason I failed may have been the
fact that as I looked at what another did through a feeling/emotion I
created an image of it in my mind, and thus when I attempted the
movement myself I tried to repeat the image instead of figuring out
how the movement should actually feel like in my body.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to hold onto this definition of myself as “less
skillful” in sports, because I picked up “signs” (how I
perceived others to behave / how others treated to me) that validated
my self-definition on every gym lesson throughout my school years.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to the definition of myself as “less skillful” in sports, because I perceived that if I cannot beat another playing by their “rules” (participating in sports) I can beat them playing by mine (the opposite of sports) – reacting to “being bad” at sports with fear and defending myself by saying “I didn't want to play anyway, keep your stupid sports” - thus rejecting all sports by believing that I somehow “won” this way.
- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to the definition of myself as “less skillful” in sports, because from within that personality in my environment as friends I could bad-mouth sports all I wanted and be accepted/praised/validated for it, never having to face myself and question my spiteful behavior.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe the fact that another person does
something skillful is somehow targeted at me as an insult, taking the
simple existence and self-expression of another personally.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe my interpretations of teachers' and
students' behavior as body language, facial expressions, language and
tone to be real, not realizing I am interpreting them through my
already-existing self-definition which I seek validation to.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself, as I believed my interpretations of the behavior
of others, to believe I “knew” what all “sports people” were
like, generalizing them into one stereotype, not realizing every
single living being is individual and that to generalize people is to
guess around in a really big scale.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe all “sports people” (people who
were relatively good at sports and did sports during their free time)
to be obnoxious, pretentious and arrogant – not realizing that I
have formed my perception/opinion/definition of them based on fear as
I found them “superior” and wasn't willing to confront them and
so avoided them by deeming them “distant”, not realizing I was
making myself distant, and that according to my memories these people
were actually mostly very humble, kind and down-to-earth.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to see another do something I have defined as
“skillful” and then judge myself to “not be enough” to do it
myself, then projecting my self-judgement onto others and through
interpretation believing that my surroundings were judging me as “not
skillful” when in fact I judged myself.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself, after some attempt at a physical movement, to
interpret my gym teacher's facial expression to be judgmental and
disappointed, then believing my teacher was judging and defining me
as “not good enough”, not realizing I was judging and defining
myself by interpreting that which I saw around me through fear.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to create a “sports hater” personality as I
have reacted with fear towards “sports people”.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to believe all exercise is evil because I
associated exercise with school and drew up past emotional reactions
whenever exercise was discussed, not realizing I am allowing my past
reactions and experiences dictate my actions in the present and thus
am not really living HERE within and as myself within breath in every
moment.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to refuse most forms of exercise (such as ball
games) simply because I associated them with past experiences in
school and didn't realize I am able to let go of all of the
connotations and memories I have added upon an activity.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize exercise is enjoyable simply
because it is movement.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to limit myself from enjoying exercise as movement
as I have believed it is not enjoyable.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not enjoy exercise because it didn't give me
instant gratification, not realizing it's not about the result but
the moment of movement right HERE.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not enjoy exercise because I believed the
memories, images, emotions, feelings, expectations, interpretations
and such mind phenomenon I had related to exercise to be an
inseparable part of exercise, not realizing they are unnecessary
extra I have painted upon the actual reality.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to make exercise unenjoyable by resisting every
movement I made and claiming the resistance to be proof that “this
is not fun” - not realizing I am creating the resistance myself and
that every time I resisted I wasn't actually experiencing the
exercise as it is in the physical but as a picture of the movement
within my mind – not realizing I cannot know whether a movement is
fun or not since I have never actually experienced it here in the
physical.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to give up on the changes I have tried to make
with my life as I saw they were not working and/or were too
exhausting, not realizing my starting point for those commitments has
been fear (reaching for an ideal) instead of being my directive
principle myself, and that such commitments will not last.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to hold on to the ideal image I created as a
child.
-- Getting in shape – the change of
my self-image --
So when I got in shape again my old
self-image of being physically weak and unable was no longer in
accordance with that which I was becoming. I was overjoyed with the
change – finally I was “winning”! - and my self-definition
started to change into the opposite of what I had been. I'm still not
really athletic, but it is something I see myself dreaming of – not
to look a certain way, but to be strong, skillful and healthy – to
be able. I was for example really excited about the fact that for the
first time ever I was able to run long distances, because I had been
unable to do anything without losing breath – I moved from complete
inability to a very good capability.
So now as my leg has been injured I
have had to face the fear of losing it all. What if I could no longer
run, jump, climb, dance? Who would I be then? What would I be without
this able body? And this is where I see how I have made myself
dependent on it. I fear terribly much that I will return to what I
used to be, and I don't want to go back ever again – I see I react
with rejection because I see my past as disgusting – I have defined
what I used to be as “less” to feel I am now “more” - to hide
my guilt and shame over my past I have turned my back on it and
refused to accept it.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself, when and as I noticed actual change in my body,
to react with surprisement – this implying that I had had a
self-image and that I was now reacting to this image “breaking”
(the image I visioned in my mind not being in accordance with that
which I sensed in the physical).
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself, instead of seeing the change as nothing but
movement from one point to another, to interpret the differences
between my old self-image and my physical existence to be a positive
thing, here creating an opinion / point of view / attitude towards
the movement and defining it as a “positive change”, not
realizing all change is just change and that to assign positive or
negative values is to not see things as that which they really are.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to hold on to this definition/value of “positive
change” because it made me “more” as I perceived myself to be
“less” and thus “in need of” an elevation - “deserving”
the change because of “all the suffering”.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize I held onto the definition/value of
“positive change” because of the fear of losing the potential to
bring my ideal into flesh.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to hold on to one point in time/space where my
body was a certain way (according to my ideal images and thus to my
liking), refusing the past and fearing the future.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that as I hold on to one point in
time/space I stop moving.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to fear the ever-changing nature of the flesh, not
accepting it as it is – the building blocks of life in motion –
but perceiving it to be a mass I can mold and freeze when I'm done
molding.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to fear my body will change in ways I do not want
it to because they wouldn't match my ideal image of my body.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that even though change is
inevitable, I have directive control over how I change and where to,
and that physical change isn't something that “just happens” but
something that is completely connected to how I move as who I am as a
non-physical being.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself, when and as my body changed and my self-image was
no longer in accordance with my body, to create a new self-image
where I was “more” instead of the old “less”, instead of
realizing that to have a self-image at all is to limit oneself.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to create the new self-image into a “winner”
in contrast to the “loser” I had defined myself before.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that to have a self-image in my
mind is to see everything I do from outside of myself – to look at
myself from a bystander's point of view – to consider how I look
instead of how I feel – instead of actually being HERE within and
as breath, aware of my physical as it is sensed through the senses,
directing myself based on my experience instead of images that only
exist within the mind, not realizing mind-images are always nothing
but guesswork because everything that happens within the mind is
never HERE in the physical – for example, I cannot know how I will
look to another person because I will never be able to actually look
at myself with anyone's eyes from outside of myself, and thus all
mind-images of myself are guesswork.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that a self-image only serves fear,
as it is that which one can return to when one's surroundings are
challenging and one starts to question oneself – for example: “X
did not laugh at my joke. Does that mean I said something wrong? Nah,
X probably has a poor sense of humor because I
know I am a funny person.”
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to expect myself to live/act/behave according to
my self-image, which I have defined to be able to walk, run and jump,
and then react with fear when I hurt my leg and could not walk, run
or jump.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself, when and as I hurt my leg and noticed I cannot
walk, run or jump, to react to the breaking of my self-image with
fear – fear of losing myself – not knowing what I'd be without my
definition of myself – not realizing I re-create myself with every
breath and that to have a self-image in my mind is thus to limit
myself as a creator as a director within and as myself.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize I have now lived out both of the
polarities – the unable body and the able body – and that if I do
not stop myself the cycle will repeat itself from polarity to another
like a game of ping pong, because I live as a defined and refined
image that is constantly morphing into something further away and
which can never be reached, instead of living within and as my
physical body as it is now here, as my physical is that which will
not be further away but which is always here as long as I exist
within this reality.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to desire to be a picture which is somewhere away
from here instead of facing and accepting that which is actually here
and doesn't have to be run after.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize everything that my body is right
now is here and doesn't have to be attained or sought after, and that
all change starts from that which is here, and that if I want to
change to improve my health for example, I begin the change by facing
that which is actually here and assessing the situation at hand at
that moment.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that when I begin a changing
process by not facing that which is actually here, I will not change,
at least not into the direction I want and at least not sustainably.
I forgive myself that I have accepted
and allowed myself to not realize that an actual sustainable change
requires that I face that which is here in complete self-honesty,
leaving no point unexamined, turning every rock.
Commitments:
I commit myself to investigate myself
during exercise to see what actually moves me, as I now see and
realize my starting point for exercise has been partially unclear and
needs to be sorted out for me to enjoy exercise as pure movement for
the sake of movement.
I commit myself to investigate and
write about the point of feeling anxious for not exercising. [A note
to self.]
I commit myself to no longer define
myself according to how I exercise.
I commit myself, with the assistance
and support of breathing, to stabilize myself here to listen to my
physical body in every single moment.
I commit myself to realize exercise is
not about comparison or competition.
I commit myself to go through my
childhood memories of gym classes with writing in order to let them
go.
I commit myself to stop defining people
who exercise as “sports people”, as I now see, realize and
understand they're simply people who exercise for various reasons and
that all of us are individual even if we'd have similar interests.
I commit myself to investigate the
ideal I have created for myself in terms of physicality and to stop
living according to it.
I commit myself to investigate,
pin-point, self-forgive and let go of all facets of my self-images,
and I commit myself to do this until it's done.
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