A selection of some of my favourite Quotations read by Will Senior.
My Best Friend the Breath
By Will
Around four years ago I started practising yoga and was blessed to have a teacher who really concentrated and stuck with the breath. Whatever position we found our bodies in during practice she kept bringing us back to our breathing. Outside of the classroom I began to notice my breath more often and found that I would hold my breath if I was anxious, or sometimes I would not breathe out fully, almost like not wanting to let go. When we find ourselves in trauma, perhaps due to an accident of some kind, we are told by the medics to breathe. Breathing helps us to connect with ourselves again and aids us in bringing us back to the moment.
I came across an elderly woman recently who needed to use a public toilet, she was really struggling to walk unaided. I took her arm and slowly we began to make our way to the bathroom. She was anxious and distressed, and with each small and slow step that she took, her body began to shake. The shaking was clearly upsetting her and she said “It’s this shaking, why does my body do this”? I could see that she found it hard to accept that her body was not doing what she wanted it to and this was creating more anxiety and so on. I asked her if we could stop for a moment and I asked her to concentrate on her breathing and to forget the shaking for a moment. Together we got our breath’s in sync, in a simple in for 3 and out for 3 fashion, and we spent a minute or so practising this. In her own time she began to walk again with me and we kept our breathing practice going while we made our way to the bathroom. This exercise had a dulling effect on her shaking. The shaking became secondary and her breathing became primary and although the shakes were still present she seemed much more in control of her situation.
You can find your best friend, healer and spiritual teacher in your breathing. It is widely recognised, in most spiritual practices, that breathing is essential as it is closely associated with our emotions and well being. Strong emotions have a profound affect on our breathing, if we get angry our breath tends to be held or if we are scared the same may happen. When we are feeling love strongly our breathing is also affected and we tend to hold our breath in certain areas like the belly or the diaphragm. The breath seems to be stuck there.
Throughout the day I try to reconnect with my breathing and try to make it my constant friend and companion. It shows me when something in me needs attention. My belly may be tight, and I try to breathe through the tightness, or I may find my shoulders stiff and upright and I breathe and relax that part of the body. Using my mind to notice what is going on inside me seems much more complicated and so I rely on my breath as an indication of just where I am at. Breathing mindfully and being aware of our breathing tends to lesson the full impact to whatever we are holding. We are not as caught up in whatever is happening inside of us, or externally, and this can be settling as this helps us to stay in the present moment. The breath becomes our anchor and helps us when we feel that we are spinning out of control and remains our lifeline when the mind wants to run and project.
Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Filed under My Experiences On The Couch
Growing Takes Time
By Will
Most of us that are on a spiritual journey, who are attempting to get some understanding of ourselves and be more in harmony with our true nature, battle with patience. It takes time to create new patterns of behaviour and thought and to accept and understand those old patterns that we have lived with for so long. Although there are people who claim sudden enlightenment, the majority of people will have to partake in long and often-times painstaking journey’s, where they may have to repeat the same mistakes over and over again until they learn and accept the lessons or truths that they need to. We need to take this long term relationship with ourselves slowly and steadily, and realise that in as much as we have taken years to mis-understand ourselves, it may take the same amount of time to get in touch with our true nature and purpose once again. You can liken this process to learning to play a musical instrument. We can’t play it harmoniously straight away, it’s virtually impossible. We have to learn to play the notes first and then perhaps a chord, then a song, and eventually we can play intuitively.
I once apologised to my therapist for having a ‘nervous day’ and he replied ‘it’s just a day’. How we perceive our situations is important if we are going to spend lots of time within them. If we can also create conditions that allow our true selves to flow we may realise that some of our old patterns of behaviour hinder us on our journeys. For example, the right conditions for coping with grief may not be a party for some but for others it maybe exactly what they need. There are no rules and we cannot learn these things from books. Experience is key, and while we are learning, growing pain is inevitable. If we can learn to flow with this pain, learn to flow with the energy of the pain and realise that it is required for us to have a positive and meaningful existence, in the long run, we can be safe in the knowledge that we are sewing the right seeds to form a secure base for ourselves in the future. Pain comes when we feel that we should be feeling other than what we are feeling, so we create a disconnection within ourselves, rather than simply accepting what is.
One thing that helps us to endure the long gravel path is faith. Some pray for strength and patience while others may ask their angels or a higher being of some-kind for help. Many of us seek meaningful and intimate connections with others to soothe us and support us on our journeys. One thing all faith has in common is that it is shared. We are not mean’t to be alone.
Often time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key ~ The Eagles
Filed under My Experiences On The Couch
Father and Son
By Will
Prior to law I had rights, a right to watch my seed grow,
Half a block from home but mountains away he lay,
This sick game only deals in crumbs of compassion,
Every day I die on the first inch of her territory,
Every right I claim for myself meets deaf ears,
Bless he who have toiled for freedom trampled under foot,
Victimisation and discrimination against love,
This my sole weapon, I bring down with full force.
Filed under Uncategorized
Thought
By Will
When joy reaches it’s peak, black leopard claws seer down on praying heads,
Just as the flower reaches its climax, water leaves you dry and seedless,
Winter blue confessions in blinding cheap light,
Circles of radiant illuminati, pointless wastage of a second.
Filed under Uncategorized
Michael
By Will
He spoke with hurt and I chose him, This unfortunate soul becomes ego’s friend, Father’s boundaries adhered never challenged, His patience tested on a radius of denial, Whose crib does he sleep that man in consciousness, All earthly answers lie creased under pillows, While the boy rides his bike with tendency to fall, Caught in sympathies yielding nest, Growing pains heard from mountains afar, Gods dream, ripped apart thorn by thorn, A man is born like a calf with unsound legs, Who now walks alone under his full moon. Only the wounded healer can truly heal ~ Irvin D. YalomFiled under Uncategorized
Lust
By Will
I lust not after the beauty in her heart, Her appetiser of passion served capable of burn, It’s debauchery making mockery of my true self, Like feeding salt to a man who is dying of thirst, Her new love prompting potent oral tradition, Satisfying mental images portrayed in a mind accompanied by crime, Queen of black lace eternally destroying light, Shadows learned through a child’s premature green eyes, Weeping and gnashing tyrannising thoughts, Lust is easy and love is hard. Of all the worldly passions, lust is the most intense. All other worldly passions seem to follow in its train ~ BuddhaFiled under Uncategorized
Masters and Students
By Will
In the film Good Will Hunting, Robin Williams plays the Psychologist and Matt Damon, the abused and genius patient, who needs help from his psychologist to find direction in his life. What is interesting in this film is that their relationship goes against the grain of orthodox Psychotherapy. We find the analyst disclosing parts of his own life in order to help the patient. He speaks of his wife’s cancer, his experiences of war, death and love, as well as the smaller things in life, which he feels are important. The therapist realises that this is the only way to get through to his patient and adapts his technique in order to heal. What they also have in common is their childhood physical abuse which is finally shared by both parties and accepted as ‘not their fault’. I always hoped that my therapy was shared in this way but I can also understand that this may be the ego’s way of gathering information from the therapist in order to sabotage the theraputic relationship.
In the Vajrayana Buddhist faith there is something called the Samaya bond. In Pema Chodrons words, “If the student accepts and trusts the teacher completely and the teacher accepts the student, they can enter into the unconditional relationship called Samaya. The teacher will never give up on the student no matter how mixed up he or she might be, and the student will also never leave the teacher, no matter what”. The basic premise of the teaching is to help the student realise that they are bound to reality already and that trying to get somewhere is useless as the student is already there. After time and acceptance of being with things as they are the students world becomes more vivid and transparent so he or she views the same world but with new eyes. “And this is a message that never gets interpreted. Things speak for themselves. It’s not that red cushion means passion, or little mouse darting in and out means discursive mind; it’s just red cushion and little mouse”. The important thing here is that the teacher and student have made a marriage of reality. One cannot leave the other so their enlightenment has to be shared.
In both cases the message is clear; Things are what they are and those things will never change unless our perceptions of those things change also. Our perceptions are mainly based on past emotional experiences and it is enlightening to be able to perceive something in a different way through a new relationship or a new set of reflective eyes. So these perceptions can be changed through love. Also in both cases, the student picks his master like ‘incarnation’ where a child supposedly chooses his or her parents and the master or therapist accepts the students invitation. Also in both cases continuous work has to be done, it needs to be sticked at. You can liken the loving relationship to polishing a mirror. As soon as you have polished it dust will start to settle again.
Often we can’t answer the question; “Is it right?”. We can however ask ;”Is it fruitful? ~ Christopher Clouder and Martin Rawson
Filed under My Experiences On The Couch
My New Therapist
Jade is 19 and is training to be a Therapist. She had previously written a piece before for this site entitled “My Therapeutic Introduction” which expressed her unease about seeing a therapist for the first time, with whom she felt uneasy and uncomfortable with. Here is Jade’s second account of Psychotherapy with her new therapist.
By Jade
Beginning therapy is a tricky business, walking to that front door, knocking discreetly, looking to see if anyone can see where you are going too. All part of the journey I suppose. I had no idea what would be in store for me until the door closed, I sat down and the therapeutic relationship started to form.
After leaving the therapy room I felt like an ant being put onto an atlas globe. So vulnerable and weak against the world, so much space to explore. I felt like I had been opened up to things that I had kept hidden for so long. I felt like I could explore myself and the world and not feel threatened, it was such a strange but surreal feeling. How this one therapist, after one session, can make me think and feel for so long without me cracking (until I got out of course). I felt like I wanted to go back in there and re-live the whole thing over again. Not that it’s nice feeling the pain and upset and the happiness, but having the opportunity to feel something, to see it as what it is, then that is beautiful. It’s like an addiction to chocolate or prescription drugs; you want more of what you think will make you feel better.
I had on and off feelings about it as I was driving home, maybe it was to much to feel all of this after just entering therapy, maybe im not stable or ready enough, but by hell this lady threw it at me. I had gone back and re-lived some of my childhood that I had forgotten, some deep and dark feelings that now I would much rather forget, but I felt and explored them safely with my therapist. Death had a big part to play in my first session, I spoke about my mum having secondary cancer and she came right out and said “is she going to die”?
I sat back in my chair, looked at the floor and felt like I had been punched in my stomach repeatedly. That’s the first time anyone has asked me that question and it was really the first time I had even thought about the fact that I could loose my mum to cancer.
Im very excited that I have 39 more sessions with her. Imagine what i’ll be feeling after 40, obviously I know their will be some rocky paths ahead of me, but I like this feeling of (feeling), expressing, smiling. I wonder what this year is going to have in store for me, I hope it is many good things that I can share with other people – sharing feels awesome.
Filed under Uncategorized
I think I’m a Buddhist
By Will
Like many of us, when I had my first taste of monstrous fear and anxiety, I began to read self help books. I took momentary soothing from these books, and at the time they enabled me to calm the storm of these serious life threatening emotions. But despite numerous searchings, and reading tons of these in vain, my fear still haunted and goaded me. In some ways I liken these books to my spiritual ‘O’ Levels as some of the basics were absorbed and have stayed with me ever since. Probably the best example of this would be in M Scott Peck’s ‘The Road Less Travelled’ when Mr. Peck states; “Life is hard”. That teaching is still very much with me on my personal journey.
The ‘self help’ industry is a multi million pound industry, and because the basic nature of ‘us’ wanting a quick fix, this is exactly why it is thriving. These books will not tell you to hold onto pain, they will advise you to skip over it or through it. It makes more sense to invite in what you usually avoid. For me these lessons were never born through books but were arrived at through legitimate suffering as I stayed with my fear and pain whenever I could manage to. Of course fear still grabs me by the throat, but starting with the body, I try to relax into it and know it for what is is, an emotion and a reaction to a conditioned thought of; ‘this may happen to you’! And what, ‘may happen to me’ … ‘The Truth’, thats what will happen. This is the false self or ego’s worst scenario because then it would loose control of ‘itself’.
I had always thought of myself as someone who is kind, flexible and loving but when confronted with this illusion I realised that I am not perfect and if I am not perfect I am continually letting myself down. I constantly invested into an image of myself that I could not live up to. When this was exposed to me, mainly with the help of therapy, I felt as if there was nothing, absolutely nothing, and at times I felt as if I was going to fall off the end of the world. If I didn’t have a story to cling to anymore, then who was I?
Currently I find myself between two schools of thought, one of Psychotherapy and one of Buddhism as they have so much in common. The problem is, as the title of this piece suggests, if ‘I think I’m a Buddhist’ isn’t that too a statement of ‘I’ and one of a fixed thought.. that ‘I’ am somebody. Bomb’s keep continually dropping.
It is possible to live in peace ☮ ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Filed under My Experiences On The Couch
inPsychotherapy 