Anger
The home in which we grew up did not engender the capabilities or provide a toolset to deal well with emotions. Apparently, anger was a tabu. Ironically, it was also ever-present, mostly in the passive-aggressive manifestations of the wetting of beds, rolling of eyes, and the slamming of doors…
Imagination
Loud voices, cramped spaces, the physical danger of contact sports, tension in the air at home that could be cut through with a bread knife, – these poised challenges to me which were not easily overcome. Fear began to creep into the picture more and more. As Cornnelia Funke has one of her characters state, `fear kills your mind, your heart, and your imagination´. I would add that it also leads us to shut down our vulnerability….
Body
Ten years later in Germany, during my first foray into psychoanalysis, my therapist ventured that it was time for me to return to my body. What a novel idea! I was clueless, however, as to how this could be achieved. He suggested going to the gym. Hanging out at the gym was not my cup of tea but it eventually brought me into contact with members of a cycling club, which I eagerly joined. In my first full year, I racked up 5,000km on my newly acquired racing bike! The re-entry had begun…
Expansiveness
I am reminded of the image of a group of famished people sitting around a huge cauldron of soup with only spoons of ridiculous length at their disposal. Far longer than a human arm, they make it impossible to feed oneself. Then one person gets the bright idea that they should each feed the person opposite. In this manner an individual problem is solved by means of a collective solution. All are ultimately satiated…
Explore!
Our large holiday home was the most downstream of three fishing lodges located on the Owenduff River, two miles from Blacksod Bay. A day would begin before dawn (that’s early in July) with a hushed breakfast in the cavernous kitchen downstairs while the rest of the family slept above. Sufficient food for a twelve-hour expedition was then packed in our fishing bags. As the day began to dawn, we would depart quietly in his old car to drive several miles upstream towards the mountains, to the junction where the two main rivers met. From here onwards we would spend the rest of the day on foot…
Woodpeckers
Like the woodpecker in the quote above, coaching participants who tap twenty times on a thousand trees may get nowhere but stay busy. Those of us who tap twenty-thousand times on one tree, get dinner. The PQ Programme supports us in staying the course until the benefits of our efforts can be truly experienced. We then find ourselves on the path of cultivating Mental Fitness for life and reap the benefits of improved personal and professional outcomes…
Transference
Carl Gustav Jung, one of the founding figures of depth psychology and psychotherapy, referred to the integration of supressed aspects of our personalities as `Shadow Work´, the idea being that, as we emerge from childhood, we consign those aspects of our history, thinking, and behaviour which we find unpalatable, to the shadows, in the hope that they would somehow be rendered harmless or even disappear…
Dynamo
This prompted ideas about the various forms of energy, and the smooth conversion from one to the other, we humans require to operate well at full potential. Physical, emotional, and spiritual are three that come to mind. In everyday life, if at all, emphasis is placed on the physical, in terms of physical health, and that generally only after something has gone wrong. The approach taken by the culture now shaped by the medical-industrial complex is similar to how we approach the mechanics of a car. We break down, find the broken element, replace it, and hope for the best.
Practice
The beginning of the new calendar year is a good time to take stock. While deciding on the topic for this week’s reflections, I compiled a list of the ninety-two essays – all still accessible in the `Weekly Reflections´ section –which have appeared on this website since the very first, on February 2nd, 2021. That essay was aptly named `Imbolc´, which is the Irish name of the feast day of St Brigid, which falls on February 1st, and marks the beginning of the Celtic year.
Christmas
The fire was already burning brightly in the hearth, and, in the heavily curtained bay window, the large, decorated Christmas tree with its baubles, figurines, lights, and shining tinsel provided a further source of warm light for the happy scene. Towards the end of the melee, we found ourselves wading ankle-deep through a kaleidoscopic sea of reams of torn wrapping paper, each child creating their island with the gifts they had gratefully received from various relations, near and far.
