Kitabı oku: «Learn Languages Easily. Methods of self-regulation for successful learning», sayfa 7

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Edgy upbringing

The way we perceive new information can influence by the image of the person who communicates it to us.

In the situation when a teacher motivates a student using edgy techniques of targeting student’s self-esteem, and when students have to defend themselves and prove their worthiness, it is no wonder that soon students find both the teacher and the subject off-putting. The main task of a person is to preserve his or her inner self from damage and maintain one’s dignity. If a tasty dish is spiced with disrespect and lack of affection, then one would hardly be able to enjoy it. If a teacher allows him/herself say something mean to a student, then it is likely, that the subject this teacher is reading, will be rejected as well.

Take your grades with calm!

Healthy attitude to marks means understanding that it is an evaluation of your knowledge on a given day and on a given topic. It has nothing to do with evaluating you as a person. Tomorrow, you can be an A-grader. Moreover, the person who provides you with this or that mark cannot be objective absolutely; he or she is also human and can be in a different mood. Sometimes, this person can be downright unfair. This is a part of reality. In any case, one should treat grades with calm. Grades are not the point; what matters is whether you can reach your goal or not.

If a student is poisoned with the negative marks of the teacher, it is rather unpleasant, but it is not the end of the world. You need to find and let go of the poisonous alloy that accompanies useful knowledge.

A poisonous teacher

Ekaterina: “There’s a whole whirlwind of difficult moments. My head is buzzing. There are images of these teachers, a real kaleidoscope of personalities.

I had a teacher. He was with a sense of humour, but it was rather unkind. It all sounded more like being ridiculed and humiliated. He seemed kind at first, but then…”

Ekaterina observes how this whirlwind of unkind influences leaves her body as something grey, black, and dark²⁹.

Here are several more examples of internal work.

Steam through my eyes and ears

Irina: “My tonsils responded. They seemed to feel loose like when you have a sore throat. Steam was going through her ears and eyes. Some tension was identified at the root of her tongue; it flowed to its tip and then completely disappeared.”

Throw away a crumpled piece of paper

Svetlana: “There’s a crumpled piece of paper in my hand, and I have thrown it away.”

A ray of light hit me – stop – back off

Julia: “My ears. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t make sense of the speech. I began to think that I wasn’t able to hear. My reaction: eyes strained; I felt like I was going to cry.”

A.E.: “What exactly happened to you back then?”

Julia: “A bright ray of light hit me in both eyes.”

A.E.: “What place did it reach? You need to follow its trajectory to the end and then say ‘Stop!’ and set off a reverse process, that is: you will need to observe how this unpleasant energy goes out and away. Ok, this ray of light came, but now, it has to go.”

Through Julia’s eyes, it is moving out. Julia observes how that ray of light, which wounded her, leaves her and moves away. She feels free. Her ability to hear and to listen returns.

Sometimes, it feels like earplugs falling out when your ability to hear is being restored³⁰.

Tongue in the hook

Here is an example of working with myself.

I learnt German in school and college (in der Schule und in der Hochschule). What do I have left from those times?

My tongue is on a steel hook.

When I was in the fifth grade, our headmaster told us that our new teacher was highly professional and that her pronunciation was the best among other students of her university. Perhaps, this was just a way to supporting a young teacher and earning our respect.

Quite paradoxically, it did not inspire and, on the contrary, we felt numb. It seemed embarrassing to speak with a bad accent in front of such a teacher, but it also seemed impossible to understand how one should pronounce from those few comments and few classes we had with her. In the end, no one dared to talk in front of her, and no one could learn to do so because there was no other source. There was only a textbook. Nobody has heard about audio and video courses back then. Language teaching was very formal and scarce.

Now, many years later, I have a better understanding of that situation, but it does not resolve the conflict between high requirements and the lack of opportunity to correspond with them, which I experienced at school.

Even though I always get my As for German, I continued learning this language in college and achieved a certain level. German has always been a language for reading rather than speaking for me. That “hook’ that got my tongue had me through the years. Naturally, as soon as I realized it, I chose to “get my tongue off the hook.”³¹

My mind took it quite literally: a steel hook and then setting my mind free from it.

A lump in the throat

A lump in the throat is one of the typical syndromes. It can become an obstacle for the free flow of speech. In many cases, it is connected with the feeling of being offended.

There is a little trick in working with this condition: you do not work with the lump – you should work with what caused it. A lump itself is a secondary formation, and it merely reflects the reaction of the body to the trauma. That is, you should determine what affected your chest at a moment of deceit, the wreck of hopes, insult, or disappointment. In the “pit’ of the chest, there will most probably be pieces of your first naive ideas about life and people. They often look like shatters of glass or knockings of stone.

In all cases, these symptoms are subject to reverse action: they either resolve or heal right away, or “fall out,” and then the energy of the shatter and pieces returns to the body. The lump also resolves after that. A new attitude to life, this time more realistic, comes to the body as light and/or warmth that makes your head more sensible, your soul tougher, and your willpower stronger.

A more detailed description of de-traumatisation and de-neurotisation algorithms are presented at the end of this book. It also includes working through the traumas of disappointment and offence. This is what it looks like in practice.

Tatiana the artist

Tatiana is a grown-up person; she is an artist. She said that she was a straight “A” student and, at some point, she had to change schools. At her new school, English classes were given much more attention than at her previous school. She did not want to look ignorant, so when she was asked whether she had read this or that author in original, she would respond: “Yes, of course!” Her answer would provoke laughter in the classroom. As a result, that period of life brought her the feeling of tension, which has accompanied her to the moment of our meeting.

We discovered it during the following work.

“There is an idea to learn a language. Does this project appear new or far from you? It can appear as some sort of container in front of you. You should decide whether you want to accept it or to reject. If you choose to accept, then observe how your soul is accepting it.” (The method of “putting on’ good things and using this moment as a checkpoint will be described later. We still have to find out more about the method of “test phrases and images.”)

Here is the description given by Tatiana.

“I have started drinking from the cup eagerly. Suddenly, there’s a headache, and everything got stuck in my throat.”

“Is it a technical problem: for example, the cup is too big, and the throat is too narrow? Or is it your body protesting?”

“Most likely, it’s a protest. I tried to imagine that it is water, like a puddle of water, which I could absorb with my feet, but it turned out to be impossible.”

“Is there anything inside that would perceive learning a language as potentially harmful?”

“There is nothing that I could think of. I like learning new things, and I always put my knowledge to use. I’m checking my inner container, and there’s also enough space.”

“Let’s define what kind of impression you first encounter with the foreign language produced.”

Tatiana begins telling her story. For her final year, she had to change schools, and at her new school, everyone seemed to have a much better level of English. Then she realized: “I don’t know this language while everyone else speaks it fluently.”

“I had no problems with other subjects, but English was different. My classmates treated me with condescension, and they laughed at me.”

“What kind of impression did it leave inside? Is there a feeling of inferiority?”

“There’s tension in my head, chest, stomach, throat, and shoulders. There’s a boulder in the soul and a lump of offence in the throat.”

“Many years have passed since then. You have acquired a lot of new knowledge, and there have been many achievements. If it is just tension, then let it melt; if you feel there is something hurting you (it does not matter whether it is sharp or blunt, big or fine, you have to let it go the way it came). Follow the principle that we let go of everything that came in without any invitation.”

“It feels better now. Something was holding me in the chest, like a lump. It’s gone.”

“Now that you’re free from the influence of the old wound and tension, observe what is happening next.”

Everything, connected with language learning (contents of that cup), was absorbed by the whole body. Here are Tatiana’s words:

“I imagined that my whole body was absorbing some yellow-coloured substance. My body was learning the fact that a language could also be learnt by the whole body³².”

What to do when something is smothering you, and you feel screens in the throat and a noose around the neck

Some people discover that they have a noose around the neck or a screen at the back of the neck all of which cause the feeling of being suffocated. We have to note here that such sensations do not always point to psychological problems. One should also consider that they could be the symptoms of problems with the spinal column or with the thyroid gland. It can even be ischemia (insufficient oxygen supply) of the nucleus of the glossopharyngeal nerve or other reasons.

If your intuition is telling you that the reason is psychological, nothing stops you from having a look at who is controlling the noose in case you feel it around your neck. Usually, there is nobody else who would hold it. Even if there was someone who provoked the spasm, you do the rest on your own. That is why you have to decide whether you want to keep on going like this or put a stop to this.

It may also be one of the manifestations of “sub-identity’ in its attempt to protect your grand self from “humiliation’ and being ridiculed.

A group photo

One may think that some people have nothing else to do but to watch you and evaluate whether you do everything right or wrong! In such cases, I often ask my patients the question if they look at a group photo whose looks they worry about the most. The typical answer is that, firstly, they think about themselves. This is what most people do. They worry about the way they look, and they do not really care about you. If it is the kind of person, who likes to judge everyone else, then let it be his or her problem that they are ready to waste their time judging. It’s enough for you to know that you deeply accept yourself and that you respect and love yourself, no matter what others think of you. In any case, you will try to do the best you can.

Thinking about the impression you make on other people is an unnecessary neurotic reaction.

Hands on the neck

Zinaida, a medic student, tells us the following:

“There are hands on my neck. They are human hands. Something is squeezing my neck…”

“Do you think there’s such force in the world that could be strangling a good girl Zina?”

Zina thinks and understands that there is nobody except herself who would prevent her from speaking. This is an after-sensation, which was formed at an impressionable age at some confusing moment. It is just an inertial contour.

Having realized that it is a part of her own, Zina decides to bring back the energy from that “sub-identity.” She observes the process that follows the realization. Hands move away from the neck and melt. The energy of the body, that used to be split into two, is united, and Zina experiences a boost of energy.

She feels that the world accepts her with interest and love. She becomes stronger with every day in this world. This sensation settles in her body³³.

Exercise 6: If there is something squeezing your neck

Initial attitude: “I choose to be ridiculous and absurd if it’s necessary. I focus on speaking and reaching the goals of communication and not on making an impression as an expert in this language. Calmly and with dignity, I cushion those mistakes I make during the communication. I feel the ability to communicate freely using the knowledge I increase daily. My organs of speech are free. I breathe freely! Everything is great!”

With such attitude, observe the reserve development of the pressure that was applied on your neck and how energy from whatever was holding you, be it a noose, a choker, or a collar, goes back into your body as warmth and pleasant heaviness. Feel the way your body is being filled. What used to be a noose is resolving completely.

Your new attitude of confidence and calm establishes itself in your body. Your body accepts the idea that your focus is on the goal of communication, on finding the right words, and connecting them in an understandable way and not on the way you look and the way you are evaluated. This understanding has a similar sense of the body being filled with light or any other positive sort of substance.

A choker

This comes from my own experience. From time to time, I had this sensation of wearing a metal choker and being a galley slave, which made me think what provoked it and how I could possibly get rid of it. During one of the sessions of self-regulation, I began exploring. There was no one and nothing that would hold my neck chained. The chain from the choker was not going outside. It turned out that its “anchor’ was a big dark kettlebell at the bottom of my stomach. As soon as this kettle bell was removed, the choker disappeared, too!

Remains of earlier traumatization and slavery were gone. I felt calmer³⁴.

There is more than one cause

A lump in the throat or being choked can be explained not only psychologically. In medicine, there is a notion of a differential diagnosis. However, similar symptoms can be caused by different reasons. In the situation, when these symptoms cannot be worked through self-regulation, or they quickly return, you need to think about other possible reasons and seek professional help of a corresponding expert, such as a neurologist and a spine specialist, an endocrinologist, etc.

You can exclude some of the aspects yourself. There is a very good diagnostic method in medicine that is called “ex juvantibus.” You assume, for example, that the reason of the spasm in your neck could be, say, impulsion from intervertebral discs at that level. Useful exercises for the neck are described in the corresponding chapter of this book. Do these exercises and, if they help, you will see that your diagnostic hypothesis was true. If you see no or little improvement, then you need to come up with a different hypothesis.

You have to take into account that, practically, every symptom can be explained from various points of view, that is: it can be the result of several different causes. For instance, the syndrome of energy deprivation of the brain (we have already mentioned it in this book) depends on the level of activation of the nervous system, blood vessels feeding the brain, spinal column, functioning of the lungs and heart, and on other factors. You can find out more about it in my book “Geometry of Emotions” and “Phobias.”

Working with the initial state

Traumas, which have no direct connection to the speech, can still affect it. When Elena observed the process of speech production, she discovered the consequences of an episode she experienced many years ago.

A comet got into my head

Elena. A comet got into her head when she saw how her husband hit their daughter with the back of his hand when she was standing in the cot and crying. This episode brought up a feeling of hatred towards her husband, which lasted for more than 30 years, even after the divorce.

There was a similar tension in his body.

During the session of self-regulation, Elena let the “comet’ leave her head in the opposite trajectory, and her body finally began to relax. Along with relaxation, it was easier to see the mystery of the speech production. Speech is born in the state of calm, and then it flows like a river. A whole river flowed and then disembogued into the ocean.

Other processes began to go freely. Reference books, dictionaries, and films are loaded through the top of the head to the area of the stomach. Elena felt she was “on air.” She offered the following interpretation of what has happened: she got connection to the info field³⁵.

Robocop

Nikolai is 32 years old. There is a certain delicacy in his build. He experiences a lot of stress even when he has to contact people in his mother tongue. Face gets tense, and there is also some tension in the chest and stomach.

On the test drawing, there is a 5-year-old boy. This is indeed what Nikolai feels like, although he works for a big company in a very good position!

As he was paying attention to his sensations, he revealed he was like a Robocop in the film, as if his face made of steel, and his body protected by the armour.

“Before the moment this armour appeared, had there been anything in your life that could have been traumatizing?” I asked.

“There were a lot of fights in the family. My mother used to shield herself with me, so I was a buffer between her and my infuriated dad.”

“What seems to be covered with armour?”

“It’s as if I didn’t have the frontal part at all. Imagine a building, the front of which is ruined and crumbled completely. I feel like I have left my body. By the way, I have been having these dreams that I lost my head since I was a child.”

“Fortunately, a human body is not a building of lifeless bricks: we have a process of regeneration. Observe what is happening.”

In the mind of Nikolai, the following static picture appeared. His father is sitting in an armchair as some sort of shapeless mass in front of him, Nikolai is tense, and everything in the picture is motionless. Nikolai is “frozen’ with his fear. At the level of his solar plexus, there is a big and completely empty sack.

The further process consisted in coming out of this state of being stuck and being outside your own body. As you know, there is an expression “to throw somebody off his stride,” and it looks like exactly what happened with Nikolai.

Very gradually, while keeping the attention on the motionless scene, it started to “unfreeze’ and “melt.”

I helped Nikolai with the words of support: life has changed, nobody is fighting right now, and he is a grown-up person with a lot of experience. I asked him to observe how his new experience (the experience of defending his dignity and the experience of communication) was coming from the space, from his head into the reservoir at the level of his solar plexus and stomach (where he used to feel emptiness).

Everything bad, that got inside, went away through the face and eyes.

Alongside with the changes inside, Nikolai’s self-image changed too.

The initial state of the frozen pain, hidden rage, the fear of emotional expression, and protective tension transformed into a new state of freedom, peace, and being filled with new knowledge and strength.

In a new state, it became easier to imagine and then learn what adequate communication with people is like³⁶.

Bold 90-s

A constructive drawing of a person, which we have described earlier, brings out the issues that influence the overall state of a person. Even if an issue does not produce a direct influence on the speech, it can interfere.

Unwanted generation

In the class which took place on August 13, 2011, in Moscow, there were Elena, a saxophone player; Ilya, an architect; and Denis, who worked on television. All of them are people who grew up in the 90-s.

In Elena’s drawing, the neck was drawn as a triangle with its vertex looking up. This is a sign of offence. Her favourite instrument, saxophone, fell through into her soul as if it was a black hole. It is a dead-weight burden at the bottom of this hole. When Elena graduated from music academy and she was eager to begin growing professionally. To her great disappointment, her skills and instrument were not in demand. It was very difficult for her to overcome frustration. Even now, there is a sad joke: “If you are a student of a Conservatory, make sure that you have a spot in the underground to be able to earn money.” Back then, Elena had to live this joke.

In the drawing of Ilya, the architect, there is a triangular head with the vertex looking downwards, and a neck, a large circular body. Arms and legs are long; arms are lifted above the line of the horizon and have fists made of circles. This is a contour of anger, and a reflection of a similar story of frustration, disappointment, and pain. The only difference is that there is more rage in Ilya’s reaction. Instead of developing ideas of improving architectural space, Ilya became a civil servant in an architectural bureau with 90-year-old grannies doing tedious paperwork. It seems that someone is intentionally dragging him into humdrum. Ilya changed jobs six times, but the result is always the same: nobody needed his ideas. As for sensations: walls of a building (at the level of the chest) seem to have fallen apart into a deep mine.

Denis, who at that moment was working on television, grew up in a town with a lot of rough neighbourhoods and street crime. He had to bear to survive, but that sensation of being scared still lives inside as some lump, although many years have passed.

During internal work, Elena was pulling out metallic heaviness with the help of powerful magnets. Ilya managed to observe how the old construction material was being recycled and then used for building a skyscraper on the place where the mine used to be. Denis was getting rid of the black substance that had gotten inside.

Life competence acquired over the years finds its place in the body. Souls are ready to live again.

A more detailed algorithm on this line of work can be found in the appendix. It can be used as many times as necessary to “cleanse’ one’s state and bring oneself up to an actual age.