Inspiration
Taoism
One of the basic teachings of Taoism is flow (being in harmony with the Universe or Dao) and the understanding that things are in constant change, but this change is not accidental at all, rather is driven by specific laws of creation. This truly important teaching made me realise at a very early age that everything I think about balance and harmony is completely wrong. Because balance is still understood as a goal, a state that I have to reach, and once I have reached it, I can lay back because I am done, I am finished for good. But how could something be so steady and unmoving in a world whose only unchanging law is change itself? This is why for me balance at every moment is closely related to the flow, as external influences touch me I adjust my internal mindset and approach accordingly.
Another crucial idea of the lineage of Taoism I am studying and practising is based around the trinity, aka the simultaneous and balanced cultivation of body, energetics and spirit. Understanding and practicing this principle made me realize that balance can and should be understood and applied on many different levels. Of course, the what and the how always depend on the goal, but it is quite certain that a completely distinct quality of experience and life can be created when our practice involves all three levels.
If we want to make the three levels simple, we can say that working with the body encompasses proper movement, proper sleep and eating, and a tailor shaped environment supporting our current state and needs. Energetics of course covers working directly with energy (like qi gong), but it absolutely includes breathing and handling our emotions well. While the third level involves cultivating our mind as well as our spirit, i.e. learning, understanding and caring for and working with what is intrinsically immortal, untouchable and eternal within us.
Obviously the cultivation of all three levels usually does not take place actually specifically at the same time for practical reasons, and this is especially true in view of the fact that the practice is carried out in accordance with the different cycles. This idea rather refers to the fact that we are using our awareness to incorporate the cultivation of the body, energy and spirit as part of our daily lives.
Martial Arts
Martial arts means the world to me since this is where my journey started. 20 years have passed ever since and I put tremendous effort and time in practicing and I have received back even more. What I find essential in martial arts is that it helped me realize my own limitations, then showed me the way to surpass them using the body as a vehicle. Actually from the system’s perspective it doesn’t matter if you are approaching from the body to the spirit or the other way around, the point is that everything is connected.
Nowadays it is a very popular perspective and you can read a lot on how the spirit can affect the body, however the idea has just reached the world that you can use the body to have an effect on the spirit as well. I use this aspect quite a lot with my disciples, for example given a particularly difficult and diffused period of time we regularly do abs workout, because the sore muscles turn their awareness back again and again to their center even days after the training session. Or to have another example, there is a direct link between the flexibility of the body and the mind, which means the more relaxed and adaptable you are in your life, the more flexible you body will become. Therefore if you stretch your body physically, you can have an effect on the pliability of your ideas and attitude. Naturally, as this is true for everything, awareness has a crucial point in the effectiveness of the transfer, because it can exponentially multiply the effect.
Martial arts for me is far more than the movement itself, kung fu is rather a way of living, and being so it defines my thinking, the way I see things and my approach to the world. When I am inquired about this I often give this example: I am a martial artist who is an employee in a multinational company, not an employee of a multinational company who sometimes practices kung fu. It might not seem to be a big difference, you might even say it is just wording, but honestly it fundamentally defines my life and my priorities.
Five Wisdoms
The Five Wisdoms in more traditional form is based on the classical buddhist teaching of the five Buddha families, which show us that we are all essentially permeated by certain qualities that determine how we think, feel and act.
Unfortunately, in most Western cultures there is no tradition for work with emotions, and Hungary is no exception, although I find that there is indeed a great need for it given that we are a nation whose daily life is embedded with high emotional intensity. Make no mistake, it is not the emotions or the intensity that cause the problem, but the fact that we have been given neither the perspective nor the methods to deal with them. In other words, the average person has roughly two choices: either to repress the emotions that they cannot, do not want to experience, or for some reason they are forbidden to go through, or to impose them on others. I would say neither is a particularly lucky approach. The problem with the first is that the repressed emotion will inevitably manifest itself in physical symptoms over time and create various illnesses. While with the second it is obvious that we are having an incredibly negative effect on those around us and are in fact assigning the responsibility for our own emotional condition onto them.
So there must be a third way, where we can allow and experience all your emotions. Where there are no emotions that are forbidden or unacceptable, and going beyond that we are able to understand and realize that emotions have a place and a role in our lives, and if handling them properly we can actually recognise that they all hold an intrinsic wisdom.
ThetaHealing
I met ThetaHealing when I was at a point in my life that I had some specific things I worked quite a lot with still, I have not experienced the level of improvement which should have been reasonable considering the amount of time and effort I put in them. Being a practical woman, after further consideration I have closed these topics with a mental comment “ok, this is the best I can get for this life”.
One of the difficult parts in awareness is when you come to see your things more clearly, therefore you understand that what you are doing is not good for you, still you keep doing it. This usually brings about some tension and with time, a considerable amount of guilt and remorse, because you ask yourself why am I doing this knowing that it is really not good for me?
When practicing self improvement it is good to remember that this is indeed a process: at first, there is nothing, and we do what we usually do. Then slowly awareness awakes that something is happening, later it extends to what is happening, afterwards it becomes more and more detailed until you truly understand what is going on. Then the critical moment arrives – you see what is happening, but you still neither can prevent it, nor stop it (this is a very demoralizing stage by the way). Finally, if you continue with your efforts, there is a promise of a happy ending: knowing what comes next and being able to avoid it, if that’s how you want to decide.
Theta helped me a lot to bridge the gap of having different, even contradictory thoughts and feelings about the same damn thing, and relaxed me into that this doesn’t have to be logical at all. Because there are great many things which plainly escape logic, even common sense and tend to function on a completely unreasonable level. Although this is not entirely true, because even though they might lack the rational aspect, they still have a valuable place and reason to be. This is exactly why, if we are able to locate them, we can change these driving forces and internal beliefs. For me it was a truly incredible and astonishing experience to be able to change the things I had added the previously mentioned mental comment to this is the best I could do for this life.