Five years after I became handicapped I noticed that the past years had taught me more about life than 19 years before I became disabled.
No-one had prepared me for my new challenges. I had to count on my own resources. This resource is the good old common sense. Emotional Intelligence is basically common sense, in which heart relates everything with each other. This functional intelligence is working in each human being according to the same principles.
Two years after the stroke I didn’t have continuous physiotherapy and I tried to find literature that would help me understand my handicap and my new state of being.
My mother died when I was 10 years old, and as I became handicapped I was living in a home for young people, who didn’t have parents. In that home there was a small library, which was put together from the books people had donated. I had a feeling I found there everything that helped me get closer to myself.
One day I found a booklet, which had been published as a supplement of a women’s magazine. It dealt with total relaxation, which is a precondition of performance of yoga practitioners.
The booklet approached the thing from a very interesting viewpoint. It said that people should learn to act without sense of sight. Ability to see in this context is a bad thing, because it scatters our attention in the outside world. The booklet gave some simple exercises, how we can keep the attention within ourselves.
I will write more detailed about the exercises in the text ‘Total Relaxation’.
I had done exercises about a week and watchfully observed their effects in my body:
As I was lying on my back on the floor I occasionally felt as if my body was swinging. Afterwards I felt as if I was sinking into the floor.
A while I had an incredible feeling that the awesome technology invented in the world is nothing compared with the technology I had inside me.
Because one side of my body is paralyzed the right and left side of my body felt in the beginning of the 1980s distinctly different.
One evening I was lying on my bed on my side and pulled the knees near to the chest. Suddenly the feeling in both sides of my body were alike.
In order to test this I turned on my back and raised my left leg, which I usually could raise only a few centimetres from the ground. Now it raised lightly at a 90-degree angle.
The first thought crossed my mind as a playful feeling of joy:
We work wonders here!
But the situation felt absurd, even scary. I understood nothing what was behind that.
When I talked about my experiences with my sister her eyes said to me:
“Oh you poor thing! Don’t say you are losing your mind also.”
I didn’t have a physiotherapist and I was not able to find anyone, who could have helped me to understand what my experiences were all about.
As I practiced later I felt as if I had butterflies in my stomach. I felt something was eating away at me. My books said that trying too hard to accomplish something and expecting certain kind of results can in itself prevent them from coming true.
So I gave up the whole thing. I was sure I will be able to overcome my handicap somehow.
I was even pleased about the new, less sexist atmosphere, which allowed me to fully focus on things I considered important.
My experiences gave me a certainty that everything in my body was OK. Some doctors had implied that the neural pathways were broken and they couldn’t be recovered.
Reading the following words gave me great comfort:
[framed_box bgColor=”rgba(246,241,204,1)” rounded=”true” align=”center”]If your body has learnt some exercise it will be able to repeat it also later, although you would lose control for a while.[/framed_box]
From that moment I have believed in the recovery of my mobility.
It is only a matter of time when I get connected to the powers that make it possible.
Some years ago I was reminded of this thing when a friend of mine told me on phone that she had begun to practice Yoga.
In one flash I was overwhelmed by the exercises I made, my experiences and the thoughts concerning my handicap and I had a heart-crushing feeling that I had betrayed myself. To our surprise I burst into tears.
I had opened Pandora’s box and was blinded by fear.
How can I ever really trust people, if I cannot even trust myself;
That I have divine power working in me and not evil spirits and demons.
In my fear I had given authority to my ego, who is only a shadow of that what I really am. In that moment I decided that I would do my best in the future in order to jump over my shadow.