The omnipresent ripple of life. Heart rate, lungs, nerves, hormones, lymphatic system and everything else that flows in the body. It contracts and relaxes. It gets smaller and grows. It holds, collects and then releases, like a great wave in the sea. Life consists of cycles, waves that repeat themselves. Time, metabolic, hormonal, menstrual, cell cycle and many others. If only I had this knowledge and information in my childhood. During elementary school, adolescence. Such leadership, learning, integration into life, mentors. How different my surfing life's waves would look like. How would I consider cycles and adapt. But I was mostly bumping into them until recently. Created invisible and unnecessary waves. Complicating and making development difficult with the intention of making me feel pain, suffering. Because if it was easy for me, it wasn't worth it. Namely, in order to conquer the waves, you have to push, suffer and struggle. After all, everyone else experiences it that way. Especially my parents and my immediate surroundings. It was given to me and was so familiar. Although I have seen others how they are relaxed and things go like clockwork. However, I started by force and by struggle.
That's why I worked so hard for so many years that I really screwed up my life. Complicated it. Caused serious consequences. Such immature behavior. Thoughts, beliefs that I am indestructible and invincible. That I can treat myself as I see fit and everything will always work out anyway. The actual feeling and awareness of lightness without a base. And on the other hand, the effort of creating gravity and valley where there is no need. Now this is being regulated and put into context. That the weight is in place and as much as is right. And lightness with maturity and where appropriate.
All my life, ever since I've been conscious, I've been spinning with this crashing into the waves. At first I felt my lightness and this flow. As a child in a game with friends, at school, at competitions, training. Above all, I stood out in making contact, communication and socializing easily. I was super spontaneous. Relaxed and exploring. I felt at home in relationships, as I still do now. With the fact that I now have behind me decades of blocking and hitting the wall - waves. Because everything looked and felt so easy, I began to complicate my actions. Shame, guilt, helplessness entered and a vicious cycle of tension from the fear of making a mistake. Before the fatal error. In fact, I was creating such a feeling with each new step. Around the age of ten, I had already entered the competitive sport of table tennis. The pressure of the opponent and the expected result increasingly cut into my spontaneous playfulness. I felt the weight of the desire and the necessary fulfillment of achievements because I invested so much in training. I simply "had" to achieve and ride the wave of victory, even if it was against me.
So I started blackmailing myself and life and at the same time feeling this relaxed game on the other side. I began to feel like I was breaking into two poles. One side is light, in flow and playful. The other is tight, heavy, stiff, self-burdening, self-critical, tense and sometimes rude. This gulf between poles began to suffocate me. But I couldn't give in to it, and that's how I got even more into hard work. And that's how everyone else worked and developed. Pressure must be met with effort and struggle. The euphoria was helpful. But what happens when euphoria is the domain of rocket propulsion, and it goes out faster - it burns than it starts up? The inspiration and excitement of the fight - testosterone was also helpful for riding the crest of the wave. Cheering, encouragement and support of the home team, colleagues, coach; sometimes more to the detriment than the benefit. One such mess of inconsistency and vagueness all together. Because ultimately, everything depended on a very limited approach to facing and achieving anything.
Almost every attempt to feel fluidity in movement, behavior, performance, learning, training was doomed to failure. Again and again, the feeling of hard work and struggle prevailed and won. Approach, that demanded ever higher taxes. I made it even more difficult, complicated and numbed my way with alcohol, parties, too much ineffective training, insufficiently effective rest, self-indulgence*, helplessness in the face of immediate fulfillment of desires, inability to delay satisfaction, respecting the principle of reality. The simultaneous awareness that I am doing something right and wrong at the same time. And further, the pattern that nothing can break me, because I am unbreakable, indestructible anyway. Constantly proving and confirming, lying to myself and others that I'm fine, that I can, I know and that I am at ease. Many times I felt on the edge of despair, lies and weakness, which will soon be exposed.
*Hiding to allow myself to feel the climax in masturbation. Especially in adolescence, a conditioned understanding that ejaculation is the peak of experience at the top of the wave. Of course, this is not the case, and thus gradually learning that ejaculation is not necessarily an orgasm - a climax. At most, it means a precipice and a fall into a low valley. On the other hand, playing with this wave while making love with yourself or your partner means developing an experience that is healing for the body. When you know how to play and hold back, wait, don't fall into the trap of immediate apparent gratification, it's connecting to your whole self and as couple.
So this has been my riding the waves of life. I created an opportunity to actually surf on the south-east coast of France. Two weeks of camping and several hours of learning every day how to ride a wave with a big board for beginners. The sea was merciless, whether you're a beginner or a pro, whether you're on a big or small board. Even more painful was the bottom of the sea full of small pebbles that hit you when you were caught in the centrifuge of the wave. Identical was my riding the waves of life before the AEQ approach / knowledge / wisdom. Will, apparent power, desire, ego and off we go. Along the way, facing many things that clearly showed the actual situation. In addition, even more will and ego in denial of reality and creating an illusion. I used to act like that in the past, before I started to calm down and learn about the real laws of nature, life and body - biology - physics. The fight to flow ratio was definitely 90/10. This 10% of fluidity was often the result of fatigue, or some luck and the key of surrender.
A pattern of behavior in a vicious circle was also one that I made difficult in my head or imagined as extremely difficult, whatever was in front of me. Any activity. Because I procrastinated and thereby accumulated more pressure and tension when I started it right before the deadline. The drama was at its peak in most cases. Panic added spice to variety, but not in the right direction. That's how I tackled it and creatively complicated it. I was creatively chronically ineffective. Especially after I started putting things in order and, in the vast majority of cases, I realized that the matter is not at all as difficult as I made it out to be.
All this created some constant time pressure for me. With whom I had / have, a love-hate relationship. In this dimension, I seem to catch the waves the most, or they break me. Catching time, doing everything planned, the ability to be creative and punctual, fear of wasting time, helplessness towards others who do not respect time, the desire to fulfill everything. Such and more similar thoughts, beliefs and expectations pressed me for a long time and limited my enjoyment of time. In using time in a constructive way. Falling into multitasking so I wouldn't miss anything. But precisely with this, lower attention and a shortcut becomes a longer one. Over chasing time has repeatedly become the valley of illness, injury, exhaustion, defeats, facing the truth and mistakes. After returning from the valley, I fully engaged in the same way and action that brought me to the new valley. That's why the valley is crueler to the ego every time. In one way or another, the body was already experiencing the harsh reality of exhaustion, injuries, wear and tear, illness, and deprivation. Chasing pleasure and believing that the crest of the wave (win, great grade, praise, outpouring, etc.) will save me and last forever. After mistakes, violently solving the problem only to immediately fix what I messed up.
AEQ exercises and explanations ground me. I feel more clearly the priorities, the connection of how it works, the harmony of the body with the ego-mind, the appropriate steps of development in sequence, acceptance, learning as glue and the essence. Feeling yourself when and how you are alone with yourself. Respecting the sensations of the body. Not an exaggerating. Just right and enough. I'm more and more into the AEQ approach for myself. I am gradually opening up and allowing myself to be kind to myself. Great, no longer playing small. No more pleasing others and resistance in me, to the detriment of myself. But clearly and emphatically saying no, to something I don't like, that I don't want. I allow myself to give myself. Courage to say no. I feel more human, less mechanical. I feel the fullness of life. Also, the void in my time doesn't bother me so much anymore, and I deal with nonwork differently. As a child or teenager, I was more and more lost and falling into a valley that I didn't want to be aware of. Being alone, lonely, I watched TV, waiting for salvation. I didn't know what to eat if I was hungry, so I grabbed the first thing that caught my eye. I have used sarcasm, aggression, defense mechanisms, been a victim, a narcissist, a perpetrator and a savior. The need for knowledge, a lot of information and the uselessness of only this. I always felt that it didn't matter where I was on the wave. Except I just have to be up there. I didn't mind the fall or the valley. It was welcomed, taken and understood as suffering that is part of the journey. The belief that the lower I go, the better I will come out of it and the higher I'll go. That I could identify more with others. I actually created bad situations and many valleys to make me more advanced. Delusional.
I am now reducing the valley, or its influence on me. Freedom of movement, behavior, expression. I don't jump on top of a wave out of desperation or false expectation of a solution. I actually feel and become aware of what and who I am. Where am I? How am I? Not just in my head like I was before. But the body was in shit. Despair. Shameless. Shamefull. Guilt. Now I am consciously noticing how much I really act like I only thought mentally I did before. Above all, the breakthrough is important to me, so that I no longer resist in the valley. So I accept it when it is such a time at low tide. I'm not quite where I want or imagine I could be. Like I could be. Even more relaxed when there is no work. When there is no action. That I will be able to value this time even more and use it effectively for regeneration, updating settings.
I'm also watching the waves in a relationship with my partner. I can better feel her waves of life's energy. I respond to her appropriately and correctly. That way, we are even more in flow. Or at all, because previously the flow was virtual and artificial. It's a natural now. More and more. I pick up on her subconscious patterns and predictable ways of acting. That's why it's easier for me to coordinate and lead her into our common wave. No more resistance or cutting into each other. Eruptions do not occur because there is no need for some chronic valley. This awareness of how I am and that I can feel how she is, is a great strength.
This also helps me with clients. Reading between the lines and subtitles of their experiences, reactions and doing exercises. When I do the AEQ exercises myself, I observe myself even better and recognize what is happening. As an example:
"When I feel something different in my body during AEQ exercises. Different than I want or imagine. Let's say one side or part of the body is harder, clumsier or less sensitive. It bothers me in a way that I don't want to be aware of. I deny that distinction. Because I don't like what I perceive. I don't like that there is a difference. I don't know what to do with it. This "I don't know" is a false lifeline that keeps me in the illusion that everything is fine. Because the very confirmation and acceptance that there is a difference, that something is harder, less sensual, means that I need to understand what and why it is so. I need to face it. Accept what affects me or how I maintain some influence on something. And then actually change it. This is quickly resolved with "I don't know what I feel differently". This immediately throws me into observing something else and maintaining SMA and SMI."
And it gives me a higher consciousness, awareness, inner strength for effective and meaningful changes. For a quality cooperation with waves of vital energy.
Jure Koscak, the AEQ method level 2 teacher and AEQ breathing level 1
Homework written as a summary of the Textbook for AEQ Method Level 2 Teacher, by Ales Ernst, Teacher of AEQ Method Level 5, and Vesna Cijan