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So, 20 years ago, Dar­bella and I were “play­ing at” Nin­jitsu. After a stren­u­ous 6 months, we both tested for our first Black Belt. And passed, hav­ing each been “attacked” by 5 peo­ple at once.

I remem­ber one funny moment. Sen­sei said, “Wayne passes, and he did this even though he is almost 40!” I thought his com­ment hilarious.

What I was most impressed by was this sweet lit­tle 70 year old lady, whose goal was to learn to do a for­ward roll. Basi­cally, when some­one trips or throws you, you need to know how to land. This video is help­ful, so have a look.

After the same 6 month period, the lady could actu­ally do this from a stand­ing posi­tion, most of the time.

I men­tion this to talk about levels.

Our won­der­ful Iyen­gar Yoga instruc­tor, Fay Gascho, when teach­ing a new asana, will break it down, teach­ing ever-increasingly dif­fi­cult steps to the actual asana. She typ­i­cally says, “This (stage) might be the bus stop you want to get off at.” She means, if this is as far as you can get, com­fort­ably, right now, then go this far.

Bus Stops along the Way

Dar and I are a few weeks away from start­ing our injured worker’s group. There will be “bus stops” along the way. The idea is to encour­age the par­tic­i­pants to go 1–2% past their com­fort level. If they pull up too soon, noth­ing will change. If they go too far too soon, they’ll get injured.

So, you need to see where you are, and push your­self just past your com­fort point. Again and again.
And, get­ting off at a bus stop does not mean stay­ing there. It’s sim­ply a stop along the way.

The Nin­jitsu story is just a cute lit­tle story about expectations.

That Dar and I passed our 1^st Black Belt test meant that we could stop there, or keep train­ing. That does not mean that we were some­how “bet­ter” than the lady who accom­plished for­ward roll.

To the East­ern mind, lev­els are noth­ing more than view­points along the way.

To the West­ern, lin­ear mind, higher is bet­ter. So, instead of a gen­tle jour­ney, every­thing is a competition.

We encour­age the gen­tle approach.

This applies in counselling/body­work. Often, clients come in want­ing symp­tom relief. This is the very first bus stop. I encour­age my clients, on the other hand, to keep going. Gen­tly, but persistently.

The rea­son peo­ple stop is fear.

Fear of cross­ing a bound­ary, fear of “the new,” fear of “what might hap­pen.” Of stand­ing out. Of being dif­fer­ent. Of hav­ing feel­ings that are judged “inap­pro­pri­ate, or too chargy.” Fear of being alive.

The game Dar and I play, as we work on our­selves, and with clients, is how to pro­vide the opti­mal inspi­ra­tion, so that both our clients, and we our­selves, are chal­lenged to keep moving.

Stuck at a Bus Stop

It’s odd. I remem­ber one client, a long time ago, who was mak­ing progress, push­ing bound­aries, find­ing her­self. Sud­denly, she stopped com­ing in. A mutual friend asked her why. She replied, “Gotta keep going, try­ing new things!” Oddly, each time she tried some­thing new, she cov­ered the same ground.

In other words, each time she hit her grow­ing edge, the chargy, scary edge, she started over.

Many clients play this game, and end­lessly loop over the same ground, maybe mar­gin­ally mov­ing, but seem­ingly unaware they are stuck.

Now, we have no magic answers, other than per­sis­tence. I wouldn’t want to guess how many really bad for­ward rolls the lady did, prior to fig­ur­ing it out. Months worth, 3 times a week. Her per­sis­tence paid off the day she threw cau­tion to the wind and actu­ally rolled instead of flopping.

Same for us, in Ninja-land. While we may have sort of mas­tered the 8 tech­niques nec­es­sary for the test, we could also see how lit­tle we really knew about the ele­gant mechan­ics of it all. We were more pro­fi­cient, and there was a life­time of “more” to learn.

The Point? Per­sonal depth work has no end.

Well, it does, but it ends at death, so while we are liv­ing, we are on a path. While dif­fer­ent peo­ple may be a dif­fer­ent places on the path, it’s all about the walk. Those fur­ther along the path help those com­ing along, in an end­less stream of hand-holding.

Sit­ting by the side of the road, for a moment’s rest, is OK, as long as you see that sit­ting there is just and only that—sitting there.

We there­fore encour­age get­ting back up and walk­ing. This requires being will­ing to exam­ine your stick­ing places, and to move through them, no mat­ter how scary.

Also required is not dis­tract­ing your­self. I know a ton of peo­ple who focus on exter­nals like work, their part­ner, their kids (hey Jim!,) what­ever, and miss the exhil­a­ra­tion of the walk. Depth is never found in an exter­nal focus. It’s found in self–depth—from there, you can play any way you want to.

If your walk has slowed or stopped (or if you are using excuses for not start­ing (and I’m amazed, for exam­ple, at how many peo­ple use finances as an excuse…)) recon­sider. Find some­one to work with, and start.

Push your bound­aries, stop stick­ing your­self, and remem­ber, this walk is not about how hard you worked at work. It’s about how will­ing you were to go deep… and find… yourself.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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Related posts:

1. Drop­ping the Excuses
2. Putting Your Soul into your Being
3. A Life Appre­ci­ated: Tak­ing Time to Reflect

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Tagged with: Learning • self-mastery • showing-up-for-your-life

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