Seeking to Understand

I had pain on the upper surface of my right foot for about 3 months. While walking the streets of London in September, I came back the first day with a swollen foot. I remembered the orthopaedic doctor's advise, who I had visited before my travel to take his inputs on how to heal the foot. He had said that my foot would be served better with me wearing sports shoes even more than the ballet flats I wore. He had given some foot exercises which I had done for a week. 

I managed the pain with wearing sports shoes. My mind reasoned that the foot had the time and space to heal by itself as I had taken a break from Karate, functional fitness and golf for 3 months on account of my extensive travel.

I re-started Karate 10 days back after a break of 3 months. Suddenly the foot pain came back into focus. The foot pain was there before but it hadn't come in the way of any of my intentions in the 3 months earlier, so I simply progressed from one day to the next without paying attention to the discomfort in my foot.

On restarting Karate, I realized I couldn't do jumping jacks because the foot hurt. I couldn't even do light jogging as part of the warm-up. Interestingly, I could do all the kicks, even the spinning kick. 

I began to notice that climbing up and down the staircase in our 2 floor apartment also caused discomfort. Till I came back home from my travels, there had been no reason to climb the stairs and therefore, I had missed to observe this.

My Karate teacher insisted that I see a physiotherapist. Last Wednesday, I was there in Dr Bela's clinic - young and beautiful at 80 years of age, still running her business full-time. I learnt through the appointment that suddenly stopping my active workout rhythm probably caused the stiffness and strain in the foot muscle. That connected some dots in my head because the Karate workout actually made my foot feel better though I could not do jumping jacks or jogging. Dr Bela lined up a physiotherapeutic treatment protocol for me and told me that the foot would be fully healed soon enough.

I wanted to take inputs from my Yoga mentor, teacher, therapist - Saras, who is also a part of our RYD Circle of Mentors - before I started any physiotherapy treatment because I believe Yoga is a way of personally taking responsibility for one's own health.

Because of my extensive travel from US to Varanasi to Mumbai to UK and her own travel schedule, I hadn't met her for 3 months though my intention and our agreement for our session rhythm is weekly.

I believe for the progress to happen on a Learning Expedition, meeting my teachers once a week is a minimum. That is why RYD is modelled on a weekly rhythm.

Last Thursday, a day after meeting the physiotherapist, I had a session with Saras. I told her about my interesting foot pain. She gave me a different way of doing a particular asana. 

In two days of my personalised yoga practise designed by her with her suggested modification of one asana, my foot pain has dissolved.

I share this with a deep sense of wonder and reverence for the wisdom of our ancient heritage and for my teacher. I danced through the night yesterday at a friend's 50th with gay abandon and no experience of pain. I just did 100 jumping jacks to re-validate that the pain is dissolved. Only 4 days ago, I could not get past 1 jumping jack because of the shooting pain I felt in my right foot as I jumped back to the ground.

I checked Louise Hay about my foot pain only in the last 2 weeks, which is interesting considering my over-emphasis on always checking the emotional reason for any physical discomfort; and using shifting of mental and emotional energy to aid the healing process.

From Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life:
Right side of the body - giving out, letting go, masculine energy, men, the father.
Foot Problems - Fear of the future and of not stepping forward in life.

I read this and smiled to myself because I saw how my relationship with my spouse was showing up in my body.

Exactly 10 days ago on 17-Oct, I had shared the below Insight in the RYD Book Club, generously and graciously led by Shreya from our Ashoka Tribe:

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from Strong Mothers, Strong Sons by Dr Meg Meeker

Insight from reading the Book so far that made the biggest difference to me:
I have judgements about my husband's parenting style. Since communication is non-verbal, my judgements are probably hurting my son's relationship with his dad, and hurting my son as an outcome of that.

Action that I will take to create Breakthrough Results: 
I will practise having my son experience my respect for his father and actively shine the light on my husband's positive qualities for my son, to support him to have a stronger relationship with his father.

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I have a strong Decision and Action Bias, developed through years of practice. Once I see something through reflective self-inquiry aided by my teachers, I decide to act and I act; with no gap between these 3 stages of generating a new Reality. So, I have been actively shining the light on my husband's positive qualities in the listening of my son. Just saying it won't make a difference. I have to believe what I am saying and feel it, for what I am saying to be fully received because communication is 90% non-verbal.

I saw the immediate difference it made. My son was angry with my husband as we were driving home last week. I acknowledged my husband from my heart, mind and soul in the listening of my son. Within seconds, I saw my son move forward on his seat and wrap his arms around my husband while he was driving the car and my husband kiss his arms. I felt joyously fulfilled.

Later, I shared with my husband my observation how my shining the light on him had shifted Shivenn's emotional energy. I shared from the joy of my experience of observing a shift in Shivenn in response to the shift in my emotional, mental and spiritual body. My husband responded - Sure. Go ahead and take all the credit.

I smiled because I saw the Universe' support for me in all its splendour and glory to raise my consciousness to Gear 5 in our relationship because Gear 5 Leaders give away the credit for the good that happens and take responsibility for what is not working. If I can step up to Gear 5 Consciousness in my relationship with my husband, Gear 5 consciousness would permanently be available to me in every area of my life. Today, I experience higher levels of consciousness at work, which powers other areas of my life.

Over the last 9 months since the discovery of the 8 cm tumour in my stomach, I had massively stepped up the work on uncovering what was in my emotional body that was at the source and went on to work systematically to heal my emotional body through Psychodrama, Brandon Bay's Journey Within, Vipassana, Yoga Therapy and week-on-week work with my coach, Leon, to actively uncover and process my emotions with Raw Honesty.

As per Louise Hay, Tumour in the physical body is an expression of - Nursing old hurts and shocks. Building remorse. 

Thanks to all that inner work this year, I have developed enough emotional, mental and spiritual strength that I am able to now step-up to Gear 2 Consciousness (I am extraordinary. I love myself. You are extraordinary. I love you.) in my relationship with my spouse that gives me grace to shine the light on him from my mind, heart and soul; not just my words; which would have been the case as recent as June this year. 

I have had Strong Mothers, Strong Sons on my book shelf for many many years but the book called me to pick it up this year because I now have the mental, emotional and spiritual strength to take the action recommended by the author. 

The tumour is still there as it was 9 months ago, when I first discovered its presence in my life. I am deeply grateful for it's presence because of the massive healing work it has led me to. It's a friend, a guide to support me to become the greatest version of myself as I listen intently to the message of my soul through it. It will dissolve when I have fully received it's guidance, acted upon the guidance and learnt from it to make a bigger difference through my life - at work and at home.

I use Louise Hay to help me understand the clues that my body is giving me to create a more effective structure of success for my intention of being at the highest level of health, fitness and joyous well-being. Whatever she says for a particular physical symptom, I consider it as the Truth and go about diligently exploring how it could potentially be the Truth. I always find a path of healing and growth as an outcome of this process. I seek to understand, instead of disagree.

Seeking to Understand than Reacting to Disagree is a Gear 3 Distinction. If my teachers (through their books or in-person) say something or do something that doesn't logically fit into my head, I seek to understand than give in to my immediate default fear-consciousness response of - I don't agree with this. I have found that seeking to understand than reacting to disagree unearths a lot of growth diamonds for me which progress me on my Good to Great journey with greater ease, grace and velocity.

At the highest expression of who we are as human beings, each one in our space is our teacher. If we can bring the humility (which is a Gear 3 Value) of a student to all our relationships, we will step into Gear 3 consciousness where others experience us as extraordinary. Interestingly, in Gear 3, we no longer feel the need for the others to relate to us as extraordinary. And, yet, we receive that Grace only in Gear 3.

My current Transformative Practice is to practise the Gear 3 Distinction of Seeking to Understand than Reacting to Disagree through all my 5 bodies - physical, energy, emotional, mental and spiritual - in my relationship with my husband. It has taken me, probably, many life times of work to reach this Consciousness of being able to do that now.

Gary Zukav very beautifully says in his book - The Seat of the Soul - that before our soul is birthed as human this life-time, our soul reaches out to other souls that we want in our family system in our human existence and request them to behave with us in a certain way so that we can learn what we need to learn for our soul to grow and evolve to the next level of consciousness in this particular lifetime.

I believe I requested my husband's soul to fracture my arm in Oct 2019 and requested the Universe to leave me stranded all alone with every area of my wheel of life at 0 making me experience the full intensity of the anguished pain of my Hole in the Soul - I am all alone. No one loves me - so that I could actively work on filling it by practise being Love, Gratitude, Reverence, Integrity, Mastery, Joy, Loving Kindness, Equanimity, Abundance - my Spiritual Values, all expressions of my Whole Soul, while I was in the darkest, deepest dungeons of my despair. 

That's how the Whole Soul gets strengthened - when we can respond to our Hole in the Soul with our Spiritual Values, and act from the consciousness (awareness) of our Spiritual Values. I am not the same human being today as I was 5 years ago. I am deeply grateful and feel divinely blessed for the accelerated journey of growth over the last 5 years; even as I see a much longer journey of learning, growth and evolution ahead.
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Let's keep learning, growing and evolving across the 3 growth levers - Leadership Depth, Craft Mastery, Business Excellence - to joyously lead ourselves and our businesses from good to great, realize our dreams and have it all with ease and grace; experiencing beauty, balance and harmony within and all around; while having lots of fun and adventure along the way 💜

Loving you,
​j.