As Human beings we don’t like limits, we crave that which is essentially beyond limits and beyond us and we are capable of more. We are capable of wisdom and love that transcends time and we carry a kind of eternity in our hearts.

Yet we are limited incomplete and unfinished, our tenure in life is so brief and fragile.  There’s something missing in all of us, there are essential things which we cannot fix, cure or resolve with our human efforts.

We are intrinsically imperfect; this is how we are made and how we are meant to stay. We are meant to make mistakes, we are not supposed to know everything and for sure there’s no enlightened guru here. When we don’t make mistakes anymore, we will be out of this world. Playing God is our most tragic mistake.

Paradoxically we have to thank our mistakes our brokenness and pain.

“God has made us with a crack so that light can shine through”. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

In my experience there are 2 main categories of people who come and look for help; those who are often and disproportionally angry and those who are afraid of getting angry. Mostly I see people that have considerable suppressed anger.

In many cultures, spiritualities and even therapeutic circles anger is viewed as a damaging and negative emotion.

Anger, aggression, is a life affirming positive force and has strong healing properties.

Anger is a natural and spontaneous response to stop situations and people who threaten and injure our body, our freedom, our integrity and self-respect. Anger is the body’s organic need to move the energy out and to take actions to safeguard and express who we are and how we feel. Anger tells us what is important and what and who we care about. Without aggression, in its literal meaning of “moving towards”, there would be no satisfaction of ours vital needs, no discoveries of all our resources, no expression of our capabilities. Love needs aggression.

Anger and fear are in antithesis, when there’s anger, there’s no fear.

In fear we block the flow of anger, the energy is reversed inward is pulled back towards the centre, the outward impulse and movement is immobilised and paralysed. Fear uses the same amount of energy as anger, with the difference that fear is the worst feeling we can host in the body: it restrains cripples who we are and what we can give. How can we be free if we are trapped in fear? How often are we afraid of confrontation and then dislike ourselves?

In the face of assaults, injustices, humiliations, if we have to block out the spontaneous response, we end up feeling self-hatred, impotent and helpless victims.

But if we suppress anger, we don’t make it disappear. The emotional secretion comes out through poisonous resentment and bitterness, self-righteousness and superiority, continuous criticism, cold silent hatred or by submitting and violating others who are weaker and vulnerable.

If we dissociate from the bodily reality, anger remains in the body in the form of tensions.

We can’t “talk” the feeling out of the body, it has to be experienced and released through the physical movement of the body to fully sense self-assurance and strength.

People, who explode at any opportunity for any minor issues, need to take deep breaths and go to the feelings below the superficial and destructive outbursts, feel the impotence and the pain. They need to increase their sensitivity and compassion for human faultiness and use all that energy in creative directions.

People who are frightened, deadened, need a safe therapeutic environment, to express the anger at who caused the injuries and the traumas.  They need to relinquish the withheld response and feel the power of the confrontation. We can be angry with people we care about, if we need to affirm our feelings, our space, our identity, so we are able to reach out again and re-establish the positive bond.

Anger, focused aggression, brings heat, energy and empowerment; it is the vital pulsatory movement that ignites the body. It is the burning flame that increases the aliveness and keeps the commitment to being ourselves.

If we cut off anger and natural aggression we smother and lose the fire, the passion.

How much fire is in my belly?  How tall is the flame?

Why searching ourselves in a group setting?

The reason is simple, we human beings find it difficult to know the truth about ourselves; often we cannot see directly by ourselves our own incongruous human mixedness.

Just as the eye cannot reflect on itself, we cannot see our own face without some kind of mirror. The others in the group hold up a human compassionate mirror, they reflect back so we can see more of ourselves.

We are all alike in strengths and flaws. “The nearer I draw to God the more I see myself as being one with every sinner” (S.Tugwell)

As genuine beings we are neither angel nor beasts, the both coexists within us: we are both saints and sinners.  It is our twofold nature of being caught between finite and infinite. to be incomplete and yet to yearn for wholeness, that human spirituality embraces.

We humans by ourselves are not enough, we need others to help us and we need others in order to help them. There’s something we all seek: we ache for contact. Separation isolation comparisons are always painful.

To feel linked joined connected to others and to a greater whole is our deepest need……

Spirituality is beyond the ordinary and yet can only be found in the ordinary daily life; it is extraordinary and yet it’s extraordinary simple and tangible. Spirituality it’s not spectacular, it’s spectacularly simple. The profoundly simple often has no words and it is appreciated by anybody. Spirituality is an essential part of being human.

At the beginning Christians chose as Saints people who showed great heroism in the face of torture and death, later on believers searched for new saints and they found one in Nicholas (today known as Santa Claus), someone ready to help others anonymously. His “miracle” was that constant kindness in everyday life.

Once a monk met a Zen novice who had just finished his first year in a monastery and asked him what he had learned, half expecting to hear of discoveries of enlightments and altered states of consciousness. The novice replied that during his first year in the contemplative life he had learned to open and close doors. The discipline of not running around slamming doors of not hurrying from one place to another was where this novice had to begin and perhaps end his spiritual percourse.

Agi quod agis “Do what you are doing”, doing the ordinary at our best, intensely and utterly absorbed in it.“Spirituality cannot be learned it can only be followed”(W. James).

We all have to find what feeds our spirit, what intimately most matters to us, what we are here for, what we have to offer. Without a spiritual basis for living, we are dead before this life has ended.

The fear of pain, the fear of not being able to bear it is mostly stored in our brain.

Our head keeps us trapped in pain. If we avoid or run away from pain, we keep the pain inside, the more we control the more we suffer. Pain has always a purpose; it is the pain that drives us and tells us what we need to change. The impossible ideal of perfection is the source and the cause of our deepest anguish and sadness. We are not in ultimate control. All living creatures experience losses and we are powerless over our losses.

Grief is natural in life.

We all feel from time to time out of control, inadequate, uncertain, tense, struggling, in conflict, breaking down, falling to our knees, failing, torn apart, defeated and crying out in deep sorrow. But if we abandon the demands for perfection and go through the rage the hurt and don’t give up heart, we start accepting and healing through the hurt.

The heart breaks open when honesty humility acceptance and compassion comes in.

“No one is as whole as he who has a broken heart” (Rabbi Moshe Leib).

Only those who know darkness can truly appreciate light.

To experience sadness, anger, utter despair, howls of pain doesn’t demonstrate deficit of spirituality but rather the ultimate spirituality.

Spirituality is not certain, clear, clean, distinct, good or bad.  “The sanctity of a temple is that it is a place which men go to weep in common” (M. de Unamuno).

The sacred is revealed to us in the experience of pain and admission of failure.

“Our defects acknowledged, instead of repelling God, draw him to us. The person realizes that those things by which he feels unlovable are exactly what he has to offer God to attract him.”(R. Simon)

When Rabbi Riziner was imprisoned, he wept.  He was asked: “why do not accept this affliction as intended in love?” He answered; “when God sends bitterness, we ought to feel it.”

When we stop fighting the vulnerability and give into the truth of being how we are right now, we feel clean light and very alive. We can use our troubles, our losses and our grief, to heal and dis-cover the unique human experience the particular kind of person we are and meant to be-come. Failures can become successes suffering joy and imperfections the source of our longing and inspiration for the never ending growth.

We feel in pain, but we are not as helpless and overwhelmed as we were when we were children. In the present we can get up and try again, we can see the same old story in a different way and choose to write a new one and be as a whole as we possibly can.

If you want to help somebody with their pain, don’t take their pain away, help them to feel it.

Soma is an old Greek word meaning body.

Somatic psychotherapy is grounded on the belief that body and mind are functionally identical, that body mind and spirit form a holistic entity.

Sensations perceptions thoughts emotions are understood as inextricably linked and interfunctioning aspects of human experience.