HEART IN A CAGE

This drawing is a piece I made more than 10 years ago as an assignment for a coaching session with Miles Kessler. It marks the starting point of my journey in Martial Arts as a path of self development, embodiment and insight, after quitting working at the German Police Forces.

I started with a lot of concepts, mainly thinking, if I would be good, no, the best, in realms of physical strength and in the capacity of fighting and defending myself and others, it would make up for what I perceived as my shortcomings in mental strength, being emotional, easily triggered and constantly feeling threatened from and being in competition with others. How wrong I was and how much my understanding in many of these things fundamentally changed over the years.

I want to continue the exploration on what we understand under strength and being strong. It seems to be such a broad concept with different people understanding different things. Some beautiful approaches had been shared from my FB post from last week as well in plenty of private conversations I had since then.

In order to understand what strong really means, it might be helpful to look into what we consider to be our weak points, a bit as if stripping away all the shelling of being strong to see what that part is protecting.

One of my largest weak points is to create huge expectations in myself and then failing to live up to them, feeding the sense of not being good enough as self fulfilling prophecy to make sure I never need to show my vulnerable sides. And here I am - anyway!

What is left when you strip away everything you are considering being a strong person? Who are you then?