Losing a whole person
Published: Tue, 11/29/16
On Saturday Venetia and I went to Salisbury for three hours training with two of my long term students. We had a good session working through the axe training syllabus and it was good to see them both. Then we went on to Avebury where we met up with an old friend of mine who I had not seen for at least a couple of years. It is not an exaggeration to say that I had difficulty recognising him when he walked into the car park to meet us. He is now literally half the size that he was when we shared a house in Kidlington, near Oxford for about 9 years. He used to have a weight problem, or maybe he was the right weight for someone about 12 feet tall but he is actually the same height as me. Now he weighs about the same as I do. It is quite an achievement to make a physical transformation of that scale. Not that changing weight is in itself particularly difficult, pretty much anyone can gain or lose a stone in weight in a few weeks
just by adjusting their diet and the amount of exercise they take. It is making and maintaining that adjustment that takes a conscious decision. For that decision to be effective their needs to be a value that changing my body is actually more important than the apparent comfort that comes from addictive eating. For my friend confronting that issue is what really took the effort and courage. It didn’t happen in one simple change either but several false starts when he lost and regained several stone. Also, he is aware that the risk of putting weight back on will be there all his life.
I don’t think my friend will mind me saying that in a sense he was lucky that his problem manifested in excessive weight. Yes, losing he equivalent of a whole person in body weight certainly wasn’t easy but at least the issue was physically obvious and the transformation equally so.
Personally I don’t have too many problems with my body. (I have old age to look forward to I know but for nearly six decades I have been blessed with pretty good health and well being). My weight fluctuates slightly but I deal with that as and when. My distorted values manifest in my working life and issues around money. A number of years ago that manifested in a debt problem which ended in personal bankruptcy. I know more about business, success principles, marketing and how to make money than most people. I just keep sabotaging the actual processes which would actually transform my situation.
The hard part is confronting the value embedded deep in the psyche which actually affects our decision making, our behaviours and thus the results which manifest in our lives.
In the mythology the best known story of a warrior is the one about how Tyr lost his hand. The Aesir had accommodated a wolf cub called Fenri which had grown into a monster. (Well, it’s father was Loki so they should have known that it wasn’t going to end well.) Anyway, the wolf needed to be bound and the only way the creature would consent to having a chain round its neck was if Tyr would agree to put his hand in the beast’s mouth and only remove it once the wolf was released. Tyr kept his side of the bargain even though there was never any intention of releasing the wolf once he had been restrained. As a consequence Tyr becomes the ‘one handed among the Aesir’ as the rune poem for Tyr puts it. Maybe there is a message there. If you would control something that is a real danger to you and is growing out of control (symbolised by Fenrir). Then some kind of bargain is going to have to be made to made which will take a real
sacrifice (symbolised by Tyr’s hand) to bring it under control. Even then it will need ongoing vigilance to ensure the monster does not get loose again, as indeed Fenris will at the day of Ragnarock.
Tyr is symbolic of the Herse or warrior approach to solving problems. Effective but probably painful. The nice thing about Stav is that there are five principles in total so you don’t always have to go for the painful one.
If you really want to know how Stav works as a way of developing the whole person you would do well to come to the foundation day on the 10th December. As well as the day training there will be nine modules of distance learning material to support the course and assist you in further training and study before and after the event. Full details here http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/foundation.html
Regards
Graham
P S I will be making the same distance learning programme available to anyone signing up to the USA training in May or the training with Ivar in September, more on those in a day or two.