Learn Languages Easily. Methods of self-regulation for successful learning

One may think that some people have nothing else to do but to watch you and evaluate whether you do everything right or wrong! In such cases, I often ask my patients the question if they look at a group photo whose looks they worry about the most. The typical answer is that, firstly, they think about themselves. This is what most people do. They worry about the way they look, and they do not really care about you. If it is the kind of person, who likes to judge everyone else, then let it be his or her problem that they are ready to waste their time judging. It’s enough for you to know that you deeply accept yourself and that you respect and love yourself, no matter what others think of you. In any case, you will try to do the best you can.

Thinking about the impression you make on other people is an unnecessary neurotic reaction.

Hands on the neck

Zinaida, a medic student, tells us the following:

“There are hands on my neck. They are human hands. Something is squeezing my neck…”

“Do you think there’s such force in the world that could be strangling a good girl Zina?”

Zina thinks and understands that there is nobody except herself who would prevent her from speaking. This is an after-sensation, which was formed at an impressionable age at some confusing moment. It is just an inertial contour.

Having realized that it is a part of her own, Zina decides to bring back the energy from that “sub-identity.” She observes the process that follows the realization. Hands move away from the neck and melt. The energy of the body, that used to be split into two, is united, and Zina experiences a boost of energy.

She feels that the world accepts her with interest and love. She becomes stronger with every day in this world. This sensation settles in her body[33 - This work took place in Moscow in 2010.].

Exercise 6: If there is something squeezing your neck

Initial attitude: “I choose to be ridiculous and absurd if it’s necessary. I focus on speaking and reaching the goals of communication and not on making an impression as an expert in this language. Calmly and with dignity, I cushion those mistakes I make during the communication. I feel the ability to communicate freely using the knowledge I increase daily. My organs of speech are free. I breathe freely! Everything is great!”

With such attitude, observe the reserve development of the pressure that was applied on your neck and how energy from whatever was holding you, be it a noose, a choker, or a collar, goes back into your body as warmth and pleasant heaviness. Feel the way your body is being filled. What used to be a noose is resolving completely.

Your new attitude of confidence and calm establishes itself in your body. Your body accepts the idea that your focus is on the goal of communication, on finding the right words, and connecting them in an understandable way and not on the way you look and the way you are evaluated. This understanding has a similar sense of the body being filled with light or any other positive sort of substance.

A choker

This comes from my own experience. From time to time, I had this sensation of wearing a metal choker and being a galley slave, which made me think what provoked it and how I could possibly get rid of it. During one of the sessions of self-regulation, I began exploring. There was no one and nothing that would hold my neck chained. The chain from the choker was not going outside. It turned out that its “anchor’ was a big dark kettlebell at the bottom of my stomach. As soon as this kettle bell was removed, the choker disappeared, too!

Remains of earlier traumatization and slavery were gone. I felt calmer[34 - It took place in Ascoli Piceno, Italy on February 22 2012.].

There is more than one cause

A lump in the throat or being choked can be explained not only psychologically. In medicine, there is a notion of a differential diagnosis. However, similar symptoms can be caused by different reasons. In the situation, when these symptoms cannot be worked through self-regulation, or they quickly return, you need to think about other possible reasons and seek professional help of a corresponding expert, such as a neurologist and a spine specialist, an endocrinologist, etc.

You can exclude some of the aspects yourself. There is a very good diagnostic method in medicine that is called “ex juvantibus.” You assume, for example, that the reason of the spasm in your neck could be, say, impulsion from intervertebral discs at that level. Useful exercises for the neck are described in the corresponding chapter of this book. Do these exercises and, if they help, you will see that your diagnostic hypothesis was true. If you see no or little improvement, then you need to come up with a different hypothesis.

You have to take into account that, practically, every symptom can be explained from various points of view, that is: it can be the result of several different causes. For instance, the syndrome of energy deprivation of the brain (we have already mentioned it in this book) depends on the level of activation of the nervous system, blood vessels feeding the brain, spinal column, functioning of the lungs and heart, and on other factors. You can find out more about it in my book “Geometry of Emotions” and “Phobias.”

Working with the initial state

Traumas, which have no direct connection to the speech, can still affect it. When Elena observed the process of speech production, she discovered the consequences of an episode she experienced many years ago.

A comet got into my head

Elena. A comet got into her head when she saw how her husband hit their daughter with the back of his hand when she was standing in the cot and crying. This episode brought up a feeling of hatred towards her husband, which lasted for more than 30 years, even after the divorce.

There was a similar tension in his body.

During the session of self-regulation, Elena let the “comet’ leave her head in the opposite trajectory, and her body finally began to relax. Along with relaxation, it was easier to see the mystery of the speech production. Speech is born in the state of calm, and then it flows like a river. A whole river flowed and then disembogued into the ocean.

Other processes began to go freely. Reference books, dictionaries, and films are loaded through the top of the head to the area of the stomach. Elena felt she was “on air.” She offered the following interpretation of what has happened: she got connection to the info field[35 - The session took place in Moscow in 2012.].

Robocop

Nikolai is 32 years old. There is a certain delicacy in his build. He experiences a lot of stress even when he has to contact people in his mother tongue. Face gets tense, and there is also some tension in the chest and stomach.

On the test drawing, there is a 5-year-old boy. This is indeed what Nikolai feels like, although he works for a big company in a very good position!

As he was paying attention to his sensations, he revealed he was like a Robocop in the film, as if his face made of steel, and his body protected by the armour.

“Before the moment this armour appeared, had there been anything in your life that could have been traumatizing?” I asked.

“There were a lot of fights in the family. My mother used to shield herself with me, so I was a buffer between her and my infuriated dad.”

“What seems to be covered with armour?”

“It’s as if I didn’t have the frontal part at all. Imagine a building, the front of which is ruined and crumbled completely. I feel like I have left my body. By the way, I have been having these dreams that I lost my head since I was a child.”

“Fortunately, a human body is not a building of lifeless bricks: we have a process of regeneration. Observe what is happening.”

In the mind of Nikolai, the following static picture appeared. His father is sitting in an armchair as some sort of shapeless mass in front of him, Nikolai is tense, and everything in the picture is motionless. Nikolai is “frozen’ with his fear. At the level of his solar plexus, there is a big and completely empty sack.

The further process consisted in coming out of this state of being stuck and being outside your own body. As you know, there is an expression “to throw somebody off his stride,” and it looks like exactly what happened with Nikolai.

Very gradually, while keeping the attention on the motionless scene, it started to “unfreeze’ and “melt.”

I helped Nikolai with the words of support: life has changed, nobody is fighting right now, and he is a grown-up person with a lot of experience. I asked him to observe how his new experience (the experience of defending his dignity and the experience of communication) was coming from the space, from his head into the reservoir at the level of his solar plexus and stomach (where he used to feel emptiness).

Everything bad, that got inside, went away through the face and eyes.

Alongside with the changes inside, Nikolai’s self-image changed too.

The initial state of the frozen pain, hidden rage, the fear of emotional expression, and protective tension transformed into a new state of freedom, peace, and being filled with new knowledge and strength.

In a new state, it became easier to imagine and then learn what adequate communication with people is like[36 - This session took place in Moscow on February 6 2012.].

Bold 90-s

A constructive drawing of a person, which we have described earlier, brings out the issues that influence the overall state of a person. Even if an issue does not produce a direct influence on the speech, it can interfere.

Unwanted generation

In the class which took place on August 13, 2011, in Moscow, there were Elena, a saxophone player; Ilya, an architect; and Denis, who worked on television. All of them are people who grew up in the 90-s.

In Elena’s drawing, the neck was drawn as a triangle with its vertex looking up. This is a sign of offence. Her favourite instrument, saxophone, fell through into her soul as if it was a black hole. It is a dead-weight burden at the bottom of this hole. When Elena graduated from music academy and she was eager to begin growing professionally. To her great disappointment, her skills and instrument were not in demand. It was very difficult for her to overcome frustration. Even now, there is a sad joke: “If you are a student of a Conservatory, make sure that you have a spot in the underground to be able to earn money.” Back then, Elena had to live this joke.

In the drawing of Ilya, the architect, there is a triangular head with the vertex looking downwards, and a neck, a large circular body. Arms and legs are long; arms are lifted above the line of the horizon and have fists made of circles. This is a contour of anger, and a reflection of a similar story of frustration, disappointment, and pain. The only difference is that there is more rage in Ilya’s reaction. Instead of developing ideas of improving architectural space, Ilya became a civil servant in an architectural bureau with 90-year-old grannies doing tedious paperwork. It seems that someone is intentionally dragging him into humdrum. Ilya changed jobs six times, but the result is always the same: nobody needed his ideas. As for sensations: walls of a building (at the level of the chest) seem to have fallen apart into a deep mine.