What the Fuck is Self Development? (A shout out to all the young women and men to get their ass on the dance floor of Life!)

Recently I came out of a strong dance ceremony on one of the Movement Medicine CPD modules. This one was about the medicine of Phoenix, the power of transformation, change and connection to that which is already whole within us. At the end of the ceremony after 9 hours of dancing for myself personally, for my 1:1 relationships, for the communities I am a part of and the greater community of all the Life on this Earth, for my relationship with the world of Spirits and the one with the Divine, I ended the ceremony with an enormous sense of sadness.

That sense was a deep longing for having around me people my age – having them dancing with me and doing this work. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love all of my tribes, but being the youngest on my every training for the last 10 years brought me to this place. And yes, I did start early with this whole self development thing. I found my teacher, felt his connection with the Divine, his love towards Life, towards me, felt deep human compassion and holding for the first time fully in my life, and with him and with that I found the practice of integrative body-oriented psychotherapy. That was my grand entrance to my conscious self development, later on followed with my other passion –Movement Medicine. Both of them, along with my teachers, reminding me of who I am and where to look to find who I want to become.

Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash

So, what the fuck is self development? It seems like that phrase jumps out from every corner nowadays. Self development, self realization, ‘working on yourself’. It sounds like we’re under construction all of the time. Even I got bored of that concept and I’m a therapist. It’s not as if I’m gonna spend some time fixing a couple of windows and my house will be warm and fuzzy till the end of my life. It’s also not like I need renovation over and over again – because we all know how exhausting is to have the workers in your living space all of the time. And everywhere I look there is a promotion of spirituality, ‘go in’, ‘embrace yourself’, ‘be compassionate’, ‘work hard through your shit’, ‘be kind’, ‘never judge’ and so on. No wonder most of the young people don’t feel a strong call to do it if it’s advertised as hard work that makes us spiritual but not real, alive and age appropriate. Spirituality comes with a great shadow of separation, false inner peace and distorted transcendence that tries to bypass the rawness of our humanity.

No doubt a big number of young people don’t find this appealing. On the other hand, no doubt that some of us found ourselves in that place as a refuge when overwhelmed with Life sometimes.

So, what does that phrase mean?

It’s not about being ‘oh so spiritual and profound’. Well, it can be about that sometimes as well. It’s about being and becoming more and more conscious of who we are personally and collectively. It’s about asking yourselves honestly over and over again what is your part in every situation, how do you create your reality and what is the place within you from which you create it. For me it is about finding what’s wrong and what’s right within me in the sense of who I am in this moment and who I would love to be. It is about feeling that which aches within us, being with it, ‘dancing’ through it, letting it breathe and bringing a new experience in that old story. It is also about being awake to the undercurrents and motivations of our actions, but also getting to know our passions, our love and dedication. It is about a constant choice of honesty and positive intention no matter how raw is the jungle we meet inside of us. And it is about having the humility of not knowing and surrendering to the force of Life.And if you think you already have that and don’t need to do anything about it, you’re in real trouble. We’re in real trouble.

It doesn’t have to be my practice. It doesn’t have to be ‘the practice’. It has to be your practice, the one you can commit to and that can support you to bring your body-heart-mind-spirit-soul self into this world.

It takes time.

It takes money.

It takes practice.

It takes dedication.

It takes honesty.

It takes passion, love and courage.

It takes company.

And it gives back so much more than we can ever imagine.

So, a shout out to all the young men and women out there ready to engage with this dance called Life. I need you.