Separate tension from force. Developing strength does not imply generating tension. If we lift a heavy box without having strength, if we are stressed by a situation, or if we spend the whole day in front of the computer without moving with our head sunk between our shoulders, it is likely that we generate tension and therefore wear at a muscular level, but also at an energetic level. We accumulate fatigue.

When we practice, the idea is to accumulate strength, not fatigue. Collect practice after practice a little more body awareness, breathing capacity, muscle strength, joint flexibility, ability to focus, communication with our body. We could say that the combination of all of these in the right proportions results in strength.

If the joints are stiff, the muscles are tense and we breathe badly, we need a much greater effort to do anything. That's why when I think of strength I like to imagine not only the development of muscles, but a combination of resources that work intelligently, a sum that results in strength.

And what I find even more interesting is that, if we take strength in this integrated way, we can think of it not only as muscular, but also as a capacity for focus, or emotional support, or tenacity. And, depending on what we want to underpin, the rest becomes available. For example, if we are in fact looking to develop more muscular strength, our breathing, capacity of focus, emotional energy, joint flexibility will be fundamental tools to go where we want to go. Bring strength and sensitivity closer together, not further apart.

Have you registered which part of your body has more strength? Would you say that your emotional structure is strong without detracting from your sensitivity? And your thinking? How do all these variables interact in you? Let's practice! To perceive ourselves, to support what is necessary, to think of strength as the development of our potential.

It seems a polar wave is coming. Yesterday winter began. Today it rained, the sun came out, it got cloudy, it was cold, it was nice. A lot of diversity throughout the same day. If my decisions / plans had depended on the weather, I would have been a kite at the total mercy of stimuli. And if I had ignored my surroundings, I would definitely have had a bad time.

July, which is approaching, brings multiple themes, such as the weather today. It is my turn to write about freedom and discipline; Meanwhile, the furious wind of the beginning of winter blows, gets between the trees and to that clear climate of unease, which is sometimes experienced on Sundays, is added that of the restlessness of the wind, of what can apparently be, in the same way, kind and hostile.

I feel before this subject as one who sits before a small fire that shelters. In part it was because of this sometimes unthinkable duo —freedom and discipline— that years ago, one day, I decided that I wanted to teach the DeRose Method. It was the combination of those two things that I didn't know it was possible to put together. I call discipline, in my case, the ability to build anything: paint a picture, run a school, write a book of poems, sustain a bond, train something consistently (beyond the weather). I call discipline the sum of little bricks that give existence to what we want to carry out. And freedom, the way we build it. Without that reaching the point of subduing us. Being able to build, create, carry out projects, relationships, life itself without it being at our expense. It seems obvious, but it is not. That is why it often happens to us that, even doing what we like, something is not being as we wanted. And not because everything has to be as we want, far from it. But sometimes we have that clear feeling of being aware of more, that what we want to do so much is occupying places that belong to other things, even that it has lost its course and overflows everywhere.

I thought that freedom and discipline permeate the way we train in schools, but also our way of teaching, working and building. Not because we always do well, but because it is a variable that we take into account when making decisions, I would almost say when doing anything.

Discipline brings us the possibility of building. Freedom, to establish a bond with what we are creating, whether individually or collectively; a loving, considerate, powerful, channeled and therefore lasting bond. I don't know if you've ever wondered how freedom and discipline coexist in you, but know that they are a great duo and, when they go hand in hand in a project, they unleash unexpected potential.

We have multiple intelligences: bodily, emotional, intellectual... and they are like gears in the same machine.

There are two main approaches throughout history to develop the capacities considered higher. One is perfectly in line with the Judeo-Christian cultural heritage: abolish the body, deny it, withdraw attention and importance from it, so that other intelligences can emerge. The other proposes to develop the body (that gear) as a way to achieve overall harmony.

Among the supramental capacities that have been pursued at different times is meditation. Today there are many systems that propose to develop this aptitude. In many cases they go straight to the point, proposing the permanence in immobility with the legs crossed for hours. Have you already tried it? Have you tried to remain motionless for several minutes? From a fly to sleeping legs, at the beginning everything disperses you.

If you are not strong, with a resistant biological structure, meditating is very difficult. In fact, one of the obstacles to meditation cited by a well-known sage who lived in the third century B.C.E., Patanjali, is illness, the incidence of which is minimized if there is care for the body.

If instead of trying the farthest thing, meditation, and crashing against the closest thing, the body, we start by paying attention to the closest thing and try to feel what is happening inside, for example listening to the heartbeat, this changes the equation and the corporal universe becomes an ally to improve concentration, an indispensable previous step for meditation, which consists in stopping to think.

You have traveled the path that leads from worm to man, and many things in you continue to be worm. Once you were monkeys, and now also man is more monkey than any monkey. And the wisest of you is only a split being, a hybrid of plant and ghost. But do I command you to become ghosts or plants? wrote Nietzsche in his Thus Spake Zarathustra. This hybrid of plant and ghost, a split being, is the human being disconnected from his bodily, sensory heritage, the spiritualist in search of elevation? However, prior to this vision is that other one that sees no opposition between body and soul, does not seek to dissect what would not survive separately. If I fall to the ground I get up with the help of the ground, is the phrase of shakta tradition that sums up this view.

The path of self-knowledge is the pursuit of authenticity. And the pursuit of authenticity is a process of freeing ourselves from the tyranny of the common.

Discovering those things that at some point we imagined could be different, that could be better, but that we resigned ourselves to because they are common. Oh well, everyone does it that way.

Staying attentive to those things that we never imagined possible, that are totally outside our imagination, but that when we see them we recognize them as authentically our own.

Like all qualities, some people have them innately and others need to develop them. Some are endowed with authenticity and are indissoluble in the mass. Others find it more difficult, they mirror themselves in the nearest one and have difficulty differentiating their own thoughts from the echo of someone else's.

And it all starts with innocent observation. Observe what we feel in certain situations, but what we really feel and not the idea we have of what someone should feel in that circumstance. Observe the flow of our thoughts and perceive how sometimes brilliant ideas, warnings or questions spring up that we simply ignore. Observe what we dream, which in the language of symbols puts us face to face with everything that our subconscious is processing.

Through simple observation, all artificial additions fade away and we find that authentic core that knows no limits and is totally free from the moorings of the normal.

In this day and age when we receive such a large and constant stream of stimuli and are thinking about so many things at once, it is sometimes difficult for our brains to understand what we want to have an idea about, insight or, the sometimes called, wow moment!

1➡ Define the issue and dial it in.
Which of all these thousands of things we are processing simultaneously are we most interested in? Once we have the answer it is a matter of giving it a priority place in our world, as if among all the thoughts this one is marked with a highlighter.How do you do that? With time, place, intensity and affection. That is, giving it priority and daily in our mental agenda, taking advantage of the moments of more vitality and lucidity to think about it. And finally approaching this idea with the energy of enthusiasm for something that matters to us.

2➡ Give room for the idea to emerge and write it down.
It is important to know that for an idea to emerge it is necessary, as DeRose would say, to reverse the flow of perception and stop bombarding information from the outside in. This can be done, for example, by training concentration on a simple image such as the image of a sun, for a few minutes, trying not to disperse ourselves. This also develops our ability to focus, in this case, allows new ideas to emerge, that is, to make room for them. And at that moment it is important to have a notebook at hand where to write them down (here an important detail, better a notebook than a cell phone, that just by opening it already proposes us a thousand new ways to disperse and probably leads us to lose that beautiful and incipient idea that was being born).

3➡ And finally, as Picasso used to say: Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

Translation of the chapter from the book Cosas que la vida me enseñño

Don't be under any illusions. Everything you say about a person will come to their knowledge. So, watch that tongue. After that, it's useless to feel upset about people's indiscretion. It's like this.

More than one person's secret is no longer a secret. The moment you tell your secret to someone you trust, that person also tells it to another person he or she trusts, and so on. In a short time, dozens of people will know your secret.

So why tell? Why this need to expose yourself? Whenever you need to comment on someone, only say good things. A good exercise is: when you start saying something bad or start spewing green exorcist criticism about someone, reverse the sentence and start praising them immediately. Doesn't this person have something good to be praised for? Take a good look. Everyone has something good.

Translation of the chapter of the book Boas Maneiras by Prof. DeRose

More than half a century of life taught me to accept a human flaw as incurable: its dissatisfaction.

I went around the world countless times and met many, many people. I had intimate contact with a multitude of initiatory fraternities, cultural entities, professional colleges, sports academies, universities, schools, companies, federations, foundations .... In all of them, without exception, there was discontent.

In all human groups there is a cohesive force called egregore. According to the law of action and reaction, every force tends to generate an opposing force. Therefore, in these same groupings, small maladjustments constantly appear, which begin to take on dramatic contours through the refraction of an egocentric perspective that only takes into account the satisfaction of the expectations of an isolated individual who analyzes the facts according to his own convenience.

In other words, if the facts could be analyzed without the harmful interference of egos, it would be seen that there is nothing wrong with these facts except emotional instability. Instability that is congenital in all human beings since we are still in the process of evolution. After all, we are an extremely young species compared to other life forms on the planet. We are in the infancy of our evolution and, as such, we inevitably commit the natural immaturities of that phase.

Note that very few people are satisfied with their world. In general, everyone has complaints about their job, their subordinates and their superiors; their pay and recognition for their work; complaints about their parents, their children, their spouses, their condominium, the government of their country, their state, their city, the police, the justice system, the traffic department, taxes, rude neighbors, unqualified drivers, unruly pedestrians.... There is a lot to complain about, isn't there?

If we go down that road, we will conclude that the world is not a good place to live and we will continue to be bitter and make others bitter. Or we will commit suicide!

In ancient times, the Hindus observed this pandemic phenomenon of human dissatisfaction and taught how to resolve it:

If the floor has thorns, you don't want to cover the floor with leather. Cover your feet with shoes and walk on the thorns without worrying about them.

In other words, the solution is not to complain about people and circumstances and try to change them, but to educate oneself to adapt. The right attitude is to stop childishly wanting things to change to satisfy your ego, but to change yourself to adapt to reality. This is maturity. The other attitude is neurotic, for you will never be able to change people or institutions to suit your desires. Don't be a misfit.

So, enough of this. Let's accept people and things as they are. And let's try to like them. You will notice that they start to like you much more and that situations that seemed immovable before, now change spontaneously, without you having to complain to them. Try it, you will like the result!