Letting go of our braced bodies

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I went to a tango class this week. For one reason or another, I found myself feeling far more stable and grounded.

On the surface, nothing had particularly changed I had been to a class only a week before, and although I did feel a bit better that day, there was not an obvious reason for such a sudden improvement.

But in the context of my bodily recovery, this shift actually makes quite a lot of sense. For the first time in my life, I am focussing on keeping my body relaxed. I feel like I have reached the tipping point where I am actually guided by my body, rather than constantly pushing it along.

Over the last year, I got into a good gym routine. I would go two to three times a week, and had a personal trainer. I would record my sessions each time and look for incremental improvements. I was doing a lot of things ‘correctly’.

Yet although I was gaining muscle, I wasn’t losing fat. This was the whole point of me going to the gym in the first place. I also found my body having increasing digestion problems (perhaps due to eating more), and I would often need an energy drink to give me the ‘kick’ to do a gym session.

Eventually, my intuition started taking over. I realised that the energy drinks were probably not helping me, and grinding through gym sessions were taking the fun out of it all. The lack of progress was also despiriting. I don’t think my personal trainer understood that I was not so bothered about the muscle gain. I felt pushed by him to keep up with increasing weightlifting goals, even though my body was crying out for less. Looking back on it, I feel like I may have betrayed my body there.

In November, I stopped. It’s been several months, and I still haven’t been back to the gym. This may sound like giving up, but it was actually vital. My body could properly rest and reset. My focus ended up shifting to doing a whole bunch of mental processing.

Mind and body are linked. My existence was crying out for space to process a lot of deep-seated emotions which were stored body. It’s also why, I believe, that I never actually lost weight over all these years. Even if I did exercise, my body was still focussed on survival. Muscle gain was fine, but it would hold on to weight stubbornly as a protective layer.

During this period, I’ve had a lot of crazy vivid dreams. They ranged all sorts of different areas of my life – past and present. I’ve often felt a sense of anxiety rising up in the morning and evenings. It would often rise around the tip of my neck, and feel as strong as if something was physically pushing down on it. Only a few days ago I couldn’t get to sleep till about 3am because the sensation was so intense.

This may sound like a form of regression. Indeed, I had gone from exercising ‘healthily’ to minimal activity and messy sleep patterns. The reality, however, was that I was finally letting these emotions surface. The dreams demonstrated that these were deep-seated feelings that had never been expressed. Sometimes sadness would arise, other times it would be random bursts of anger.

For many of us straddling histories of migration and difference, we hold an incredibly high amount of charged emotion. We carry these things with us throughout our lives, unless we give them space to release.

The challenging thing is that many of us aren’t even aware we are carrying these weights. We sometimes assume that what we experience is just the same for everyone. Or, as was in my case, we learn such good coping mechanisms that we get around the additional challenges. That is, until we hit breaking point.

I am glad that my body is feeling lighter and more grounded, and it’s actually exciting to think that I will only further improve with time. But I also have some sense of bitterness as to how nobody ever pointed these things out to me over all these years.

The western mantra around exercise taught me that either my body was broken or that I wasn’t improving because I was a greedy fatso. Calorie-in-Calorie-Out only works when you’re not trying to quite literally fight your body. I could either eat ‘too much’ and ‘fail’, or not eat enough, feel terrible, and then go on the scale only to find I hadn’t lost weight anyway.

It is worth checking in how braced our bodies are. If you know you are someone who is regularly stressed, then the chances are this is quite high. If you are someone who has experienced long term trauma, you may not even be able to tell. Even the simple act of checking in can be a big first step of letting the feelings arise.

One of the best things we can do is to release our body from its brace.

The lost art of keeping discipline

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Although I’ve learnt the game of ‘celebrating my successes’, it’s always been one that I’ve done because I’m meant to, rather than because I feel naturally inclined.

In my previous management roles, I used to talk to my staff about the importance of ‘cashing the cheque’ – when a good piece of work had been done, it was important to sing about it from the rooftops. Otherwise, all that hard graft would most likely go unnoticed. I accepted this as part of the game, even if I had a personal distaste for it.

Yet there is a fundamental issue when our value comes from the showing rather than the doing. The laborious, harder graft has become devalued.

Discipline has become a dirty word. As someone with the misfortune of being a fan of English Cricket, I witnessed what was probably one of the most disappointing Ashes tours of Australia. The series build up started with high hopes, only to end with an anti-climatic 4-1 loss. England’s ethos of aggression morphed into a happy-go-lucky approach leading to reckless dismissals and a lack of accountability.

I remember watching a video between former England bowler Stuart Broad and former Australian batter and coach, Justin Langer. During the discussion, Broad hesitated around using the word ‘discipline’, to which Langer interjected angrily that discipline is not some sort of dirty word. Discipline is about having a level of self-control and principles to do what you’ve set out to do. Without it, it’s practically impossible to succeed.

Discipline has certainly been lacking in my previous workplaces. We were in the midst of the meeting when she suddenly exclaimed ‘s**t!’. She was scrolling through twitter and news broke that someone important had passed away. It completely derailed the meeting.

I used to try and highlight how bad multitasking was for productivity. People seemed to agree with it in principle, but never follow through with it themselves. It drove me up the wall.

In my personal life, I’ve noticed a few people I know putting up Instagram stories of their latest gym sessions. To be clear, I’m not against posting videos, I’ve actually done so of my own workouts.

But the actual value of filming yourself is to see whether you’re doing the exercise correctly. I’ve noticed in these videos how poor people’s forms often are, even from my pretty untrained eye. Things like putting a machine at the highest setting then brute forcing it to show strength. It might look flashy, but in reality it doesn’t properly target the muscle, so is fairly inefficient. It can also create bad habits, or even injury.

I think my mismatched affinity towards discipline is partly cultural. My ancestral heritage and culture has been one where slow, repetitive work was far more valued. Even in the pandemonium of modern day South Asia, slowness and tradition still has a respected place in society.

It was recently rather validating that my Sanskrit teacher recently said that he was pleased with my progress. He spoke about seeing how I came regularly and was sincere and attentive, and that this meant that good progress was possible. I have never had a western teacher highlight these things as positives.

In the West, I feel like discipline is increasingly getting thrown out the window. I’ve been on workshops where I’ve said I came simply because I’m interested. This has been met with a sense of quiet confusion and dismay – how could I possibly want to do something without having some big goal in mind?

I was once on a coaching course and would always prioritise making the weekly calls. After a while, people would drop off early or simply stop attending. The course leader didn’t seem to be overly bothered. If I was being generous, I would say it was because their mindset was one of ‘its your choice’. If I was being less generous, I would say it was because they had already been paid.

This cultural disconnect around discipline is probably why my methods are chronically undervalued in the workplace. My natural inclination is to build better systems and focus on incremental improvements. Such things are seen as optional extras rather than fundamentals. People only seem to care about these things when something goes horribly wrong.

I do not value discipline for discipline’s sake. I value it because it is required. Anything genuinely meaningful will require continuous dedication. This can take years, or even decades.

If the idea of exerting self-control is something that we find ourselves avoiding, then its probably time to take a long hard look in the mirror.

Waiting for the World to implode

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I don’t think I’ve seen as much pessimism at the start of the year than I have in 2026. We’ve got to the point where we openly speak about how tumultuous things are right now.

The political watershed moment of the week came from Mark Carney, Canadian Prime Minister. Speaking at Davos, he openly talked about the ‘illusion’ of the rules-based international order. He went as far as to say ‘the system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true’.

The problem is that the illusion is slipping. It has been for a while now.

This is not a political blog, but I also do not shy away from politics. I am wary of self-help gurus whose solution to the world’s woes is to turn off the news because ‘it is too negative’. I quit a coaching programme last year when a coach suggested ‘rising above’ picking a side in the Israel-Gaza war. There is nothing spiritual or healthy about ‘rising above’ a genocide.

I’ve moved away from such western, individualistic styles of philosophies, and instead taken inspiration from ancient South Asian influences. I believe the world runs in cycles. For a good amount of time, perhaps after the Cold War, we’ve had a relatively stable time of it. This stability was flawed, but the illusion served us all. Over time, however, the cracks have grown.

People have grown disillusioned. The difference between what is promised and what is given continues to grow. Most of us can’t afford houses. Healthcare has become harder to access. Many sectors are built upon barely-legal unpaid internships.

As disillusionment has grown, the winning argument has become to have a more interventionist, directional approach. I think this is why we see a growing amount of authoritarian styles of governance. Displaying authority and coercing discipline keeps the boat afloat. Or the illusion of it anyway.

But there is only so much duct tape you can put on top of a creaking system. Climate change does not suddenly disappear because we stop talking about it. Anti-migrant and anti-trans narratives only work until people realise that eradicating minorities doesn’t actually improve anything. Economically, the AI bubble can only inflate for so long until investors are finally willing to admit the truth: the astronomical investments are only give a fraction of the promised value.

We are due a reckoning, and it’s not going to be pretty.

Yet this is not a message of despair. Instead, it’s a message of comprehension. This is a cycle. We need a period like this for us to get genuinely honest about what is working, and not, within society. Only when the illusion has fully been dispelled can we look honestly at creating something that works better.

In the last few weeks, things started to click for me. My perennial challenge has been that despite knowing what I’m talking about, my voice has been sidelined. Actually, I think it’s been sidelined because I know what I’m talking about.

The problem is that I question things. In an increasingly systematised, authoritarian era, this has been seen as a threat, rather than an asset. My questions highlight the short-sighted nature of how things are run. Since my points are factually logical, it is easier to instead attack my character. ‘It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it’, I’ve been told. When I ask for an example, I receive silence.

I’ve come to understand that I’m not meant to work in such systems. I tried, and after nearly 10 years of it, I broke down. It’s taken me over two years of rest since then, and I’m still recovering.

Instead, my voice only gains relevance in the next stage of the cycle. When we are more ready to admit as a society that things are broken. When people are looking for more honest answers, rather than how to keep the engine going for another 20 miles.

Strangely, I’m waiting for the world to implode. Only then, can I actually do something about it.

On Family and Duty

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The subject of duty has been deeply imprinted in my mind this week. It relates to the idea of expectations and roles, passed down by family and society.

I went back to see my parents in London, where I also reconnected with the works of my grandfather, Delwar Hussain Chowdhury. Before his death in 1977, he wrote many poems that my father compiled after his death.

My grandfather, was a regional inspector, posted down in Barishal, Bangladesh. In 1942, he received a telegram that his father – my great-grandfather – was nearing death. My grandfather returned back to our ancestral home in Noorpur, Sylhet. Here, he promised my great-grandfather that he would continue the Chowdhury legacy and inherit the responsibility of governing the land.

My grandfather handed in his resignation. It was at first rejected. Instead, he was offered a prestigious role as Port Commissioner of Chittagong Port. This was the biggest port in Bengal. My grandfather turned down this offer. Instead, he would live his life fulfilling his promise.

I never met my grandfather. He died 16 years before I was born. I didn’t know much about him until recently. I’ve only really come into deeper contact with our family history since working with my father on his biography.

I’ve spent some time reading through what my grandfather had written. It’s been very rich to reconnect with my ancestral history. He was clearly very intelligent and a moral person. It is reflected in his writing, as well as how he lived his life.

জ্ঞানোদয়

কোথায় ছিলেরে জ্ঞান কোথা হতে এলে তিপ্পান্ন বয়সে এসে প্রথম দেখা দিলে ছিলে তুই আশেপাশে মোরে লুকাইয়া চালিয়েছ শরিফদেরে মোরে ছাপাইয়া।

একাদশ মাসে মালিক পিতৃ গৌরব ট্রাস্টি হলেন একেলা আপন রক্তে একার অর্থে বয়ে ছিলাম ঝামেলা। অর্থ গেল উপাস এলো ঋণ সাথি মোর তোর উদয়ে আঁধার হলো সবই দেখি পর।

আগস্ট, ১৯৫৫

দেলওয়ার হোসেন চৌধুরী

Wisdom’s Awakening

Where was wisdom, and from where did it arrive? At the age of fifty-three, I saw it come alive. You were always nearby, yet were concealed from me But through the Prophets’ guidance, you taught my eyes to see

In the eleventh month, the father stood alone in trust. Within my blood there flowed hardship, loss and dust. In hunger and poverty, debt walked close to me With your rising, the darkness lifted, and now I finally see

August, 1955

By Delwar Hussain Chowdhury

Reconnecting with his poetry was heavier than I expected. His writing betrayed the difficulties he had in his life. He spoke about the loneliness of leadership, bemoaned the degradation of morals, and wrote about uncomfortable issues such as family betrayals.

I perhaps naively thought I would find a calmness from reading these poems. In reality, his life would span the Second World War, the partition of India, the Bangladeshi Liberation War (where millions were killed, and a Pakistani Army General set up camp in our ancestral home) and the ensuing famine which killed further millions. He had the impossible choice of either keeping his children close in Sylhet to live with little means, or sending them abroad to be educated earn a living, but with little guidance.

I have no doubt either that the binding of duty to family had a deep impact on his life. I also have no doubt that it has been passed down to my parent’s generation, as well as to myself. Our family have naturally gravitated towards professions that serve others.

My uncles worked in local councils either in the UK or Bangladesh. My father has been involved with numerous charitable projects across the two countries. My oldest brother works in international development. I ended up working in Government in the UK and EU.

This is not about some spiritual mysticism. Even western psychologist Carl Jung talked about ‘ancestral inheritance’. The footprints of a family can be seen in a child, even if they grew up in a completely different setting, or indeed separated from their family. A more modern term often used is ‘generational trauma’, though this is not always necessarily trauma (and I must admit, I am slightly uneasy at how often the word trauma is bandied around in instagram-therapy speak).

I am certainly glad to have a family heritage of helping people. It’s one that I am proud of. Nonetheless, I also recognise that it can have a shadow-side. When supporting others falls into compulsive duty, it can become an obligation. I can see in both my grandfather’s writings and from my father, that it can build a sense of resentment, particularly when it is not reciprocated or even appreciated.

An important part of shifting karmic cylces is recognising the scripts. Otherwise, we unconsciously follow the same pattern that our parents and grandparents make. This is something that I think I am breaking away of, but one I am seeing repeating in some of my brothers and cousins.

This does not mean that I need to turn away from helping others. That is definitely not the point. Instead, it’s breaking the pattern that I must help others without discerning whether it is the best thing to do. There are times where I think my father and grandfather have been taken advantage of due to their generosity.

My aim is to write a new script, which honours the past, but is not beholden to it.

Living life in a protective bubble

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When I hear the word bubble these days, it’s often used in a somewhat pejorative sense. In fact, I’m probably the one using it in a critical manner. I often lament people living too much in their own comfortable bubble, or indeed the Brussels infamous ‘EU bubble’.

Yet this week I reflected that there is some value in having a sense of bubble around us. For me specifically, I’ve started imagining the idea of having a protective bubble whenever I am in social situations. This helps me stay grounded and give a sense of safety, wherever I might be.

A lot of people talk about the concept of authenticity. This is the idea that we behave in ways that are true to our values. Generally, I agree with this principle. Yet it also comes with a lot of connotations that are sometimes unhelpful.

I’ve personally fallen into the trap where I thought being authentic also meant that I need to be very visible about my authenticity. In practice, this has meant feeling like I need to demonstrate my authenticity out to the world. Authenticity in this sense can fall into zealotism, where preaching becomes a part of being ‘authentic’. I don’t think I’ve been guilty of that per se, but I probably wasn’t far away from it either.

What it did result in however, was a more miserable life. The idea that ‘being my word’ meant that I had to speak was not always helpful. A key part of navigating life is also discernment, and its close relation, discretion. Sometimes, we have to better judge when we actually do want to speak. There is no prizes for being a martyr to a cause. You’re unlikely to make a whole lot of change, and you’re probably just going to burn yourself out by doing it.

My new approach is more guarded. I went out this week with the idea of having an invisible bubble around me when interacting with people. Inside the bubble, I was safe and grounded. I would only lower the bubble if I actively decided to. This meant that I was slower to engage.

For someone as sensitive as me, even looking someone in the eyes can pull me away from my being. So this is a practice to counterbalance that I found it worked rather well. The small frustrations that I am prone to experience were less intense. I prioritised myself far more than I have done previously.

The prerequisite of this is being comfortable in my own skin. In this regard, it’s not an option that a lot of people have access to. Indeed, it would not have worked for me over the last two years. I felt a fairly constant internal instability. The truth is that this approach can often seem weird to others. If everyone is expected to be super sociable and you are not, people will be confused about your behaviour. It is why it is doubly important to be comfortable within yourself, otherwise it is too easy to fall to societal pressure.

Now, I am getting far more comfortable with being alone. I think this is nine tenths of the battle. Once we feel comfortable just being in our own company, the social angst slowly dissipates. It frees me up to do what I want, rather than getting caught up in other people’s lives (and often, their problems).

In social situations, I’m pretty relaxed with standing apart in silence. Honestly, it’s probably where I’m best suited. My views are often too avant-garde, so it’s better that people hear from me only if they directly ask. It’s a more lonely existence, but one that I’m increasingly accepting as my place in the world.

I think if people tapped into this idea of having a bubble around them, it would help navigate social situations. It’s something that can be lowered when necessary, and drawn back up when feelings of insecurity creep in.

If you feel called to it, try imagining it for yourself. How would you approach a social situation differently if you could return to your protective bubble whenever you wanted – even if it was just in your own head?

If it feels like something useful, then it may be worth trying.

Well, where did that year go?

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I wasn’t planning on doing an end-of-year recap. Mainly because I had lost all sense of time. I barely understand it’s December, let alone that tomorrow is 2026.

Yet when I realised that 2025 was about to end, I was hit with a sense of shock. I could barely recall where 2025 went. And I don’t mean that in a whimsical ‘time flies when you’re having fun’ sort of thing. I mean it in a – I have massive blanks in my memory of what even happened – kind of way.

The first instinct usually betrays the inner workings. The sense of panic of not having ‘achieved’ much is a sign that I’m still rooted in a sense of needing achievement. 2025 was completely bereft of achievement. Externally, this year looks like a failure. I went from having a prestigious sounding job to an unemployed, barely functioning adult. As time has gone on, I have turned more insular, with fewer social contacts and friends.

But that was also the point. I needed to be ripped away from a life that was not mine.

I started 2025 feeling totally lost. I had a sense of continuous existential angst. I had no idea where my place in society was. I constantly questioned what the point even was of me living. I felt doomed to be a floating ghost in a world which had no desire for me to even exist.

Coming to the end of the year, I feel far more calm and grounded. I am better rested, and have a way stronger sense of stability. I’m still not ‘there’ yet, but I have hope for the future. I also understand, at least in broad terms, my life trajectory and where I’m meant to be heading.

The journey between these two points was a massacre. I essentially needed to strip out any pretense I had of living a normal life. Societal and community comforts will probably not be something I experience for much of my adult life. Instead, I am somewhere between being blessed or cursed. My role is one of the seer. I observe truths. In theory this is a blessing as I can see things that most people cannot. In practice, I am cursed to a marginal existence as that person that says things people don’t want to hear.

Although my career journey on paper looks impressive, it has been filled with a sense of angst and frustration pretty much throughout. Being able to see means seeing the dysfunctions of the modern workplace. I’ve often felt like I was watching a car crash in slow motion. Yet I also quickly learnt that averting people to the danger would be upsetting the peace. I would either be ignored or be blamed for creating problems. The only way to deal with it was to play willful ignorance to things that were obviously wrong. Piece by piece, I felt my soul being crushed. No wonder the burnout eventually came.

I also have found I do not fit into most social spaces. For the normative groups, I’m the oddball who has too many radical beliefs. In the radical groups, I’m too nuanced and question things too much. I think group dynamics dictate a certain level of compromise around personal opinion and the group collective. For most people, this seems to be a worthy trade. But for me, shifting away from my integrity feels like a deep internal betrayal. I’m not sure whether that is because I have too many points of difference to most groups, or because I have an inherent heightened value on my personal integrity.

I’ve spent the recent months shifting between states of anger to mourning. Anger at realising that I have been given life instructions that were leading me to internal ruin. Mourning for the life that was meant to be so much easier, warmer and simpler.

Some days I had a sense of energy. Other days I barely could lift myself out of bed. The Anxiety and internal pain at certain points felt never-ending. When it seemed like my body was coming back to life, then a new phase of intense internal processing began.

I had crazy, vivid dreams. In one, I vomited blood and needed to find Gordon Ramsay for help. Another, I had the power to turn invisible, and used it to escape people chasing me because I had killed people they knew. Even last night, I had a dream of being back in my classroom for English in Year 9, being cordial with an imaginary frenemy. My understanding is that this is my psyche doing dramatic rewrites of deep-rooted identity.

2025 was the toughest year I’ll have in my adult life. The stuff I’m describing is well beyond the norm of what most people experience. But the upshot is that I’m finally reaching a place of clarity.

Although the toughest, 2025 will also probably be the most important year I live. It has set the run-way for the rest of my adult life.

Choosing a more private life

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For the last number of years, my modus operandi has been to increase my visibility. More networking, more connecting and more socialising.

In truth, I’m not sure I was particularly successful at it. I’ve built some good connections along the way, but they have broadly remained at surface level. Whilst it’s nice to have acquaintances, many end up being a case of mutually watching one other’s Instagram stories. I might have a conversation every now and then. It could be after a few months. Sometimes, it’s after a few years.

For some, it is understandable. We live in distant places. Regular physical interaction is not possible. It was my choice, after all to up sticks and move from my country of birth. For others, it’s just simply a case of diverging life paths. We are different people, and so the connection has naturally loosened.

But often, it’s not about distance. This happened with people who lived in the same city. That was both when I was living in London, and now in Brussels.

My response was simply to try harder. But the harder I tried, the more futile the exercise felt. I’ve worked on my ‘social skills’ and doing things that people are meant to do in the hopes that this would bear fruit.

Because I was trying so hard, it seemed that people implicitly started relying on me to put in the effort. Without realising, I’ve spent much of my adult life building relationships where the expectation was that I would be pulling most of the weight.

It’s only now, by the end of 2025, that I’ve finally given up the ghost. I’ve not been putting too much effort out there, and I suppose it’s unsurprising that my social life has dwindled. It’s a lonely process, but an important one.

Now, I see that many of my past friendships have been highly conditional. So many of them have expected me to be the mature, softer one. People assume I have my s**t together, and so I’ve ended up absorbing a lot of emotional energy. It has been a long standing pattern throughout my life.

I’ve actually lost some friendships as I’ve come into my own. At first, I thought it was because I was being too outspoken (after all, that’s what everyone has told me my whole life). But now, I realise that it was because these friendships were based upon the idea that the other person can say or do what they want, but I cannot.

And so, I’ve stumbled upon an uncomfortable truth. If authenticity is the key for self-fulfillment and enlightenment, it’s also been a one-way ticket to ostracisation. That’s not the case for everyone, but it seems to be for me.

There are some who become more self-aware, and this has an immediate boost in their lives. People notice it, and react positively. But for people like me, it actually leads to further shunning. Many people preferred who I was before, when I had less opinions.

But there is comfort in realising that I don’t need to be social. I don’t need to be super public or visible. In fact, my life is better this way. In fact, I think it is how it is meant to be. Some people, like my dad (front of mind as I’ve been working on his biography) were born for the limelight. Others are best kept a little more hidden.

That is not some sort of self-effacing claim. It is a realisation that certain people are better suited to public facing profiles. These are often flawed but absorbing people who attract admiration and love. I see this very vividly with my father.

I, on the other hand provoke a sense of intrigue, and often intimidation. My opinions tend to be too avant-garde for the room, so I often break a room’s delicate harmony. My perceptive nature and lack of desire to follow social norms provokes suspicion, and for some, is a danger to their egos.

This is only becoming more stark as I unshackle my sense of ‘true-self’. The hot-takes are no longer toned down. I’m no longer in social structures and employment where I can be easily punished. I think this is how it is meant to be.

I was pointed by ChatGPT to Edward Said’s description of exile. Exile is not just meant in a literal sense, but in a state of mind. Said himself was displaced to many different countries, and although he had the safety of academic tenure, he was never a part of any establishment.

Said was too interested in the truth to be especially popular by any side. His essays on orientalism led to ostracisation in the academic elites, whilst his nuanced views on the Middle East only served to upset everyone. He received many death threats on his life, and was surveyed for many years by the FBI. There is, after all, nothing more dangerous than the truth.

In his essays, Said does not romanticise this sense of exile. He describes it as difficult and often lonely. But he also describes it as necessary. The world requires people who can see things without being a part of the established order.

This fits my life better than any other description I have seen.

The signs of a renaissance

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For the first time in around two years, I’ve had several days in a row where I’ve woken up without a sense of fatigue or dread.

Around two months ago, I remember having a day where I felt pretty good. I could get up, go out and doing things without any real issue. Is this what it is to live again? It was remarkable how easy everything felt.

But that was not a sustained feeling. The day after I was back in an energy dip. It was quite frustrating. Yet it at least reminded me what life is meant to feel like.

I’ve learnt how poor our understanding of burnout really is. Many people equate it simply to a sense of overwork or exhaustion. But it’s much more fundamental than that. It is often our internal systems purposefully shutting down. It is it’s way of telling us that the way we are living is not functioning, and that something needs to change.

In the West, we have gotten very good at ignoring our bodily signals. Subtle signs of mental or physical poor health are systematically ignored. Our ‘important project’ means that it’s fine to just take a paracetamol every day. Broken sleep just means drinking more coffee in the morning. Feeling low means we get shoved on antidepressants (this one happened to me).

When we ignore the more subtle signs, their only choice is to get louder. Eventually, it becomes like a toddler screaming so loudly that we must listen.

Ayurveda describes a burnout as an imbalance of doshas (energies). I have found it far more balanced and useful than any Western way of looking at it. A book I read even gave the most clear guidance I’ve ever seen. Eat foods that balance the doshas, and rest. For every year off sick, add an extra season (i.e. 3 months) for recovery.

Most people rush back to work far too quickly. I was actually close to doing similar myself. The logic was that if I got back to work, I would go back to a sense of routine. Then I would get better.

But this was a fundamental misunderstanding. The point of these moments is not simply to rest. It is to reevaluate our way of living. If our lifestyle is one that will lead us to burnout, then if we go back to it, it will result in another burnout.

Many people talk about the importance of slowing down. This has some truth, but it’s not the whole truth. There are certain activities that need to be reduced. But there are others we simply must stop. They are bad for us, and we can tolerate it no longer. Likewise, this also means that we must also start new things that are healthier for us. The word renaissance literally means rebirth in French. This is a period of reinvention, not just repair.

What this looks like for individuals can greatly vary. But it’s important that this is not just about physical health. In fact, a lot of it is about everything else. For me, working in my last job was destroying my soul. The poor treatment and lack of respect was killing me. I needed to get out.

The rush back to normal life also comes from a lack of patience. I will admit that this sort of period isn’t very fun. It’s challenging when even basic tasks feel difficult. There have been many moments where I’ve struggled to feed myself. I’ve dreaded showers because of the heightened sensory input it gives me.

So it’s quite natural to see if we can find a way to ‘speed it up’ or do something to just make it go away. We also crave the structure that we previously had, and so delusionally believe that returning to it will fix the problem.

We also live in a society that is not built for sickness. The pressure to earn money is rather crazy. I realise how fortunate I am that I can take time away from work. Not everyone has that luxury.

It was not always this way. Even in the west, we still had diseases and long term sicknesses that were common place. Vaccines for things like polio only came into play over the last 70 years. Sickness and caregiving was far more seen than it is previously.

I recognise that I am getting better. I think the worst has passed. And make no mistake, the worst was rough. It has included periods of intense existential agony. They weren’t pleasant, but they were necessary.

But I’m also not there yet. My body still needs longer. Any regular physical exertion will be too much. I can feel it.

But for the first time, I can genuinely believe that better days are ahead.

An ode to old school methods

For one reason or another, I started learning sanskrit this week.

I use an online language platform called Italki. It’s basically a place where you can find teachers and organise classes online. It’s where I also found my Bengali teacher too.

I took a chance and went with a teacher who was a lot older. His profile said he had taught in Sanskrit for over forty years. It was a slightly chaotic profile, far from the slicker, more polished video presentation you get from others.

I’ve had two classes with this teacher so far. His teaching method goes against most rules around modern western education pedagogy.

He did not ask me my motivations, he did not engage in small talk to get to know each other. He did not ask me about my other languages or why I was interested. He also did not set out some big learning goal or lesson plan.

Instead, we went through words in sanskrit. He would read them out loud, and then tell me the English of them. He would repeat the words several times. Over the course of the lesson, he slowly expanded to examples of different genders and plural conjugations. Each time, he would give example of words, repeating them several times.

On the face of it, this would seem like a banal way of learning. There were no flashy powerpoints or innovative gadgets used. Instead, it was just reading a scanned hand-written document.

Yet I left feeling satisfied after each class. It was fairly intense and tiring work. It was slower paced, allowing me to really digest the information displayed in front of me. After all my brain is in overdrive recognising a new alphabet, phonetics and vocabulary.

To the untrained eye, it might seem that teaching off a PDF document was unsophisticated. But when you look closely, there is a deepened mastery at work.

Most teachers are impatient. Watching people struggle with basic things can be frustrating. When we’ve ridden a bike for decades, we forget how long it took us to learn to do it at the beginning. The skill to teach slowly is an art that has been lost, particularly in the West.

I can’t help but compare it to the recent experience of learning Dutch. I had a teacher who was knowledgeable, but over time I realised I didn’t particularly enjoy her style. She would get me to speak, but then jump on the grammar mistakes I was making. When we did go through the grammar lessons, the exercises she would give combined it with unknown vocabulary and past grammar lessons too.

The experience was overwhelming. This was just too much to process all in one go. It was not kind on my mind, which has already been restructuring itself during my burnout. I came to dread having my classes, even though it was me who signed up to do them. I felt a lot of silent judgement for repeating mistakes, and an unneeded sense of pressure.

The funny thing is that on paper the Dutch teacher did the things to avoid this. She asked me how I was at the beginning of the class, made certain subjects relative to me and asked whether I wanted homework.

But these things felt more tick box. In the west, it’s almost like we learn an internal checklist of things to do ‘be nice, cordial, then down to business, then nice at the end’. At times, it can feel more inhuman rather than less.

My sanskrit teacher did none of these things. Yet I feel already that he has a much better understanding of me than my dutch teacher did after over 6 months of lessons.

The big difference was that he observed. He didn’t need to ask me my motivations, because my attentiveness within the class demonstrated it. At the end of the first class he told me that it was evident that I was properly paying attention and listening deeply to what he was saying. He was reading my energy, rather than my words.

A lot of people see this as too ‘woo-woo’ for them because it is not scientific enough. Yet the scientific actually often backs up the traditional far more than we realise.

After the class, I looked up the best ways to learn a new alphabet. And guess what? The suggested method was to repeat simple words rather than trying to memorise individual symbols. This would activate my brain through visual, listening and cognitive understanding in one go. Precisely the method that my teacher was using.

Such an approach comes from experience, in the case of my teacher, 40 years of it. A large part of scientific proof is literally seeing what stands the test of time. If something has worked for a long period, there’s probably a good reason as to why.

The truth with language learning is that it requires a lot of hard work. No flashy gadgets can get passed the fact that much of it comes through mundane repetition. Old school methods are less shy about this reality compared to newer ones.

It’s what has attracted me to learn sanskrit in the first place. In my quest for many answers, I’ve found fruit from ancient texts.

These texts not because of some sort of divine, but because they have accumulated thousands of years of experience before them. The quality of them were also good enough to last several thousands years more. This is in stark contrast to the other 98% of information I read, which will likely get forgotten after a week.

When dealing with the complexities of a chaotic, modern world, sometimes it serves to look at what worked in the past.

The key when you get locked out

Photo by Jaye Haych on Unsplash

We often use the metaphors of ‘keys’ and ‘doors’ in the world of personal development.

But on Monday, it had a far more literal meaning for me.

When taking the bins out, I shut the door behind me. I didn’t realise I didn’t have my key, effectively locking myself out.

It’s the sort of general mishap that we all face at some point in our lives. But it’s not so much about the event itself, but what we tell ourselves about it.

Whilst locking myself out wasn’t so bad per se, the real issue was that I had inadvertently left the key in the door on the other side. This meant that the lock itself was jammed, and so even when my flatmate arrived, we couldn’t get back in. To add to the social embarrassment, my neighbour also turned up and was also locked out due to my mishap.

After trying to wiggle the lock, It was time to eat humble pie and just call a locksmith. Fortunately, it wasn’t too late, and there was one available pretty quickly. What made it even more humbling was that when he turned up, he slid a piece of flimsy material across the side of the door and had it open within 15 seconds. The whole ordeal set me back €120.

There were quite the range of emotions throughout the ordeal. First, when locking myself out, I had the moment of panic. I found myself fall into a sense of self flagellation and guilt. How could I be so stupid? This was such a simple mistake.

It’s these moments where we get a true glimpse as to our internal fragilities. For me, it was a sense that this was some sort of karmic punishment. You see, I was generally feeling more upbeat earlier in the day. My sense of desire and ambition was coming back. I started to dream again about what I could do in the world.

Yet this seemed to be a message from the heavens telling me to stop being so arrogant. I am but a fool who couldn’t remember their keys. How could I dare to dream of making a difference in the world?

It’s pretty important to catch these moments when they come, else we fall victim to them. And it helps that I have a better understanding of my internal infrastructure now. Whilst I previously intellectually understood concepts such as ‘catastrophisation’ and ‘self forgiveness’, what I didn’t understand was why my pattern automatically jumped to these reactions.

Now I can see it for what it is. I jump to such thoughts because it is a safety response based upon a life lived in a state of constant hypervigilance. My modus operandi has been one in which any small mistake was a gross failure. It was what I was taught growing up, and further reinforced by society and the childhood dynamics I recreated in adult life.

I did deal with the issue fairly pragmatically, and in the end, I didn’t dwell too much on the cost of €120. This was a demonstration of my growth from the last few years. After all, these things happen. In the end, I was glad it didn’t happen at midnight, and moreso that the ordeal was sorted without any real harm done.

What was interesting was that the biggest awkwardness for me came from the social embarrassment. The fact that I was inconveniencing my neighbour felt absolutely terrible. This was despite the fact that in reality he didn’t actually mind all that much. Like most healthy adults, he recognised that these things just sometimes happen. It was a great example of my life pattern – if I see I make a mistake I feel bad about it for ages, even if it was a fairly minor thing. Because of this, I end up living a life in which I am focus on never making a mistake.

As for the karmic punishment, it was helpful to see that there was actually something to this intuition. The world wasn’t actually punishing me, but instead this was simply a case of cause and effect. As I learn to relax my mind and break out of this state of hyper vigilance, I’m having to relearn my way of living. And with that, comes mistakes.

Plus, I was crazy tired that day. I had been doing so much emotional processing that my brain was barely functioning. In that state, it’s no surprise that I made such a basic cognitive error. And put in that perspective, it actually makes me realise how well I’ve done this last year in managing to survive despite being at around 30-40% of my basic operating energy.

This incident was realy about the key. It was instead to realise that I am a human that is not going to be perfect. Making mistakes is just part of life, but what is not helping me is chastising myself if I do make one.

This last 18 months has demonstrated that my body cannot tolerate such an intense level of hyper competence and perfection.