Decide What to Act upon Your Insights
Huang Jin Kun (Shenzhen, China)
December, 2011
In early winter in November 2010, I came to the Balancing Retreat in Beijing with two express purposes: First, I would like to receive a balance from Conrad Ho the facilitator. Each time, it felt so refreshing. We students really looked forward to having new discoveries in the process. Second, following the advice of Conrad, I would like to gain some insights of myself from observing others’ balancing processes, so as to define my goals and do balances with fellow students, to settle in my daily learnings.
The first purpose was clear to me. Each time before I went, I would spend some time (sometimes over a month) noticing myself, trying to find something to improve upon. If my thoughts were not clear enough, I just discussed it with Conrad. But for the second purpose, I could not get a handle on it. In each retreat day, I just grabbed some feelings or sensations that popped up to do a balance. Whether they were insights, I did not really know.
Nevertheless, in each Balancing Retreat, a “strange” phenomenon caught my attention. In some cases, Conrad would invite fellow students to role-play as the client’s family members to simulate real world situations. I was chosen several times. At the end of each session, Conrad would come to check me on my statement “I am Kris Huang.” Each time, the result would be a weak muscle response. I had to do some simple balancing on myself before I could be “Kris Huang”again.
In this retreat, because this strange phenomenon occurred several times in a row, I became nervous within. I brought this to Conrad. He explained that probably, it was due to unclear personal boundary, which caused me to invade into others’ boundaries or be invaded without my own knowing. As a result, I would be easily affected by others. I did not really understand what he exactly meant but I could associate it with my personal history, that I was vulnerable to external happenings.
Thus, in the practice sessions for two days, I set goals around this issue to do my balances, e.g. “I am myself.” or “I live my own life.” Then, gradually, no more attention was paid to this issue.
On the plane back to Shenzhen from Beijing, I talked to Conrad about my insight, “To receive insights from caseworks and daily life activities and do balances on them IS the Balancing Retreat.” I had forgotten that I had said so. I read this from a webpage of Brain Body Centre website and soon sank into deep thoughts. I did not recall why I had such a comment but did remember the scenes of some participants being moved by the one-on-one balancings of other students, feeling grief, rage, impatience and the like. Pursuing such emotions and digging into their issues, people did a number of balances in the five days of retreat and obtained obvious progresses. From this, I finally understood how the second purpose as described in paragraph one above could be realized.
In early April 2011, I was in Beijing again for the Balancing Retreat. This time, I paid special attention to others’ balances and did get quite a bit of important insights from them. It was tiring for me, but gratifying. I had done some significant balances for myself. At the end of the five days, I found myself not worrying about role-playing others. Each time I was muscle-checked afterwards, a locked muscle response came. I interpreted that I had no more stress from being myself. It was a result that had roots from the last Balancing Retreat.
