Ten years ago I realised that I was deeply unhappy. The depth of pain was shrouded by time, the folds of the unconscious mind and, it turns out, by a very disturbed posture.

For about seven years I ‘worked’ only on my mind and found no solice, relief or healing. Three years ago I dropped the focus on my mind, realising that the circular nature of the effort to unpick the past in this way was not working. I began to focus instead on my body.

Previously I had been physically healthy, fit and strong. I used to manage ski resorts and was snowboarding for six hours a day. The past two years has been a journey of great difficulty as I have slowly unwound my body and one by one muscles have come back to life which have not worked for thirty years.

My pelvis was twisted. My right hip was twisted. The gluteus medius on the left and the gluteus maximus and psoas on the right did not function at all. My upper body, twisted by the pelvis, twisted back on itself and collapsing the right lung into a small part of my lower chest. This twisting also meant I could control my right leg, even though half the muscles were ‘missing’ others in my abdomen and lower back took over. My pelvic floor stood idly by and watched all this going on. Few of the back muscles of my body on the right side worked, not least the trapezius. Many other muscles in my body overworked. My neck and head, in a final twist, has been locked into an incredibly painful position to counterbalance the rest of my body and the twisting forces in these major mucscle groups.

I have learned I was raped as an infant and that has been the cause of my deep unhappiness and physical problems. I learned to walk in this twisted way that evolved to avoid the pain of the rape. I also learned to look normal despite this and so that I would be left alone.

Unfortunately, too normal, especially for the medical doctors. They, being fooled by my apparant straightness, could not detect what my body was doing, even though they could identify many muscles not functioning. I am being a little generous. The doctors are fundamentally ignorant about the body and it’s ability to compensate - in short they are fooled by their own expertise.

The other significant consequence, as anyone with a little knowledge of the body could tell you, was on my hieght. At the age of thirty eight I have increased in hieght by over two inches in two years. When my body finally straightens up fully I am about six foot and one inch. My full adult hieght, all my adult life, was five feet and ten and one quarter of an inch.

Some psychologists and therapists would tell me that my inner child was doing all this. The truth is that habits of body and mind were formed to avoid the pain in my body and the pain of the memories. As I have unwound the habits of body, the mind too has found release. The Buddha taught all about this over two thousand years ago. He taught that five Skandhas (or “heaps”) of habits dictated who we were. The first habits in the heap are the habits of body. These must be undone for the other habits, of mind, to be laid bare and worked upon.

So the answer to the question posed in the title of this piece is that healing is found first in the body. And as the body unwinds the mind follows naturally. The healing has to be complete, body and mind, or bodymind as I prefer to use for it’s indispensible merging of the two.

And if you find yourself deeply unhappy, what should you do? Learn to walk really slowly - it is called walking meditation - and pay attention to your body. Memory is a function of the bodymind, not just the mind. You will get to the root of it if you start with the ground and that is the body in this case.

Since the Tsunami on 26th December, four hundred and eighty thousand children have died needlessly from lack of food or basic medicines worldwide. So just in these seventeen days deaths of man’s making outstrip nature’s two to one.

Did you dip into your pocket for the Tsunami? Fancy doing that every eight days for the regular martyrs? No - it just does not make such good television as big waves. This is the big problem with many of the injustices in our world: they are rarely seen and even less rarely acted upon.

Tsunami Jokes has become the most common google search overtaking Tsunami Video. Video Uplift, as an emotional response to the disaster, is quite natural. Laughter is also quite natural. Is it right to be disturbed by those looking for Tsunami Jokes?

Humour offers a release of pent up energy. That is why jokes need punchlines. The energy gets stored during the buildup and released on the punchline. There are deep parallels between music and mathematics. Crescendo’s and harmonies build then shift down or change key. Another change can resolve or hieghten the effect.

In humour the energy is in shifting the expectation or understanding by changing the value of tokens and symbols used in the joke. The Tsunami for instance would be turned into humour by shifting the joke on to someone who could be seen to benefit, for example. Then the tsunami would be a good thing and there would be a release of energy in the person hearing it, felt as laughter.

This is the crux of the problem. It is natural for people to dissipate these energies that have built up. However, the tokenisation of the Tsunami as a subject appropriate for humour just seems too soon to be funny. Bodies are still being found. Families are still grieving. The dead are far from being buried. It is unfortunate so many are burying their shock and awe and grief in jokes.

This website is more serious than funny. Though the writing may be ironic the subjects covered are often painful. Searching freedomforall.net with google on the left there are 42 references to death or dying and 5 to laugh or funny or joke.

I call it irreverent because it is - because I am. I once told the practice co-ordinator at a Buddhist centre I was “off to shit on the shrine” if she did not clean some toilets. I can not help but add a twist to the end of each story ironically pointing out some aspect of, usually, hypocrisy.

When the Scotsman printed an article in the paper and online editions sourced from freedomforall.net I was flattered. I looked forward to some more readers. That was until I read it and discovered this site was described as containing ‘a variety of news items and internet “funnies”‘.

Personally I am skeptical of the Scotsman newsdesk’s judgement. Thirty thousand children dying needlessly of starvation each and every day - my staple rant - can not rank as one among a collection of “funnies”, surely.

“The operator said his site, which contains a variety of news items and internet “funnies”, received a hit from someone at the authority who had used the Yahoo! search engine to look for “tsunami joke”.” - Quoted from City Hunts Worker Over Sick Jokes - Scotsman.com

Hi Lynda,

You are right that it is not good to condemn. I am glad I did what I did because I really want people not to propagate or laugh at tsunami jokes. I think it’s too soon after a quarter of a million or so people died to do that.

I am going to urge Edinburgh City District Council to provide more training in appropriate and inappropriate use of computers. It is not the sort of thing anyone should lose their job over and I am sure that will not happen.

Thanks again.

Matthew

To:

Sent: Friday, January 07, 2005 4:36 PM

Subject: Council joke search

> Hello,

>

> I think you are a little to quick to condemn that person who searched

> for “tsunami joke”. I just did the same thing and I’ll tell you why.

>

> On our forum, someone posted a disturbing tsunami joke. He got a lot of

> flack for it, and rightly so. We commented that we were heartened by

> the fact that there didn’t seem to be any of that kind of thing this

> time, as there have been so many other times. He responded that if we

> hadn’t heard any “tsunami jokes” we must live a sheltered life, and that

> they were all over.

>

> So…I deliberately searched for it on Google. Which is how I found

> your site. I was pleased to find there is just not much out there in

> the way of tasteless humour and am just off now to report my lack of

> findings. Kinda gives me hope for the human race.

>

> I do agree that our giving to the Red Cross, and other such like

> charities tends to be event driven, but I have vowed to make the same

> donation every New Year to the Red Cross every year, in memory of those

> lost to the tsunami. But they may use it wherever it’s needed.

>

> So context is everything and motives are not always what they seem.

>

> If anyone reports me for searching those words, I’ll be happy to explain

> why I did it.

>

> Lynda

Newham Council are without doubt leading the pack when it comes to extracting maximum value from the homeless. A friend who was given a property on a non-secure lease was forced to decorate the property despite musculoskeletal disablement. He didn’t mind too much as he was promised the tenancy would become a secure one after a year.

A year later Newham have changed their policy. My friend will never know his home is permanent - after several years he will have to move to another home. Newham have got their stock decorated on the cheap.

This is all to improve “Choice” apparently.

I dearly wish man would wake up to the tragedies which are not natural phenomena. I am talking of the results of the actions of men as was Mr Blair when disussing Africa. I have written previously on the “Pattern of Stupidity” Theory TM which explains these failures. Responsibility lies in the consistent stupidities - i.e. specific patterns of ignorance - of those men who have power. All men who have power - all men like Mr Blair.

Dear Friends From Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India. I have appreciated you being visitors to my humble website. Your countries, hit by this disaster, have long known hardship and suffering. Recent events have shocked and awed us all around the world. I hope you have found information that helps in comprehending the situation when you have visited freedomforall.net

Having posted my earlier post re Edinburgh Council computers being used to search for Tsunami Jokes on the Internet, I felt it was good form to give them a call and let them know. Having had a peek at freedomforall.net they quickly called me to say that it is being raised a “security incident”, will be investigated and result in action.

Well done Edinburgh.

OK it is definitely council bashing day. I just went to look at my webstats and found the entry below. This information shows that somebody working for Edinburgh District Council thinks it would be fun to have a few “Tsunami Jokes” to tell.

If the sickness of what was being done is not bad enough, they are using the Council’s computers and their work time to find them. Freedomforall.net has been returned in the search as there is a joke on the same page as several articles about the Tsunami, although it is not in any way related to the recent death of two hundred or so thousand people.

“ncc.edin.org (City Of Edinburgh District Council)

United Kingdom, 0 returning visits

Date Time WebPage

6th January 2005 03:02:02 PM www.freedomforall.net/

referral: uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=tsunami joke&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&meta=vc%3D&pstart=1&fr=fp-tab-web-t-1&b=9″

That Search