Finding freedom in confinement

[Music]

[Music]

you

are as free as you allow yourself

to be i wonder if you

agree or disagree with a statement

the question is how free

do you want to be

freedom is often seen as something that

we fight for

we strive for and people have even

killed for it

how many people run away on a holiday

saying i want to get away from my work

and my home is so stressful

it’s too much i can’t cope and head off

on this journey

to go and rest and recover

and then they come back home again to

deal

with the music and to all truth

they have to come back to themselves to

you

you can’t escape yourself you cannot

take a vacation from yourself

because you are stuck with you from the

day you’re born

to the day you die

there’s one thing i do know for sure is

that if you treat

a freedom like an external pursuit

you’ll be chasing those mirages in the

desert and you’ll never

quench your thirst you’ll be thirsty for

your entire

life we have really been indoctrinated

and conditioned from a very young age

what we believe what we think a lot of

the time has been taught to us

and we believed what we’ve been taught

that was our normal

we didn’t ask too many questions we

lived our life

according to the way others lived or the

way we saw our parents to live

and then add to that one very important

thing that there’s nobody in the room

has escaped from

either discrimination or abuse or

bullying

or scorn or hurt or harm

that’s a given what else is a given is

the fact that

everyone in the room has been hurt by

somebody

and everyone in the room has hurt

another person

that’s the truth you see we can’t really

escape

what others are ever going to do to you

it’d be lovely if we had control of the

entire universe wouldn’t it

but if there ever been a pandemic

lockdown if we chose not to

but sometimes we just don’t have the

choice

what i want to ask you about is what are

you going to do about those situations

those uncomfortable messy situations

in your life are you going gonna keep

running or are you gonna face them

i really grew up in a

less than perfect kind of family i’d

like to say i don’t think many of us

grew up in a perfect family

was interesting i grew up in a middle to

upper class family

and from the outside it looked picture

perfect the white picket fence

the great role models it was all looking

fabulous my friends at school and

everybody around me said

you know i want your life i want to be

you

and i thought hell yeah you just don’t

know what’s going on

behind the white those four walls

was a very different picture playing out

as youngest of three i was

constantly at the mercy of abuse

anger being the scapegoat i was the

black

sheep i wasn’t particularly the favorite

at

all

and what happened is i started playing

that externally

so from the age of six already there

were problems

i was already in a psychologist’s room

by eight years old

what was wrong with this child came from

a picture-perfect

family but look at this child as a

monster

it’s playing out aggressive beating

things up going crazy

and that was the 1970s children were

meant to be seen and not heard

and that is where i started my journey

of realizing that i had to find my own

coping skills and strategies

because i didn’t have them at that age

and there was no way

of gaining those strategies

there was a big elephant in the room

and the adults were turning a blind eye

and pushing it under the carpet

they were not wanting to see the picture

it got such a bad degree by my early

thirties

that this pain this anger inside

not even ball sport was making it right

i could hit

a squash ball 20 times against the wall

but still

that anger remained and it was getting

worse and worse

i turned to martial arts i went from one

studio to the next looking for full

contact

until i found cage fighting cage

fighting was

the best find almost that i could ever

find

here i was role model therapist by day

at night cage fighter

my clients thought i was fabulous i was

having city clients a day

great therapist what they didn’t know

was i was cracking on the inside

i was screaming for help but that mask

was so good

that job well

i was living alive by nighttime it was

my only way of releasing that pain

that anger was building up inside and i

was addicted to it

every strike every smack i got

cut bruised i wore with a badge of honor

i like the emergency room i got

attention

and for those split seconds i felt i

felt like i was seen

i felt like i was real i felt like

something mattered i could feel again

then one day in the middle of a wrestle

on the floor with my fellow fighter

something happened i woke up

what are you doing what are you doing

i got off the floor left outside off

that got off that wrestle

and i left outside that room never to

return ever

to a studio ever again what i realized

at the time is i was at this

massive crossroads if i’d carried on any

further there was no return home

and if i got out now i had a chance of

redemption

i was addicted to pain i was stuck in

abuse

cycles and pain and drama cycles

i was not free and i needed help

right now remember going for a technique

and i thought you could help me

i’m a fighter no one’s gonna help me

and then i walked into this room

and it was a technique in short called

emdr

that stands for eye movement

desensitization

and reprocessing that’s a rapid eye

movement that they create

with a side to side movement that the

therapist does with their fingers

and that opens up all those suppressed

memories

that are coming and you what you’ve been

suppressing and the traumas in your life

what i didn’t expect of the six sessions

guess what

my sesh that all my abused sexual abuse

came flying out at me

like a whirlwind tornado and just ripped

through my life

i was left absolutely

raw vulnerable scared and alone

i’d absolutely know where to turn at the

time i decided

i’m gonna go for counseling or if i went

and i picked up the emdr textbook

on the first page is that a quote by

jean paul

sartre freedom

is what you do with what’s been done

to you

freedom is what you do

with what’s been done to you

i said to my therapist a time yeah this

thing makes no sense

what the heck is written here freedom

doing

whoever someone’s done wrong they must

go to jail they must pay the price

they’re bad

finished i want retribution and she said

to me lusanda

one day you’re gonna work this out

well the one day only took close to 20

years

i think you can say i’m extremely slow

luna

and from that i started doing qigong

that is a chinese

ancient chinese form of martial art

it was a way to find peace and balance

in my life

and i met up with my master and he said

to me lucinda

will you assist me

in the men’s maximum sentence prison

with qigong classes

i kind of didn’t want to but i knew this

man must know what he’s up for

what is about as we got to the prison

that day

he said to me that just two things i

want you to remember huh

two things just remember this

don’t judge show compassion

and show each man look at them

with soft eyes

and number two remember

it has hurt people

that hurt people

see the light see the good

and these offenders we got to the open

entrance

and the what if started what if i’m

raped

what if i’m hurt and i don’t come out

but i carried on into that first

corridor

the corridor was dark like this room

right now and there was a light

flickering

the floor was cold and concrete it was a

very very deep stench of testosterone

sweat

and my lungs they burned

and as i walked through i saw these

these cells were overcrowded

and i knew it was no place for a woman

to be

and then the cat calling started

you come to daddy

and many other below the comments we

shall get into tonight

and so we carried on we were swallowed

into balls of the prison

and led into this the gymnasium where 15

muscular men stood they wanted none of

this qigong

master or his woman’s sidekick

the sessions were over six weeks one

hour a week

only and from the start

i watched these men soften before me

what i knew is that one hour wasn’t

really

enough they had to go back to their

cells and they had to face

the abuse from their fellow offenders

and then also the wardens

and there was one young man that came up

to me right in the beginning of that

first session and he held my hands

and he said to me thank you

for believing in me

that was a day i’ve never forgotten

because i realized that believing in

somebody no matter how bad or how wrong

you think it has been

sometimes those people are the people

that need that the most

they just have got slightly off the

program

for now and so

my sessions continued and then they

asked me

but how do we find freedom in

confinement

i went back to my therapy the skills the

tools i had

and i created a three-step process

acknowledge assess

accept acknowledge comes down to

they had to accept that they were

offenders

there’s no running away from it there’s

no use trying to

numb the pain take the drugs available

in the prison

and distract yourself like we all know

how well we do that

in life they had to face the music

and they had to be accountable for what

they did

the second thing was assess they got

there for a reason

what did they do wrong where could they

have corrected it

and go through the facts the positive

the negatives

where had they got unstuck

number three acceptance they had to

learn to love themselves

no matter what no f’s no one’s perfect

in this room

and neither were they and they had to

sit

not with the knowledge knowing that

they’ll hurt and that is why they’ve

ended up where they are

they’ve got a past and they need to

start working on their past

and they need to stop moving forward

what were they going to do

about where they were

and so by the end of the time of six

weeks

i had a group of men who knew you

are as free as you allow yourself to be

they made a decision that they were not

going to feel the trap of the physical

confines and they

realized the mental confines were way

worse

now this is what happened in lockdown

famous

pandemic lockdown that affected almost

the entire world i wonder where you were

in march 2020

i know where i was i was on the road

doing what i do well

distracted driving around being busy

being a great person out there with a

heck of a schedule

and i came home all alone and i had to

face the music to my

life for the first time there was no way

out

it was me what we thought was 20 days

became

many many months and i came back

and that is what i faced i looked in the

mirror and i said

so who’s going to live here are you

going to

make it or are you going to fall apart

and so when the external world shut down

my internal world woke up

now why is there some importance to you

is because

every one of you’ve got a story every

one of you has been hurt

every one of you has faced conditioning

indoctrination the most important thing

my question to you is what are you doing

about it are you gonna let it destroy

your life

are you gonna bleed out on other people

are you gonna hurt the people that never

hurt you in the first instance

not even that you’re doing it

intentionally

but what are you gonna do starting today

you don’t have control over the outside

world i’m sorry tell you can’t control

our governments

you can definitely not control the

people around you

you can’t control the drivers on the

road the many factors every day

and if you want that control you need to

go home and lock the doors and not leave

but we’re living a big world here and i

believe in turning things around

and as my master said to me it is hurt

people who hurt people

you can remember that always

you will realize that when somebody

hurts you don’t take it personally

it’s because they need help and they

need

love and they need somebody to believe

in them

i truly believe in this world

that so many people

are actually trapped in their own trap

and they created it

every time you had a blow a breakup in a

relationship something happened someone

hurt you what you did is you went into

confinement

and now is the time to change

that exact story in your life

take your life the remote of your life

in your hands

you have way more power than you even

think

and i want to leave you with one last

thought

you are as free as you allow

yourself to be

you