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Soften Your Grip on Your Belief



By Masaru Kato

Moshe Feldenkrais, a founder of the Feldenkrais Method (increasing self-awareness through body movement), said, “If you know what you are doing, you can do what you want.” You are mostly unaware of how your behavior is patterned or confined to a certain fixed way by your thoughts and beliefs. Thus, if you know why you are doing what you are doing, you can transcend the pattern that molds you. You will become more open to your potential and you will get what you want.

     Actually, it is hard for you to realize what kind of psychological pattern you engage in. For example, through my healing practice, I saw dozens of clients who had an issue of self-criticism. They harshly beat themselves up, seeing themselves as insignificant,

unworthy, or unlovable persons. At a certain point, I realized that in many cases, they were attached to and submitted to the Christian value of “You are a sinner.” They were imprinted with the belief that they were born with original sin; thus, they unconsciously limited their life, as if they needed to punish themselves. They did not know that this particular religious belief bound their life. Even those who could recognize it found difficulty in being free from it. Why?

     The important point to argue here is not the context of the belief of original sin as stated in the above example. I am not challenging the Christian value in itself. The question to ask is why you are holding on to it. I call your attention to the energetic

persistence in yourself that makes you cling to a belief. I would like to discuss that mechanism by sharing my own attempts to liberalize myself from my cultural beliefs.

     I came to the U.S. from Japan in 1996. Needless to say, in those past years, I was bewildered, annoyed and frustrated in many ways, by cultural gaps. How we relate ourselves to reality is different between the two cultures. For instance, you can find a gap even in the manner of parking a car. While I was studying Environmental Science at Syracuse University, on a day of a big sports event like a NCAA tournament, all of the parking spaces around the campus became more than full. The university had its domed stadium right in the center of the campus. Many people parked their