As a four year old girl I decided I wanted to play hockey. I wanted to be like my older brother – my Dad was proud of what he could do on a sporting field so I wanted him to be proud of me in the same way. I was given my first hockey stick and taught the basics then I joined a junior minkey team.
I was pretty good at the sport so I was put onto a hockey field at the age of 5. I realised that the tougher I became, the harder I could hit the ball, and the more willing I was to go in for a tackle without showing I was scared. My ability to get back up again after being taken out in a tackle without showing I was hurt was congratulated and earned me a lot of praise. I became quite good at any sport I tried.
At the age of 13, I had made it into the under 18 rowing team. A few years later, after trying discus for a few months, I was selected for the Pan Pacific Games for athletics and had also made it into the state schoolgirls hockey team. I was known as the powerhouse on the hockey field and no opposing team wanted to get in the way of any ball I hit. I remember one day another girl did get hit by a ball that I’d hit and had to be carried off the field. I was devastated that I had done that to someone, even though it wasn’t intentional, and couldn’t sleep for three days. After that I knew I didn’t want to bring that level of force onto a sporting field.
As a teenager I was confused, I ridiculed the ‘girly girls’ for being pathetic but there was also part of me wishing that I could sometimes show I was hurt or cry but I never did. I didn’t know how to be around boys because I didn’t think I was pretty enough so I just became one of them and threw myself into sport more and earned recognition this way but it was never enough.
In my mid 20s I was very overweight despite playing lots of sport and I also had the muscle definition of a man in some parts of my body. I was ashamed by this but also used this as an excuse to retreat from people and relationships. I didn’t like how I felt about myself and if any guy showed an interest I would instantly reject him thinking he was either ridiculing me or there was something really wrong with him if he was willing to accept me.
When I first heard Serge Benhayon present, “you need to be more fragile with yourself,” I was outraged. It was like a red rag to a bull, I wanted to take him down, like I would someone on a hockey field. It brought up such a fury in me and I thought he was asking me to be pathetic and I wanted to show him I was tough and could cope. I was surprised by how intense my reaction was.
It was not long after this that I had my first Esoteric Breast Massage. I dragged myself through the door as I was extremely embarrassed and did not want to go, but there was a part of me that just knew it was right. In this session I was treated with a tenderness that I had never before received in my life. After this I reacted and got angry, I did not want to feel all that was coming up, the way I had been with my body for many, many years. However, I could not argue with the physical changes in my body, I had always had very irregular or light and short periods, however after the Esoteric Breast Massage. It was like my body was releasing and I started to have more regular periods.
Despite how uncomfortable I was with what was coming up, I continued to have Esoteric Breast Massages. It took a while but I eventually stopped reacting in anger to them and started to accept that underneath that, my whole life I had been wanting to be fragile and tender with myself but I had never allowed that.
Over the period of a year and a half I lost 30 kilos, which I had never been able to do before even when I was playing sport and trying lots of different diets. My body shape changed also and so did the way I interacted with people, I was no longer as guarded. I am still in a process of re-learning how to nurture and treat my body with tenderness and care. While there may not be a proven scientific study behind it yet, I can use my body as my science and I simply cannot argue with the changes that have occurred in my body and in my life as a result of the support from Universal Medicine, its practitioners and healing modalities.
by Anon
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
Anon, I understand much of what you have shared and how as women we shy away from being tender and fragile. Like you, I used to think that that was a weakness, when it is completely the opposite.
Being tender and fragile evolves as you evolve and then more is offered. Otherwise our Soul offers this to you somewhere along the way and sometimes it isn’t how we envisaged it to be.
From a young age we are tender, whether we are a boy or whether a girl, it matters not. Tender and fragile is something we all need to embrace and in the heart of this, is the love and Soul that resides within all.
Anon, I love how you have shared that as you allowed yourself to connect with you, and love yourself, your body and natural beautiful shape returned to you without much effort (of dieting or exercising to lose weight)…This is a great testament to being at ease with your body and how it then reflects it back to you in the form of a natural weight loss.
I agree as we are comfortable with our own skin and can truely gaze into our own eyes, there is beauty beyond that beyond…
I too have experienced a similar thing growing up where I felt that sports was the way to connect and get attention from my dad and so I would push myself and my body hard, so that I would get noticed. It’s interesting to realise that I did not allow myself the space to know that for someone to truly love me, there was nothing I needed to do, other than just be myself.
Wow Anon, this is a super powerful sharing and one that really speaks for many of us as women who have pretzeled ourselves in life, contorting our natural way of being so that we try to turn into something we are not to get ‘love’ or acceptance from another, and in the process deny our fragilty and innate beauty.
This is a great topic for a conversation on how we are conditioned and this has a tendency to start when we are young and are not recognised for just being who we are a natural spark of light and joy.
“there was also part of me wishing that I could sometimes show I was hurt or cry but I never did.” I can really relate to this line, it’s so important to be open and show others exactly where we are at, it can help them to grow also, particularly if the hurts have occurred in a relationship.
This is a very beautiful blog to be read. It deeply touches me to see how even the hardest guard we may had created, this can be released from our body, allowing us to come back to our exquisite and delicate fragility again… This just feels expanding and really nurturing.
Fragility is really seen as the enemy, something to be avoided. Growing up the tough, macho, non-feeling male stereotype was promoted as the ideal, and women were seen less because of their delicateness and fragility. Having less muscle strength as a woman compared to men was somehow seen as less worthy also – how utterly ridiculous it all is. I’m still making my way back to fragility and I often notice how rejecting other women can be if I’m open about being physically unwell – it’s bizarre but that’s what happens. We seem to want to relate to others as images and ideals of how to be and avoid realness at all costs.
Why do we need scientific evidence when what we are doing is obviously working? What kind of insecurity is being masked with the back up of double blinded, random sample? What do we need to prove, and who do we need to prove it to? If it works in your life, if it benefits your body, your state of being, and the state of those around you, than who needs a quantitative experiment of 1 million others? The results cannot be the same for everyone anyway, and what works for one may not work for another so to put an umbrella on anything is just false, it proves nothing and does not give a platform for real growth.
Science should be working side by side with humanity and learning together, not taking an authoritative position that implies superiority, or expects to have control over others.
The changes in how you are speak volumes, that is proof enough, ‘I can use my body as my science and I simply cannot argue with the changes that have occurred in my body and in my life as a result of the support from Universal Medicine, its practitioners and healing modalities.’
I can’t imagine going back into martial arts like I used to do. These days it feels far more supportive to be sensitive and tender with myself rather than harden up.
Spot on Leigh, in retrospect, some of the choices I made as sports (I also did martial arts) feel like abuse to me now especially to consider if I were to go back to them, especially given the way I was with it all at the time.
I agree Ariana. That’s what makes it really inspiring.
Love the honesty in this sharing and the humbleness of opening up to this process of letting go the hardness to connect deeper with yourself.
We can run away from tenderness, we can deny or fight it one and million times but this quality will remain pure inside us, whether we like it or not. No matter our age or gender is part of our true nature as human beings.
I adore what you are saying Inma that there is a quality within that remains pure no matter how we are encouraged to trash our bodies nothing can taint the purity of God.
Losing 30 kg in a year and a half is pretty impressive in itself, but here what is being shared is that it started with allowing tenderness within – I agree, some people may want to question or argue, but this is your very own personal scientific study, a very solid proof of what is possible, and from the honesty you speak with, I feel how powerful this whole process is.
Then you add in the testimonials from 1000+ other people that have had similar changes to their lives and it makes you wonder why science isn’t chomping at the bit to research this.
There is so much here to appreciate. Someone making such a transformational change is huge and the fact that you have been so honesty and transparent about it is rarer still. This is true medicine in action.
It is medicine in action and the beauty of it is when we empower ourselves not only does it heal us but it offers a healing to others too.
It is beautiful to realise that all that we want is to be treated with tenderness and deep care and that we can give ourselves permission to do so and a whole new world unfolds from there.
When we really start to nurture ourselves and become more ‘fragile’ with ourselves our body shape can change and our weight also. I have known people who are underweight put weight on when beginning to come back to their own body wisdom, as in trusting themselves, and treating themselves more delicately.
When we follow the impulse of hurts, we enter a pattern of realizations that only help to crystallize the hurt, while giving us the illusion that we are leaving it behind.
Compelling insights into what can go on for children behind the closed doors of ‘sport’ – an activity that is heralded by many but could actually be having a devastating effect on many despite what it appears like.
Fragility can be found just by allowing ourselves to be, from the very essence we already are, which is untouched and untouchable by nature.
“Over the period of a year and a half I lost 30 kilos, which I had never been able to do before even when I was playing sport and trying lots of different diets.” – incredible what can happen when there is re-connection to oneself and the love that one is. The Esoteric Breast Massage is a beautiful healing and restorative modality that takes us as women back to our truer selves shedding and discarding much in the process.
Losing weight is much more than just what we put in our mouth and how much or little we move – these are just the mechanics but more importantly, there is an energetic factor; this mean that when we start to let go in an area of our life, the body can easily shed the weight that had been piled onto it.
I love how our body just knows what it needs and your example of dragging yourself to your first Esoteric Breast Massage is a great example. Your body just knew that there was healing to be had.
Learning to be more gentle with oneself, not only melts the hardness and the protection away but allows the love and care to come in.
Reconnecting with the quality of nurturing ourselves is paramount in our development as living as the woman we are.
Your very honest sharing shows so clearly that when we are not living in a way that is true for our body, pushing it, hardening, and so on, our body speaks very loudly of its discomfort, and if we continue to not listen its voice only gets louder. In beautiful contrast, when we bring more love and caring to our body and honour it for the amazing vessel it is, it speaks in such a loving way as it begins to return to its true and unique quality and shape.
Weight on the body is not just about food. The way we see ourselves, the honouring or lack of it for who we are within is without question a contributing factor.
True, weight is an energetic factor before it shows up on the body as extra padding. And that is why diets don’t work or only for a limited amount of time.
I loved reading your your blog Anon, because it reminded me so much of my own youth, I played a lot of sport to a high level and it was not until my 40’s when I came across Serge Benhayon that the penny dropped and I realised how much protection I had put up, I now know through my own experience that to surrender to the tenderness that we can change our life completely.
This shows clearly that we shape our own body and life, it is only a question of whether we go with what we think we need to be or do we allow ourselves to come from the natural tenderness that we all hold in our bodies.
There was a sadness reading about how you felt about your body and towards yourself as I realised how many young women (and men) are living in these self-imposed-prisons about our bodies and how much shame/embarrassment we can carry (I know I did for years!). Then reading about how you are stepping out of that prison, and developing a loving and tender relationship with you and your body was quite delightful and very heart warming.
We are the result of the thoughts we allow in. Say no to abusive thoughts by saying yes to tender loving thoughts and our whole world changes.
Thank you Anon. What stands out for me here is how our body responds to our drive to cover up and deny our immense fragility and how quickly it relinquishes the armour when we are enabled to re-connect our delicate beauty through all the Universal Medicine Healing Modalities and in particular the EBM sessions. These modalities work on us on many levels, psychologically, physically, energetically, true multi-dimensionality that delivers incredible changes in so many aspects of our lives all at once.
Wow Anon you showed the world that a change is possible. To return to your tenderness and your fragility is something more women should allow themselves to do as this are our natural way of being.
What really stood out to me when reading this blog was the focus we place of changing the outside instead of the quality of being on the inside. What good is it eating well if we still feel rotten within?
Crazy how many of us associate fragility with weakness, yet like you have shown there is a real true strength in allowing ourselves to feel what is there to be felt and not to override it. There is a grace and beauty like no other when a women chooses to allow her delicateness to shine though.
We see what we want to see. We see, wow this person is great in sport. He/She stands out. What we do not want to see is what is behind, wat is the drive and what is the bodily quality that makes that to happen. We disregard this as important in the name of the results. When we confirm the person because of his/her capacity to deliver, the person gets identified with his/her ability and what drove him/her is further cemented into his/her body.
When we confirm another by what we see we are usually assessing someone on images and beliefs, when we feel and sense we get the truth and we know what’s going on behind the image presented.
Isn’t it interesting how we in fact know exactly what to do to keep us from being fragile, tender, still and sacred? Even by our reactions we give away how to the detail we know who we truly are and where we truly come from and in the end our divine universality cannot be denied.
Why wait for ‘science’ to catch up before we implement changes to our life? We do know when we do something that is true for us and our bodies for they respond in kind as they do when we don’t. We are living and breathing science and we can be masters of our own living science that is called out bodies. We can get to know it very well and learn to live all of our life through its intelligence. Our body will never lie or let us down, it will simply communicate the truth.
I am too finding it a “process of re-learning how to nurture and treat my body with tenderness and care” and I get a bit undone with sitting with feeling uncomfortable. A loving work in progress.
It’s a crazy business when we harden ourselves to protect ourselves from being hurt. As you describe so beautifully, we can lose connection with our own tenderness as well as not allowing love in or out and to and from others.
‘Over the period of a year and a half I lost 30 kilos, which I had never been able to do before even when I was playing sport and trying lots of different diets. My body shape changed also and so did the way I interacted with people, I was no longer as guarded.’ Awesome Anon. It is the way we are, the way we live, that counts.
This really is a testament to the power of re-connecting and allowing out our innate tenderness and sensitivity, something we may ridicule in others when we deny it in ourself but that deep down I’d say we all want to come back to.
Self-loving choices establishes a self-loving reality.
The best diet in the world is the diet based on self-loving choices.
How beautifully put. I could feel today after having an EBM how food can sort of support us staying still or can take us away from that. And how loving to not eat anymore what takes me further away from myself.
As we slowly let go of the protective guards we set up around us that basically say keep out we begin to actually let others in and our interactions with them become far more meaningful and purposeful.
It is incredible the lengths we will go to, to avoid feeling our sensitivity. But no matter what we do and how hard we make ourselves, it is always still there waiting for us to return to.
‘ I can use my body as my science and I simply cannot argue with the changes that have occurred in my body and in my life as a result of the support from Universal Medicine, its practitioners and healing modalities.’ Witnessing and honouring the truth of our body – it’s simple really…
There is so much more behind body shape and food. As you describe our whole attitude to life and how we are with ourselves in all plays a role in how our body shapes itself. We are creating our own body shape to face life.
Our body is our science and what it can teach us is not only invaluable but will one day, when sponsored science has run its course and been defrocked, so to speak, be accepted as the truth it is and has always been.
Being tender as a woman is a hugely underrated quality. It offers more power than being tough ever will.
This is an incredible story and a common one for kids trying to impress their parent(s). What I was inspired by was your dedication to keep going to have Esoteric Breast Massage despite it not being pleasant. This story also confirms to me that anger is not really about being angry. It is actually a protection we use so we don’t have to show our tenderness or fragility.
Since studying with universal medicine, I now understand the truth of emotions. There is so much judgement and shame around anger as it is seen as a ‘bad’ emotion and one that drives people away so there is little true understanding of anger. certainly I had never come across so much love in the understanding that anger is a way to protect sadness. With so much anger in the world, we can never express too much that there is a fragile and tender person behind all anger.
Yes especially when faced with anger in another person or persons and being aware of the atrocities that are happening every day in the world knowing that sadness is underneath anger allows us more compassion and love in holding this person without condoning for a moment how they are expressing.
It’s very interesting how from a very young age so many girls seem to somehow work out they’d be better off being a boy.
This story is a great example of how we mould ourselves away from our true self as we grow up. In the search for attention and praise (as a substitute for love) we are willing to sacrifice our true self. But luckily our body and being show the effects after a while and gently bring us back if we take heed.
What a truly beautiful healing and blessing to read – how we can treat our body in another way that is actually loving and understanding. That holds no crutches or self-critique but a freedom to love.
This blog gives an in-depth understanding into why girls would put their bodies through such hardness through competitive sport – that being that lack of self-worth creates the gap that needs to be filled by something that will give one recognition for what they do… and the more extreme the better! Valuing ourselves, for who we are is a great start to then choose activities and movements that honour that instead of deny it.
Thank you Anon. It’s clear that most people are making choices based on gaining recognition. Collectively it is acceptable to settle for this rather than choose love. Recognition will never leave us feeling full and so love is the only real choice we have.
This is beautiful. When I rejected being a woman, rejected love, wanted to do everything on my own believing I needn’t need any help, my periods stopped for two years. When I chose to be open to myself, to others and to me being a woman in the true sense, I am experiencing my periods again and my whole body shape changed from teenager back to having curves.
Allowing tenderness – is accepting ourselves in full, surrendering to that.. This brings automatically the freedom and sets the tenderness free.. to come out of our body.
It’s bizarre when you think about it: why on earth would we encourage very young girls to take up such a pursuit? I know you chose it Anon and you’ve explained beautifully why, but this aside, how is it we collectively think the roughness of sport is OK for anyone – young girl, young boy, teens, adult women and men? We’re all tender beings.
There is no proven scientific test needed to appreciate what you have shared here, Anon. All the proof needed is your body and your beingness – and you have given us the facts re the former, and we can feel the latter in what you have shared.
I wasn’t a big fan of contact sport growing up. I played it and was great at it but I couldn’t keep it up and most of the time I didn’t really look forward to playing it. Funnily enough I am now fitter, stronger and more flexible then ever before in my life and yet I don’t play any sport, I don’t even run. Some may dismiss this as I would have done previously and so I understand but for me sport didn’t support me. I didn’t like what I had to do I did it but before, during and after I never felt great I’d feel relieved it was over but never great. I remember clearly preparing for sport on the weekend and how anxious I got or before I went for a run the dread I felt but I would just put my head down and do it anyway. So what has changed? It’s as the article offers I just allowed more of the truth of how I am out and from there made choices on what to do next. This may sound simple, confusing or too hard and it’s possible it’s all of those but for me I knew something wasn’t right and deep down it had nothing to do with anyone else but more just the fact I was doing something my body wasn’t up for. I bought small changes into more parts of my life that followed the same line and before to long my body changed significantly and as I said I’m now fitter and more healthy then anytime previous in my life. It goes against everything sport says it is, for me it was unhealthy as I was mostly in pain, exhausted, injured and the list goes on.
My relationship with other woman has deeply changed since I had my first EBM, I am much more open and sweet with other women. I used to get rather disdainful of ‘girly girls’ I thought they were not strong and fussed, this was no doubt a judgement, because I was not starting from the appreciation of what they are sharing with me, but looking at what was not working. Often they were delicate, gentle with themselves, did not push their body further than they needed to, would go to bed etc…lots to learn hey…now I am open to these reflections with out the disdain, ti is lovely to appreciate what is offered for us to learn in the reflection from others.
Protecting ourselves from others is simply us saying, I won’t accept more love here.
It never fails to amaze me how we think that protecting ourselves saves us from being hurt when in fact it is entrapping us in our hurt, in a self made prison, where we are stuck all the while missing out on life and having life miss out on us.
I am finding that letting go for protection is not an instant occurrence, it does take time as there are so many ways in which we protect ourselves from showing that we are sensitive, fragile, that we can be vulnerable and sense that this world we live in is not true. Universal Medicine is more than amazing in that it’s teaching by lived example that we need not protect ourselves from being aware of the lies and lovelessness.
Being tender is something in our society that has been almost banned.. Yet it is something we are naturallly capable of – every single person has it in them.. But we live in a society where it is almost rare to see a person, except a child, living tenderly. So what happend? How have we been shaped ? And how come we lost that naturally tender movement in our daily living? An interesting point..
What have we allowed in that has now replaced our tenderness? Super important question.
Lets ponder on this further..
It’s beautiful how the body responds to joy, tenderness and sensitivity rather than strictness or discipline with dieting. It shows how loving and wise the body is, to know and respond to how we feel about ourselves, how we move and interact with others – it is all recorded in the body.
It’s interesting how you say
“While there may not be a proven scientific study behind it yet, I can use my body as my science and I simply cannot argue with the changes that have occurred in my body and in my life as a result of the support from Universal Medicine, its practitioners and healing modalities.”
Our bodies can communicate so much to us if we are prepared to listen, and we are walking science laboratories we really don’t need a scientist to explain to us what is occurring within our bodies. But they do come in handy when we need support if our bodies become unwell and that then can become a great partnership between the knowing of one’s body and Western medicine to help it recover.
We toughen up in order to live in a hard and often cruel world forgetting who we truly are and the constant support that is there if only we would pay more attention.
To begin to uncover the true tenderness and fragility we hold in our bodies is a gift and one that develops and deepens over time. Taking the time to stop and appreciate our tenderness especially in our simple daily tasks is a healing unto itself and can show us so much in terms of how we are feeling and connecting to our bodies day to day.
The process of developing nurturing is an ongoing one that evolves and deepens as we evolve and deepen our connection with ourselves.
We get praised by showing we are not affected by pain, cruel words or setbacks. No wonder it is such an ingrained trait that many of us have to give the impression to not care. I catch myself doing this often, but will stew about the incident later. The hurts we pretend not to feel don’t go away.