What is the framework for all of this
Everything worthwhile starts with a good story and a good story never really has a defined beginning or end, just a placeholder.
My placeholder was on the 22nd of June 2019, moving my motorcycle, a Triumph Bonneville with the number plate “Gaz 22” - in memory of Gary, my younger brother and only sibling who passed away in 2013. The number 22 was his lucky number and the racing number on both his dirt bike and on road bike (both motorcycles).
As I moved the Triumph it fell and resulted in me tearing my chest muscle off my upper arm.
In hospital, when I went in for surgery I discovered that I had been placed in bed number 22.
I showed the nurse the number 22 tattooed on my forearm, and told her about the specifics of the accident. We both agreed that there were a whole lot of coincidences around the number 22.
Post surgery I was required to keep my arm across my chest 24/7. I could not move properly, I could not bathe properly, and I was in a significant amount of physical and emotional pain.
My situation was also exacerbated by having to take care of our 6 month newborn daughter, Stevie, the youngest of our 4 children, while my wife returned to work as I was in no position to be the primary breadwinner.
All of this also happened in and amongst the collapse of a business that I had founded 20 years previously and a more recent commercial experience where I had been ousted as the CEO of a company that I had co-founded and was now in a legal altercation with the other co-founders as I attempted my first share divestment.
Physically, mentally and financially broken.
Perfect.
As I lay in bed wallowing in my own stink, the inner voices literally screaming at me, my wife, who is one of the most insightful humans that I know said something very simple to me
“Let yourself break, mourn your Brother and everything else that you have lost”
And I broke, really broke, broke from somewhere deep inside of myself in a way that I had never broken before.
Everything had been pulled away. There was nothing left.
And after the great breaking came the great rebuilding.
I was fortunate in part (every coin has two sides and every gift has its curse) to discover that my accident qualified for workers comp and so I began to rebuild myself physically and emotionally and shortly thereafter, financially.
As part of that rebuilding practice I finally graduated from being a swimologist and actually became a swimmer.
What does that mean?
Goenka, the Burmese man behind the Vipassana 10 silent retreat centres that have sprung up across the world, in one of his discourses, talks about the great swimologist.
The great swimologist is the man who has read everything there is to know about the world of swimming. He was watched every great swimmer, has attended all the races, studied their techniques and literally knows everything there is to know about swimming.
And then somebody takes him to the edge of the pool and pushes him in.
And guess what happens.
He sinks.
Because the great swimologist has never actually swum, has never experienced swimming, has never done the practical work.
At that point in timeI had been on the personal development self awareness journey for over 30 years. I believe it started when I moved to Australia from South Africa in my late teens. It started with books like the Prophet by Gibran, Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance, Tha Tao of Pooh, the way of the peaceful warrior.
In my early twenties I was living in an Ashram and the rest of my twenties were spent deep in the world of jewish Orthodoxy and studying to be a rabbi.
When the millenium switched from 99 to 2000 I was in Blackheath, in the Blue Mountains, doing my first ever 10 day silent retreat.
The Great swimologist.
Years of courses, therapies, learnings, councilors, experiences, reading, programs and on it goes.
The great swimologist.
What my wife did in July 2019 was take me to the edge of the pool and invited me to swim by allowing me to recognise that i was drowning for one simple reason.
I had not allowed myself to recognise one important principle “do the practices on a consistent basis”
As part of my recovery, as an example, for the first time, I started to meditate twice a day on a daily basis.
I had my first introduction to meditation more than 30 years before that. Had done meditation courses, read books, sat in the Ashram, explored jewish mysticism (kabbalah) and meditated in that domain, had done vedic and received my mantra, had done 6 Vipassana 10 day silent retreats, and had attended jasons meditation for men course.
All that was missing was a consistent twice a day practice - the great swimologist.
And now i was sitting, twice a day, consciously and consistently and as a priority.
And I explored the what else, what were the other big rocks that had at times sustained me - my martial arts training, another 30 year journey, my mens circle, a fortnightly gathering I had been attending for over 16 years, the course in miracles, journaling, sharing gratitude, sunrise with the men on a Saturday, training and meditating.
As I looked, I discovered these practices that sustained me, that filled my cup, that allowed me to serve myself and others, that kept me present, that enabled me to handle my situation, that cultivated resilience and capacity.
I coined them pillar practices and used myself as my own petri dish.
From those pillar practices a life rhythm emerged. It became increasingly clear to me that my power came from the consistency in these practices and from expressing all the key facets of my life with integrity consistent with the man I was committed to being in the world.
I had always been deeply interested in personal leadership, human performance, creating a life that worked, optimal health, mission statements, purpose and life meaning so none of this was new.
What was new was that I was swimming for the first time and as I swam the experience of swimming and sharing it with others was much clearer.
What emerged and evolved from there as the 22 Movement that has ultimately become the Sit and the Shift and working with incredibly inspiring men.
And what has been crystallised in that journey of swimming is the Shift, Practise fundamentals and the Pillars and practise programs as the vehicle for swimming, swimming together, creating lives that work, being men of integrity, making a difference in the world, being the ripple, cultivating internally and being able to withstand.
As such becoming examples, beacons and being with the reality that we remain simple humans on a journey to live the greatest lives that we can with all its misery and suffering and its moments of wonder.
Because that is what life is, an ebb and a flow, calm days and rough days
And in that ocean of life in which I now swim.
Ho