CASE STUDY – ELIMINATION OF INEFFICIENT WALKING

In the following case study, I use the knowledge and skills of understanding the impact of physical laws, subconscious patterns and the impact of family relationships to significantly improve a difficult condition of a teenage girl, with the help of my student, Samo Šinik, and with that enabling her to experience a different future.

Description of events and changes – Tina

It all started at least five years ago, that is, 2016. Of course, certain things have happened before that, but I don’t remember them that well.

We took a family sledding trip during a winter break close to the New Year. Because we didn’t choose a public ski resort, we went sledding onto a forest road covered in snow. There was no traffic there, so we dragged the sleds up the hill and went down in pairs. The first time it was fine, we had a lot of fun, and the road was just right. The second time I went with one of my brothers, we went downhill, and for some reason, I couldn’t turn my sled, and we were getting closer and closer to a big rock that was next to the road. Because I didn’t want to hurt us, I thought I would just push myself off the rock with my foot…

Yes, it didn’t end well. I don’t know exactly what happened, but in the end, I think I said, “my leg went back,” and I admit I have no idea what I meant by that.

After that event, I was left with pain in my leg, and I could not stretch it, so I started going to various hospitals for physiotherapy and visiting my doctor for various scans. Nothing was broken, but we realized something was wrong with my knee when the results came back. They had no idea what it was, so I had to do various examinations for at least two years.

After these two years, they discovered that it was some kind of tumor, and they removed it with surgery. I started going to AEQ therapies shortly after that. A few tears appeared every now and then… yes, well, a little more than a few – but the consequences began showing up pretty quickly. For example:

Fifth-grade elementary school: that’s when my tumor removal surgery ended, and during the whole school year, I had trouble walking and knee pain. Sixth grade: I had more AEQ therapies but still struggled with walking. Seventh grade: I went to therapy less, and I could do much more in sports, walking, and running… And then, I could do it all by myself in eighth grade.

Many other things have also improved mentally, such as my relationships with family, my verbal expression, talking to other people…

For me, what I got from these five years is that I can talk to others quite well now and be able to express my opinions. Even though I still have to try sometimes, it is at least a lot better than it was before.

Tina

Description of events and changes – Sabina

It all started quietly. Tina started feeling pain which escalated during walking – first up the stairs and later up the hill and in other long-term physical activities. You could notice it when she was walking. She began limping, and her posture changed for the worse as well later on.

In the search for the cause of pain, we went to various orthopedists for two years. Tina was screened in every way possible – from x-rays to tissue samples.

In between, we tried to find a way to improve her posture and her walk, to relieve the pain that reached its peak with a sprained knee.

The final diagnosis that she received from the orthopedist was “kaposiformni hemangioendothelioma” (invasive vascular formation).

The formation was surgically removed, but her knee did not align. Later, knee and valgus straighteners were inserted into it. They did their job, and now she is waiting for them to be removed.

During all this time, I was looking for other solutions.

I always felt guilty about Tina’s illness. It was passed onto me by my parents, especially my father. Supposedly things were my fault because I was too yielding and not raising her right.

I was looking for all sorts of solutions so she could walk normally again. All I wanted was that she would be OK. That’s why we tried massage, reflexotherapy, a chiropractor, and dianetics.

The search also led me to the AEQ method. A colleague told me that her friend avoided leg surgery this way, so I thought I might finally find a way to good health for Tina and my father to stop bothering me.

Our first therapies of the AEQ method looked like facing reality and identifying the truth of how things and relationships are between us.

Finding the right causes for Tina’s condition seemed very logical to me, and although it was difficult to take responsibility, I also felt relief, as this was a different kind of responsibility than not raising her right. It was the responsibility to control relations. The actions made sense, and as Tina’s health began to improve visibly, I finally got confirmation that we were on the right track.

The next realization was that we are actually changing the way we live. It took me a while to understand the connections between relationships.

It wasn’t just about doing the exercises. Relationships had to be observed, which until then had been pushed away since physical health and appearances were too much at the forefront.

The biggest shift happened when I started working with myself. First, I did active therapy with Samo Šinik. I am aware that Tina is carrying my past, and the weight of everything I started uncovering started suffocating me. When I stopped doing the exercises, it felt easier.

Then I started the AEQ breathing program with Aleš.

This is where I started digging up the memories and feelings that I would prefer to keep hidden. The feelings of knowing that my child had to put up with the weight of all this were horrifying, and at the same time, she didn’t even know what she was carrying. And the same was true for other members of the family.

The story is not over yet, and it won’t be for a while. Changing relationships takes time, but the consequences are luckily already noticeable.

In our family, we understand each other much differently now than in the past, and our overall dynamics are much better.

We learned to talk and listen and to be more considerate of each other.

Our health is improving simultaneously with our relations; except now, all attention is not focused on Tina’s knee anymore.

I know that change requires active action, but the right direction has helped us reach an understanding and improvement.

Thank you, Aleš, for your active leadership.

Description of events and changes – Tine

Before these events, our communication was poor.

We did a lot of things together but didn’t truly talk.

When Tina and Sabina started visiting Brežice, Tina’s progress soon became obvious. She became more mature. She was a bit quiet at first. I think she had smoother communication with her mother than she did with me and still does.

I don’t think I know how to talk with kids. Until I went to Brežice alone, I didn’t know what exactly they were doing. But after my first therapy, I understood what it was about, how it works, and that the problem was with my wife and me – that if we’re going to help Tina, we have to change. When I was there, I became even more passionate about this method.

I avoided it a little bit at first, even during my wife’s therapies.

When I started Aleš’s program for the lower part of the body, my world changed completely too. I started behaving differently at work, and that was where the biggest changes happened. I started communicating with people differently and started exercising my rights more. Before, I was pretty quiet and obeyed everything that was thrown at me, but after I started expressing my opinion and I now feel at peace at work.

I think my father changed a lot. We used to have a lot of battles, but now he’s starting to think differently. Even in our last joint work, you could see that I was no longer “the little kid who has no education and knows nothing.”

The difference is also seen at home, and you can tell that the boys are bigger. Communication with them is OK, and we can talk about many things. Sometimes it’s hard to get anything out of them, but usually, it’s possible.

Tina and I don’t communicate much because I don’t know how to approach her.

My wife and I communicate much better now than before.

I am very grateful to Aleš for pushing us over the barriers we had so that we started looking at ourselves and others differently.

We still have work to do, but I think we’ve already crossed over the fundamental barriers.

Description of events and changes – Samo Šinik

Tina came to me for the first time in December 2018. The first visit was about learning and repeating AEQ exercises she had previously learned from Ernst Aleš. She was very quiet and had low confidence, her eyes were usually directed to the floor, and when answering my questions, she usually checked with her mother for confirmation and approval of what was said. You could see that she already “worked hard” to learn the exercises, so I only led her to slow down and the appropriate intensity and amplitude of movement. Her standing posture was rather ruined and incorrect, and her left leg was permanently contracted in her knee and slightly gravitating toward the X shape. As if she couldn’t fully stretch it out or wouldn’t dare to burden it like her right leg. I also noticed an incorrect pelvis rotation and a shorter left side of the body.

In January 2019, we started active therapies. Throughout the therapy, you noticed sparks increasing in Tina’s and Sabina’s eyes, which were a testament to new sensations and visible changes in Tina’s left leg position. With protocols designed to eliminate SMA of the green light reflex or back torso muscles, she relaxed her pelvis and was consequently able to stretch out and straighten her leg better. All this suggested that it was a functional problem and not a structural one, which meant that by regularly and consciously implementing AEQ exercises and continuing to learn the AEQ method, she could improve her current status.

After every visit, you could see an increasing satisfaction and confidence in the method by both Tina and Sabina. Both became more open and communicative. I observed a significant improvement and change in their communication, which became more and more direct and honest, without reservations. In general, communication between them and the family was also the subject of our conversations, in which I encouraged Tina to communicate as directly and honestly as possible with her mother. I encouraged her mother to listen to her in return and truly hear her.

Afterward, Tina and I implemented further active learning protocols, which helped her to feel her front and side muscles better. Better sensations allowed her to have better movement control, and to be more aware of how she stands, how she walks, and her posture while playing her instrument… I continued to teach her suitable AEQ exercises and encouraged her to pay attention to even more details that she could detect every time she started playing with and exploring the exercises. The increasing relaxation in the torso, especially around the pelvis, which is the center of the body, from which every movement of the leg is meant to originate, has stimulated a change in her self-esteem and self-image. We continued with protocols, exercises, and differentiations designed to improve leg sensation and control in conjunction with the pelvis and torso.

Medical examinations by specialists confirmed to us that the AEQ method is the correct solution for Tina’s situation.

She has always been a “good” girl, which has not changed when learning the AEQ method, she even started achieving excellent results more efficiently in school, and her instrument has also started to sound much better.

After her mother started learning the AEQ method, Tina’s results improved even more.

Tina’s results after learning the AEQ method are so obvious and impressive that it makes me feel so happy and proud to have been a part of it.

Personally, I was able to follow the slow but reliable path of change on the physical and emotional levels of both Tina and her mother. I realized the power of family influence and tradition on an individual family member – what it means to have someone to look up/down to, how this can unconsciously carry us into exaggeration, and how by doing that, we separate the mind from the body, and how strong the consequences of that can be.

Description of events and changes – Aleš Ernst

I started teaching Tina in September 2018 after having a phone conversation with her mother about Tina’s problems at the time, which were related to walking and a very bad left leg condition, especially her left knee. They came to the first meeting together because they needed a thorough conversation about family relationships to connect the environment in which Tina lived with the condition of her body and left leg.

The most obvious was the clear separation between mother and daughter and the mother’s inability to accept the strong grief that Tina expressed several times during the meeting. They acted more like a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law rather than mother and daughter – Tina was 12 years old at the time. Tina was reserved and insecure and felt a strong distrust and a lack of self-acceptance. Her mother stood by her, literally, because there was an abyss between them, which later proved to be an intergenerational transfer of the same relationship between Tina’s mother and grandmother. It was very obvious that Tina was calling out for change and realization, which her mother refused to accept out of fear and helplessness. She refused to accept her feelings because she couldn’t even change herself or her husband.

Tina’s mother was characterized by a severely contracted expression of female feelings and maternal behavior due to a lack of these emotions and behaviors in her childhood. This created a profound imbalance in the family, especially after the mother gave birth to twin brothers. The need for maternal behavior in her family increased dramatically in a very short period, and the mother has been unable to offer it despite the incredible efforts she has been putting into her children consciously. To help regulate the imbalance and keep her family in balance, Tina instinctively took on far too much female influence and put too much responsibility on her body, and increasingly overburdened herself.

In the six years that have passed since the birth of her twin brothers and visiting me, this overload has increasingly hindered Tina’s movement, and when walking, she looked more and more like someone under a heavy burden. Meanwhile, she also fell off the horse and further contracted the left side of her body so that she could carry on with the same behavior. She kept her feelings to herself so that she wouldn’t burden others in the family, and she became heavier and heavier to complement her mother’s lack in the family. Her behavior in meetings was too responsible and artificially mature, while she longed hard for attention, recognition, and praise for her self-sacrifice. She longed to feel important and noticed.

Physically, her whole left side was much stronger and, accordingly, more rigid and shorter. That is why we put most of the attention into increasing the sensations and awareness of the condition in the left half of the body and learning to better understand AEQ exercises so that she could then continue to improve on her own. At the same time, as a result of AEQ interpretation, she increasingly understood how physical laws and time affect and define each other and why she is the way she is.

The learning took place in the presence of her mother and later her father, who had to start increasing the role of male behavior in the family, and with that, relieving Tina’s mother so that she could find time and energy to develop her maternal role because the very highly unnatural relationship between Tina’s father and mother was the cause of Tina’s condition. At the same time as Tina, her mother had also been learning the AEQ exercises. At first, she was helping her daughter to execute them, and after that, she started doing them more and more herself. I included Samo Šinik into the process, an AEQ teacher Level 3, who was teaching Tina and her mother the AEQ method by actively learning on the table and giving them a more detailed education of the AEQ exercises.

It took over two years of regular work in Tina’s family to create a better balance in the relationships between them so that Tina could relieve herself of the function she had to intuitively take on as hers eight years ago, without the fear of deteriorating the state of the family. She became more open, determined, and clear in expressing her thoughts, desires, and needs. She no longer quietly cried in her room, and because she started understanding the importance of effective and responsible emotional expression, it became easier to stand on her feet, and she became less and less afraid of the future. Her posture and walking have also changed accordingly. The left leg is not yet fully equal to the right, and it will take another year or two for the environmental impact to be different enough for the left leg to return to normal in both structure and function.

An additional and very significant impact on Tina’s progress was her mother’s decision to start working with me in the autumn of 2020 to clarify the boundaries between her current and her previous family and increase her strength and efficiency of expression. She realized that Tina had taken on a role that she had taken on in her primary family. She understood even deeper why Tina was the way she was and why she herself could not be influential enough in her family. Through individual learning, she gained a deeper understanding of the importance of changing the level of protection of her boundaries and the interests of her family, regardless of who wants or needs to cross them. In this way, she gradually developed increasing autonomy and began completing the development that she should have completed 20 years ago. In the online program, which took place in the spring of 2021, she further developed a sense of what was missing and where she was too active, thus properly rounding up her maturation. The father attended the online AEQ learning program, which helped him understand the impact of relationships on his and Tina’s physical condition even better.

The more natural relationship between Tina’s mother and father and Tina’s much higher awareness of what is right and wrong is allowing for a continuation of change in her behavior, which is coming out of a different understanding of sensations and emotions, a different expression of what she feels, and a different response from her environment. Her form, her posture, and her movement are also changing accordingly. When she is standing, she is increasingly using both of her legs. The little girl who, when arriving at the first meeting, awkwardly and timidly, almost dragging her left leg behind her, is just a distant but a real reminder, and a reminder to all of us for how much burden we can unknowingly and unintentionally impose on a child that is born into an emotionally unprepared family.

Aleš Ernst, author of the AEQ method and author of AEQ breathing