Mere Words

Alfred Adler taught us to trust movement. He stated that life happens when we move. It doesn't happen thru mere words.


In graduate school I took a course in Adventure Therapy. I had to complete an obstacle course in the forest at the Oregon Coast with a group of students. The obstacles required team cooperation and couldn't be completed alone.

To my surprise I learned more about myself and my fellow students then I had in hours of classroom time and therapy. Doing this kind of therapy activates our true emotions and prevents us from easily rationalizing, or intellectualizing our behavior in front of our team. This kind of work teaches us, if we are willing, to look at our personal beliefs, motives, actions and to analyze them to determine if they really help us or hinder us.

I guess you could say that it helps us understand why we did what we did, or said what we said. We also learn how our beliefs, which motivate our actions, affect other people and we learn to talk about it with a mind toward improvement and/or personal understanding. The end result, after that day in the woods, was that I felt closer to those people in my team because we understood each other better and that I had something to think about regarding my own inner workings.

Truth really is revealed in movement not talk.