11 Jun Always in the air

Before I can even look, I hear it already: the familiar sound of the swifts: kwiet kwiet kwiet kwiet…. They are back! A swallow is such a special bird. It always stays in the air, and these birds even sleep soaring, accomplished with one eye open. And now, now that they have just arrived, they have just covered 6,000 km, flying non-stop from Central Africa for 40 days. You would think they must be tired, but I have often seen swifts arrive around the 30th of April, and each time I had the impression that they were extra exuberant, extra wild.

Tattoos
One day my daughter comes home. ‘Look, Dad,’ she says. She lifts her shirt, and right there, in the middle of her body, a large swallow is displayed. When they were still young, I often took my children a few buildings away to watch swifts. My daughter has marked that. Then the three or four of us would stand looking up at where the swallows put on their evening show.

They circle high in the air to group together into a string of birds chirping ever louder. At first, the string moves freely in the air, but then dives towards the high gutters of the houses where they will soon nest, or makes a flight around the house. As they swirl, they chirp together, so that a loud string of sound sweeps over our heads. Above us, the string bursts apart again to distribute itself chaotically in the air, yet constantly calling and darting toward and past each other like a never-ending game, only to subsequently form a new string once more.

Six months later, this daughter accompanies me when I get my swallow tattoo. I want three on my arm, one below the other, just like in the sky!

Why does this bird fascinate me so much? I think I know the answer. It is because of their play. There are other animals that enjoy playing, such as dolphins, just like us humans. And this bird does it to the fullest.

The swift radiates freedom
It is also one of the 9 affirmations: ‘I am free’.

Affirmations are a way to provide yourself with new information. For years, you were programmed to adapt your opinions and behavior to that of your environment. This affirmations ensures that you allow more and more freedom within yourself. That does not mean that you will no longer align yourself with others, but if you do, you do so out of free choice. The special thing about a affirmation is that you send the information to your brain in four different ways: with words, with an image, with feeling, and with a body posture. When information travels to the brain via different pathways, these begin to interfere as waves: it becomes stronger.

In the method I advocate, you only need to say the affirmation once a day, preferably in the morning, and then project it onto the day ahead. You do not need to feel the affirmation throughout the day at first; that will come naturally. You say it now as an actor! And in my experience, anyone can do that. The image you can use for this is, for example, the swift!\

*This post has been automatically translated from Dutch