An Interview with Dr. Menis Yousry by Rossitza Yotkovska
Many times each one of us has felt vulnerable and told oneself “I want to be stronger”, in moments of weakness “I want to be determined” or after an involuntary mistake “I want to be perfect”. And something more, there are so many books written and infinite number of trainings on how to be who we want us to be: how to regain our strength when we are dispirited, how to build inner confidence, when the trust in ourselves is ruined, how to do this or that without making mistakes.
Now, I will tell you a story. Imagine something like a training ground, but a training ground for our emotions and perceptions; we will call it a seminar. People participate in this seminar, people who have realized that more or less they are limited by their subjectivity and have decided to take the risk, to come out of their shell by looking at themselves through the eyes of the others.
They know where they feel strong and where weak, what motivates them and what stands in their way; they also know how they would like to feel in their life: in their family, work and the world. They also realize something else: they don’t always manage to feel that way, to do things the way they want to, and have undertaken the experiment of looking into their hidden, unconscious resources, and finding support in them, so that they could open up to their full potential.
But let’s get back to our story. A man steps in front of the participants in the seminar. He has been given the task to express with words that which makes him feel best and to declare it in front of the group. The man steps out, settles down to reach the state required by the words he is about to speak, and says:
I am a strong,
determined,
and perfect
leader.
There is a round of applause in the room. Everybody here is clear that the challenge for this man and for them as well is to dare share those most intimate desires everybody has, when choosing their behavior and social roles in everyday life – to express the thing that is always obvious, either in the way one walks or the expression of the face one has, or in the spontaneous reactions, but somewhere down the road we have decided to hide that thing behind formality, diplomacy, image and we end up hiding it even from ourselves.
The man has met the challenge of being genuine to himself and the room supports him unanimously – from now on his support in fulfilling his goals will be stable, because it rests on his real motives.
But in this very moment the facilitator approaches him and very quietly asks him a question:
“Would you mind repeating after me some other words? Would you like to try?”
The man agrees, even smiles to the softness of the manner the question was asked.
“Good”, says the facilitator. “Would you try saying “I am… sensitive…””
The man suddenly transforms. Behind his sense of confidence and self-dignity, with which he has uttered his previous affirmation, something completely different emerges – it is like his entire being is transformed in these words and he utters them.
…”I am a sensitive…”
Something much stronger awakens in the man than the power with which he stood up in front of the people a few seconds before; he repeats these words too…
“loving”…
The man is now different.
“…leader.”
A complete silence. Like time has stopped.
And in this very moment the man puts a hand on his heart, falls down on his knees and utters the whole affirmation from beginning to end. The entire room spontaneously jumps to its feet and the outburst of applauses does not subside for minutes on end – the effect is striking.
§§§
What has happened?
The man, the people, the room have felt the true dimensions of that which constitutes us. His strength. His beauty. The light within him. Everybody has felt what is in there, in our essence, which is much more than who we think we should be, due to other people’s expectations or due to an idealized view we have about ourselves (which is also a product of other people’s criteria and expectations).
How many times in life have we tried to be something different than what we truly are, just because we thought this was right, beautiful or good; just because we thought that if we were what we were expected to be, people would like us more, appreciate us more, love us more – and respectively we would like ourselves more? And how often have we rejected our true essence, we’ve tried to get rid of it, change it or replace it, thinking that we’ll become less vulnerable, will make less mistake, will become more desirable and complete?
And after a story like this, one realizes: our true strength lies in our uniqueness. In our authenticity. In accepting who we truly are, and opening up all that we carry – it is worth opening it up to the world and enriching it, because that is the only place where every transformation can start from.
Strength does not substitute vulnerability – it is the way to live the most fulfilled life WITH our vulnerability, and sometimes FROM our vulnerability; our sensitivity is a bigger strength than our impeccability.
People don’t need our perfect image, they need our love, and also the love we have for ourselves; the impeccability lies in allowing ourselves to learn even from our weaknesses with love.
§§§
We are getting back to our story.
The seminar is called “Towards the essence”. The facilitator is Menis Yousry. The participants in this very story are people from Bulgaria, but people from UK, U.S., Russia, Sweden, Hungary, Germany and Spain too have their own stories.
And on these pages of Public Republic, I would like to present Dr. Menis Yousry.
What is Bulgaria for you?
Bulgaria is where the East meets the West in a positive and a negative way.
Which is the first word you learned in Bulgarian?
“Dobre” (Добре)
Behind the cover (layers) all people are the same, but probably there is difference between the cover of the Bulgarian, the Englishman, and the Egyptian? Are there nationally conditioned protections?
Yes, people are the same everywhere, but there are cultural specific layers. These layers can cause a lot of confusion when we communicate with people from different cultures.
You possess the secrets of inner transformation: after your seminars people take life-changing decisions. Is there anything left to the fate, to the karma, or to the “providence”?
We can outsmart fate, karma, or “providence”. Because we do not understand them we may draw conclusions from them that limit us even further. When we learn to listen to our heart or inner voice and have the ability to act on this, everything is perfect without fate, karma, or providence.
Before turning to psychology you have had a Bachelor degree in Arts. Does art look different through the eyes of a psychologist? Do the criteria for what is valuable and aesthetic change?
Life is a creative movement in constant movement towards the future and this is what Art is. Creativity is always new, what is creative is always changing and never ends, is never complete. Everything in life is art except our past, it is movement moving backwards so it is not creative.
What did you take as experience from the theater and design into your seminars?
Yes, I use Art to construct the seminars and when working with people. I prefer to say that I share with people the Art of expanding our consciousness.
Many people achieve great things in life thanks to the expectations of people around them. What do these people gain from becoming aware of their unexpressed essence?
Improve the quality of life. Living and acting without the mask of protecting ourselves may not be comfortable for everyone of us, but it is the best gift we can give ourselves and everyone who comes into contact with us.
If you look back in time, what are the stages you have been through before shaping the seminars as they are today?
The first stage is deep and painful personal experiences. These experiences broke all the filters that clouded my perception of the world and allowed me to look so deeply into my heart and soul.
I gained a lot of insights and awareness about how it is to be human and how to live in a way to be a loving peaceful presence in the world for myself and for others.
How would you define the correlation between personal experiences, professional experience and intuition, when working with people?
There is no rule book for life and we cannot divide personal experiences, professional experience and intuition. They are all the same.
According to you, is there a difference between “spiritual practice” and “therapy”?
“Spiritual practice” and “therapy” are attempts to relieve human suffering and they will change. Buda was the first psychotherapist.
Usually people see more clearly the solutions to other people’s problems, rather than to their own. Does this apply as well to a professional therapist?
It does apply even more, if the therapist has not worked on themselves enough, they are in danger of falling in that trap of being the saviors of people.
Which are the key moments in your life?
When my children were born, and when the people I love hurt me.
How would you describe your own essence?
Humility, humanity, humor, harmony
Could you define the people you consider your teachers?
My real teachers are the people who caused me the most amount of pain and I managed to remain loving towards them.
“When the student is ready the master appears and the master is you“
Many of the people you work with create their own seminars, but do you prepare people who would continue your seminars?
My seminars will continue by people who catch the spirit of my work and follow their own heart.
Each seminar reflects your new experience and new knowledge. What is next to come?
What is next to come will unfold by itself without me controlling or planning it. It will show itself to me when I am ready to take the next step, my next steps have always found me. What we are looking for in life is looking for us, if we allow it. There is no end for this type of work.
Dr Yousry is the founder and lead facilitator of the Essence Foundation. He worked as a Family & Systemic Psychotherapist and Psychologist and a supervisor for the British National Health Service for fifteen years. Over the last 20 years he has designed and facilitated personal development courses in 16 locations in Europe, USA, Latin America and the Middle East.
He used his professional experience and academic research to develop the Essence Process, a simple, sensitive and unique approach that transforms intellectual and emotional understanding into practical application to the day-to-day living experience.
The Essence process illuminates our way of being in the world. It reveals the negative, invisible and subconscious family of origin structures and patterns that changed our perception of seeing the world as it is. Consequently we have developed ineffective behaviour patterns to deal with our unrealistic misperception of our world.
Dr Yousry takes participants on a magical journey to embrace the past without resistance, with compassion and acceptance instead of trying very hard to create an unachievable ideal world to compensate for our unresolved, unaccepted past hurts. This journey starts a process that deepens our lives by growing through the realisation that our behaviours are based on conclusions we arrived at as a result of our past experiences because Real life cannot be experienced
Dr Yousry works with people with an extraordinary clarity, compassion and humour without a ‘method’ by simply guiding people to a deep observation of their inner being. While methods are cognitive operational strategies to change our behaviour, Dr Yousry sees all human behaviour as a manifestation of the meaning we put on our past experience of our world.
Therefore, changing our behaviour cannot work unless we transform our view of how we see our world. His approach to self-development is extraordinarily simple and self-revealing, leading to lasting transformation in our consciousness.
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