Forgiveness heals like nothing else in this world. Do unto others, as you would want others to do to you. So how does the concept of an eye for an eye fit in here? How do we forgive someone who has hurt us beyond belief? How do we overcome an incident that has traumatic lifelong effects on our health and wellbeing? Ameneh Bahrami lost her sight and suffered horrific burns to her face, scalp and body in a vicious attack, when a man who was angered that she refused his marriage proposal threw acid on her face.
As she stood above her attacker in a hospital operating room as a doctor was about to put several drops of acid in one of his eyes in court-ordered retribution, she had a change of heart and asked the doctor to spare him at the last minute in a dramatic scene broadcast on Iran’s state television.
“It is best to pardon when you are in a position of power,” Bahrami said in explaining her decision yesterday to spare him. After undergoing treatment in Barcelona, Bahrami initially recovered 40 per cent of the vision in one eye, but she later lost all her sight.
Based on the Islamic law system of “qisas,” or eye-for-an-eye retribution she was entitled to blind him in one eye. Initially she was very pleased with the ruling and had said “I am not doing this out of revenge, but rather so that the suffering I went through is not repeated,” in a March 2009 interview.
So what is forgiveness? In a 1:1 balance session, this is a topic that arises often when we use kinesiology techniques to clear a specific issue and our body responds to a particular event in our past. This gives us an opportunity to reprogram our cellular memory using our breath, detailed affirmations and colour.
In kundalini yoga, the way we position our bodies using the science of angles and triangles. Every angle we hold in our body has a corresponding energetic affect because the muscles are putting pressure on specific parts of the body. This can sometimes lead to the release of old emotions, which we clear using the high frequency of a sound current called a mantra.
I am in awe of this woman and incredibly inspired by her strength, courage and grace. As Mahatma Gandhi says “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong”