Eddie Jaku was a Holocaust and Auschwitz prison camp survivor. He told his story in the wonderful book The Happiest Man on Earth. His book was thoughtfully written and certainly goes into the library for resiliency training. There are many valuable lessons from his story.
Jaku was born in Germany and declared that he was German first, German second and Jewish third. This made the Nazi atrocities that he and his family suffered very disturbing. He couldn’t believe Germans from the country he loved would treat him and his family this way.
He was forced to stop going to school at the age of 13. His father procured a new identity for him, and he attended a school nine hours from his family under a false identity. At age 18, he returned to his German home, and the Nazi police were waiting for him. His faithful dog was killed in front of him, and he was beaten severely and taken to his first prison camp.
After escaping his imprisonment for being Jewish, he was arrested for being German twice and imprisoned by Belgian and French police. Finally, after all of that, he was again imprisoned by the Germans at Auschwitz.
Surviving Auschwitz
He and his family arrived at Auschwitz together, and his mother and father were killed as soon as they arrived. Jaku was forced to work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Most days he marched for hours to and from work. In many of his jobs, he wore a sign around his neck that stated if he failed in his task or allowed a machine to stop running, he was to be shot immediately.
The people in the camp were treated horrifically, as is well documented. They had poor nutrition, poor housing and inadequate clothing in frigid temperatures. They were forced to sleep naked in freezing temperatures so that the prisoners wouldn’t escape. The beds allowed 10 men to a row. It was vital to wake throughout the night to rotate positions because if you were on the outside of the row all night, you would freeze to death. Literally.
It was vital to wake throughout the night to rotate positions because if you were on the outside of the row all night, you would freeze to death. Literally.
After a failed attempt to escape, Jaku needed help getting a bullet out of his leg. He asked a Jewish prisoner he knew was a doctor to help him. The doctor met him privately and removed the bullet from his leg with a butter knife. He then advised Jaku to keep it sanitized with saliva. The leg healed. I told you he was kind of resilient.
Jaku said the doctor gave him advice that saved his life. He told Jaku to rest whenever he could. He told him to lie down. The doctor told Jaku that all the others would be looking for food or clothing or trying to find their family, but he should lie down. He told him that one hour of rest equalled two days of survival.
Jaku escaped from Auschwitz at the end of the war, barely avoiding extermination in the death marches. He was so sick from typhoid and dysentery that the doctors in the hospital gave him a 30 percent chance of surviving. Jaku lived to the age of 101.
Approximately 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz. Eighty-five percent of them were murdered at the facility. Many died after escaping, during and after the war.
The importance of rest
The doctor’s recommendation for Jaku to rest leaps from the story for all of us to hear. Time for recovery is essential. Additionally, it speaks to the idea of providing space for body and mind. Space for good things and thoughts to surface and gain traction.
In his wonderful book, The Creative Act, Rick Rubin describes how the best way to hear or see what is hard to define is to not try. He discourages attempts of analysis or prediction. He suggests creating a space that allows it to come in.
Jaku created space by lying down. He did what the doctor recommended and nothing else.
Rubin suggests that the universe is constantly supplying information and ideas and that they’ll only land with us if we create space. When we free up sufficient space, he says our minds function “as a vacuum.”
When you deliberately rest, as Jaku did, you create space for recovery. When you deliberately rest physically and/or mentally, you create a vacuum for good things.
The problem with being “busy”
In a TED Talk in 2019, before he passed, Jaku talked about young people today and how they’re always commenting on how they’re running here and there. Jaku questioned this, saying, “I don’t know where they are going!”
At 100 years of age, Jaku seemed to appreciate the idea of rest and creating space even more. One of my least favourite words, especially around the institute, is “busy.” I have for a long time found it undesirable, and, a year ago, I heard a Zen reference for the definition of the word “busy.” It stated, “Busy means your heart is full.”
This perspective of the word “busy” and others suggests there isn’t room for anymore. No room for others or good things. Jaku doesn’t know where people are running. Why would you ever want to be busy or say you’re busy?
Are you getting enough rest? Sleep is what we first think of when considering rest. And while your sleep is very important, rest achieved in other ways may have as much or more relevance and potency. The rest between. The rest between workouts. The rest between sets. The rest between important presentations or projects. The rest between any stressful event and your next step.
What is your survival equation? What is your thriving equation? What does one hour of rest mean for you? What does 20 minutes of reading or three minutes of juggling or colouring equal?
Do you have space in your day? Do you have space in your mind? Do you have space in your heart?
What is perfect force?
One of my favorite groups of athletes and people is performing artists. My team and I were blessed to work with some of the world’s most talented and recognized performing artists, from the New York City Ballet to Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal and modern dance groups like the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Pilobolus.
I’ve often said that the most impressive athletes I’ve ever worked with were dancers. Their combination of strength and grace is unparalleled. It’s hard to describe the beauty and power that they combine.
Imagine standing on one leg. Now, extend the knee of the other leg in the air.
Now, spread your arms out to the side. Now, raise up on your toes. Now, make it beautiful. And, of course, this is the simplest of their movements.
At times, it’s as if they’re levitating, motionless in the air for what seems like minutes. G.K. Chesterton eloquently describes a “perfect force,” an “airiness that can maintain itself in the air.”
Like the sun rising or setting on the ocean horizon, it’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it. I was often backstage and at the location hours before the performances. I watched their orchestrated processes from preparation to performance onstage.
I marvelled at their ability to perform precision and beauty, with movements of leaping and holding positions, their bodies and their partners, night after night, knowing that the three or four shows that they were doing in our city were only part of a 20- or 30-city tour.
What is the formula for this combination of strength, control and endurance? Dancing athletes are serious students of many of the resiliency principles we’ve covered. They deliberately practice sensory motor awareness and are masters of knowing where they stand and how their bodies move. They must have a keen sense of where they are.
Chesterton again, from his book Orthodoxy: “A bird is active, because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. The stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. The bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force.”
Dancers are like birds
A bird, by its nature, can go upward. No other animal can do this. A Blackbird jet flying nearly 2,000 miles (about 3,219 kilometres) per hour covers 32 of its own body lengths per second, but a common pigeon covers 75 of its body lengths per second. The roll rate of the aerobatic A-4 Skyhawk plane is about 720 degrees per second, while the roll rate of a barn swallow is more than 5,000 degrees per second.
Some military aircraft can withstand gravitational forces of 8G–10G (Earth’s gravity is equal to 1G). Many birds routinely experience g-forces greater than 10G and up to 14G. Maybe dancers are so impressive because they mimic and sustain the extraordinary performance qualities of birds better than anyone else!
Dance and letting go
Most of us can perceive and expect that dancers are masters of letting go. Their movements and expressions are so free and under control. What most don’t see or appreciate are their processes of rest and creating space. Behind the curtain, they have specific methods that align with Jaku and Rubin’s recommendations.
I often saw them simply relaxing in unique postures for long periods, sometimes for improving mobility and just as often for simply mobilizing the mind. I’d see them reading and having fun playing and socially engaging. Most fascinating was that all of this relaxation, more often than not, led right up to their demanding and exquisite performances.
Therefore, it seems clear that they applied activities of rest and relaxation similar to Jaku’s lying down. Because they’d prepared thousands of hours of deliberate practice and deep work, they could engage the demanding and powerful performances with precision. Eloquent execution, night after night.
Creating space for resiliency
What is likely less clear for these amazing dancing athletes and Jaku is how these difficult and stressful feats improved their resiliency and tolerance. Challenging activities, when pursued fearlessly, actually created more space and tolerance for stress. Such events and their experiences created space for improved resiliency to stress and, importantly, improved resiliency to unexpected stresses.
Therefore, while rest and sometimes leisure are valuable for creating space, it’s likely that similar space creation and resiliency can happen through challenging activities. Preparation and poise in those challenging activities are important factors for success—priceless, really.
Masterly pursuit of your purpose(s) likely includes unique combinations of lying down and taking on challenging performances that are distinct and different for each of us. What parameters do you need to develop your perfect force?
Dr. Clayton Skaggs is the founder and CEO of Central Institute for Human Performance (CIHP) and the founder of the Karel Lewit Clinic and Curious Gap Labs. In addition to his clinical career, Skaggs has been on doctoral, post-doctoral and research faculties of eight national and international universities. He was the principal investigator on a collaboration including Washington University of St. Louis School of Medicine and Logan University College of Chiropractic. Dr. Skaggs led the National Institutes of Health (NIH) trial resulting in publication on one of the largest studies on low back pain during pregnancy in the U.S.
Dr. Skaggs and the teams at CIHP have worked with World Series champions, Stanley Cup champions, elite military, PGA champions, NFL, NHL and MLB All-Stars and thousands of professional and elite athletes. Skaggs currently consults individuals from around the world who have unresolved pain or injuries, and those seeking better resilience.
Excerpt from The Power of Doing What Matters: Discover the Mind-Body Resilience in All of Us with permission by Dr. Clayton Skaggs.
images: Depositphotos
