Moving out of habits of perfection

Moving out of habits of perfection

by | May 11, 2024 | Blog, Body Intelligence, Changing the story, Nervous System Health, Somatic Awareness, Somatic Wisdom

Last week during the retreat as we were exploring our senses through our animal body and dancing with its emotions of grief, anger, and pleasure, we came to speak about the habit of perfection, the hurt and wounding underneath, and how it has influenced how many of us can be so hard and demanding on ourselves, and lack the self-compassion to give loving attention and care to our bodies and sensations. As a result, we miss out on many valuable sensations, sparks of sensory wisdom, and a sense of natural time and rhythm.

Many of us live with a stressed, deprived nervous system, and chronic holding patterns in the body that cause hypersensitivity, and lack of energy, and also make us feel less animated or flatten everyday pleasurable and joyful sensations and emotions.

I believe the most important part of healing your soul is finding your way back to sensing in the here and now. Allowing your sentient animal eyes, ears, sense of smell, taste, and touch to curiously scan their natural living environment, feel its beauty and magic in every cell of your being, and receive its nourishment for your nervous system and body.

For in order to heal your system of body, mind, soul, and inner spirit and soothe the stricken animal within, your nervous system needs to connect with and map into its present sensuous environment where it can tune into the soothing ebb and flow-like greater natural movement and rhythm of the earth and cosmos.
This gradually and in small reversible steps changes your perception and your physical-emotional holding patterns and steadily guides you into your sacred essence….

I have read Marion Woodman´s ‘Addiction to Perfection’ a few times and Marian Woodman puts it beautifully. I quote Marion Woodman:

“First, I believe that femininity is taking responsibility for our bodies, so that the body becomes the tangible expression of the spirit within.
For those of us who have lived life in the head, this is a long, difficult and agonizing process, because in attempting to release our muscles, we also release the pent-up fear and rage and grief that has been buried there, probably since or before birth .
Within ourselves we find a stricken animal almost dead from starvation and mistreatment. Because it has been punished for long, it acts at first like a wild neurotic creature that hasn’t known love. But gradually it becomes our friend, and because it understands the instincts better than we, it becomes our guide to a natural, spiritual way of life.
To find the natural rhythms of our bodies, to walk, to see, to hear, to feel with renewed sensitivity and perception, is to return to our birthright which is our gift from the Goddess” Marion Woodman | ‘Addiction to Perfection’

Because the relationship with our bodies is such an important and permanent one in our lives, I feel that creating a beautiful relationship with our wise bodies is a must in order to feel alive, and able to manifest our greatest, most exquisite soul desires and dreams.

Are you seeking to connect deeper with your body and feel better in your skin?

I offer ongoing retreats to help women with

  • finding their way back to sensing themselves in the here-and-now
  • changing constricting perception habits
  • change painful physical-emotional holding patterns in the body
  • align with their sacred essence, inner wisdom, joy and sensuality
  • build a loving relationship with their wise bodies
  • create beauty with who they are and what they have

You can check out my retreats via Bookretreats.com

 

 

Pausing your thoughts

Pausing your thoughts

by | May 11, 2024 | Blog, Body Intelligence, Changing the story, Somatic Awareness

Did you know that every thought, every feeling, every sensation comes from the body?

So often we immediately attach thoughts and feelings to old stories with our minds instead of listening to what our bodies are telling us now. And in doing so, we have become deaf to the message our body wisely wants to send us.

Our mind habitually wants to give meaning to everything we take in and feel and does so based on memories, experiences, perceptions, and beliefs from the past and the values we hold. And with this filter system, we get stuck in the same groove: the painful experiences of the past. These filters also create a very limited view of our inner and outer world that slowly distorts our personal truth and our personal myth.

Our Body Wise wants to help us break this habit by helping us feel and perceive in the Now Body. The challenge is to perceive with an open mind. By stepping into the space of your curious, playful infant mind and feeling from there, you can step out of the habit of wanting to give meaning immediately. And in this space of not knowing, the wordless messages from our bodies become clear.

How often do you listen to your body with an open, curious mind?
Soul messages that nourish your inner sparkle

Soul messages that nourish your inner sparkle

by | May 11, 2024 | Blog, Ignite your sparkle

I love to create mixed media collages, write short poem-like musings in addition to loving to dance. It’s like journalling for me. Together they create my soul messages: Body-wise ways to heal, thrive and grow

In this time of selfies and fast cameras on the phone, I often play along in my Self Wise way.

When was the last time you nurtured your soul with a creative, playful, uplifting message to yourself?

Why a ‘step by step’ approach gives more results than a quick fix

Why a ‘step by step’ approach gives more results than a quick fix

by | May 11, 2024 | Blog, Body Intelligence, Nervous System Health, Somatic Wisdom

I have never believed in quick fixes. Rapid changes often mess with our finely tuned system They undermine our natural rise and fall, resulting in overly intense highs followed by deep lows. We have probably all tried a Jo-Jo diet, where you ended up worse off than you started…

Quick changes usually throw us back into the tightest grip of our unhealthy habits and behaviours.

Rather, I advocate small, thoughtful steps that allow our system to try something new, like we take time to try on a new dress. It allows our system to move back and forth – to oscillate and also to reverse in any way it wants. It gives it time to test its ‘water’ again and again. So that it can make intelligent choices that serve our whole system in the most optimal way.

Perhaps it is that many of us need to learn to trust our Self-Wise again in choosing what is best in the given situation or how we can best heal or enhance our growth.
I call it giving your Self-Wise space to play. That means to explore, taste, pause, sense, feel, and do or undo in a relaxed, aware, and easy way.

Here is to your Self-Wise; your intelligent Body Wise Soul!
When was the last time you invited her to play? 

Rooting in yourself

Rooting in yourself

by | May 11, 2024 | Blog, Changing the story, Movement as Medicine, Somatic Wisdom, Uncategorized

In my retreats at Jardin de Luz, I often include one or more Chakradance sessions.

While dancing through the base chakra myself, I came upon the themes of belonging and birthright. I know that there are many people who struggle with a deep feeling and belief of not being welcome, not being wanted, or feeling that they have no right to be there, to exist. There often is a fear of feeling the intense emotions that these deep experiences and beliefs bring into the body.

I struggled with it myself. And it caused me to feel deeply insecure and anxious about who I was. I worked hard to feel accepted by others, and to avoid pain. I used to have a strong inner voice constantly alerting me to possible signs that no one was waiting for me, and that I was not wanted. I was hyper-vigilant and sensitive. I was constantly aware of my surroundings, other people’s emotions, the energy around me, and another person’s slightest (inner) movement. At the slightest thing, I shot out of my body like you might jump up from a chair startled when stung by a wasp.

Thankfully, this lonely, fearful time has long passed. I have found a warm home within myself, within my body. Six months after I moved to Spain and a few months after I completed the Chakradance facilitator training, I wrote a few lines about it that you can read below.

For me, connecting and working with the archetypal energies that flow through my body and circulate in my energy field helped me find peace within myself and grounding in my body. From this safe base in my body, I can feel myself, be myself in new encounters and relationships. And in challenging moments, I now also feel the inner support and safety of my body.

Why can it be so powerful to work with archetypes creatively as we do in Chakradance?

Archetypes are the basis of all the underlying, unlearned, instinctual patterns in our behavior. They exist in our human collective consciousness and are embedded in our psyche from which they influence how we move through life and perceive, feel, think, and act.

Dance is like a mirror in which we see the archetypal energies at work in our energy system. We can clearly feel where they bring imbalance and distortion to our energetic make-up. It offers us a conscious way to connect with these archetypal energies and change how and where they affect us.

In this way, deep instinctual patterns in our behavior get a chance to transform. This changes not only our perceptions for the better, but also how we feel, think, and move in relation to others and our environment.

“I can only belong when I allow myself to belong to me”

Dancing with your base chakra ‘Muladhara’, helps you dissolve deep beliefs of not fitting in, of being alienated from your body, and feelings of fear, overwhelm, and insecurity. In fact, even longstanding patterns of physical tension and e.g. back pain can be released when the energy of the base chakra is better balanced. It also changes the vibration in your energy field and therefore the way other people perceive you.