Natural impulses to heal

Natural impulses to heal

Let´s have a look at our brain´s agenda

In the former blog I wrote about the importance of a sustainable energy budget for healthy emotional, mental, and physical being.

Maintaining a sustainable energy budget is one of our brain’s priorities. It is constantly adapting to the environment in the most economical way to keep the system in a dynamic balance (homeostasis) with minimal impact on the energy budget.
By natural design, it does so by mapping itself into the here-and-now environment through the senses. Then the brain asks the somatic communication channels emotion, sensation, image, and meaning about ´how the information that the senses bring in feels. Our brains then can get to the task of predicting how best to adapt to the environment based on the maps that it has created. That is, maintain a dynamic balance in the system without using precious energy when it is not needed.

But what if our past gets in the way?

Painful past experiences, and associated attention habits, movement- and postural patterns, limiting beliefs, negative self-image, and intense feeling states such as excessive worrying, anxiety, sadness, anger, or shame disrupt the spontaneous in-the-moment flow of information through the somatic channels of sensation, emotion, meaning, and image.

Rather than commenting on the input of the senses those channels then send signals related to these painful inner experiences to the brain. As a result,  your system stays stuck in a self-repeating cycle of rapidly building intensity, over-arousal, and collapsing that demands more energy from the energy faculties in your system than is available.  Instead of the brain making accurate predictions based on its maps of the present moment, the predictions come from intense inner experiences that push the system over and over again into high energy-cost survival strategies such as fight, flight, and freeze.

As you can imagine, this erodes your energy capacity which then leads to even more stress, overwhelm, anxiety, and exhaustion, risking serious long-term chronic health issues.  So it is important to break this cycle to allow the brain to get back to doing what it is meant to do so that your system can function optimally and you can dance through your life in healthier, resilient, and joyful ways.

Addictive patterns in attention

Yet over time, many of us have quietly become addicted to attention habits rooted in the idea that something is wrong and that life is supposed to feel like a struggle. Ideas like “You have to feel worse first to feel better” or “No pain, no gain” still underlie most forms of therapy, coaching, and movement education. Many of us have been taught that we must attend to our painful experiences to heal, or push our bodies and minds to grow.
But rather than leading to healing and growth, these ways reinforce the hypervigilant, painful trauma patterns that underlie the ´What is wrong´ attention and belief that we have to be hard on ourselves or struggle.

The first step to breaking the cycle of stress, overwhelm, anxiety, and exhaustion is to follow the natural impulse of your system. 

Our organic intelligent system teaches us that living and feeling in the present moment is a much more rewarding, healing, and economical way to recover from our trauma and maintain vitality, joy, and resilience. It restores our energy budget, giving our brain the energy and capacity to process life better.

When you learn to eliminate this parasitic attraction to inner disturbing, very intense signals, your movements, thoughts, feelings, and life choices become more coherent. You then no longer fight against yourself, and the living system that you are. Rather you begin to collaborate with your system’s self-healing impulses and potential. You will find that this gives you the energy, peace of mind, and space to create a meaningful, authentic life in a fluid and sustainable way. And you will start to feel better in your body, mind, and emotional faculties as well.

Unlike what you may have learned so far, you then don´t attend to the inside voices that tell you that something is wrong. Instead you let your senses freely roam in your immediate environment and receive what is here and now. And this sensory orientation to the present moment helps your brain make a renewed prediction of what might happen next. And that will most likely be much more neutral, and positive than letting your anxious inner experiences create a future that is reliving your past wounding.

The neural programs that result from this sensory orientation are attuned to what is needed for the system to effortlessly, and economically keep a dynamic balance while dancing with the constantly changing environment. It is a systemic form of energy efficiency and automatic regulation that sets you up for ease and growth and allows your body systems to function optimally. This creates the space to be creative, find solutions, enjoy inner peace, and live life with more lightness and equanimity.

I have two reflective questions for you:

  1. How often do you turn your attention to pleasurable sensations and thoughts as you move, talk, work, cook, think, feel, or do nothing?.
  2. How often do you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel the immediate world around you?

Are you curious to learn more about restoring your internal energy budget? Learn more about this in the Retreat ´Somatic Movement Journey from Freeze to Flow´

When there is not enough energy for what you need

When there is not enough energy for what you need

What does your internal energy consumption look like?

There is a lot going on about energy efficiency and how to minimise high energy bills. We all have households with many energy-consuming appliances like smartphones, refrigerators, washing machines, lighting, and computers. We subscribe to an energy supplier for X amount of energy. Often, we don’t have to think about this because we only see the effects of our usage reflected in our bill. But every now and then we may face a shortage of power. The capacity has been reached and the power system says Nope. The demand for energy exceeds the amount of energy that can be supplied at that time.

Often it is quickly resolved by turning off a device. But what if we constantly run out of energy for the appliances we need to keep us warm, give us light, keep our food fresh? If a power outage lasted a long time, it would be disastrous for the food we keep in our fridge, for example.
We all have things that need to be permanently on like a fridge, things that only need electricity when we use them like lights and there are things we put on standby in case we need them like the television or an electric toothbrush. They may use a little energy instead of full power but they still take from the power net.

If our power grid capacity is exceeded, we need to look at what is really needed and where we can cut back by turning off appliances or using them at other times of the day. For example, where we live in Spain, we only have a very limited power supply at our disposal. We cannot use a washing machine and a heater at the same time. And often the light comes on when we turn on the food processor. So we have to think carefully about where and when in the day we need energy to do everything we want to do. And you probably do too now that energy has become so expensive.

But what about the cost of your internal energy usage?

As living beings, we also consume internal energy generated by the energy faculty of our system. And much works the same as in our outside world. There are body systems that run in the background and need energy 24/7 to keep us alive: like our respiratory system, nervous system and brain, heart, immune system, digestive system, part of our motor system, and so on. There are body parts’ that we use consciously and often, such as our muscles that need energy to generate power to move, hold us upright, hold us together, speak, look around, hear, smell, eat, and express our emotional states. Like our mind that needs energy to think, and so on. And all these physical energy processes have to stay within a certain range for us to be on the safe end of survival.

One thing is certain, we cannot buy more capacity for our internal energy system. Each of us has a certain capacity available. So our system has to manage its capacity well to keep everything within a safe bandwidth. If we exceed that bandwidth, we risk an energy outage. And as you can imagine, that can be disastrous. Fortunately, our system then has a preservation system that kicks in as a measure of first aid. it is the Freeze response and it preserves our energy currency ‘Oxygen’ by turning off all systems that do not pose an immediate threat to our survival when they are more or less de-activated, so that our heart and brain can continue to do their work. But the freezing system is not a solution for long-term excessive use.

How energy efficient is your system?

That said, imagine if an energy consultant came to your “home” to check your internal energy meter and look at the efficiency and sustainability of your internal energy consumption patterns? How high would your consumption be? Maybe just look at your movement habits, your attention ahbits and your emotional and thinking habits…

Are you working harder than you need to?
Are you constantly overthinking or worrying?
Do you experience a lot of intense emotions on a daily base?
Do you experience a lot of stress in your day-to-day life?
Do you often tighten your shoulders and clench your jaw to hold yourself together? 
Or do you tighten your muscles to keep yourself upright?
Do you squeeze your buttocks and abdominal muscles together when you speak out? Or perhaps to look a certain way?
Do you metaphorically walk on eggshells and hold your breath to avoid conflict with others?
Do you try to push your physical limits when you exercise or do yoga? 
Do you often have muscle pain after working out?
Are you hard on yourself? Maybe a perfectionist?

Some of these questions may be easy to answer. Some may be about unconscious stress,- and tension habits. Nevertheless, all of these habits and patterns in moving, acting, thinking, and feeling lead to the depletion of your system’s energy budget. This can eventually make you feel stuck, flat, disconnected, overwhelmed, and anxious in your daily life.

In the next blog, I’ll reflect a bit more on how our brain takes care of our internal energy budget and the ways it can become disrupted in the process.

Break your habits through movement

Break your habits through movement

There are so many invisible rules we follow, often without knowing it. Whether it’s an instruction your mother gave you in childhood about sitting up straight, or that as a woman you should keep your knees together as an expression of virtue, or that you shouldn’t raise your head above the ground because that’s haughty…As well as physical advice from your sports or yoga instructor to raise your shoulders a certain way or keep your belly in… Postural patterns that they once thought were ‘right’ for everyone.

Most of us walk around with a lot of conscious or unconscious instructions and assumptions about how we should be in our bodies. And slowly we are losing the ability to listen to our body -our natural intelligence- in the first place instead of giving our responsibility and sovereignty to another person ‘because they will know what is good for us because they are the expert’. Another such assumption!

Two years ago, I started training as a Quantum Human Design coach. Human Design is like a personal energy map of you. It teaches you how your personal energy field works. It acts as a roadmap that gives you an entry point to discover who you are, how you experience and process the world, how your system can help you make good decisions and what you can do to stay closer to your true self. It helps you get to know your inner sensory compass. And it helps you live that story you have felt in your heart all your life. The story your soul came to earth with to share its gifts, gain life experiences and complete old lessons.

Looking at a Human Design body map is also a bit like looking into a Mirror. It shows you your personality traits, your talents, your wisdom, and your vulnerabilities. And it shows you where you are disconnected from your true self. Where you think about yourself in a fragmented way instead of in your wholeness.

It also shows you where you struggle with limiting beliefs and where you live by rules imposed on you by the world or where you have unconsciously or consciously adopted beliefs and thinking patterns of others, or adopted or reinforced the energy of others. In (Quantum) Human Design, this is called conditioning. Conditioning is the way you have learned to behave in response to your life experiences, your family patterns and beliefs, and how you experience the energy of the world. Some of it is great and some of it really limits us to be in touch with who we are in the heart of our being. Your neurobiology also has conditioning in the way neural networks work in your brain that create habitual patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions.

The latter is what makes the Human Design roadmap overlap very nicely with what Moshe Feldenkrais -the founder of the Feldenkrais method– says about learning habitual patterns, and how our system plays a role in this by the way it functions and is programmed to protect us from emotional/physical pain.

Feldenkrais practitioners approach movement as a mirror for becoming aware of what you have consciously and unconsciously internalized in terms of rules, learned instructions, beliefs, and values throughout your life. It shows you how you have come to attach certain meanings to certain words, stories, and images, which have led to a misalignment with your physical-emotional being. It shows you where you are not in connection with yourself and where you think fragmented of yourself instead of sensing your wholeness. On the other hand, it also puts you in touch with the voice and wisdom of your body and who you are beyond the stories and in the here and now.

To mature, in both the Feldenkrais method and Quantum Human Design, means becoming aware of this unconscious conditioning. and what is true for you in this. And that you start making other choices, choices that are in tune with who you are and what you need and want for yourself.

It invites you to explore where can you let go of what limits you in being authentically yourself and taking good care of yourself. Where you need to create a more accurate self-image and start living more of your truth in the way you perceive, feel, think, react, make decisions, choose, do, and give meaning to what you perceive, feel, and think.

From both the Feldenkrais neuro-physical point of view and the Quantum Human Design metaphysical, and archetypical point of view, this is what really aligns you with your unique energy blueprint: your potential, power, creativity, health, the talents of your soul and how you use your body and life energy most joyfully and efficiently to live the story in your heart.

Do you want to get to know yourself better?

Check out this retreat in which I help you discover how to use your energy more optimally so you can enjoy yourself more, be more yourself and ‘use’ your body and nervous system more kindly and according to their way. So that you can start to release prolonged tension, pain and overwhelm.

    What is your story?

    What is your story?

    What is your story?

    And is it still the story you want to tell yourself?

    The way you move tells your personal myth and shows you the hidden parts of yourself. It reveals to you the deepest beliefs and feelings that underlie the story you have come to tell yourself about yourself and the world around you.

    Your way of moving tells you f.e. about the unconscious thoughts that dominate your self-image from the background. You can read your deep basic beliefs and unconscious habits, and also how you are in relationship with your body and the world around you.

    The way you stand, sit, move, reach out, and turn inwards tell about (unconscious) emotional patterns. These often originated long ago and impose themselves in the way you carry yourself; your personal conditioned patterns of muscle-contraction as well as the way you talk to yourself and about yourself.

    Meet yourself in movement

    Over the years, I learned about the many unconscious stories I was telling myself by landing more in my body and becoming aware of how I was moving and how that made me feel.

    I now recognize the stories that are well hidden in the depths trying to keep their grip. They used to control me with subtle posturing patterns that kept me small. Now I am aware of their ways and can choose whether and how to respond to them.

    Your body tells your inner story

    Most of these subconscious stories, that live on quietly in the background, reveal themselves in a moment of challenge. Often through a sudden sensation, or an abrupt change in your inner energy flow, that gesture you always make, or that small but all too familiar movement. And even more often through that subtle familiar but unconscious body posture that you have become accustomed to over the years.

    They are those hidden stories that were written when we were very small and sometimes even long before that. And sometimes the stories live on through us, but belong to our family or ancestors.

    How do your stories reveal themselves? I love to hear from you.

    Over the years my practice of Feldenkrais and NIA  turned me into a curious movement and sensation detective who uses dance to unravel the inner stories that move, challenge, and touch me. I like to use the movements for my´Body Wise Soul Guide´cards and write a little message to my soul on them.

    So from time to time I draw a card like this to remind myself that I am worth loving myself for who I am, that I am enough as I am, and that my needs want to be valued and honored.

    Move into Joy offers a holistic and sensory-based approach to healthy joyful being in all aspects of life. I offer transformational retreats for women seeking self-connection, self-acceptance, and expression of their authentic inner sparkle.

    Are you ready to reclaim your power and life artistry? Join me for a retreat at Jardin de Luz Inner Sparkle Sanctuary, Spain

    Moving out of habits of perfection

    Moving out of habits of perfection

    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

    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?