What moves you?

What moves you?

by | Dec 28, 2023 | Blog, Body Intelligence, Changing the story, Movement as Medicine, Somatic Awareness, Somatic Wisdom

When it gets freezy underneath.

In 2021 I gave a presentation for the online Movement and Wellbeing Festival organised by Angela McMillan.

I gave a talk about ways to move “From freeze to flow” And as I was writing on my presentation, memories came to mind of childhood times when I struggled with fear, shame, and insecurity, unable to control my turbulent inner world that was constantly put on edge by being bullied and ridiculed. It resulted in a lot of uncomfortable physical sensations that I couldn’t control at the time. Eventually, I tried to get rid of them by dissociating myself from my body or somehow controlling it. Slowly, I slipped into a continuous, slumbering state of freezing. Not much later I developed an eating disorder, followed by other destructive numbing habits.

Freezing symptoms can linger just under the skin for long times keeping you from engaging in intimate connection with yourself and others. On the outside you may look like a happy puppy, people may praise you for being such a good listener, for being flexible, helpful or so loyal. But between the lines, suffering happens. It can manifest itself by withdrawing from situations and people, feeling very tired, lonely, and depressed, feeling chronically anxious in your skin, not knowing what you like, want, or don’t want, or what has meaning for you, having trouble concentrating and focusing, having trouble putting your money where your mouth is, or to get moving. Physically you can feel like you can’t hold yourself up, feeling tight, tense, and limp at the same time,  a lack of fluid movement and stability, or experiences of spatial unclarity, bumping into things, tripping, and hurting yourself.

Actually, we all experience freezy states on a daily basis.
Now more than ever! Many of us are living more in the head than in the body. Our smartphones keep us attached to the screen even when biking or crossing a road. Mental information forms the biggest part of our nowadays intake of information about our environment.

We live in an expectation- and performance-oriented society in which there is little room for spontaneity, authentic self-expression, or listening to the heart and senses. Many of our physical activities are about looking good rather than feeling good. Feeling present and alive in the body is not so obvious anymore. The pandemic certainly contributed to this disembodied life.

magic happens when you choose to follow flow

For a long time, I tried to work with the turbulent emotions themselves. It was yo-yo-ing between feeling okay and feeling down again. It took a toll on my health and made me feel less and less secure with myself. It was exhausting falling and crawling back up again and again.

Then by chance, I discovered the somatic movement approach of the Feldenkrais method. During the first session, I felt calm instead of cathartic. Just feeling good without having to go back into that dark hole first. Wow! As I continued to deepen my understanding of the Feldenkrais Method and other somatic-, and systems-oriented movement and dance approaches, I gained three very important insights:

  1. Where attention goes, energy flows
  2. Each of us is a living system, a complex fabric, of biology, energy, consciousness, and soul which are interrelated, interconnected, and interdependent.
  3. All living systems have an innate capacity for self-healing, thus so do we, if only we follow our system’s way of ‘thinking in relationships, integration, and interconnectedness’ instead of being a hierarchy divided into a mind, a body with parts, a soul and spirit.

I discovered how I had gotten stuck in a one-sided negative attention spiral of What’s Wrong. And I learned that thinking and emotions are only two channels of a huger somatic constellation through which we know ourselves, and by which a living system informs itself of inner and outer relationships. Most importantly I learned how to help my system prime for healing, nurturing all somatic information channels with the input of “What is. Through Perception, reconnecting with my senses, and learning systemically from the inside out through movement, and now-attention.

In many forms of therapy and coaching, the focus is on the somatic channels of emotion and thought only. The attention is on What is wrong; the former experiences, the trauma… Reliving the triggering emotions, and analyzing them. And I experienced that this starting point keeps reinforcing the pattern of suffering instead of helping our system to self-regulate and heal.

Leaving the old experiences and analyses alone for a while and spending time with my senses in the now, renewed my ability to feel pleasurable, comfortable, and easy sensations in my body. Sensations that invited me to stay in my body, feel safer in my body, gain trust in my being able to surf the emotional waves, and slowly create a greater capacity to deal with all of life, including former traumatic experiences.

It certainly didn’t happen overnight, no quick fix here. And that is exactly why the healing happened! Instead of forcing my system to suddenly change, I danced with the system through awareness, movement, stillness, and time, crafting my attention to what felt good. Gently offering options to my system, in addition to the one my system was used to. I learned to trust my system that it would choose what felt best to thrive in life in its own natural time and wisdom.

You can find my talk below:

In the Movement and Wellbeing Festival 2021 of Online Movement Academy, I shared a Feldenkrais somatic movement experience that has helped me and my clients to follow and flow with our systems and move from freeze to flow. You can listen and move with it below.

Better your foundation for more ease and support

by Pingel Braat

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NecbplsqrwCUdYHeQ0X6q3zWegW64_I-/view?usp=drive_link
From FRAP-ing to body-listening

From FRAP-ing to body-listening

by | Dec 28, 2023 | Blog, Body Intelligence, Nervous System Health

Today I like to champion the fine art of listening before you demand your body to change.

Do you recognize these situations in which you share something with someone, or you are facing a challenge or struggle, or feel sad or upset by something… and without first asking you what you need or want, people immediately start telling you what you should do, have to do, or what they have experienced and worked for them? How does it make you feel when that happens?

Did you know that there is a verb for this behavior of assuming someone needs your help and you know what they need: FRAP-ing. It is an abbreviation for:

  • Fixing
  • Rescuing
  • Advising
  • Projecting

It actually means that people are not truly seeing you, nor hearing you, and not acknowledging you for who you are and how you feel. I believe this is one of the most disempowering things we can do to each other. Because we all need to be seen, heard, and acknowledged for who we are, our own wise & wisdom, our feelings, and emotions, our own experiences, our unique stories, our boundaries … no matter what.

Frapping often happens because the frapping person feels uncomfortable by what they hear, see or feel, and by how the frapped person responds to a situation. The frapping person often feels triggered by the pain, struggles, or challenges that she witnesses. The frapped person often meets this frapping with reactions of resistance, withdrawal, or helplessness. And I believe that, even if a thank you is politely said, assumption-based fixes, rescues, advice, and projections are seldom helpful.

Do you so every now and then frap somebody consciously or unaware?

Frapping is perfectly human. It is a survival habit. It helps us to not have to feel ourselves in ways that challenge our feel-good states, our feeling of being in control of what is happening, or our own perspective on things. Honestly, it makes most of us feel better to think that we truly helped somebody, even if that means telling them how to act, to move, to feel, to think, and to see like us.

So outside, so inside

Why do I bring this topic up? Because almost every one of us FRAPs her body and nervous system at some point. With the often, still far too simplistic and mechanical view we hold of our physical selves, we fix, rescue, advise, and project our expectations, our stories, and what we think we need onto our body and nervous system, from how we want our body to move, look, and feel to how we think it should be better.

So often we ignore, or force, our intelligent, sensitive nervous systems to behave and act in a certain way, without enough understanding of their role in the complex living system that we are and its relationship to the sentient, living environment around us. Many times this results in physical, emotional, and mental pain, overwhelm, or anxiety. Reinforcing these patterns that keep us stuck in pain, uncertainty, low confidence, or tension.

FRAPing our body and nervous system is a form of not listening, not seeing, not acknowledging. It stops us from getting to know the underlying dynamic of relationships: the relationship patterns that make us move, emote, think, and behave in certain ways. When we FRAP ourselves, we try to change that single symptom that gets our ‘What-is-wrong-attention. The so-called elusive obvious.

And by our effort to get rid of this symptom, we keep reinforcing the uncomfortable neuro-biological pattern underneath. Our neurobiology will do what it can to prevent any rapid, forced change that disrupts its equilibrium. Because a change in one place means everything changes in expected and most unexpected ways.

How to then help ourselves without FRAP-ing?

There are a few universal principles underneath all interaction that happens in living systems/ living beings us included.

  • Living systems can only be interested, invited, or gently encouraged to change
  • Living systems only accept solutions that they help to create
  • Living systems only pay attention to what is meaningful to them in the here and now.
  • Living beings don’t communicate linearly and unambiguously! They communicate through complex layered messages that weave together biology, emotion, reason, physicality, soul, environment, now, and past.

By respecting these universal principles of change and growth, 3 steps will help you tap into the magic of self-healing:

  1. Listen actively with all your heart
  2. Follow the pattern with a curious inquiring attitude rather than focusing on a symptom.
  3. Stay in the question: What does this pattern want to tell you through sensation, feeling, thought, image, and movement?
  4. Dance and co-create with your nervous system; go slow, move small, attend to ease and pleasure, and don’t assume.

When there is no need for the nervous system to protect a pattern it lets go of its defenses and orients itself on what it perceives as meaningful now and here.

Exactly this is what the short free mini-course ‘ Co-creating and flowing with your nervous system’ will be about. You can find it on my YouTube channel soon.

In this course, I will give you a taste of how to rewire patterns with the help of your wise sensuous body and intelligent, sensitive, nervous system. A combination of cutting-edge neuroplasticity and powerful Feldenkrais functional integration. So you can feel more confident, relaxed, and joyful in your body. Let’s be MAMA to ourselves.

To play is to heal, to move the foundation, to sense the way in, your body the source

Be Guided by Your Body Wise

Be Guided by Your Body Wise

by | Apr 11, 2023 | Body Intelligence, Somatic Awareness

“What people had been calling a “gut reaction” turned out to be a mere hint of the complex intelligence at work in a hundred thousand billion cells.”

― Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life

How do we really know what is good for us?

Most women I know decide with their minds. Often these choices don’t turn out right. The mind is made for organising, and planning intention into action, talking with others, and making lists and many other good and valuable things. However deciding is not one of them. 

To make decisions from what to eat to how to life our life or what next step to take we need that part of us that is in contact with the here and now in time and space. That part which is online 24 hrs a day, taking in and processing information far below the surface of what our mind can capture. I am talking about our Body Wise Self.

Our Body Wise Self may be most felt through the sensations in the gut, in the heart, in the upper belly, or the sensation of weight on our feet, depending on how you are wired. Our Body Wise communicates in many ways and often we experience this as inner visceral sensations or proprioceptive sensations or even images or unfamiliar word choices that come from an inner voice.

Our Body Wise, being the intelligent intuitive web of a living body, neurobiology, heart, subconscious, and spirit, offers the most direct and intelligent guidance for our choices.

In the short 10-minute meditation in this post, I guide you to dialogue with your inner Body wise in a simple straightforward way. This technique allows you to consciously tune in at any time with your inner wise one.

You will learn how to ask a question to your Body Wise and interpret the subtle language through which your Body Wise answers.

This meditation is done in standing  and preferably on bare feet (socks are oke

Do you love yourself enough to truly listen to your Body Wise?

Do you love yourself enough to truly listen to your Body Wise?

by | Apr 11, 2023 | Body Intelligence, Changing the story, Somatic Awareness

I am in the midst of preparing the sessions for the ‘Embrace your Body Wise’ retreat in May. The retreat will be a journey of somatic dance play that takes you into your own depths to feel, move and be moved, to discover, connect, heal and grow in your natural time, guided by your natural rhythm. We will move, heal and create at the pace and rhythm of our nervous system.

This somatic journey connects us to all the inner resources that help us experience ourselves from a non-judgmental, innate wise, and curious place. Being playful brings us to a place where we can be open, inquisitive, and joyful. The main state for both organic, experiential, neuroplastic learning, and holding space for self-regulation of our sensitive nervous systems.

But what is somatic you might ask me. One of these mysterious coaching words? Today I want to shine my light on somatic awareness and help you understand more about somatically oriented learning.

A Study of Experiencing your body from within

Soma means the living body. Somatic refers to the study of experiencing ourselves from within the body; the whole living system that we are. In other words, having a felt sense of ourselves. Somatic approaches are body-centered instead of mind-centered or spiritually centered. That doesn’t mean that there is no place for spirituality. On the contrary, the living body is where the mind, biology, soul, and spirit meet to create and celebrate life.

Somatic modalities are offered successfully in many fields of personal development and trauma. Research shows that the body holds all of our memories -both conscious and unconscious- in our brain, cells, tissues, and bones. The body keeps the score, as the title of well-known psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s groundbreaking book on stress and trauma processing reads.

And at the same moment, awareness in the body is what gives us a sense of being present in the here and now and of being alive. Movement and stillness are both ways to enter the body’s memories. Most somatic practices use a combination of awareness, and involuntary or voluntary movement to release pain, trauma, and stress.

Back to somatic dance play creativity…

My somatic movement practices add attentive movement, and stillness to ‘experiencing from within’, to bring awareness to both internal and external relationship patterns and habits of perception that perpetuate fragile self-esteem, and a sense of hyper-vigilance and not belonging. I believe that changing the way we move can change our self-image and the perception we have of the world, in a gradual, sustainable, nervous system-friendly way. It is a graceful and empowering way of changing that respects our system’s need to keep balance.

“When you witness without judgement, how you move, behave and imagine yourself to be in the world, you can initiate change.  Change can happen by learning to become aware through enjoyable movements that may bring to light personal details about yourself you never knew.” Moshe Feldenkrais

Moving with awareness teaches us about our body’s interaction with the environment, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. We get to know and familiarize ourselves with the somatic antennae by which we inform our nervous system (sensation, senses, image, meaning, emotion, and our energy perceivers). This allows us to clean out those antennae that have become clouded by our unconscious attachment to old painful experiences and limiting beliefs. In this way, we can be purely present with what is now and here and adjust our perception of our inner and external reality and environment like-wise. This creates the embodied experience of wholeness and aliveness that is fundamental to feeling a deep vitality at the heart of our being.

In a physical way, attentive movement informs us, and our nervous system, about the relationship patterns between our muscles, organs, the connective tissue on one hand, and emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings on the other. When these patterns are far from optimal we experience pain, tension, and tightness. All motor movement begins with these relationship patterns and can be improved by improving these relationships from within. Our own Body Wise guides us in getting to know our habits in relationship dynamics. Having this understanding helps us re-pattern habits that create struggles in relationships. What would it be like to feel genuinely present, safe, and intimate in relationships that are important to you?

When we alter the stimuli our nervous system receives, we change our entire perception. Awareness and the intention to focus on what feels comfortable, pleasurable and easy are the keys.

“Aren’t we all in varying degrees, captives in our own personal prisons, bound by our limiting habits?” Ruthy Alon

How would it change your life if you can consciously choose movement that feels free and pleasurable and makes you feel relaxed, centered, present, and at home in your body? Ways of moving that contribute to feeling effortless in navigating life’s challenges?

Do you love yourself enough to join the dance of your Wise sensuous body and receive her gifts wholeheartedly?

‘Embracing Your Body Wise’ is an invitation to reconnect with your inner sensuous wisdom, rediscover playful, spontaneous movement, reattune to the wonder and magic of your sensational you, and consciously choose the path of enjoyment and ease to navigate life and build a caring, joyous relationship with yourself. Well isn’t that a spark for our vitality and inner sparkle?

Again I believe it all begins with reconnecting to your own nature, coming home to your body, re-attune to the sensuous world in and outside, and experiencing a felt sense of yourself.

Check my ‘Embrace your Body Wise retreat’ on Bookretreats.com

What people say:

“Thank you, so much. It was such a blessing to be able to transform through dance and be held in a safe, sacred, beautiful outdoor space.  I’m amazed at the tenacity of your body wisdom and that rare gift you have of guiding while supporting freedom and intuitive movement. There was such a depth and complexity to your work and yet it was so simple and easy to engage, to flow, to dance, to move, to transform, and to just be. Thank you. I had profound realizations and moments of such clarity on deep core issues. It’s wonderful knowing I embodied those transformations. I feel completely different now when I walk and move”. Lucy Hunter

Rolling about and around

Rolling about and around

by | Mar 28, 2023 | Blog, Body Intelligence, Nervous System Health

The benefits of somatic floor play…

I love to roll on the ground. I love floor play whether it is Feldenkrais oriented or whether it has an NIA Joy in Motion taste. Rolling around and about, creeping, crawling, and playing animal… my daily dose of spontaneous play. Whenever I feel tired, overwhelmed, or just in a playful, silly mood, I lay on the ground and start sensing, feeling, and moving. It helps me to empty my overflowing, busy mind. Overtime is has proven to be one of my best working crumpy-mood changers and energizers.

The ground friend or enemy?

So often we hold ourselves with loads of effort. As if we have no backup that supports us when life plays tough on us. As if the ground beneath us is our worst enemy. Have we forgotten where our roots go? When I look around me I do get the impression that many people don’t remember their roots. So many of us are living high up in our minds and seldom come down to scent the moist fragrance of the rich earthy soil or sense the feet as they faithfully guide us through life, exploring the ground beneath us with their sensitive antennae. There are 7,000 nerve endings in each foot….

For a half year now, I live in the midst of nature in my beautiful paradise ‘Jardin de Luz’ in the heart of the Alpujarra mountains in Spain. I am surrounded by singing birds, and abundant tapestry of flowers in myriad colors, and lots of creepy little crawlers that fertilize the humid soil of my land.  I love to lie down in the green and watch the bright blue sky while a soft tepid breeze tickles my skin. And when the green is not too pointy, I love to roll around and about like a little kitten. It keeps my nervous system healthy.

The Human Nervous system, like any other nervous system, needs the ground to orient, organize and move the body. Yielding to gravity is the medicine for excessive muscle tone, anxiousness, and stress. And that is precisely why a little floor play a day keeps the doctor away.

When we are born we first learn to move on the ground. Our nervous system learns to navigate and negotiate gravity. This play with gravity also helps strengthen the muscles that later will support the skeleton, carrying us through life. There are 7 core patterns that we move through before we stand up and walk. And together with this physical process of creating these patterns, we develop our minds. We first learn about the world and about meaning through these early movements on the ground. We develop emotional intelligence while playing our way up into standing and walking. The physical body guides the emotional and mental body to wise up and get ready to play in life’s luxuriant garden.

The ground beneath us was a safe haven when the world was too overwhelming for our young minds. The support we could lean into when there was nothing else to lean on. A place to rest and digest. Yet on our path to adulthood, many of us mostly forgot that gravity supports us. Where did we start battling gravity and backing away from the ground? So many people deal with tension and back pain as a result of not grounding and co-operating with gravitational forces. Many nervous systems forgot how to lean into the earth and inhale its life force.

As a result, stressful tension cannot discharge and becomes trapped in the physical body, causing physical pain, fatigue and tension, emotional anxiety and stress, and an overloaded, busy mind that hardly is able to relax.

This brings me to a few of the most impressive benefits of floor play:

Relaxation, discharge stress, tap into life force, feel vital, vibrant, and energized. And most important, it will improve the way you move and help you thrive in life by giving your nervous system back its starting coördinates.

Every time I play on the floor, it helps me revisit the early core patterns that my nervous system once created to help me thrive in life. Every time this rolling about and around helps me tweak and refine those early core patterns and fill in the blind spots created by painful experiences, ignorance, and well-intentioned advice I once took for true without listening to my body.

Do you want a first taste of play on the floor? Let’s roll about and, around…

How to dissolve feelings of not belonging?

How to dissolve feelings of not belonging?

by | Feb 28, 2023 | Blog, Body Intelligence, Changing the story, Somatic Awareness

Today I was preparing a private Chakradance retreat ‘Reconnect with your Essence‘ in Jardin de Luz.

While dancing through the base chakra, 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. And with the fear of feeling the intense emotions that these deep experiences and beliefs bring into the body.

I used to struggle with it myself. And back then, it caused me to feel deeply insecure and anxious about who I was. I used to work hard to feel accepted by others and to avoid pain. I had an inner voice that constantly pointed out to me possible clues that no one was waiting for me, and that I was not wanted. It made me hyper-vigilant and over-sensitive. I was constantly alert-aware of my surroundings, the emotions of other people, the tiniest (inner) movement of another, and the energy around me. At the slightest thing, I shot out of my body like you can jump up from a chair in a startled movement when you are stung.

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. See the image above…

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 ground in my body. From this base, I can feel myself, be myself in all new encounters and challenging moments, and feel the inner support and safety of my body

Why can it be so powerful to dance and create with archetypes as done in Chakradance?

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

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

In this way, deep instinctual patterns of behavior get a chance to transform. This changes for the better how you perceive, feel, think, and move in relation to others and your environment.

For this reason, dancing with your base chakra ‘Muladhara’, can dissolve deep beliefs of not belonging, of being alienated from your body, and feelings of fear, overwhelm, and uncertainty. In fact, even longstanding patterns of physical tension and, for example, 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. You can be sure that you will start to experience more joy, inner sparkle, and a deeper, genuine connection with others when you can welcome yourself completely, and feel at home in your body.