Changing the story Archives

Moving out of habits of perfection

by Pingel Braat | 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

by Pingel Braat | 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?

Rooting in yourself

by Pingel Braat | 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.

The way you move tells your personal myth

by Pingel Braat | May 11, 2024 | Blog, Changing the story, Movement as Medicine, Somatic Awareness, Somatic Wisdom

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 relation 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 originate 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 family or ancestors.

How do your stories reveal themselves?

Over the years, my practice of Feldenkrais and NIA has transformed me into a curious movement and sensation detective. Dance is my tool to unravel the inner stories that move, challenge, and touch me. I like to use the movements for my Body Wise guide cards and write a little message to my soul on them.

Our stories start and change in the body

by Pingel Braat | May 11, 2024 | Blog, Changing the story

I love this quote and I believe there is so much truth in it!

Our bodies know they belong; it is our minds that make our lives so homeless.” —JOHN O’DONOHUE

Our stories start in the body with the way our autonomous nervous system feels the world from moment to moment. It is called neuroception, a term originating with Stephen Porges Polyvagal theory.
We only have little awareness of these subtle shifts in our states and the influence that they have on how we feel, perceive our environment, and behave from moment to moment.

These wordless neuroceptive messages are somatic signals, like a gut feeling, sensations of temperature change, or our heart intuition, sensations from our organs, muscles… The autonomic nervous system sends these ‘neuroceptive signals’ to the brain. Our mind then starts to give meaning to this somatic story that our body tells by creating the beliefs that guide our daily life. A story is being born.

This mostly happens in the background of our daily lives, our moment-to-moment being. This gives the story a chance to result in unconscious habits of perception, behavior, movement, and attitude that influence our decision-making, our self-image, our reactions, and ultimately how we are in relationships with others and our environment.

We can become aware of this unconscious flow of information by pausing, listening into our body and paying attention to our bodily sensations before interpreting them with our mind. Much like being a witness.

When we can witness with the curiosity of our ‘infant mind space’ rather than our more judging ‘ego mind space’, we create a new space for trying on options in responding, behaving, and taking in the world. This creates options to enact a new somatic story by using the ability of our nervous system and body to adapt, change, and grow.

We meet ourselves through our infant mind space when we express ourselves through dance, conscious movement, and expressive art. When we invite ourselves to re-connect with ourselves without judgement by playing, exploring and discovering what wisdom our body holds for us. This leads to self-healing and inner growth.

It’s how I healed myself many years ago when I realised that I had lost my zest and sparkle and felt alienated from myself. I made the choice to change how I listened to and looked at myself, to re-story, to meet myself again in movement, in the moment, to re-member myself home in my body and being.

Awareness through movement versus awareness of movement

by Pingel Braat | Jan 25, 2024 | Changing the story, Somatic Awareness, Somatic Wisdom

We often move on automatic pilot in many situations of our lives, We vaguely know what we do, but do we really know how we do it? What is happening behind the scenes so to speak? How is our action benefiting our intention?
For most people, the most basic intention to move or act is to maintain or move into joy, ease, comfort, and pleasure. Our nervous system is wired that way.

Then how come our actions don’t always result in comfort and pleasure?

In a Feldenkrais somatic movement exploration, we explore HOW we move. The HOW is about our individuality, our unique habits, beliefs, and behaviors, and the way we see ourselves and act upon that image. How do we meet our intention with the way we move? What are the habits that interfere with our intentions?

When observing the HOW we get clarity about which beliefs are in the driving seat and where our image of ourselves and the world needs updating. Are we ‘doing’ on automatic pilot or are we consciously choosing how we do what we do? And does it lead to the desired outcome?

Habits are when we decide how to act before we are aware that we have a choice (Moshe Feldenkrais)

Habits typically show up when we don’t choose or we always choose the same which is equivalent to habitual behavior. The outcome therefore will subsequently be the same as yesterday, today, and in the future.. Doing from habit strengthens the same beliefs and emotional patterns that keep us from where we want to go.

So the goal of the Feldenkrais method is to bring our awareness to the moment between intending and doing by slowing down and paying attention. It is here where we can find out and correct course. In this moment we can recreate our responses by exploring other options and creating conscious choices. It is then that we begin to grow out of a habit and the beliefs that support that habit.

And this goes for all action; Whether it is about movement skill or an action that has to take us to something we want. Or maybe an action that has to take us away from something we don’t want. We need to slow down to listen into the body to sense and feel what happens with our emotions and thoughts. As no brain can think without a body (original quote by Moshe Feldenkrais)

All movement is driven by the mind. So the body’s movement is a great way to start exploring our mind’s way. Our most basic intention is to find ease, comfort, and joy no matter what. Our body is straightforward and accurate in its response. It does not create constructs like the mind does. It immediately tells whether it feels pain or joy. And it is always open to course-correct. It can serve as a wonderful guide on the path of growth and healing

Below is a link to a Feldenkrais exploration that will give you a taste of how to rewire patterns with the help of your wise sensuous body and intelligent, sensitive, nervous system.

Originally it was an FB live in which I verbally guided people through a 20-minute lecture and exploration. All you need is a quiet space on the floor and a (yoga) mat.

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