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. Outdated ideas like “You have to feel worse first to feel better” or “No pain, no gain” still underlie most forms of therapy, coaching, and movement education.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 our attention to what feels wrong or bad, and our belief that we must be hard on ourselves or struggle to feel the way we want to feel.
The first step to breaking the cycle of stress, overwhelm, anxiety, and exhaustion is to follow the natural impulse of your system.
Our wise 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 regain 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.
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 self 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:
- How often do you turn your attention to pleasurable sensations and thoughts as you move, talk, work, cook, think, feel, or do nothing?.
- How often do you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel the immediate world around you?
Do you long for greater ease, lightness and pleasure in your everyday life? Are you curious to learn more about restoring your internal energy resources and how you can help your nervous system better organise, and thrive?
Experience it for yourself in the 7 Day private retreat:´Neuro-somatic dance Journey from Freeze to Flow´
