The law of reciprocity in self care

The law of reciprocity in self care

by | Mar 4, 2026 | Changing the story, Ignite your sparkle

What you give to your body is what your body gives back to you.

In both psychology and neuroscience, the law of reciprocity teaches us that our inner attitude and how we behave toward our bodies and ourselves is reflected back to us by our bodies by creating a feedback loop between our behavior and our biological well-being.

If you are often hard on your body, speak harshly to it, neglect its needs, or if you lack understanding of your body´s way and force it beyond its capacity, Your body can respond to this with tension, stiffness, contraction or fatigue, to name but a few sensations.

When this is a recurring pattern, it may even happen that the increase in intensity exceeds the bandwidth of your nervous system and body to digest life. resulting in your system becoming stuck in its defense mechanism. Your body may respond by becoming chronically tense, which can lead to hypervigilant attention habits, a limited ability to process life, anxiety, physical tension, constriction, gut stress, and low energy levels.

Why?

This response of your system has a direct effect on how it interprets signals from your external environment. Your movements are connected to your sensory perception and your interaction with your environment.

We are often unaware that we are acting out of tune with the subtle needs and desires of our biology. Many of us learned from a very young age that it is normal to force ourselves to do more than our body and nervous system can handle. We have learned not to live in harmony with our body and its rhythms by controlling and forcing it. We have learned that our body's reaction to our demands is a fault of our body. We have learned to silence those body's messages through quick fixes and external interventions. This behavior often leads to ways of holding ourselves, moving, expressing, breathing, or eating that are not in alignment with the nature and needs of our bodies.

And that is where the law of reciprocity can teach us to make a different move.  The law says that when you use effort, friction, and force to make your body do something against its will, your biology and nervous system respond with equal friction, tension, contraction, and an increasing intensity of negative sensations, emotions, images, and thought streams. On the other hand, when you follow your body's way and attune to its needs, your body and nervous system respond with a corresponding expansion, pleasant sensations and emotions, growth, ease, and fluidity.

And the needs of your body and nervous system are very down-to-earth. They need ongoing sensory contact with the outside world, and a reciprocal relationship with gravity. They need to follow their natural pace and rhythm. They need energy-efficient ways to go through life, which translates into sufficient rest, calm eating and digestion, and efficient, effortless movements, guided by feelings of ease, pleasure, and flow.

Would you like to bring more ease, pleasure, and flow back into your body and life?

All my neuro-somatic retreats are designed to help you reconnect with the needs and desires of your system and experience a lasting sense of wholeness and well-being.

Mirror, mirror on the wall 

Mirror, mirror on the wall 

by | Mar 4, 2026 | Body Intelligence, Changing the story, Nervous System Health

Your body reflects your beliefs and images about yourself and the world.

The law of reciprocity, the social principle whereby an action is repaid in kind, also exists internally between our mind and body. The body mirrors the way we treat it, how we care for it, and how we think about ourselves through specialized brain cells called mirror neurons. Those neurons fire when we perform an action related to ourselves or our environment, and when we observe someone else´s action. They connect action to sensation and emotion, the language of your biology. Your brain does not distinguish between someone else's actions and your own actions. Your brain ‘mirrors’ those actions as if they come from a force outside yourself.

If you are often hard on your body, speak harsh words to yourself, neglect the needs of your body and soul, or if you do not understand your body's way and overburden it, your mirror neurons mimic that stress.
On the other hand, being kind to your body through care, appreciation, good nutrition, compassionate thoughts, and moving in tune with your body's natural pace, rhythm, and capacity can create a “mirror” that reflects a self-organizing system that radiates joy, vitality, inner peace, self-confidence, and self-compassion.

Here is the thing. We are often unaware that we are unkind to our bodies and behave in ways that are not in tune with them. We have unconscious beliefs and expectations, embedded in our culture, that we have grown up with and that have conditioned us not only in how and who we have to be but also in how we use and perceive our bodies and their rich language of emotions, sensations, and movement.  We may have internalised cultural beliefs that we are not good enough, that we must prove our worth by working hard, sacrificing our needs for others, dimming our light, or suppressing undesired emotions. Our body keeps that score. And here is the catch. This internal cycle of expectations and perceptions in your brain defines selfhood. How you “see” yourself in your mind determines how your body tries to look and organise itself to match your mental image.

What do you tell yourself?

Would you like to move those inner stories that are not serving your body and life?

My 7 Day dance healing retreat "Reclaim your Inner Freedom" is designed to help you move those stories that dim your sparkle and experience a lasting sense of wholeness and well-being again.

Reclaim your self-wise: your own Wise

Reclaim your self-wise: your own Wise

by | Aug 28, 2025 | Blog, Somatic Wisdom

´Self-wise, or own-wise; a word that can be interpreted in many ways.

As a child, I was often told, “Don't be so self-wise!” when I did something my own way, differently from how my parents or teachers would have done it. Especially when my way of experimenting showed me how not to do something. Over the years, I silenced my inner ´Self Wise` voice to be the girl who didn't make mistakes and lived up to the expectations of those around me.

By the time I was on my own feet, I had no idea what I really wanted or needed, let alone knowing my deeper why and meaning in life. I had become reactive instead of responsive. It resulted in feeling empty, uncertain, self-doubting, and meaningless.
I went through life with emotional stress and often had tense and tight muscles and a chronic condition of IBS with no apparent medical cause. Doctors called it psychosomatic. These symptoms disappeared when I welcomed my Self Wise back and began to relax into living my own life, on my terms.

Self- wise... what a beautiful and powerful word that is when you think about it more deeply. Our very own inner wisdom, our own way, our own style, our own inner knowing, our own perception of the world, our own body telling us what we need emotionally and physically, our own truth, our own unique connection to spirituality, collective wisdom, and consciousness...

Our ´Self Wise` is intelligent and complex; I see it as an ingenious interweaving of our neurobiology, our body, our soul, our mind, and our spirit. Our ´Self Wise` awakens in the seed of our life. The moment we enter into a relationship with all layers of life in and around us. It learns to express itself through its interaction with its physical environment and the force field around it (e.g., gravity, upward forces, and pressure).

The first self-expression of our ´Self Wise` is movement.

Through movement, we learn about ourselves and the world in our first months and years, and we make our first contacts with other people and beings. Our first explorations of movement help our own ´Wise´ to learn about life. It acquires the basic sensational, emotional wisdom to set its inner compass to growth and vitality. It learns how to organize itself neurobiologically to create sustainable, thriving relationships in the complex system of cells, bones, joints, connective tissue, muscles, and organs. Neurobiology as a mirror for the system of body, soul, mind, and spirit that works together in harmony with each other, embedded in the greater environment of which it is an intrinsic part. We notice this, for example, because movement feels effortless, enjoyable, and fluid, and we feel deeply alive, connected, and energetic. We experience a felt sense of meaning in life.

The core patterns that emerge from these first explorations of movement with the force field around us and within, also form the basis for the further development of our brain, mind, emotional-social behavior, and deeper self-expression.

Without our ´Self Wise´, we lack our compass for life

Then things happen in our lives that hurt us physically or emotionally. And these experiences influence the basic layout we lay in the early years of our lives. One of those experiences is the encounter of our ´Self Wise` with society, our caregivers, and teachers. For many people, that felt like an unpleasant and 'self-confidence undermining' clash. The first moment we begin to doubt our ´Self Wise`.

Our society is not a nurturing place for our own Wise. Many people have already silenced their own Wise by the time they get out of elementary school.

Many of us gradually put our well-being in the hands of others who tell us how to move, think, or feel. Many people let others tell them what to do with their lives. Many people depend on others to know what is good for them. How they should answer their needs, how they should look, what is expected of them, how they should behave, and express themselves to belong and be successful by society's standards. I was there too.

Our ´Self Wise` shows us the way to our own path, our soul’s purpose, our own way, our own signature in expression and movement, our own meaning, our own needs, and our own why.

Moving through life without our ´Self Wise´ is like sailing a boat without a rudder.

It is therefore not surprising that so many people are experiencing fear, uncertainty, and doubt. For many, the body has become a place of emptiness, discomfort, pain, and tension.
Many people feel lost within themselves, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. Being truly yourself is a difficult challenge in this society, when it should actually be completely natural.

Our ´Self Wise´ knows how to dance through life and with life; physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It has the talent to perceive the world from the heart, to nurture itself with the beauty inside and outside, and to live passionately. To tap into the wisdom that our far ancestors already had about life. Wisdom about ourselves that can't be found in books. Wisdom about ourselves that we only unlock when we start to perceive and feel life in ourselves and around us again. Wisdom about how to heal, blossom, and grow.

The wisdom that we can access again when we stop pigeonholing the body, mind, soul, and spirit and instead think in wholeness, relationship, and connection. And that connection resides in our embodied self, which is always in a lively exchange with all life and energy around it.

The body breathes our spirit and expresses our soul. And for these reasons, it is so important to come home to your body and embrace and befriend your Self Wise again.

The somatic movement adventures in my retreats will give you the space to discover yourself again, trust your own way again, and put yourself at the helm of your life. So that you can move confidently and passionated in your skin again.

Do you define your boundaries based on pain or pleasure?

Do you define your boundaries based on pain or pleasure?

by | Apr 13, 2025 | Body Intelligence, Nervous System Health, Somatic Awareness

A while ago, I wrote about respecting and growing your boundaries. In particular, your boundaries to yourself. These could be boundaries from your nervous system or your body to you, or the limits you impose on your body. Today I want to share something about the boundaries that are about ourselves and the window of pleasure.

Often, people become aware of their boundaries only when physical or emotional pain comes into play. Pain then becomes the measuring stick by which boundaries are defined. Boundaries formed by the fear of pain are often all-or-nothing boundaries; an on-off switch because when pain occurs, our system steps on the emergency brake or shuts down.

To feel pain, you need pain.



In Feldenkrais sessions, I find that many people, when they no longer feel their pain, immediately start looking for the pain. Their attention is, so to speak, hijacked by the pain. This leaves them in a vicious circle of pain. The thoughts, feelings, and movements are so focused on avoiding pain that it actually reinforces pain, creates more pain, and sometimes leads to chronic pain and tension patterns... An attention pattern, under the spell of pain, causes people to experience needless pain for a long time. Why?

 

Pain and the nervous system in a nutshell

If we experience pain anywhere in our body (emotional pain included), it is because pain receptors in a certain area in our body perceive a certain stimulus that can cause harm to the body. We experience this as pain. A message is sent to the central nervous system. Once the brain understands what has happened, it sends a message, to the muscles to make a movement or prevent movement so that no further damage occurs and the damage is limited. I call it a kind of protection program.

All sorts of things are also set in motion in the body to heal the pain. In addition, the pain is stored in your brain's memory library along with the emotions, and sensations associated with this particular pain. And every time there is a similar emotion or sensation, your brain sends the protection program for this pain back to the muscles.

Besides physical pain stimuli, our ‘Something is wrong’ thoughts and anxious emotions also trigger stimuli to which the central nervous system responds with this pain-protection program.

Sometimes we keep sending stimuli to the brain with our ‘pain-oriented’ thoughts and emotions, long after the actual physical pain has healed.

This constant pain stimulation makes our nervous system over-stimulated and increasingly sensitive to pain. It can even change certain neural networks as a result. It expands the original protection program more and more and fires it more often and faster.

As a consequence, pain in one area of your body can cause long-term tension in your whole body, psyche, and mind, causing you to lose a lot of energy and bandwidth in feeling and moving. Even such traits as curiosity, flexibility, creativity, and solution-oriented thinking then often take a back seat.

This is a vicious neurobiological circle, which we can break by consciously focusing our attention differently. The beauty is that both the body and our nervous system then have much more room to tap into their self-healing capacity.

Window of tolerance or window of pleasure?

Besides focusing on what hurts, we can also turn our attention to what feels okay or perhaps even pleasurable. By doing this, we again widen our bandwidth and our variety of feelings. I like to call this expanding the window of enjoyment or pleasure as quoted by Steve Hoskinson from Organic Intelligence® in preference to your window of tolerance. 

When we direct our attention to pleasurable sensations, we move out of fear and all fear-oriented tension patterns.
To feel pleasure, all we need is a very small pleasurable sensation somewhere in the body, even if just in your fingertip or your little toe. We find pleasurable sensations more readily by focusing on what feels easy rather than strenuous, and effortful. For example, we experience ease by moving smaller, softer, slower, and more mindful.

When you make movements with very little effort, your brain is again able to register the differences between different movement options and choose what is most efficient, pleasurable, easy, and comfortable. With these new choices, the brain can rewrite the pain protection program and create better-feeling patterns.

 

Our brain’s need for our physical antennae

Our brain’s need for our physical antennae

by | Apr 10, 2025 | Blog, Nervous System Health, Video

In this video, I talk about becoming more aware of how you use your senses - the physical antennae that monitor the physical world around you. They help the nervous system organise itself and they give the brain the right information to map itself in the here and now.

An important task for our brains, as the incoming information helps the brain create a predictable outcome to face the situations life brings us as efficiently and energy--savingly as possible.

When our brain does this successfully, we experience it as having the energy to do the things that are meaningful to us, and to have a sense of ease, peace, and joy as we move through our daily lives.

Play, play and play

Play, play and play

by | Apr 9, 2025 | Blog, Ignite your sparkle, Nervous System Health, Video

We find much of our ease and pleasure in play. You only have to look at small children and see how they get fully absorbed in playing, and then how they enjoy themselves. Indeed, playing helps us to be completely in the present moment, and to feel carefree and joyful for a while. When we play, our attention is not so focused on our more intense inner world.

For us adults, it would be healthy if we spent more time in our playful infant mind space, where curiosity, awe and wonder dance together. Play awakens our creativity and inventiveness. It creates space in our minds.

So why not play more? Everything in our daily lives can be ‘play’ by approaching it with a playful attitude. Our brains love it. It is a powerful nutrient for a resilient nervous system. And it gives space and relaxation in the body. Let's talk about play...