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

Do you own all of you?

Do you own all of you?

by | Dec 27, 2023 | Blog, Changing the story, Somatic Awareness

They say ‘When you don’t own an aspect of yourself it runs your life.’

For a long time, I tried to be a good girl, denying that somewhere inside was a very angry little girl. However, what we can’t be with, won’t let us be.

During the retreats here at Jardin de Luz, there is always a moment when my clients come face to face with an aspect of themselves about which they have major judgments and feel resistance to embracing it. Very often it is a theme around anger.

Many women learn early in childhood that getting angry does not suit girls. Many women learn to suppress or replace anger with tears and interpret it as sadness. And that can take on a life of its own in the body with consequences such as chronically high muscle tone, Irritated Bowel Syndrome, anxiety symptoms, prolonged fatigue, poor sleep, a tight body, sexual problems, less and less movement possibilities, and an inflexible mindset to name a few.

Some time ago, I made an inner child card for this angry, sometimes destructive, young part of me that I was far from comfortable with. (see above)

“Owning all aspects of yourself” is an essential step in the process of healing and creating beauty with who you are and what you have. We cannot embrace what we do not own. Then we can release suppressed energies and restore the body’s natural state of being.

Does working with dance, movement, and creativity as a way to heal and grow internally speak to you? And are you interested in a retreat with me? Feel free to contact me for a exploratory chat.

Source quotes Ford, Debbie. Dark Side of the Light Chasers: Reclaiming your power, creativity, brilliance, and dreams (p. 73). Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.

Meeting your inner family

Meeting your inner family

by | Dec 27, 2023 | Changing the story, Somatic Awareness, Somatic Wisdom

Today was the last day of the last retreat of 2023 at Jardin de Luz.
I am grateful for the beautiful, courageous journeys I was invited to guide this year.

One of our participant’s favorite practices is the inner child cards that we create from working somatically, energetically, and creatively with parts of ourselves.

Our younger parts often bring up the most painful and sometimes happiest stories from the past that demand our attention. Sometimes because we can’t let go of them. And more often we become aware of how we have rejected some young parts of ourselves out of fear of losing the love of those around us. Those parts keep demanding our attention, challenging us, until we make space for them, really listen to them, and give them a place in our hearts again. Their behavior often created counterparts who act as safety officers. They manage our beliefs and keep our free, uninhibited, playful inner child firmly in line. Some call them their inner critics. (Above one of my inner child cards).

For this practice, we listen deeply to the somatic messengers that inform us from the inside out, from our cells, bones, muscles, connective tissues, and our subconscious realm so to speak. They are what I call the somatic communication SISTEM:

Senses

Images

Sensations

Thoughts

Emotions

Movement

and next to that, we use lots of old magazines, scissors, and glue to play with what our inner children have to say.

Does working with dance, movement, and creativity as a way to heal and grow internally speak to you? And are you interested in a retreat with me? Feel free to contact me for a exploratory chat.

Where do you focus?

Where do you focus?

by | Dec 27, 2023 | Changing the story, Somatic Awareness, Uncategorized

“Focus on your difficulties and you have difficulties for life.” (Moshe Feldenkrais)

Yesterday I prepared a Feldenkrais awareness through movement explorations for a little group of people of all leaps of life. An exploration to release tension in the neck and shoulders and free the head and spine.
Tension and blockages in the body often are good companions of thinking in difficulties. They are very attracted to each other. If they didn’t think and act the way they do, they would probably dance a very passionate tango.

I have this little exploration of 1 minute to think about something that is fairly unknown to you. Maybe you have a dream you want to realize… What are the first things that come up when you think of the possibility that your dream could be a reality?

Are you thinking:

  • I think I can’t do it.
  • What happens if it goes wrong?
  • I think I am not good enough.
  • It is too difficult, there are only challenges because of this and that, etc

Or are you thinking:

  • What is all possible?
  • I am going to sort this and that out.
  • I am going to learn this, discover that…etc
  • How can I connect the dots?
  • I have never done this before so I think I can do it

And feel in your body (whatever way you think) what happens. What do you feel in your belly, your jaw, your neck, and shoulders?  Your lower back, and the connection of your feet with the ground? Just experiment with different thoughts…

Feldenkrais explorations are designed to help the nervous system create new possibilities and connections. The nervous system has the ability to create endlessly when we bring the right input: creativity, curiosity, quantity, quality, variation, and quality. And when this happens we move on a highway towards unlocking our full potential.

My inner sparkle feeds on dancing the highway of my potential and so I pay close attention to what I feed my mind with.

Where do you focus on today?

You are enough

You are enough

by | Dec 27, 2023 | Changing the story, Somatic Wisdom

I am preparing for the solo retreat that will start in less than a week.

In many of the past retreats, women told me about their struggle with ‘Not being good enough’. One of the tools in my magic healing box is the Systemic Dance Constellation Ritual. It was born out of my own intuitive way of systemic constellation and the training in systemic work I received in training as a somatic energetic therapist

I love to constellate the theme of ‘not being good enough’ by playing with our Self-wise energy personalities. Our Self Wise is the part in us that often got wronged or ridiculed in our childhood.

I know from experience that it can leave big scars and feelings of being disempowered, not equipped with the right survival tool, of not feeling of any worth. It has a huge influence on our life decisions, how we dream and desire for ourselves, our relationships, and how we dare to stand up for ourselves.
It is important to heal that part! To change your belief settings and self-image. And there is a very powerful way to invite our mind to stop her chatter: Movement and Play!
I believe that moving is the medicine, and to play is to heal. Through movement, we can gently sense our way in, with our body as the foundation.
After one of the Systemic Dance Constellation Rituals, I gifted myself, I wrote myself this little empowering poem:

“Not good enough” There she is again. Her venom paralyzes me to my core and grabs me by the throat. She drags me into her raging stream full of self-condemnation and comparisons to others. I go head over heels for her vicious words. She pulls me into her dark deep waters. Slowly I feel myself drowning in the fear of not being able to survive with who I am. Is it possible to believe in something else?

For a moment, “not being good enough” gets its way. Then strong hands pull me up, a soft voice whispers ‘It is not true’. It is another part of me. I break free from this devastating stream of thought. I feel the power of “not good enough” weakening. Her poison will miss its effect this time. She will have no more power over me..”