Moving out of habits of perfection

Moving out of habits of perfection

by | 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

Pausing your thoughts

by | 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?
The way you move tells your personal myth

The way you move tells your personal myth

by | 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.

Awareness through movement versus awareness of movement

Awareness through movement versus awareness of movement

by | 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. 

Somatic dance play, somatic movement?

Somatic dance play, somatic movement?

by | Dec 28, 2023 | Somatic Awareness, Somatic Wisdom

(with a little taster at the end)

What does somatic mean? In the Feldenkrais somatic movement education community, we are asking ourselves this question: Do people understand what we mean by this word?

Soma means the body as experienced from within. The felt sense of ourselves. So somatic refers to the study of experiencing ourselves from within the body. An embodied experience of ourselves. Somatic movement adds movement as a way to experience our body through sensations.

Just as the mind gives us a felt thought of ourselves and a visual image of our body, our body gives us a sense of ourselves through the way we move and hold ourselves together. Sensing brings our attention to the space that exists beyond words and feelings, to our sensations and emotions. Gene Gendlin, a somatic educator, has written beautifully eloquently about the body as our compass for thinking, feeling, and acting. I feel he describes soma, the felt sense of ourselves very poetic and magical through his words.

He writes -and I quote loosely- that our body is part of a huge system that is both here and in other places and embodies the now as well as other times. It is in constant curious interaction with its environment, the energy of others, the earth, the universe, our ancestors, past times, and other dimensions.

Energies flow in, out, and through, evoking emotions and sensations. We touch, see, smell, taste, and hear our environment every little fraction of time. Millions of cells sensate with now-information, emote with past experience, are moved by energy, and inform and co-create our brain’s magic network of connections and relationships.

Being consciously in connection with what is alive inside, feeling from the body, and being present in the body is feeling bodily alive in this vast universal system of relationships, interactions, and movement. Our conscious mind only can just comprehend a fraction of this. For me, somatics is about this conscious embodiment and self-awareness that connects us in a sensory way to that bigger meaning of life where words and mental constructions fall short.

Wikipedia shares another definition of somatic that brings in psychology as well:

…the study of the mind/body interface, the relationship between our physical matter and our energy, and the interaction of our body structures with our thoughts and actions.

It brings me to a statement Moshe Feldenkrais made that there is a unity of body and mind. One does not function without the other. They are an inseparable whole while functioning. A brain without a body could not think, a body without a brain could not function. So when we experience the body from within, we experience our mind from within as well.

Through aware movement, we experience our brain’s way of thinking and organizing from within. The way our self-image and movement develop through emotions, feelings, and thoughts.

What are the benefits of the somatic movement practices I share?

  • Experiencing ourselves from within makes us feel our depths, our wonders, and the magic of life. Well isn’t that a spark for our vitality?
  • Experiencing our body from within helps us understand our thoughts and feelings. It creates a co-creation between body and mind. It teaches us about the relationship dynamics that are all possible between our mind and body. What would it be like to tap into your full potential of strengths, gifts, and abilities?
  • Experiencing our body from within teaches us about the relationships between our muscles, organs, connective tissue, emotions, thoughts, and feelings. All motor movement starts here and can be improved by improving these relationships. What would you do if you would feel free and able in your daily life movements and actions? How would it change your life if you can consciously choose movement that feels free and pleasurable, that navigates you effortlessly through life’s challenges?
  • Experiencing the body from within teaches us about relationships. Our body guides us in getting to know our habits in relationship dynamics. Having this understanding helps us re-pattern habits that create struggles in relationships. How would be if you feel confident and open in relationships? How would it be if you could feel true, intimate, deep, and joyful in the relationships that are important to you?

In the somatic movement practices of Feldenkrais and dance movement creativity, I offer self-awareness and self-growth. Not because you have to be a better version of yourself but to guide you in getting to know, feel, and express more of yourself with joy, love, and innate playfulness. And experience relationships with more intimacy, ease, and being you

I call it somatic dance play and movement exploration. In playing we find all the tools to experience ourselves from a non-judgmental and curious place. Being playful brings us to a place where we can be open, exploring, and joyful. It is the most important state for organic, experiential learning.

My offer is an invitation to rediscover playful, spontaneous Being and consciously choose the path of pleasure and ease to navigate through life. I believe it all starts with coming home in our bodies and building a caring, joyful relationship with ourselves.

Are we loving enough to ourselves to receive our gifts ourselves first?

In this link, you’ll find a somatic dance play audio to start your own somatic journey. Dance through it with your eyes closed or open and have fun exploring relationships through your joints.

Self improve through self-connect

Self improve through self-connect

by | Dec 28, 2023 | Somatic Awareness

Many people are so busy becoming a better version of themselves. Often before even feeling themselves, feeling familiar with the deeper parts of themselves, or their living body (the soma). Before knowing who they truly are or knowing how to get to know their most authentic selves. Let alone having a relationship with themselves that includes all of them.

Improving yourself as a way of escaping from who you are, and of escaping from building a loving, attentive relationship with your inner self.

Being busy improving yourself before creating a relationship with yourself that is self-respecting, nurturing, and compassionate. Or setting up for improving yourself before being able to be wholeheartedly and consciously present in this relationship with your inner self, and your living body.

It is in the quality of this relationship with yourself that the improvement lies. Not in how you become better or change.

This beautiful quote says it so clearly and precisely:

“Drop the self-improvement project, for now at least, and first spend some time learning how to connect to your innermost Self, and how to nourish that ability to connect.” Christopher “Hareesh” Wallis

Do you want to connect with yourself in a more loving way and get to know yourself more intimately? Do you want to experience less effort in being?

I offer various live retreats that help you deepen your relationship with yourself and find joy and vitality through self-love.