What about your inner castle?

What about your inner castle?

by | Dec 29, 2024 | Blog, Changing the story, Ignite your sparkle

Sometimes I read a text whose symbolism completely coincides with what is going on in my inner world at that moment. At such a moment, when the words reflect this back to me, peace and clarity arise in my mind.
The text below is such a text. It comes from the inspiring book “Dark side of the light chasers’ by Debby Ford

“Imagine being a magnificent castle with long hallways and thousands of rooms. Every room in the castle is perfect and possesses a special gift. Each room represents a different aspect of yourself and is an integral part of the entire perfect castle. As a child, you explored every inch of your castle without shame or judgment. Fearlessly you searched every room for its jewels and its mystery. Lovingly you embraced every room whether it was a closet, a bedroom, bathroom, or a cellar. Each and every room was unique. Your castle was full of light, love, and wonder.
Then one day, someone came to your castle and told you that one of your rooms was imperfect, that surely it didn’t belong in your castle. They suggested that if you wanted to have a perfect castle you should close and lock the door to this room.
Since you wanted love and acceptance, you quickly closed off that room.


As time went by, more and more people came to your castle. They all gave you their opinions of the rooms, which ones they liked and which ones they didn’t. And slowly you shut one door after another. Your marvelous rooms were being closed off, taken out of the light, and put into the dark. A cycle had begun. From that time on, you closed more and more doors for all kinds of reasons. You closed doors because you were afraid, or you thought the rooms were too bold. You closed doors to rooms that were too conservative. You closed doors because other castles you saw did not have a room like yours. You closed doors because your religious leaders told you to stay away from certain rooms. You closed any door that did not fit into society’s standards or your own ideal.
The days were gone when your castle seemed endless and your future seemed exciting and bright. You no longer cared for every room with the same love and admiration. Rooms you were once proud of, you now willed to disappear. You tried to figure out ways to get rid of these rooms, but they were part of the structure of your castle.

Now that you had shut the door to whatever room you didn’t like, time went by until one day you just forgot that room altogether. At first, you didn’t realize what you were doing. It just became a habit.

With everyone giving you different messages about what a magnificent castle should look like, it became much easier to listen to them than to trust your inner voice: the one that loved your entire castle. Shutting off those rooms actually started to make you feel safe. Soon you found yourself living in just a few small rooms. You had learned how to shut off life and became comfortable doing it.¨(from the book of “Dark side of the light chasers’ by Debby Ford)


How recognizable, THIS! Many of us put away so many facets of who we are. Those facets are like rooms in the colorful castle we once were when we were born. And as more rooms in our castle are locked away and forgotten, we become more like a small studio in an apartment complex that is constantly being tweaked to look the same as all the other studios in the building and meet the aesthetic requirements of the housing corporation (read society). And we may not even remember over time that we were once a very special castle with many colorful rooms.

In Quantum Human Design (QHD) this ´tweaking ourselves to meet society´standards´, is called conditioning. A QHD map helps you see which rooms in your inner castle you have closed, and forgotten and it gives you keys to re-open and reclaim those rooms of your inner castle. It also helps you see where you let others decide about how your rooms should be. And it helps you re-attune to your inner voice of wisdom. Since living more according to my unique Human Design, I am more and more my whole castle again, and more and more of my quirky, crazy, colorful and sacred rooms are open to me again.

Last year I certified in the last level of Quantum Human Design; level 4. Studying and certifying is one thing and important. However giving as much Quantum Human Design readings is even more important to become skilled and confident in delivering others their unique Human Design roadmap. So I decided to offer free Quantum Human Design reading in the one-to-one Dance Healing retreat Reclaim your inner Freedom.

Move into Joy offers a holistic and sensory-based approach to healthy joyful being in all aspects of life. I offer transformational retreats for women seeking self-connection, self-acceptance, and expression of their authentic inner sparkle.

Are you ready to reclaim your power and life artistry? Join me for a retreat at Jardin de Luz Inner Sparkle Sanctuary, Spain

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?
Why a ‘step by step’ approach gives more results than a quick fix

Why a ‘step by step’ approach gives more results than a quick fix

by | May 11, 2024 | Blog, Body Intelligence, Nervous System Health, Somatic Wisdom

I have never believed in quick fixes. Rapid changes often mess with our finely tuned system They undermine our natural rise and fall, resulting in overly intense highs followed by deep lows. We have probably all tried a Jo-Jo diet, where you ended up worse off than you started…

Quick changes usually throw us back into the tightest grip of our unhealthy habits and behaviours.

Rather, I advocate small, thoughtful steps that allow our system to try something new, like we take time to try on a new dress. It allows our system to move back and forth – to oscillate and also to reverse in any way it wants. It gives it time to test its ‘water’ again and again. So that it can make intelligent choices that serve our whole system in the most optimal way.

Perhaps it is that many of us need to learn to trust our Self-Wise again in choosing what is best in the given situation or how we can best heal or enhance our growth.
I call it giving your Self-Wise space to play. That means to explore, taste, pause, sense, feel, and do or undo in a relaxed, aware, and easy way.

Here is to your Self-Wise; your intelligent Body Wise Soul!
When was the last time you invited her to play? 

From being hard to a heart for yourself

From being hard to a heart for yourself

by | Dec 28, 2023 | Blog, Body Intelligence, Nervous System Health

Today I was working on a new online program ‘From Being Hard with Yourself to Having a Heart for Yourself’. And that brought back old memories from when I was still auditioning for dance. And the journey I made then, stepping out of patterns of insecurity, self-criticism, and sensory anxiety. I had to learn to have a heart for myself to build a caring, respectful relationship with my body and feel the life force, love, and lightness, to sparkle again.

Learning to feel and look at my body differently then, changed my dancing and also the way I dance through life. I experienced a renewed relationship with my physical self, my felt self, my dreams, and my environment. And to my amazement, this happened over time by changing the way I move: The Power of Movement and Dance. And most of all, the power of moving in a relationship.

It is all about relationship!

If there is a harmonious relationship between the muscles, bones, organs, and breathing, we experience softness, strength, and mobility at the same time. All members of the body can regain their place in our greater living system and our nervous system operates in sync with what is needed for the good life. That way our system operates efficiently and flexibly, allowing the energy to flow optimally again. There is interweaving, teamwork, support, and non-stop interaction between the members of our system: the body, mind, brain, and heart. This is where the path to lightness, energy, creativity, connection, and growth begins. The way that we as a system function is similar to the way other living systems work. Systems are about networks of relationships and the better the quality of a relationship the better the system works.

We sentient beings benefit from a well-functioning system physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. When there is constant conflict between body members we experience that as tension, stress, pain, or fatigue in our inner lives, leading to us being more quickly overwhelmed by our environment. Most people react to this by hardening, armoring themselves, and disconnecting from their bodies and their environment.

Our ‘movement mirror’

The dynamics in relationships within our bodies teach us about our external relationships with others and our environment. It is not for nothing that people say, ‘So inside, so outside’!I have noticed that when the various physical parts of myself are better attuned to each other and the energy flows optimally again, the judgments and convictions about others and myself dissolve and my capacity for (self) compassion grows.

So I came to believe that the way we move is a mirror for our thinking and feeling. When we move, stand, and sit more freely physically and experience more options in doing so, this will also be reflected in our thinking and feeling. Many people then experience more playfulness, and flexibility in their mind and emotional life and feel more resilient in their lives. They are more able to face the world with an open, uninhibited heart.

Conversely, restrictive thoughts and emotions that constrict us have a compressive effect on our cells. We feel our muscles tighten. The organs experience less space because of this muscle movement and can no longer do their work properly. The bones are pulled and the joints experience more strain. There is no longer a relaxed balance in standing and sitting. Our nervous system starts worrying about survival.

How then can we heal ourselves in wise ways?

Often people don’t think of changing what they do, think, or feel. They give the same input and expect the body to act differently. Their choices are often based on the separateness of body, mind, and soul, and the belief that the body is makeable.

Changing one thing in such a complex living system changes everything for the better or worse. When we look at the dynamics of living systems, just like us, there are a few systemic laws that I want to bring forward in this context:

  1. Living systems are interdependent – change in one part of the system influences other parts of the system in expected and unexpected ways
  2. Living systems cannot be steered or controlled, only attracted or nudged.
  3. Living systems are never static; they are always in movement
  4. Living systems only accept solutions that the system helps to create
  5. Living systems only pay attention to what is meaningful to them here and now.

Often our mind’s way of isolated thinking, and acting does not respect the laws of our system. This leads to changes that do not serve our well-being and limit our potential. Our nervous system slowly becomes overloaded with these unbalanced relationships and the resulting dysregulation. Eventually, it loses its flexibility, creativity, resilience, and zest for learning.

Systems are all about networks of relationships and the better the quality of these relationships, the better the system operates.

For that reason, when working with chronic pain, tension, stress, and distorted body image, I look at the relationship between body, mind, emotions, and spirit: the relationship between perceiving, feeling, imagining, thinking, meaning, and moving.

Check my YouTube channel for tons of free, short healing practices that approach our whole being and follow the life laws of our system to move toward joy, transformation, and growth.

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