In this video, I talk about the impact of our physical and mental habits and our emotional behavior on our life energy. Energy that wants to move. It expresses itself through our movement and our voice. Ultimately, the way our energy is allowed to flow determines how we connect to ourselves and our environment.
I offer a free series on YouTube ‘The sound of You’, to help you to feel free in your body and vibrant, energized, and spontaneous in your life.
Sound is our channel for expression. It is the energy of vibration and has the potential to heal and open the spaces in ourselves energetically and physically. It eases our breathing, and softens tight places in the chest and back. Therefore sound is an important element of the sixth chakra; the throat chakra.
When we are at ease with our voice and sound and we speak with clarity and confidence, the energy of this chakra can flow optimally. This keeps our throat, mouth, thyroid, neck, ears, cavities of belly, face, and chest in good health.
We heal and balance our throat chakra when we speak our truth, communicate kindly and non violently yet with clarity. When we are able to listen attentively and receive through our listening. And last but not least when we speak kindly and compassionate to and about ourselves. A balanced throat chakra is a must for our spontaneous expressive energy to flow freely and nourish us with joyous vibrancy and meaningful connections with others.
For as long as I remember, I have been shy and anxious to speak out loud, speak my truth, show myself through my voice. I would hide in myself as soon as the fire reached my cheeks in a turbulent red. Ever so now and then I still feel panic and blockage when it comes to finding words and sharing my thoughts and feelings through them.
Old wounds as so to speak. It took me some time to realize that blocking my voice caused the tightness I sensed in my chest and upper belly and my shallow breathing and states of anxiety and emotional tension. It even touched upon my digestive system. My journey to get to know my voice and free her started during the Feldenkrais training I took and led me to dance, sing and lament, to NLP, and voice and breathwork.
Fast forward, I now go live on Facebook in a language that is not even my mother tongue. I voice my thoughts and ideas. Daily I get to listen to my voice and the words I choose when I offer Feldenkrais somatic movement play, and Somatic movement creativity online. I celebrate this new step with joy, more confidence, more breath, and resonant spaces in my chest, belly, and bones. And certainly more courage to authentically dance play myself into the light and help other people to step into theirs.
In 2021 I offered a miniseries to free the body’s sound system in my former FB group. People told me how much they had enjoyed exploring their body’s sound system, expanding their potential for more ease, range, and freedom in expressing and breathing, and to give a voice to their trapped emotions and the beliefs they were holding about their voice and self-image. And how they felt more of themselves.
Do you want to embrace more of you? I now offer the free mini-series ‘The Sound of You’ on my YouTube channel
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:
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.
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.
“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:
Or are you thinking:
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?