Moving out of habits of perfection

Moving out of habits of perfection

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

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?
Our stories start and change in the body

Our stories start and change in the body

I love this quote and I believe there is so much truth in it!

Our bodies know they belong; it is our minds that make our lives so homeless.” —JOHN O’DONOHUE

Our stories start in the body with the way our autonomous nervous system feels the world from moment to moment. It is called neuroception, a term originating with Stephen Porges Polyvagal theory.
We only have little awareness of these subtle shifts in our states and the influence that they have on how we feel, perceive our environment, and behave from moment to moment.

These wordless neuroceptive messages are somatic signals, like a gut feeling, sensations of temperature change, or our heart intuition, sensations from our organs, muscles… The autonomic nervous system sends these ‘neuroceptive signals’ to the brain. Our mind then starts to give meaning to this somatic story that our body tells by creating the beliefs that guide our daily life. A story is being born.

This mostly happens in the background of our daily lives, our moment-to-moment being. This gives the story a chance to result in unconscious habits of perception, behavior, movement, and attitude that influence our decision-making, our self-image, our reactions, and ultimately how we are in relationships with others and our environment.

We can become aware of this unconscious flow of information by pausing, listening into our body and paying attention to our bodily sensations before interpreting them with our mind. Much like being a witness.

When we can witness with the curiosity of our ‘infant mind space’ rather than our more judging ‘ego mind space’, we create a new space for trying on options in responding, behaving, and taking in the world. This creates options to enact a new somatic story by using the ability of our nervous system and body to adapt, change, and grow.

We meet ourselves through our infant mind space when we express ourselves through dance, conscious movement, and expressive art. When we invite ourselves to re-connect with ourselves without judgement by playing, exploring and discovering what wisdom our body holds for us. This leads to self-healing and inner growth.

It’s how I healed myself many years ago when I realised that I had lost my zest and sparkle and felt alienated from myself. I made the choice to change how I listened to and looked at myself, to re-story, to meet myself again in movement, in the moment, to re-member myself home in my body and being.

A vibrant You starts with a free voice

A vibrant You starts with a free voice

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.

 

The sound of you

The sound of you

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