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? 

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.

Let your senses take you back to your heart

Let your senses take you back to your heart

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

In this blog, I share how you can tap into the intelligence of your heart by engaging consciously with your senses to come home to yourself and find your inner peace after an upsetting event or news story or simply after a stressful day.

And what’s more, it also helps you, help your beloved, stressed animal feel better and calm her nervous system after an accident or epileptic episode. As I did with our newly adopted cat Uma who suffers from a neurological condition.

Uma’s story

It all happened around ‘cat’ dinner time. Uma suffered a short circuit in her brain, resulting in a seizure that manifested as epilepsy and hyperventilation. She spent hours between heaven and earth. We took turns watching over her. Halfway through the night, she wanted to move. She stood weakly on her feet. I could see her panic. She had no idea where she was or who she was. She couldn’t recognize her scent anymore. So she kept walking, stumbling, and bumping into everything. At one point she was so exhausted that her legs couldn’t carry her anymore, but she wouldn’t lie down. She was so scared. And so were we for her. By sunrise, we were dead on our feet. We didn’t know what else we could do to calm her down.

And then my heart took over from my mind and sent my senses out to play. I sat down next to her, with my feet well on the ground. And my eyes wandered around the room and lingered on a floor tile. From the corner of my left eye, I could see Uma. And as my eyes took in the floor tile, my ears received the sounds of the early morning-the heavy hum of a plane high in the sky, birds singing, the wind, my dog’s snoring, the murmuring of the trees, and Uma’s fast, pumping breath. I felt the movement of my breath, which carried silent grief, while a gentle breeze stroked the skin of my arm. The heavy summer heat pressed down on me. Drops of sweat ran down my back. While sensing, my thoughts became quieter and quieter. Time stopped. I felt my weight rest heavier on the cough, my feet spreading out into the ground. My gaze softened and widened. I could feel Uma very clearly now.

From the corner of my eye, I saw that she had laid down. And while we were together in silence, receiving the surroundings in our hearts, I saw her breathing becoming quieter and quieter. Her eyes slowly fell shut. She began to doze off quietly into a deep, restorative sleep.

How aware are you in your heart?

All living beings have an energy field within and around their bodies. When these fields contact each other there is a subtle, very complex exchange of electromagnetic energy encoded with information. It is the language of all life.

One of the most mind-blowing books I’ve read is a book called ‘The Secret Teachings of Plants’ by Stephen Harrod Buhner. He states that the physical heart is the most powerful organ of perception in both humans and many animals because it generates the strongest electromagnetic energy field in the body. And the heart becomes even more perceptive when it is in a harmonious connection with the rhythms in the rest of the body and brain and with the rhythms of the universe, and Mother Earth. This is called heart coherence. It happens when we shift our consciousness from our mind to our heart.

The more coherence the stronger the information exchange can be. A coherent heart has variability in heart rhythm so that it can easily adjust to movement intensity, emotional experiences, and other internal and external processes. This has beneficial effects on brain processes, our physical-emotional vitality, connection to others, openness to learning, and the neuroplastic capacity of our brains. It helps every part of our system work together harmoniously, and function efficiently. This creates space for auto-regulation, healing, resilience, and growth.

Did you know that your physical heart is a highly sophisticated communicator?

The physical heart has a huge amount of highly specialized cells that receive and transmit electric magnetic energy waves filled with information, much like a radio transmitter and receiver carries the music. These specialized heart cells group to form many finely tuned antennas with a very broad reach. This way the heart receives infinitely many different energy frequencies at the same time. No other part of the body and brain has this extraordinary quality. When the heart’s electromagnetic field meets another electromagnetic field, interaction and synchronization start to happen. In this process, information is exchanged.

The heart decodes this deep information by altering its beating pattern, pulse wave, electric output, hormonal functioning, and neurochemical release. These changes in function send information to the rest of the body and the different parts of our nervous system. It also acts directly with our nervous system through neurochemical releases in the brain that directly alter nervous system functions.

What does this have to do with the senses?

Our heart enters a state of *coherence when we shift from analyzing, thinking, setting expectations, and commenting to what we perceive through feeling and sensing. When we leave our senses free to wander around and take in the surroundings, we enter into our hearts. We re-member ourselves as part of our natural family. Resulting in our heart rate starting to slow down. Also, our eyes soften, our breath slows down and deepens, and a cascade of transformational chemical processes take place in the brain that controls the autonomic nervous system, emotions, and cognitive functions. As our hearts are both sending and receiving, this state of coherence is then exchanged with another Being when our energy fields touch.

And so by the simple act of sensing my surroundings and listening to my sensations, and feelings, I could help Uma feel more peaceful and start resting her exhausted body.

When was the last time you took the time to let your senses wander freely without any expectation?

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.