How do you live internally?
Are you rigid in your body, and fixed in your thinking? Do you have hyper-mobile hips, and regularly over-stretch your schedule, or an inflamed body, and a temper to match it? There is often synchronicity in mind and body, for our body is always reflecting back to us, about our current state of in-house affairs.
Gabor Maté tells us, “When we have been prevented from learning how to say no…our bodies may end up saying it for us.” In other words, the suppression of a ‘no’ over time, take its toll, until the body can’t hold the energy any longer. If the mind consistently rejects our body’s messages, we disrupt the signaling system between the two, and the result is inner conflict – or a breakdown in trust, and communication. We have simply shut down the communication circuits from our head (rationalism) with our gut feelings (intuition), and heart intelligence (emotions). Making it all too easy to see how we can end up living in the head- indeed it probably feels natural, and familiar – and we don’t even realize we’re doing it. If analyzing/judging/conceptualising your way through life is all you know, it might just feel like who you are, but thinking your gut response, is not the same as feeling your gut response.
Maladaptive coping strategies inherited from childhood
Gabor Maté explains we have two basic needs as children; attachment and authenticity. But we will always suppress our authentic needs, if our attachment needs are at risk. Attachment relates to how we ‘chameleon ourselves’ into being whoever we need to be to get love and attention from those around us. We are wired for attachment, as our primal survival depends upon connection. Our authenticity is our natural instinctive self, and our truest essence of who we are. As children, we seek respect and approval of others – our attached self, at the expense of our more emotive and intuitive guidance system – our authentic self. To recover our deepest sense of self is to re-connect, and re-associate with the fullness of who we already are, re-opening the channels of communication between head, heart and gut to create alignment and integration.
3 hacks for mind/body integration
Nurturing safety: Somatic Experiencing
- Tool: Self-holding exercises
- How: Self hug to settle and soothe, and to feel the body as a container, to feel where our physical body starts and stops.
Clearing Blocks: Body Tapping
- Tool: Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
- How? Tapping on energy meridians and reciting positive affirmations to relieve blocks, and help restore balance in the mind body bioenergy system.
Releasing Tension: Body Shaking
- Tool: Tension and Trauma Release (TRE)
- How? Series of exercise designed to allow the body to release stored patterns of stress, tension, and trauma through vibrational waves.