Category Archives: Body Psychotherapy

Expanding your Brain in Real-Time

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“The concept that mind creates matter is not a metaphysical proposition. It’s a biological one….your brain creates matter in the form of neurons and synapses in response to your consciousness.”
(Dawson Church, Mind to Matter, 2018)

Lots of research is coming out now (thanks to imaging machines and brain electromagnetic field readers) that the pathways in our brain are changing in real-time.

What you think and focus on affects the neuron structures in your brain directly, then and there. (Not just when you are asleep at night.) The rewiring is happening live as you focus intently on a task. The longer and deeper that you can focus, the deeper the neuron connections that can form in your brain.

Meditating in a Body Mindfulness Meditation class for one whole hour, and in the presence of other meditators, boosts this effect as everyone’s energy field resonates with each other, strengthening the effect.

This is why I also ask all clients at the end of a therapy session to not talk as they go home, and to lay down if possible when they get home. Most often people feel like doing this anyway. It’s a natural result of going deep. The energy your brain is expending in making neuron changes then and there is tiring. A good tiring.

You cannot feel the actual neutrons forming, there are no feeling receptors in your brain to let you actually feel this, but you feel the after effect in your body. You are tired, don’t want to talk and just want to lay down and often take a nap.

So after every deep body meditation and deep body personal therapy session, your brain has literally changed and the neuron connections in your brain have multiplied.

This is nice to know.

Disconnection from your Body can cause so much Misery

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It never ceases to amaze me when a client has a problem (health/habit/phobia/limitation//trauma/psychological etc), that it can be changed rapidly just by bringing the focus into the body while the head is still trying to work it all out (the old way.)

Some words of wisdom that can save you a lot of time, drama, pain, money and effort….

In my experience, if something isn’t working in your life, chances are you have disconnected from your body and have left your poor head/intellect all on its own to try to work it all out for you.

When this intellect process tries harder – thinking more to try to solve the problem – you begin to create the racing mind phenomenon where your poor brain is overworking (thrashing) for very little result.

The more thoughts you need to solve an issue, the more stressed your system is and badly in need of a tune up. At some point, (when you are finally over it) it becomes time to clean up all the unfinished programs in your head that are still running, clogging up your ability to think in a straight line and doing so within a clear space in your head.

Thankfully body mindfulness offers a big key to be able to do this. And you can do this at home in a body mindfulness meditation practice. My body mindfulness class is designed to help you do this for yourself each day and then more intensely when you need something more focused.

I also recommend giving yourself this mind/body tune up with a therapist each year too, with a number of one-on-one private sessions. This helps to speed things up much more. Of course I practice what I preach and I do this myself every year. It makes a huge difference, as you prune all the old unfinished thoughts and issues still whizzing around in your head taking up unnecessary space and energy.

So why don’t people do this more often? One of the biggest reasons is that they think there isn’t a problem until they go inside and find just what is still running in there, subconsciously. That can be a bit of a shock to realise how much of your effort internally is inefficient and clogged with unfinished traumas which you thought you had resolved.

So I have learned over the years to never wait for a problem to surface. I do the work regularly and clear it out before it becomes a problem. You will always find things lurking in your subconscious that are building and are problems in waiting. So do this practice for yourself regularly, ideally daily, and have a series of sessions regularly each year for the deeper stuff. Do it no matter what and you will notice a big difference.

Your life will run smoother, you will feel more in the flow and present. Drama drops off. Your health improves. You age slower and you think with more peace in your head as the thrashing of your thinking clears.

Changing your Deep Subconscious Auto-Pilot Habits

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“Our brain captures the strategies that work to keep us safe, connected and respected as possible in our early life environment, and then puts those behaviors on autopilot.”
(Amanda Blake, Your Body is Your Brain, 2018)

The behaviours you have that are on autopilot are hard to change because they have been buried deep down very efficiently. They are on autopilot so that they can run automatically when needed without thought.

When you need to be safe and connected, you don’t want to have to think it all through. Stopping to think for too long can be the difference between life and death, or connection and no connection with others.

So how do you change something that’s deep and not part of your conscious thinking intellect? You need to turn inward and put the intellect into the back seat for a while. Body Mindfulness work helps you to do this. You scale back the rate of thinking by focusing on your inner body, mostly from the neck down, away from the seat of the intellect. That brings you closer to the automatic patterns that you deemed early on as the best way to live.

I like Amanda Blake’s explanation of the there brains. The lower Cerebellum Brain is geared for safety. The middle Limbic Brain is geared for emotional connection with people and the Cerebrum (top brain intellect) is geared for Respect. This gearing or wiring are strategies that are on autopilot were created long ago, mostly in childhood.

Things change as you grow up and into adulthood. But very often these deeper autopilot patterns do not update. What burned them in place was so strong (probably traumatic) that you decided there is no way you are going to let that affect you in that way again. So that patterns is locked in deep to protect you. To keep you safe. To keep you connected and to keep you respected by people.

That Ego Voice in your Head

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When it comes to Self Healing the bottom line – is facing the pain you have stored away in the cells of your body.

Your ego is doing a great job at keeping that pain at bay and building an identity and behaviour pattern around it all to keep you safe. Initially that’s good and you needed it under the circumstances when it first formed. But at some point if you are to progress in your life in a healthy way, that needs to be addressed.

“The remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not fully faced, accepted and then let go of, join together to form an energy field that lives in the very cells of your body.”
( Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, Page 142)

Body Mindfulness based self-healing and therapy work is very powerful in helping you heal all this old stored up pain. It’s not always easy to face, your ego will kick and scream all the way or put you to sleep. That’s the last place it wants to go. But as you face it, bit by bit and release, the ego’s strength lessens and it eventually gets easier and easier to let go.

You grow in strength and the ego diminishes. You get healthier and more alive and back in real contact and communication with your body. So as the communication with your body increases, you gain more control and know what’s going on. All this leads to a healthier more relaxed and peaceful mind and the all the great benefits that go with this.

As you learn to face what’s stored, compressed and banked up in your body, the ego voice in your head begins to diminish, it starts to take a back seat. In sessions, you will still hear it doing it’s thing, but it will more and more become a fainter voice in the background as you face the past within you and your body.

There is nothing wrong with having that ego voice assisting in your daily activities, but it becomes a problem if that’s the only voice running your life. There is another one, the one that comes from the cells in your body and, of course yours – the aware spirit you, (some people call it your heart).

Listening to the voice from your cells is what heals your physical body. Listening to your heart/spirit is what directs and heals your life.

Healing the effects of Bullying at School

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A strong traumatic event from the past that clients often share is being bullied and teased at school. This can have such a strong effect on people’s lives later on. Many clients will say just how much bullying affected them in their lives. There has been more focus on this issue in the recent past but I thought it was worth mentioning it here again.

I enjoy working with kids with this issue. Parents will sometimes bring a child in for help with the anxiety and stress of such bullying.

Body based and movement work is excellent for this. Helping a child fight and hit back at the bullies in a session (kicking and punching into a big cushion) helps to release much pent up fight/flight stress in the child’s body. They feel great after, their confidence goes up and often the bullying stops.

So it is good to get it early in a child’s life. Sessions help provide a safe place for a child to gently get their physical power back. They may hit into a cushion tentatively at first, but eventually they can be pounding with a strong force that gives enormous confidence after. With strong overpowering bullying a child will retract and hide their power away for safety. If this happens for too long, a child will forget that they have this power available within them. Sessions help to coax this important fight reflex back out again.

“George, how do you remain so calm and balanced all the time?”

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An executive client (while I was on location at a corporate client site) recently asked me ‘George, how do you remain so calm and balanced all the time?’ He had observed me over a six month period while I was working there with a variety of issues and employee behaviors and stresses that I had to deal with and help with.

That was a very good question that I’d like to answer a little bit here and give some insight into with four major points.

How was it that the whole time I was working with that client I never stressed out, complained, got impatient, got reactive to another employees behaviour, but was always calm, balanced and fully available?

On one level it’s a great testimony to this therapeutic work, meditation, mindfulness and body psychotherapy.
You can walk into a place and pretend to keep your cool and try hard to not react and stay balanced, that’s an interim step to the real thing. But what you really want is to be so present in the moment that normal stresses just flow through you, creating a little bit of a wave maybe, but pass through you and the present moment. Or if you do react, the reaction completes very quickly and flows out of your system so you are back in balance very quickly, within seconds sometimes, with very little lingering on.

So here is part of what keeps me in that balanced state the majority of my day:

1.
Do your personal work. Preferably Body based Psychotherapy (my bias).
Having had a lot of personal sessions over the years has been the biggest foundation to being able to be more present than ever before. When I first started having sessions for some issues, I didn’t realize just how much I had buried within me. So as it came out, more arose that I became aware of. So I began a number of years of flushing out the past build up. Without that flushing out, (if you have a lot buried within you) it is very hard to stay present and calm in the face of reactive people that trigger your past unfinished business. So this foundation step is not a quick fix. It took some time which has paid off for itself handsomely over the past 20+ years.

2.
Meditate every day.
Preferably every morning. Each time I arrived at that client’s site, I would stay in my car for 10 minutes, close my eyes, engine switched off, doors locked and I would meditate, centre myself, arrive, get more present. Let any stress from the drive there release.

3.
Be mindful of the present moment – often.
During the day, stay in mindful touch with your body sensations where ever you are at. This helps to keep you out of your head and more embodied in the present moment. You can’t be responding to the present moment appropriately if you are off thinking other things in your head other than being with what is in front of you in the moment.

4.
Be in the Zone.
People who do their job well, professionally, usually have mastered doing the work ‘in the zone’. That’s another way of saying – only be in the present moment now. So my client who wondered how I always stayed that relaxed was seeing me working ‘in the zone’ doing my job, focused, present, attentive, there to accomplish a goal. That’s different from the more casual state that you can be in outside of work hours, where you let your hair down. That professional ‘zone’ produces quality output.

So there you have four major points for how I stay calm and present when I’m busy and/or in a challenging environment.

The Bizarre Twitches and Jerks

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“What are these twitches and jerks George! They are bizarre!”

Such were the comments of a client recently after their session.

Welcome to my world! Where every little subtle sensation and feeling is treated as much more important than the thoughts in your head.

To the average person, when they do this work, (getting into the body) the body responds and comes to life. This life shows up as twitches, jerks, tingles, buzzing, heat, tensions, pressure, waves, feelings and emotions, to name just a few.

Under normal circumstances these body messages are ignored by most people. But, come and have a session of body based psychotherapy, enter your body mindfully, and all these previously hidden sensations that the intellect always considered totally irrelevant, come to the forefront.

You would not walk down the street and let your body twitch and jerk visibly. You would get strange looks and people will want to lock you up. ‘Who is this weird person?’

But in the total privacy of the therapy room, all these sensations become very important and normal. They are a very important part of your body releasing the causes of your blocks, pains and stresses in your life. Not just as a coping mechanism, but as an organic completion of old unfinished business that’s been buried deep in your body.

So if you want to progress more rapidly and heal more fully, spend time listening to your body’s messages in deep, deep detail. Hang out more with all those cells that make up your whole body. They have a lot to say about your current issues, problems, pains and health. Give them some attention and they will show you what needs to happen next for you to move forward and heal in ways that drugs, talking, pushing and analysis could never do.

I haven’t been in this body for a long time

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“I haven’t been in this body for a long time.”

Such was the comment from a client recently in her first session when she came in for some work after a long layoff.

This is such a great realisation, to realise that you haven’t been in your body ‘for a long time’. Just realising this means that she has become aware of her still presence that inhabits her body, separate from the busy trillions of cells working away making the body function as one whole unit. She now has some space and access to the workings of the cells in her body and so access to the dysfunctions there, most which have been neglected for ‘a long time.’

Mindfulness body based therapy work helps to bring focus back onto what really matters in your body. By stopping, slowing down, listening and ‘being with’ your body, you allow powerful healing to occur, many times without having to do anything specifically.

Question:
If it is so beneficial to be in your body, why would you not spend more time in it?
Answer:
People don’t I have found, because of two major reasons:
1. You’ve never grown up making this a habit. You’ve never been taught the importance of doing this, because others around you never knew how either.
2. You’ve had some strong traumatic or painful experience in the past.
And the only and best way you knew how to cope was to escape and not be in your body.

Living in your body is the best way to live, it is also the most effective, the most beneficial, the most healthy and the most fulfilling way to be and function. I can say this from experience and the feedback from thousands of clients over the years. Why would you want to be any other way, all in your poor over worked head?

When you get a sniff of what’s possible with this work, you’re on your way to a whole new more productive way of working and living. But even with such benefits, doing this work still takes some time to break the old habits.
The old habits of:
1/ trying to work it all out with thinking just in your head and,
2/ vacating your body and living outside of it.

These habits can be hard to break. Especially when the majority of the population around you are doing just that.

My advice? Ignore the majority. Follow your instinct and heart and watch what a huge difference it makes. Watch how much more calmer you become, how much smarter, more emotionally intelligent, much more real, human and healthier all around.

You don’t have to wait for more studies to prove all this. Even though they are coming through now more and more.

Joseph Campbell – That ‘still’ place

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I was reading a little of Joseph Campbell recently. For those who don’t know, Campbell was a very highly regarded American Professor and writer who specialised in the fields of comparative mythology and religion. A brilliant man and observer of life.

From his book ‘The Hero’s Journey’ Joseph Campbell talking about his early years as a very good fast track and field runner says:

“There has got to be a still place in there and the movement has to take place around it. I lost two races that were very important to me because I lost the still place. The race was so important that I put myself out there to win the race instead of to run the race. And the whole thing got thrown off.”

This is such a great explanation of what often happens when you lose that still centered place within your body and you allow life and thoughts to take over. Whenever you work ahead of yourself, (already at the destination in your head) that you lose sight of the present moment in your body now, things don’t work as well. You lose clear creative thinking and the quality of your decision making drops. Why? Because you are not operating in true present reality and you are not operating from the still quiet place within you and your body.

MIndfulness Mediation and Body Psychotherapy work helps to change this.

For when you run the race mindfully (staying and responding to your body in the present moment along the way,) it increases your chances, that by the finish line, you’ll be up front and in the winning position

The difference with Body Psychotherapy

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I have often in the past (not much any more) been asked what the difference is between a Psychologist and what I do as a Body Psychotherapist. This is a very simple question to answer.

A Psychologist generally learns cognitive intellect thinking tools to help clients handle a particular problem or behaviour. They offer tools and strategies to help keep a problem in check with your mind.

A Body Psychotherapist works with the whole body condition and blocks that are causing the original behaviour and helps eliminate the original cause and original trauma, releasing it.

Releasing it emotionally (by processing and releasing feelings), physically (by processing and releasing body movements) and mentally (by processing and releasing core beliefs).

So the focus in the session is on processing and permanently healing the problem. A Body Psychotherapist doesn’t focus on ‘tools’, because once it’s gone, you don’t often need tools to cope anymore. With this work, the problem is either gone or lessened enough to not be a big problem anymore.

Body Psychotherapy is a very mindfulness based process. Often in sessions there is not much discussion but a lot is happening and releasing. And the results show up afterwards. Sometimes instantly.

In Body Psychotherapy, what you feel in your body – Sensations and Movements, and what you feel emotionally, are much more important than what you think about a problem.