Do you talk to your muscles?
If you could hear them speak, what would they say? The body and all its interconnected components make up an intricately complex and amazing communication system. It is gathering and processing information all the time, even as we sleep, and that information is used (consciously and unconsciously) to direct our thoughts, actions, our reactions and perceptions about the world around us and about ourselves.
These internal and external stimuli let us know where we are in space, in relation to gravity or the ground, and everything else in our environments including other people. We are constantly on the move. Even at rest, we breathe, we daydream, and a myriad of processes operate unseen under the surface so that we can function in harmony, and so our minds and bodies can focus on being, doing and living and carrying out our rich and complex physical, psychological, social, emotional and spiritual pursuits.
Saying the word ‘muscles’ can be limiting.
There is much more to the makeup of your body and even to the muscles themselves than how we normally perceive them. Your muscles are surrounded, supported and partly made up out of fascia, a shimmery plastic wrap-ish connective tissue that like its name, ‘connects’ everything in the body. Bone, tendon, muscle, fascia blend into one another, as well as one muscle to another, and the lines are blurrier and much more interconnected and fluid than we think. Fascia can literally become more solid or liquid as the body directs it to change.
The body and mind are not separate.
Our thoughts, feelings and perceptions have the ability to transform our tangible worlds for better or for worse. The body itself is a listening and sensing instrument, sending messages up to our central systems, but also responding to what we think and say. Patterns of tension, contraction, holding, breathing, moving or not moving can all be affected by a single thought, or a subconscious belief, or the smallest start of a feeling.
So why bodywork?
When receiving bodywork, we are engaging with this communication system, both the giver and the receiver. You 'hear' things you haven't noticed before, which in itself can initiate a process of change, of rebalancing or transformation.
How does the body choose to organize itself? And what are our tools for linking into this process? Do we live at the whims of our physical structures? Is our only option that we must willfully wrestle control of an unruly system? How do we maintain balance without being caught off guard? Awareness, experience and ability to develop our self-perception are some possible keys to finding a more harmonious state.
What is 'awareness'?
Think of shining a light around into a place of darkness, and every place the light comes to rest it reveals something previously unseen. The unknown becomes known. Your awareness is what you can see, sense and perceive, right now or in any given moment. You can direct awareness to different areas of the body, or tune it to particular sensations.
While receiving bodywork, your cognitive, thought-creating, deciding, judging, planning mind is given a chance to slow down and rest, to step aside, while your sensing mind and your awareness are allowed to take the stage. In normal everyday life, we are assaulted with stimulation, responsibilities and plans for what is happening next, even if it is just the next moment. These experiences compete with the messages coming to us, often more quietly, from within. If we are tuned out from this quieter stream of signals, we are not connected to an important source of inner intelligence.
If you could hear them speak, what would they say? The body and all its interconnected components make up an intricately complex and amazing communication system. It is gathering and processing information all the time, even as we sleep, and that information is used (consciously and unconsciously) to direct our thoughts, actions, our reactions and perceptions about the world around us and about ourselves.
These internal and external stimuli let us know where we are in space, in relation to gravity or the ground, and everything else in our environments including other people. We are constantly on the move. Even at rest, we breathe, we daydream, and a myriad of processes operate unseen under the surface so that we can function in harmony, and so our minds and bodies can focus on being, doing and living and carrying out our rich and complex physical, psychological, social, emotional and spiritual pursuits.
Saying the word ‘muscles’ can be limiting.
There is much more to the makeup of your body and even to the muscles themselves than how we normally perceive them. Your muscles are surrounded, supported and partly made up out of fascia, a shimmery plastic wrap-ish connective tissue that like its name, ‘connects’ everything in the body. Bone, tendon, muscle, fascia blend into one another, as well as one muscle to another, and the lines are blurrier and much more interconnected and fluid than we think. Fascia can literally become more solid or liquid as the body directs it to change.
The body and mind are not separate.
Our thoughts, feelings and perceptions have the ability to transform our tangible worlds for better or for worse. The body itself is a listening and sensing instrument, sending messages up to our central systems, but also responding to what we think and say. Patterns of tension, contraction, holding, breathing, moving or not moving can all be affected by a single thought, or a subconscious belief, or the smallest start of a feeling.
So why bodywork?
When receiving bodywork, we are engaging with this communication system, both the giver and the receiver. You 'hear' things you haven't noticed before, which in itself can initiate a process of change, of rebalancing or transformation.
How does the body choose to organize itself? And what are our tools for linking into this process? Do we live at the whims of our physical structures? Is our only option that we must willfully wrestle control of an unruly system? How do we maintain balance without being caught off guard? Awareness, experience and ability to develop our self-perception are some possible keys to finding a more harmonious state.
What is 'awareness'?
Think of shining a light around into a place of darkness, and every place the light comes to rest it reveals something previously unseen. The unknown becomes known. Your awareness is what you can see, sense and perceive, right now or in any given moment. You can direct awareness to different areas of the body, or tune it to particular sensations.
While receiving bodywork, your cognitive, thought-creating, deciding, judging, planning mind is given a chance to slow down and rest, to step aside, while your sensing mind and your awareness are allowed to take the stage. In normal everyday life, we are assaulted with stimulation, responsibilities and plans for what is happening next, even if it is just the next moment. These experiences compete with the messages coming to us, often more quietly, from within. If we are tuned out from this quieter stream of signals, we are not connected to an important source of inner intelligence.
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