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Recovery only begins when your body signals ‘safe’

Recovery only begins when your body signals ‘safe’

Life is too short to let trauma and stress affect your joy of life

Every nervous system is primarily focused on safety. When I experience an overwhelming situation as a child, my nervous system can be calmed by the presence of safe, loving others who protect me and help me understand the situation. If this does not happen, my young nervous system will find a way to calm itself anyway. That self-developed “trauma resolution” can cause problems later in life.

Together, we help your nervous system find its way back to true, deep-seated safety.

BodyMind Breath-Synchronous Sessions are customized.

A BodyMind Session is essentially a guided combination of breathing, touch and meditation. You breathe, and I touch – similar to a massage, but attuned to your breathing. My touch largely follows the rhythm of your connected breathing. Breath is our primary form of communication. I guard the space and guide you in your process. It is an interplay, a collaboration.

First we discuss your intention for the session. Where your focus lies. This can vary from pure relaxation to processing trauma. And everything inbetween.

Then we combine conscious breathingwith touch.Touch as in various forms of massage.This together activates the self-healing ability of your body.

In a BodyMind session a different awareness that sometimes invites a conscious, healing journey into the subconscious.

Then we focus on anchoring the experience in your daily life

“The Mind cannot change the mind
Real change is not a mental process”

BodyMind Coach

Safe

Body and mind have one fundamental purpose: safety. Our bodies constantly seek safety within the human herd because without social connection we are vulnerable. Evolutionarily, our survival depends on the group.

Our thinking is a relatively young tool in evolution and comes into action primarily in the face of danger or threat. Like a deer, we can flee, and if that fails, fight like a tiger. What makes us unique is that with our thinking we can past and future – we can recall past experiences and predict possible dangers. A powerful, but also limited tool!

Tension occurs when natural, bodily movement – for whatever reason – is blocked.

You feel tension when your body signals that it is safer to left move, but the environment directs you to right push. In itself, tension is not wrong, as long as you can adjust and connected remain connected to the group. This sense of connection gives our nervous system and our BodyMindcombination an experience of safety.

But if you cannot adjust sufficiently, or if the connection with the group is compromised, the tension remains. The body then remains in a state of neurological insecurity stuck.

‘Thinking’ is quite different from ‘Noticing’

Body and mind working as one BodyMind system together to find a way back to safety. If they cannot, then false security is also an acceptable option – as long as the system experiences (temporary) peace. This unconscious adaptation process begins at an early age and occurs in subtle and ingenious ways. We call this conditioning.

Many of these conditionings suppress feeling(Body) and send us instead to thinking(Mind). This is a clever trick of the nervous system to relieve tension. By framing an experience framing” an experience – in other words, interpreting it differently – the tension temporarily seems less.

This works in the short term, but if it goes on too long, it can actually cause problems. Sometimes anchors this re-framing into automatic patterns of behavior and thinking. Then a reset needed to get back in touch with true safety.

Deferred feelings still want to be felt. This can only be done through conscious contact with your bodybecause feeling happens in the body.

Recognizing and better guarding your boundaries helps you achieve deep peace and true security experience. It is the key to shifting from need and want to simply being safe – and living your life as it is truly meant to be lived.

Feeling empowered begins with coming home to a body that feels safe

Kees
Kees BodyMind Coach
Recovery begins when your body signals ‘safe’

BodyMind for you too

Life is constantly pushing and pulling, both privately and in your work. Perhaps you are actively engaged in your personal developmentor just recovering from a period where everything was was. And sometimes, just sometimes, there is something from your past that wants to be felt and processed.

Breath Touch Attention
“BodyMind is unique because of the combination of breath, touch
and unconditional attention.”

Book easily online

‘At la minimum the best massage in Amsterdam’

Sessions may run overtime at no cost to you. Please leave ample time after the session so you can integrate and land on planet earth.

Invest in your personal well-being

Don’t let cost be a consideration in your choice for a better life.
There are special rates for off-peak and last minute bookings.
Please feel free to call me for consultation or if you are tight on time.

Breath is life

Conscious breathing is living from your source

Breath is all-important in balancing Body and Mind. Your breath connects your body with your (sub)consciousness, regulating the autonomic nervous system. The breath is closely connected to all bodily functions and to my survival mechanism.

Inhalation activates, exhalation calms. Inadequate breathing, also called sub-ventilation, limits my life experience. Often this is due to (chronic) anxiety.

My body is “on,” danger is sensed, real or from a trauma reaction, my breath quickens, my heart rate speeds up, ready to flee or fight. And if there is nothing to flee or fight in the here and now, then I hold my breath, in fear or sometimes full-blown panic. My arms start tingling, there is too much cortisol in my blood that has no way to go. I’m stuck.

Consciously breathing out longer can then bring my system back to more peace.

Feeling lifeless, wanting to isolate myself and see no one, with dark thoughts and shame about who I am. My brain and gut are working at a low ebb. Then my body is stilled and wants to conserve energy. Until another signal comes that it is safer.

Consciously breathing in longer can then add energy to my system for more movement.

Your breathing has a lot of influence on your emotional experience. Each emotion has its own way of breathing. Understanding this can help you better follow your body’s signals.

By actively working with the breath in a BodyMind session, we can deepen the body experience and experience emotions that otherwise remain under the surface.

Touch can be done in many ways

You decide

Depending on your intention for the session and how you want to be dressed, touch can vary. That touch will be largely in the rhythm of your breathing. That’s how we keep in touch.

Each touch is meant to awaken your body and reactivate its connection to your brain. Releasing memories. Reduce tension. There are many roads to Rome.

The determining factor is what you are used to, what you experience as comfortable and safe, and what your intention is for the session.

Sometimes the unconditional presence of another human being is enough and sometimes it is important to be touched or held to deepen the inner experience or to get to parts of yourself that were previously unreachable.

There was once attention … unconditional …

Hope is stronger than fear

Above all, Bodymind offers perspective. No one is “broken,” irreparably damaged. At most, your security system will have to be readjusted. That takes love and attention and time. And an instantly experienced re-imagining of how safe once felt. And can still be felt. Together, if you like, we’ll look at these psychodynamics and where it affects you. In preparation for the core of our BodyMind session.

Trauma means ‘wound’

Small and large Trauma results from an event that was so overwhelming that it felt like a threat. An event we could not give meaning to from our experience up to that point. While no relevant caregiver was available to lovingly protect and give us meaning. We were on our own. Powerless.

The BodyMind has only 1 function: survival, by any means necessary. Anything to reconnect with the human herd. Just to avoid experiencing the abandonment despair of trauma. Never again!

Help! Save me!

So we look in our surroundings to see what alternative connection options are available. How do I reconnect with relevant elders? What appropriate behavior will keep me from being alone again? We mainly look at our parents, our teachers, spiritual guides and their behavior. From the unconscious thought, “If I do this, will you love me? Behold the birth of our conditioning. Everyone has to deal with it and everyone suffers from it later in life. Psychological and/or in physical form.

All conditioning has an end date. When is does not work anymore.

The way forward begins with understanding how this above works and then lovingly and mindfully feeling what wants to be felt. That everything is allowed to be there. This is not always easy or pleasant. Feeling old feelings in the present moment. Tolle talks about the Power of Now. The parrots in Aldous Huxley’s book Island are even trained to call out “Here and Now” all day as a reminder.

Here and Now

Why is living in the Now so difficult or even incomprehensible? Mostly because various, sometimes accumulated, traumas just feel too painful. Therefore, many people escape, dissociate, through social media, stories and gossip and all types of substance and behavioral addictions including brooding and compulsive thinking. Yes, thinking is also an addiction. Most psychological disturbances are dissociative in nature. Away from the here and now. Because the experience in the Now is perceived by the body as unsafe. Therefore, the movement is away from feeling.

Recovery by experiencing more consciously what wants to be felt

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