The Beauty of You: A Love Note from Your Body

by Brittiney George

You are a beautiful imperfection.

I know that makes you uncomfortable, because you want to be perfect.

Ahh...my child.  I do not work in perfection...humans do. 

Perfection assumes completion.  But how can you be complete when the world around you, and in you, is full of so many glorious options for miraculous change?

I work in magical mysteries, in awe inspiring moments of truth and clarity.

I commend you for wanting to better yourself.  But I ask you to not try to perfect yourself. That implies you are flawed. You are not flawed.

You are a colorful mosaic reflecting the experiences of your life.

Instead of berating yourself for all that you do not know;

Breathe. Listen. Explore with me.

You are more than a number on a scale, a title in a job, the pain or fear that you feel.

You are a gift.

If you don’t believe me, journey with me.

Let me show you how amazing and resilient you truly are.

Meaningful Movement with Others through Self-Awareness

by Brittiney George

“Taking responsibility for your physiological state is not only about learning how to down-regulate your system, but it is about communicating your state to those around you…mammals evolved to co-regulate – meaning that we help each other regulate our states through care-giving and reciprocity.”* So how does Self-Awareness impact regulation and relationships? 

A strong sense of self allows you to be in RELATION with others instead of REACTION to others.

Your body knows safety and danger and is constantly reacting to the cues received regarding it.  “Your body can sense something and react to it without it necessarily entering your conscious awareness.  In fact, your vagus nerve has two branches- an older branch that can be recruited for defense by going to the organs below the diaphragm and eliciting immobilization behaviors… and also another newer more evolved branch that, when functioning, keeps “fight/flight/freeze” in check, and supports your health, growth, and restoration.  This branch is the part of your autonomic nervous system that is responsible for allowing you to connect, self-soothe, be playful, and be in relationship.”*

When you tune in to the physical and emotional responses in your body you get to know how you can move with them and learn from them, instead of merely reacting to them.  When you acknowledge, give voice to, and share these experiences in relationship with another, it helps to regulate your system, and create more meaningful movement with your partner or friend.

What are some tools to help with regulation?

Change Your Breathing Pattern:  “Have you noticed when you are upset with your partner, you begin to huff and puff? This is your body physically preparing to mobilize for a fight or to run…in an effort to slow down, you need long exhalations. Try extending your exhalations through intentional breathing or through singing. Singing is wonderful because it uses muscles of the social engagement system.”*

Honor Your Story by Choosing Who and What you Share:  Honor when your gut is telling you, this isn’t someone I want to share my story with.  If you find that difficult, try out some of the empowering statements below:

·      Being authentic does not mean that everyone has the rights to all of me.

·      I can choose who knows the details of my life.

·      I can choose what I share and who I share it with.

·      I choose to honor all of my emotions, even the ones that are hard for me.

·      When I feel vulnerable, overwhelmed, or scared, I can choose to share my experience with someone that will receive my story with respect…..not agreement, not to hold the weight for me, not to take the pain away from me, but to respect the impact that what I’m sharing has on me.

Learn to Listen to the Cues of Your Body:  not sure how to even start listening to your body?  Or maybe you hear your body all the time (pain, anxiety, fatigue), but don’t know what to do with the information.  Somatic Therapy is a wonderful tool to help.  For a complimentary 55 min. Somatic Therapy session contact Brittiney George, at 610-389-7866 or movebackintolife@gmail.com.

*The quotes in this article are from Dr. Stephen W. Porges, creator of The Polyvagal Theory, and a distinguished university scientist at the Kinsey Institute and a Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina.  Information from this article is available at:  http://www.neilsattin.com/blog/2016/04/34-the-science-of-safety-with-stephen-porges/

Brittiney George, BS, CRS, CST-L3, ICI, CEIM, is a Somatic Therapist specializing in Transformative Touch.  She offers Somatic Therapy sessions, Infant Massage and Baby Sign Language workshops, and exploratory movement classes at The Resiliency Center.  She also co-leads Connection, Expression and Movement (CEM), a monthly workshop series focusing on body-mind integration.  For a complimentary 55 min. Somatic Therapy session contact Brittiney at 610-389-7866 or movebackintolife@gmail.com.

Why Can’t I Just Get Up and Get Going?

by Brittiney George

Alternative therapies are not new, but have only more recently been embraced by Western culture as science is now backing what intuition has told us for years…that our body is brilliant in its wisdom and ability to heal.  Your body is the keeper of your unique story. It’s like the black box of an airplane.  It records your surroundings, your emotions, past mental or physical trauma, stress, and your memories.  Together, these become your unique story as told by the body in your posture, your walk, and in habitual patterns that develop over time.

Your movements reflect the conscious and unconscious aspects of who you are and how you feel.  Depression is one of the areas that bodymind integration can be an especially helpful tool in determining what you need.  After all, look at how different the definitions of depression are:  

To be in a slump

Weighed down

Heavy hearted

Stuck in a pit

Hollow or hollowed out

While research shows that movement can play an important role in lifting the fog of depression, sustained momentum and improvement is often only obtained by paying attention to the primary movement that is needed.  For instance, someone that is weighed down, or heavy hearted, may need to remove the weight of what is pressing down on them before they feel like they can get up.  For someone that is stuck in a pit, they don’t need to remove something; they need to get out of something.  Likewise, someone that feels hollow doesn’t need to get out as much as they may need to fill up with something new or something different before they can move on.  Getting “up” or getting “going” may be the end goal, but knowing the movements your system needs to start is an important tool to be able to sustain that momentum of change.  The body is brilliant at providing this insight. 

Somatic Therapy can be a wonderful way to access this information and is powerful on its own or partnered with traditional talk therapy. Through gentle touch and talk both the right and left brain as well as the nervous system are engaged in the conversation and can provide invaluable insight into what is needed and what is available.

Brittiney George, BS, CRS, CST-L3, ICI, CEIM, is a Movement Practitioner offering Somatic Therapy and exploratory movement classes at The Resiliency Center.  She also co-leads Connection, Expression and Movement (CEM), a monthly workshop series focusing on body-mind integration.  For a complimentary 55 min. Somatic Therapy session contact Brittiney at 610-389-7866 or movebackintolife@gmail.com.

Debunking the Myth of Sensitivity

by Brittiney George

Contrary to popular belief, being sensitive is a gift, not a curse.  It does not mean you are weak.  It does not mean you’re a cry baby, an exaggerator, or a wimp.  You have a gift, the gift of connection.  It means you are highly aware of both your external and internal surroundings.  When someone else smells smoke, you already can see, hear, and feel the fire.  This can be upsetting to the one that only smells smoke, because we often assume that if we can’t see it or feel it, it must not exist.  This same experience can be scary for the one that senses the fire.  It can be crazy making….Does no one else see or feel the way I do?  Statements like:

·      “Stop exaggerating.”

·      “You’re overreacting.”

·      “You’re too sensitive.”

·      “You’re too much.”

can creep in around these experiences and begin to physically and emotionally take their toll.  I often see clients survive by learning to shut down, shut off, hide, disconnect, and to devalue and mistrust their internal cues.  While this works in the short term, long term it can create physical pain, and a deep sadness and longing for “something different”.    Reconnecting the body and mind through transformative touch and talk is a wonderful way to begin to gently explore coming back to one’s senses. 

“A session is like settling into your skin after having experienced a lifetime of things getting under your skin.”-Joe Weldon, Co-Founder of The Somatic Therapy Center

Finding a way to create clear boundaries to avoid overstimulation of the senses, and learning to trust your instincts again, is an invaluable tool in being able to reap the benefits of a highly sensitive system.  Come explore ways you can value the wonders of your gift.

 

Brittiney George, BS, CRS, CST-L3, ICI, CEIM, is a Movement Practitioner offering Somatic Therapy, and gentle, exploratory movement classes at The Resiliency Center.  She also co-leads Connection, Expression and Movement (CEM), a monthly workshop series focusing on body-mind integration.  For a complimentary 55 min. Rubenfeld session contact Brittiney at 610-389-7866 or movebackintolife@gmail.com

Finding Balance during the Holiday Season

 by Brittiney George

How is it possible that the holiday season can feel both energetically exhausting and exhilarating?  Both joyful and stressful?  Feel simultaneously warm and cold?  Maybe it is because the holidays ask us to do two extremely different things: (1) tap into our childhood and see the world through the eyes of a child again, and (2) continue to act like and make decisions of an adult.  This experience can shine light on parts of our lives currently – and within our childhoods – that felt extreme (good or bad).  We become consciously aware of our current life and often compare it to the life we thought we would be living or should be living right now.  In that moment our subconscious belief systems can get kicked back into high alert.  Some familiar phrases that might resurface: 

·      Get Control of Yourself

·      Get it Together

·      Keep it Together

·      Shut that Down

·      Let it go

All of these phrases indicate that something is out of balance and we are trying to figure out a way to respond to feel safe or fit in to our given environment.  There is an energetic release or movement that needs to happen to reset the scale back to even.  During different times in our life, the way we did that may have differed:

·      Tantrums:  The ultimate energy buster in a world that feels out of control, proportion, or too much (too fast, too loud, to unpredictable).  Tantrums allowed us to naturally get the extra energy/noise off our system:  If I am expected to take it all in, than I also need permission to let it all out.

·      Rebellion:  When we learned that tantrums were no longer acceptable by society or in our family, rebellion kicked in.  We still needed an energetic release, but the form of it changed.  It may have been quiet rebellion, or loud in your face rebellion, but either way it was our way of trying to gain back some control, let out some steam, or have our voice heard.  We got the message that we needed to keep it together but were still missing the staples, tape, and glue (aka support or internal resources) necessary to do that.

·      Peace:  Peace is the place where tantrums & rebellion meet and become friends.  Instead of fighting about whether we should or shouldn’t feel how we do, instead of second guessing why we feel that way when those around us don’t, it becomes knowledge.  Tantrum and Rebellion both may still be there, but they are not at war, they are sharing their knowledge about why it is upsetting, what it is throwing us off balance.  It becomes insight and space to acknowledge what we need.  In the acknowledgement of that information….even if you don’t know what to do with it…the energy can flow more easily, emotions can flow more naturally.  You are not getting shut down, tuned out, or broken into pieces by it all.  Now you have choices.  Now you can move.

So this holiday season I wish you acceptance of all of who you are so that your system can truly know balance and find its true peace:

“Peace.  It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble,

Or hard work.  It means to be in the midst of those things and still

Be calm in your heart.”-unknown

Brittiney George is a Movement Practitioner offering Rubenfeld Synergy, Infant Massage Education, and gentle, exploratory movement classes at The Resiliency Center. She co-leads Connection, Expression and Movement (CEM), a monthly workshop series focusing on body-mind integration. To learn more about her practice and services, contact her at 610-389-7866 or movebackintolife@gmail.com

Your Body is Your Einstein

by Brittiney George, BS, CRS, CEIM

“Emotional expression, touch expression and verbal expression are all connected neurologically, forming the psychobiology of our intelligence, our communication and our adaptability. Touch and emotional expression share the same brain function, just as fine motor movements of the fingers and thumb share the same neural real estate in the motor cortex with the fine motor movements of the mouth that produce speech” Greenfield, Susan. (1997). The Human Brain: A Guided Tour.

So what does that mean? It means your body is more than a vehicle to move you place to place, it is full of wisdom and connections that allow for adaptability and resilience. 

·      Your Body is Smart: “The Electromagnetic current of the heart is 60 times higher in amplitude than the field of the brain.  It also emits an energy field 5,000 times stronger than the brain’s, one that can be measured more than 10 feet from the body.” –Dr. Mimi Guarneri, Cardiologist and author of The Heart Speaks.

·      Your Body is the expert on you: “Each heart beat sends complex signals capable of reaching higher brain centers, ultimately affecting our reasoning and choices, our emotions and perceptions.  Apparently, the heart has not only its own language, but its own mind.” –Dr. J Andrew Armour explaining his concept of a functioning “heart brain”.

·      There is a universe inside you waiting to be discovered: “There is more to you than you realize.  The body contains the knowledge and resources you need.  What would happen if you explored your body with wonder and curiosity instead of judgment?  Oh, the treasures and wisdom you’d find!”

To learn more about how Rubenfeld Synergy can help you listen to the wisdom of your body as it communicates with you throughout your daily life, contact Movement Practitioner Brittiney George, at 610-389-7866 or movebackintolife@gmail.com