 Body-Q... the intelligence use of body wisdomThere is an art to learning, that has nothing to do with efforting, or perhaps education-as-we know it. I am pointing at about the built-in intelligence in our bodies, that - when left to its mastery - can perform things never done before. The spontaneous experimental (childlike) part of us, learns by copying things. This has an outer component (the visible world and circumstance), and an inner component (the trust that you have in yourself, how you ‘speak’ to yourself). There was a little book written in 1974 (!) by W.Timothy Gallwey about this principle. It’s called The Inner Game of Tennis. It highlights how important it is how we let our mind talk to our body consciousness. He calls the mind Self 1, and the body consciousness Self 2. When we judge or doubt our actions, for example when learning a new skill, what we expect to happen, generally happens. But also: when you get your mind out of the way, the body can kick in with its mind-blowing technical intelligence. In fact the book is about the proper use of the mind (IQ). Watch this video for a short explanation of the book by Brian Johnson. It’s only 10 minutes and worthwhile! The inner game of table tennisOne thing that can make me super excited and happy is playing table tennis with a challenging opponent. In the shared garden where I live, in Utrecht, there is a pingpong table, where I play as often as I can. One time I was playing at the end of the day, and we just couldn’t stop. Dusk set in. At some point it got too dark to see the ball, yet we kept playing. To our surprise it went extremely well, better than ever. It seemed we were sharper, we didn’t miss a ball. The fact that we couldn’t see hardly at all, made us more relaxed and perhaps more intuitive. Our body wisdom (I call it BodyQ) seemed to be in control, and just knew what to do, before our minds could intervene. I registered this and thought of the booklet. For me it proved the point. I figured: the more relaxed my mind is in its focus (which is it’s primary task, just to vision), the more I surrender to my BodyQ (trust its intelligence), the easier things go. I like to apply this to everything. To physical challenges, such as horse-riding, physical work-outs, my work, or things that I want to come into manifestation. Experiment… it’s fun to play with!
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How do you take care of your life energy, and your time wallet? What makes you really feel alive? Every day is there for you. Do you live like day is a space where you can give shape the things that really matter? What would it be like if you recognize yourself and life as: yes, that's how I want life to feel! A big key: You are the navigator of your inner world, regardless of circumstances, like-to-do’s or must-do’s. Tasks and responsibilities are important, and nice to ‘tick off’. Optimal would be if this goes with ease. Energy management is THE foundation here. When you come to your priorities - aka you really want to experience, receive, do, all that gives you satisfaction - time starts to flow. Then the other things will come naturally. A review of an Energy Management Shortcut "My system remembers with Maria that life is there to be enjoyed, that I can be free and playful. After taking many steps in self-development I have really gathered essential new insights, connections and skills. I have more connection with on the one hand how I was and what I can grow out of, and with how insanely beautiful I am in essence and what can therefore show itself more and more, in all aspects of my life!" #EnergyManagement #TimeManagement #Flow 
I try to feel into how a body has developed over time, perhaps through and around certain challenges. Most problems that have become visible, are just 'the drop that spills the bucket' of a process that has been going on much longer. It wasn’t that ‘falling of the stairs’ or the ‘lifting of heavy weight’ ; no it was what preceded it… There was a tendency, that was already present in the tissue, and that one event just gave it another nudge. That nugde made it present enough to start paying attention. I feel so lucky to be so often the witness to the mysteries of the body that reveal themselves during a session. By listening carefully, and following the impulses I get. It feels a bit like when I am sculpting (another passion of mine). You take 'away' something in order to get to the core of the shape. I am dancing around the stone in my attention and with my chissel and hammer, releasing, unlocking, revealing the perfect form, that lays, invisibly, hidden on the inside of the stone. Stone seems so hard and inflexible, but for me a stone is full of life. While working it, I start to get an intuition about what my eye cannot see: the rivers of crevices, the groupings of its particles and the variations in density. One wrong hit, and my stone breaks in two.
With the stone above, I indeed made one wrong hit. I was applying too much force. The lady has a broken arm. I glued it on again. I sold the piece nevertheless. Its now overlooking the best view of Crete in someone's garden. When an arm or leg was broken or even strained, when big injuries happened, this will to greater or smaller degrees forever be imprinted in the fascia. Just like an elastic band that was stretched so far that it broke; you could tie it back together again, and continue to flex it, but it will never be quite the same. The fascia will reorganize itself to create the best possible support. It will form differently when a person recovers in a stance of survival versus from a state of mind that exudes wellbeing.  So....Giving a treatment is very subtle and careful work. I love the complexity of that 'inner web' and tuning to how to unlock the life-juice out of it! It is ‘going in’ with touch, with great direction and precision, while simultaneously being completely non-invasive. When the tissue is approached accurately, by both me and the client itself, it can start to unwind naturally. Photo: Timothy Dykes
So fascia pertains to structure. Fascia promotes life by being its architectural building block, allowing shape, solidity, multidirectional stability, and… independence from gravity. It literally looks like a network, like a web, like a matrix. Layered nets of fractal arrangements. Imagine that tasty parts in a citrus fruit: it has sheets that divide it into compartments and those compartments are divided in even smaller cells, filled with liquid. The structure (connective tissue) brings order, and gives the overall form. Same with the human body. Under the ‘peel’ (skin) you can find webs of chaotically, yet organised fibrous connections.
aligning with life, every day anew
Those interpretations created our belief systems. The amount of focus given to these beliefs or thoughts lead to a certain momentum. Continued momentum will eventually express itself physically. The body never lies!
The art of living is: to keep up energetically with who we have become, now. When we don't let ourselves GO into the "new”, it can often be the past that we recreate in the now. That doesn't feel too good. The type of guidance and body work I do offers you the experience that sensations of discomfort are not ‘fixated’ and can move. In undivided attention, in exploring it, in a matter of seconds, minutes, the sensation, discomfort or pain can shift. Long term (emotional) pain can shift gradually. Pain, whether emotional or physical, is an indicator that you are focussing on something in a way that is opposing who you really are. Pain is also the measure of how much gain you are disallowing. Another way to look at pain or illness is to consider it the last stage of a restorative process to bring things back into balance. We humans are very conditioned to avoid pain, which actually aggravates it. Very helpful and loving to have such indicators; it shows where responsibility can be taken, or where focus is needed. One important aspect of my personal approach to body work is: to call in the direct experiences, that become anchor points for healthy belief systems and constructive choices. It takes commitment to turn to Life itself. All physical life is vibrational in nature - my perspective! - and it is and should be natural to feel good! The body is like a conduit of core energy - the energy of who we really are, authentically. This aspect of our body, the electro-magnetic part of our existence, is life-giving energy. We can align with it every day anew. |
