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Teaching the Body How to Program the Brain for Health

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Mindfulness, Somatic Coaching, The Feldenkrais Method®.

“We act in accordance with our self-image.” ~ Moshe Feldenkrais

According to the latest report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), 116 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. That’s a staggering amount of human suffering and lost productivity. Are you one of them?

Pain and mobility issues typically come from two sources — an underlying physical condition (like an injury or inflammation) and the subconscious way you hold your body and your movement (like tension or habitually walking with your head down). It becomes a vicious cycle of inflamed muscles aggravated by poor posture, which inflames the muscles more.

While medical treatment addresses physical conditions, they often neglect the subconscious choices. How can you find the most effective solution if you’re ignoring a major component of the problem? That’s why the Feldenkrais Method® teaches a person to uncover the underlying way your brain and body are working, or not working together.

Let us be clear – The Feldenkrais Method® is a learning process, not a treatment. It helps you learn to better understand what your body is telling you and to improve your movements and interactions with the world around you. Through it, you engage muscles you’ve not used for quite awhile or didn’t even know you had – in a non-invasive, very gentle way. Many people, after trying it, marvel that so much can be accomplished with such little movements.

What are some of the benefits, besides pain relief, of Feldenkrais? You will…

Improve the Basics: Achieve better balance and higher performance by learning to sit, stand, and walk with dynamic stability and balance. Learn skills for improving your sensory acuity and self-awareness.

Move Smarter: Recover from injuries faster and understand how the whole body participates in the process of recovery. Encourage the development of new neuro-pathways.

Sleep Better: Teach your body to rest well, improving sleep function for restoration, relaxation, and repair.

Improve Posture: Learn to move more efficiently, with less effort and highest skeletal support

Improve Your Self-Image: Moshe believed that our self-image is smaller than our potential capacity. Awareness Through Movement creates a favorable training ground for enhanced learning, improved thought processes, more efficient movement and positive learning, which in turn, improves the awareness of the person in relationship to self, others and the world.

Have Fun: Feldenkrais is fun! Learning is fun! Feldenkrais is a way of learning how to learn rather than a therapeutic method to fix aches and pains.

There is an indisputable connection between the mind and body. And it is only by engaging the whole person that you can become aware and make mindful choices that support you. Are you ready to learn what you’re body and mind have been trying to tell you all these years? If you live near Ashland, OR, please contact my office to discuss the best option for your situation.

How I Eliminated Chronic Pain and Began Teaching The Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Re-education

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Mindfulness, Somatic Coaching, The Feldenkrais Method®.

Six years ago, before I decided to sign up for The Feldenkrais Method®, a 4-year intense course in Eugene, Oregon, I often suffered from lower back pain. It seemed as if it would come up all of a sudden with no warning and no clue as to how it happened. At times, I would have to clear my schedule because the pain was so intense and debilitating. Perhaps many of you with high stress jobs where you sit in front of the computer all day can relate to having intense back pain for no apparent reason.

During the training, I learned to sense into myself more accurately and deliberately. The daily practice of body awareness through movement was a delightful discovery, an opportunity to know myself through my body in motion. Feldenkrais has enhanced the perception of both how I move and why I move. I loved it so much that the student has become the teacher. That’s me in the above photo teaching some of my clients an Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) lesson.

What is The Feldenkrais Method®?

I realize that many haven’t heard of this method, so let me give you a little background. It was developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, an Israeli physicist, engineer, judo master, soccer player and gymnast. After a knee injury, he began to pay attention to his own movements. Opting out of surgery, he turned to his knowledge of physics and using his own body as a research subject. Feldenkrais created a means of learning to move beyond habitual patterns of movement.

He believed that the central nervous system plays a key role in a person’s comfort, so he focused on encouraging awareness of the skeleton, muscles, and joints. This new awareness allows each body part to participate more fully in every action so that no one part is stressed more than another.

The skeleton is able to provide its intended support so the muscles feel more relaxed. This leads naturally to a decrease in tension and an expanded range of motion and flexibility. This new awareness helps a person understand their customary negative patterns of posture and movement and learn to create more functional ones.

He developed his discovery into a program called The Feldenkrais Method®. It allowed him to increase efficiency and range of movement, reduce stress, improve posture and flexibility, function and self-image with greater comfort and ease. After helping himself, he went on to help many others experience that same relief. Is that something you’d like?

How can you learn The Feldenkrais Method®? There are two ways of learning this technique:

Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) lessons. Generally these are group lessons. In a non-judgmental learning environment, the Feldenkrais teacher verbally guides the students in gentle and easy movement sequences. Students are supported in accepting themselves and their bodies by moving only within their ranges of ease and comfort. The emphasis is on curiosity, discovery and exploration, attending to the quality of movement, and especially observing one’s own internal process while performing the movement. The above photo illustrates one of these lessons.

Functional Integration® (FI). This is done in individual, hands-on lessons. The client lies fully clothed on a low table while the teacher uses gentle touch to explore ways that she can move more comfortably. The lessons are tailored to the individual and will be different each time. The quality of presence and touch in an FI lesson reassures the nervous system and can help restore inner balance.

Are you interested in exploring how this easy-on-the-body method can bring lasting pain relief and increased personal confidence? If you live near Ashland, Oregon, please contact my office and schedule an appointment so we can work out lessons that help you become more aware of movements that support you as a person. If you know someone who could benefit from this, please refer them to me so they can benefit, too.

The Best Life Management Skills Don’t Focus on Feeling Better

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Life Skills, Mindfulness.

“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.” —Audre Lorde

Do strong emotions like shame, anger, guilt or worry hold you back from living your life to the fullest? Do you often find that you consciously or unconsciously avoid “feeling bad” for fear of “being swallowed” by painful and difficult feelings? You’re not alone in feeling that way; however, there is a way to live a more meaningful life.

To begin creating a richer life experience and better management skills, you need to understand this vital truth:

There’s a difference between disliking unpleasant emotions, yet riding through them because you accept they’re an inevitable part of life versus experiencing unpleasant emotions as unbearable and needing to get rid of them.

Often people are convinced that they “can’t face”, “can’t bear”, “can’t stand”, or “can’t tolerate” emotional distress. Being intolerant of experiencing emotional discomfort can actually produce a whole set of other problems, as it interferes with living a fulfilling life and can worsen any emotional discomfort you might be experiencing. If you recognize that you have difficulty facing your feelings or tolerating distress, then read on to learn ways to overcome this pattern.

Here’s another truth you must embrace: There’s a big difference between feeling better and doing better. When we focus on feeling better we’re consumed with wanting to get out of an uncomfortable feeling, NOW! When we emphasis doing better, we focus on learning to tolerate the feeling, being curious and learning that there are a lot of hidden gifts in staying present with what’s difficult and painful.

When you experience difficulty in facing your emotions, here are five simple truths to remember:

Difficult emotions are necessary and useful. They’re also universal. Every human being experiences these types of emotions.
No emotion is permanent or unchanging. Emotions tend to come and go like waves in the ocean, rising and falling in time. Sometimes it can feel like your rage, guilt or sadness will last forever, but it won’t.
You can never hope to eliminate unpleasant emotions, and in most cases, trying to block these emotions intensifies your problems.
Though you can’t block undesirable emotions, you can learn to experience these emotions without feeling such distress and without having to react impulsively.
When you learn to be with difficult emotions, you discover hidden gifts, messages from your body about your external circumstances.

It’s a misconception to think that if you could only get rid of negative emotions you would solve all your problems. Life is too unpredictable. Life happens. You can only begin to tap into your internal power when you realize that you’re a spiritual being having a human experience. This allows you to peacefully embrace every one of your human emotions as part of your daily occurrence.

We are never done with learning how we relate to our world, others and ourselves. This CAN be a fascinating journey or a dread depending on your attitude. Doing better means that, in spite of what happens in your life you have the life management skills and resources to navigate it in an attentive and sensible way. Often it’s beneficial to have an objective professional guide you through this process. If you’re ready to do so, please contact me and we’ll unlock your potential for excellence together.

The 90-Second Secret to Mastering Your Emotions

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Mindfulness, Somatic Coaching.

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus” ~ Bruce Lee

Psst…Want to know a secret?

How do successful people perform so well, whether it’s on the ball court or in the boardroom or on the stage? They’ve learned to control their emotions and make them work for themselves rather than against themselves. They know how to tap into the power of their own natural brain processes by fully utilizing the 90-Second Secret.

In an earlier blog, we discussed how the emotional response from cortisol only lasts 90 seconds in your system. How you react after that is within your own choice. You can either perpetuate the cycle or you can shift your focus to a more positive thinking process. Your thoughts are powerful. And it does only take 90 seconds to make significant changes in your emotional responses. One secret is to utilize visualization.

Here’s the key that many don’t tell you when they discuss visualization: Most of us visualize before we want something to happen. However, it’s much more powerful to use 90 seconds during or after an incident and visualize a successful outcome.

Here are five steps to making the most of those 90 seconds.

Relax your body by breathing deeply and slowly until you have 6 to 8 breaths per minute.
Be fully present in the moment, blocking out what others may be thinking or doing.
Be aware of how you’re feeling, but don’t give in to it. Count to 90 and remind yourself that you get to choose your emotions.
Engage both hemispheres of your brain. Often we’re taught to replace our thoughts and redirect our attention towards more positive and relaxing topics. However, this means you’re still relying solely on the left hemisphere of the brain. Before the thoughts take root in your left hemisphere and become your reality, move them to the right hemisphere, by choosing to focus on what you smell, taste, see, hear and physically feel.
Visualize in great detail or play a movie in your mind of successful outcomes. What outcome do you want and how will it feel? Again, engage your whole brain by incorporating ALL of your senses – what you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear as you do this. It only wastes time and energy to replay negative emotions. You don’t want them to become your reality.

In practical terms, how can you apply the 90-Second Secret to real-life situations? Here are some examples:

You begin your day feeling unfocused, not knowing where to start. Take 90 seconds to visualize your desired results for that day’s important goals. (Feel the confusion leaving as you become totally centered.)
You have good intentions to accomplish so much, but days and weeks go by and you feel like you have nothing to show for yourself. Take 90 seconds every night and be grateful for what you have accomplished and the steps you’ll take to accomplish your goal for tomorrow. (Feel how this grounds you and keeps you on track.)
You really want XYZ in your life but it seems elusive and you tell yourself, “It’s never going to happen”. Take 90 seconds and visualize what you want, how you want it to happen and how it feels when it happens. (Feel your inner peace and confidence return and joy when it does happen!)
You feel the stresses of the day piling up on you until you want to scream or cry. Take 90 seconds to reboot and change the course of the day from that point onward. (Feel the tension release and the frustration dissolve.)
You’re tired and can’t focus. Take 90 seconds to recharge yourself with calming deep breaths and body movements. (Feel your energy and ambition renew.)
You’re nervous about an upcoming speaking engagement or difficult conversation or meeting. Take 90 seconds to become more deliberate as you go in with a positive attitude. (Feel your muscles loosen and peace and harmony return.)

This technique isn’t hard to learn, however, it does take some effort. Want me to walk you through this process in more detail? I’d love to help you master this technique so you can live a more intentional and peaceful life. Contact me and we can get started right away. It’s time to master your emotions instead of letting them control you.

Neuroscience Unlocks the Key to Emotional Control and Business Excellence

Written by Maria Connolly. Posted in Controlling Stress, Mindfulness.

How do you feel when you see a top-performing athlete play a perfect game? Or when a motivational speaker holds an audience in the palm of his or her hands? Or you see a husband and wife still in love after 50 years of marriage? Don’t you admire them greatly and wonder to yourself, “How do they do that? I wish I could do that. Oh sure, they were born with the gift and they’ve practiced a lot to get it right. But I could never do that.”

Why not? Why shouldn’t that be you…performing excellently in your field or creating powerful and supportive relationships that last a lifetime? “Because, Maria, I let my emotions get the better of me. My mind keeps telling me negative stories about what I can or can’t do. And there are people in my business or family life who know how to push my buttons. I just can’t seem to control what I think or say and how I react.”

I’ll let you in on a secret… These successful people know a technique that taps into the way the brain works and the natural processes for becoming more effective. Jim Fannin has made this technique famous – The 90 Second Tool™. But people have been using it for years and you can too.

Neuroscience, the study of how the brain works, has discovered three vital ways the brain functions when processing our emotional responses:

Your brain is made of two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is where we process the present. The right hemisphere is for connecting to the past or to the future. (I’ll share more about how this applies to emotional processing in a future blog post.)

Your brain believes what you think, whether it’s reality or not, if you replay it or visualize it long enough. Do you doubt me? Well, remember a time you heard a noise late at night and you thought there was a criminal in the house. The more you thought about it the more your brain believed it and made your body become defensive, the heart beat quickened, the muscles tensed, all in preparation for attack. When in truth, if you attach a true meaning to the sound – the furnace came on – you can go back to sleep.

The hormone, cortisol, is released in stressful circumstances. And it triggers the fight or flight response. But here’s the thing…cortisol only stays in your system for 90 seconds. How you react after those 90 seconds is really on you – the choices you make and your thinking process. You can ward off that emotional loop of fear, anger, frustration, by using those 90 seconds effectively.

Can taking 90 seconds to calm your mind and visualize a positive outcome really make that much difference? Absolutely! Remember, your brain doesn’t know the difference between something real or imagined. What you visualize becomes its reality!

Want to change your reality by harnessing your brain’s power to create a more satisfying life? Contact me and I’ll show you how to do it, so you can excel in business and in your relationships, too.

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Continually grow as a person and find your work/life balance

Teaching the Body How to Program the Brain for Health

How I Eliminated Chronic Pain and Began Teaching The Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Re-education

The Best Life Management Skills Don’t Focus on Feeling Better

The 90-Second Secret to Mastering Your Emotions

Neuroscience Unlocks the Key to Emotional Control and Business Excellence

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