Lifestress Cues Up Body Memory    Patterns of bodily reactions and beliefs — that you practiced over and over again — shape emotional postures unique to you.  These patterns helped you get through tough times, but they also keep you stuck there.

Like learning to tie your shoe, or drive a car, your mind strings bits of information together to build a pattern and commit it to memory. This pattern is a mix of cues, body signals, and ideas.  Every time you tie your shoe, or drive to work, you strengthen that pattern when you use it.  Likewise, how you’ve learned to adapt to stress, in challenging times, to painful things, is built on a pattern.

Working With the Body   Sometimes you can talk circles around this pattern, ’til you’re blue in the face, and nothing really changes.  Especially when the pattern goes back before you could talk, or even into the womb.  Working with the pattern in the body, where awareness and emotion is fresh, really gets down to the base.  This method works because it’s working under the hood.  The part of the brain that forms these patterns is not the logic mind; it’s the same part that you use when you pay attention to your feelings, and body sensations.