Embodiment vs Mindset
I spent a very long time working on my ‘mindset’. Mostly - this involved a myriad of ways to try and change my thinking. Because - as the world of mindset says - ‘change your thoughts change your life’.
I did so many things.
Did it help? Yes…
Well...kind of.
Or what I should say is...it helped to a point.
The problem is, so much mindset work is predicated on working with the conscious mind only. If I were being a little fiery (and I am) I’d say..it’s a whole lot of cerebral fodder! There is so much for the conscious mind to grab hold of...so much to work on...so much to ‘reframe’....so much to DO!
This kind of work can feel quite rewarding. We can have the sense that we are really doing something because it often leads to ‘ah-ha’ moments of realisation about the ways we are doing things in our life that are limiting us.
This is by no means insignificant.
But it is very easy to get trapped in that cerebral space of seeking to continually gain more and more mental insight or meander around at the surface level of our being without ever going deeper into ourselves...
Without ever working on our actual BEING..
BEING work is the kind of work I do. We blossom according to our being - our being is the birth place of true change. I do not just want to know what my clients are thinking. Or how they are behaving. I am sincerely interested in what's going on in their hearts, their bodies, their emotional state, how they are holding themselves, where they are expanding and where they are contracting in their momentary experience and their life.
You can work in the mental realm forever without taking the journey down into the heart and body. In fact, many people with trauma can be very drawn to the kind of cognitive work that misses out the body because they are unconsciously desiring to bypass the whole experience of the heart and body because they gave up what was most real in themselves and they haven't learned how to be safe there.
Mindset work is a top-down process. It is based on looking primarily at the cognitive level of our experience - how the mind is processing and interpreting information - and aims at helping us change these cognitions to change how we are feeling and experiencing ourselves (CBT is a great example of this mode of working - and I hope you’ll understand why I am not a fan after you’ve read this).
So called ‘bottom-up’ approaches incorporate working the body, the nervous system the emotional state and the heart as a means to help us become aware of patterns of activity and importantly - to repattern these.
There are many reasons why my work focuses on BEING (embodiment), rather than only THINKING (mindset). Here are some of the core reasons:
It is not true that our thoughts cause our feelings. In fact, most of the way we think is a result of subconscious programming in our nervous system. We feel first…then we think. This programming gets laid down mostly in the developmental period (before age 18) and it causes us to form patterns in the nervous system of regulation or dysregulation. Our sense of self and identity forms on top of, and alongside, this patterning.
Many of our ‘negative’ patterns of thinking are due to the imprints of developmental trauma. Trauma is not in our heads or thinking cortex...it is in our whole body/mind system. Trauma causes adaptations (survival styles) and distorts a healthy, loving sense of self and other. We do not heal trauma and the identity-based/mental symptoms of trauma just by conscious head-brain work.
Feelings are much faster than thoughts. Before we have even had a conscious thought biology has already taken place. So when our only approach to change rests on working at the level of conscious thought patterns and awareness, then we are always playing catch up; trying to change the feeling that's already present by getting ourselves to think differently. Yet because feelings are faster and more powerful than thoughts, we get stuck in cycles of frustration because we believe that we should be able to think our way into a new way of feeling and it really doesn’t work like that.
The neural connections that relay information from the emotional centres of the brain to the thinking centres are not symmetrical. There is a natural imbalance favoured in the direction of feeling. What this means is that there are far more powerful and numerous connections that go from the emotional parts of the brain to the thinking parts than vice versa. This imbalance explains why our emotions have such profound effects on our cognitive processes (thinking, problem solving, decisions, identity etc), and conversely, why it is hard to change our feeling by only working on our cognition (the connections in that direction are much less numerous and much less strong!).
There are over 5 time more connections going from the heart to the thinking brain than vice-versa, and the activity of the heart has a huge impact on what is happening in the brain. This means that when we learn how to change the rhythm patterns and resonant frequency of the heart - which we do via feeling not thinking - then we have a powerful access point to help us change the way we are thinking and perceiving. The heart also releases it’s own hormones (such as oxytocin), and gives us access to core heart feelings like compassion, care, appreciation and joy, which help to create a sense of trust and connection within our whole self. Again - this is something we can start to awaken when we work directly with energy and centre of heart itself.
So you see, it is very easy to work at the level of cognition without ever making deeper, embodied changes within ourselves; change at the level of feeling. and being.
Again, I want to point out that we also get conditioned to go up into the head when we feel big feelings because we don’t know how to make space for them. So the process of trying to change our feeling state by our thinking patterns can actually reinforce the patterns of intellectualisation and dissociation that arise due to trauma. It’s a vicious cycle that keeps us locked out of the only place where we can truly create embodied, lasting change i.e. in our body!
Embodied change is about working with the unconscious parts as well as the conscious. It’s about learning how to align our heads, hearts and bodies. Working directly with the autonomic nervous system to create new baselines of regulation and connection - and in doing so, to allow old patterns of thinking and relating to begin to dissolve. It’s about looking at patterns of constriction and expansion within our bodies and learning how to consciously move from one to the other. It’s about working with the reptilian complex - the subconscious part of our brain - and helping to establish new blueprints and patterns there. It’s about awakening the power of our heart to help us self-regulate, relate compassionately to ourselves and others, connect to our core essence and learn how to come home to the love and wholeness that we are.
I want to invite you to understand that it is possible to think a ‘positive’ thought without ever truly experiencing it. Thinking is for the head. Experience is for the heart and body. In fact, the body will only accept a thought that is resonating at the same frequency as the body.
The things we crave - love, connection, freedom, expression, pleasure, joy, wholeness, expansion...these are not thoughts. They are EXPERIENCES. And so the path to uncovering them is to work with the birthplace of inner experience; the heart, the body, the whole system of our deeper embodied being.
We are not a brain walking around on top of a body. We are a whole, interconnected BEING. And so I strongly believe, and have witnessed many times, that the best, richest an most impactful kind of change comes from working at these deeper levels of our human experience...taking that journey from the head-brain down into the heart and body.
There are many therapeutic modalities and techniques I incorporate in my work that help create change at a deeper subconscious and embodied level - including biofeedback, embodied mindfulness and movement, heart intelligence, Amygdala Depotentiation Therapy, breathwork and pranayama and Brain-Working-Recursive Therapy.
If this resonates and you *know* in your heart that it’s time to stop trying to think your way into a new state of being, then I’d be honoured to talk about how I can help you reclaim the inner experiences that you are deeply craving. Beautiful things happen when we take new leaps and decide to invest in ourselves….
If you want to chat, book a connection call today.
with love,
C xx