Regulating Your Biology and Neurology

Regulating Your Biology and Neurology

From scientific research on Super-agers, we have learned that athletes show stronger connectivity across neurological networks that involve emotional regulation, impulse control, and self-monitoring. The structural demands of competitive sports, managing adrenaline under pressure, following rules, and coordinating emotion with movement, appear to drive neuroplasticity. These are changes that carry over into everyday life. You don’t need to be an athlete to benefit when all you need to begin to add into your daily life is structured movement in group settings, even when it’s a virtual gathering, shared effort, and thinking a like an athlete when stress hits. This approach can build the same capacity over time for anyone.

We are living in difficult times, our world is in trauma, and for all of us, there is a strategy for how to persevere, renew health, and mental balance. While there is no absolute, it is possible to create new patterns that share how to build and enhance well-being. Ask yourself: what am I willing to do every day to improve things that too often are beyond my control? How can each of us address the issues that support and help us get through difficult times? There is a way to work towards changing your state; you are a work in progress, endless, instead of goal-oriented.

“All perception and sensation take place on a background of muscular activity. And though we are unaware of it, this activity is most strictly shaped by gravity. There are several systems cooperating in orientating our bodies, but the vestibular apparatus is the coordinating chef d’orchestre. The vestibular apparatus coordinates all sensory impulses that influence muscular tone and attitudes.” – Dr Moshe Feldenkrais, Body and Mature Behavior

I share with you how I continue to focus on what I can do, creating daily, little baby steps. Sometimes it feels like a step forward, and then two steps backward. Nonetheless, continuing forward is a process of listening internally to the subtle and significant things all of us can do.

So, try this: come lie down and get comfortable. What are the things you do to allow more ease and comfort even when you sense and feel out of sorts? Focus on what you want, initiate a small movement to begin enabling what feels stuck to move. The movement will enable your biology and neurology to reset as long as you take time to listen to subtleties and notice when the old wired habit of pushing into resistance is recognized, and you select another pathway to explore. Ease and comfort are necessary to learn. What were the movements that came to mind, or did you notice if you started to move without thinking of doing an exercise you learned?

Be in a freer sensing place that Emilie Conrad, creator of The Continuum Movement, offered, just as Moshe Feldenkrais did. Both shared an unrelenting quest for a life unfettered by cultural constraints, seeking to transform their states through movement. Each allowed their awakening awareness of the physical biology to guide them. All life is movement, which, as the ancient Chinese shared, all movement is fluid. Life is an ongoing movement, and most important is to have curiosity and inquiry, how to awaken to that which is within us, but not taught to copy, rather to follow the freedom that comes with movement. Deciding and taking action daily is scientifically proven to be the next step in taking control of yourself when everything else feels out of sorts.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” – Laozi

I hope you will join me for weekly Awareness Through Movement (ATM)® lessons, which are virtual gatherings for anyone interested in taking action to feel better. This is not just to fix a problem, but to learn how to shift from a goal orientation toward finding other options that are free from the pressure to do something that is too often coercive. It is so powerful and something you can do every day to facilitate daily improvements in your biology and neurology.

Come join a gathering where there is comfort, ease, without judgment, to allow something to awaken. Then play daily like any child or animal. Take time to get out in the fresh air, walk on surfaces that are not flat and hard, and begin to feel the spring in your step returning. What does skeletal support feel like? Once you feel it, how do you return to it to reset yourself, even when you’re fatigued? If it can reset me, I know it can reset any system, as long as you’re curious and willing to play little bits every day. Notice that when you respond, you don’t have time. That belief needs to be readdressed. Do you have a few minutes to tune into yourself? Change your thoughts, change your behavior, and notice how you begin to reap what you sow for the better. This is something under your direct control, and as the saying goes, make it “On Demand”.

I hope I’ve earned the privilege of your time and attention this week, and I look forward to the moment you’re ready to reach out.

Stay warm, stay safe, and remember what easy, comfort, and calm feel like to bring this back into your daily experience.

Warmest on frigid weather days, weeks and …

Peggi