By Julie Kouyate
Look, here's the deal. YOU CANNOT CREATE CHANGE in your life with concepts and words alone. Affirmations can only take us so far. Let me break it down for you.
Our lovely minds are a record of the past. Our experiences are a combination of what our brains and bodies record, along with a chemical release (depending on what happened in the experience), but mostly the emotion we assign to the experience. The neurological networks wire together to create a roadmap—the way we respond to this experience gets mapped out and that's how the body conserves energy. It will run this program over and over again when faced with similar situations— the body goes into auto-pilot. This is great for survival, but the problem is that this system works in the same manner when we get angry at a fellow co-worker, get totally stressed about a car problem, or upset with how someone we love speaks to you.
The long term stress response creates downregulation in the genes and immune system, and ultimately body and mental illness prevail. This is precisely why it seems almost impossible to change. It literally takes energy to change. So how do you get inside that hardwired program of redundant responses based on past experiences? Is it possible to change the automatic way the body responds without your conscious awareness? How can one change anything with the mind alone without understanding how to change the chemical response associated with that thought?
Bodymind coaching steps in here as a very unique transformational process. First, we attempt to understand the neural networks or “the map”. Awareness is key and investigating our subconscious thoughts is where it all begins. We literally bring the “program” out of our minds, and by identifying it, we bring the response road map to the forefront of our awareness. We work with all areas in life that a client desires to focus on, but particularly we start where the current “stuck spots” are, or where there's pain and suffering in the body. Bodymind coaches all have touch as a unique skill set and have honed their craft over many years as healers. Bodymind coaches are well versed in alternative health approaches like massage and energy work.
Next, and most importantly, is understanding where you experience this energy in the body. This is super important. Most of us are walking around living in our head, assigning negative thoughts to most of our experience. If we can locate the place, texture, and all the details of what and where that negative contraction comes from in the body, then we have just made a bodymind connection! Once that's truly felt in the body then we re-assign the emotion that you want to feel. AHHHHH, the neurons begin to create tiny tendrils in a newer set of networks just by this process alone. Everything is possible here. Once we have identified the new emotion that you’re inviting in, then we do the important embodiment work. This comes in many ways that is intuited by the coach—ranging from massage, energy work, movement, guided visualizations, breathwork, to song. It's so powerful to watch people come into full touch with what was missing, and when you embody a new emotion you actually release new chemicals from the glandular system. You’re saying YES to oxytocin which seriously makes a change in the body. Change cannot be intellectualized. It's a bodymid process in which we get in touch with ourselves so we can hear what the wisdom of the body knows and desires.
Lastly, the way to lasting change is implementation. Taking committed action toward the steps that your inner guidance system reveals to you, is the final kicker. Again, knowledge without action fill syou with information , but that's all it can do for you. Taking your next best steps forward can be slow and steady as you process this with your coach to break free from those barriers that were once imprisoning you.
The thing is, we all have a deep connection to source and a purpose to fulfill in this lifetime. It can be a huge, earth shattering, massive people reaching goal, or it can simply be a sense of peace that you want. Your goals could be as simple as stressing less, be in less pain, or just change the way you “carry” stress and pain. Big or small, we all have our highest purpose—to come away from the land of living inside the mind, and back into the center, back to home.
Come back into the body, your home. Enact true change and raise the feeling you walk with in this life. Bodymind coaching is an excellent and unique opportunity to grow. I assure you the life you desire is available to you and there is always the true possibility of a life fulfilled.
Julie Kouyate is a Bodymind coach and LMT. She has been in the alternative healing and wellness industry for over 20 years, but coaching is now her preferred way to work with clients because of the way we can change our patterns to have a lasting change that leads to a more connected life that is less restricted in a holistic way…. Body, mind, and spirit! . Learn more about her offerings, including the BodyMind coaching program, at www.kouyatehealingarts.com, or call (734) 330-7903.
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