In the beginning of January 2022 I expressed a desire to blog this year inspired by the writings of Stephen Covey from the perspective of an embodiment artivist. If you haven’t read that introduction to this project, I invite you to check it out here.
*************************************************************
Here is the next one in the series on the subject of The Process of Change: I hope you enjoy! -Vic
On pg 36 of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey says,
What happens when we attempt to shortcut a natural process in our growth and development? If you are only an average tennis player but decide to play at a higher level in order to make a better impression, what will result? Would positive thinking alone enable you to compete effectively against a professional?
A mindbody approach to change would say that, yes, positive thinking is what is necessary to override the limitations of the body. Most of us have been trained to live from our minds direction and to ignore the information and experience of the body. These sorts of suggestions start in the cortex and then attempt to move downward.
I picture it like this. “I believe I need to play tennis at a higher level so that my friends will think more highly of me" turns into “I must play tennis better” turns into “body, are you listening? you must do this thing my mind has decided you must do.” And the body is doing the best it can.
I agree with Covey that this is a very ineffective approach to change.
*************************************************************************
THE OFTEN INEFFECTIVE MINDBODY APPROACH TO CHANGE
I invite you to consider: what is the thought you imagine that you might think when you realize that your body is not capable of playing tennis at the level your mind believes you need to play?
What is the thought you imagine you might think when you realize you can’t do what your mind wants in order to satisfy the mind’s belief that other people’s opinions of you are important?
Are you able to think that this is only an idea that your mind created and that this idea was in reaction to your body’s sensations? (if you were able to honestly say “yes” to the last question, then you are on your way to a bodymind approach to change - to be shared about more in a upcoming post!)
In my experience, personally and professionally, most people (myself included) have a pattern hardwired in our neural network to answer the first two questions with harsh thoughts about ourselves at this point in the pattern.
*************************************************************************
If you’d like to explore this a bit more, I offer this possible choreography of the pattern where the mind directs the body:
1) your body, your nervous system, has a sensory experience in response to unknown information (of the mind or the environment). Perhaps one of smallness or disconnection or dissatisfaction or discomfort. I invite you to supply the sensory description of what it feels like for you when your body experiences a sense of unease.
2) your body may then have an experience that your mind recognizes as an emotional response to the sensations of unease. Perhaps fear or sadness or anger.
3) your mind recognizes this information to mean some sort of problem exists, and possibly even something dangerous is present. Your mind, if allowed to, runs with whatever information is available to it at the time, latches onto any pieces of story that it believes it can put together to give meaning to and to try to fix the problem that it believes is causing the sensory experience.
In the quote by Covey, the person who is uncomfortable translates his or her discomfort to have something to do with what people think of her or him. “If I played tennis better, person x or people xyz would think more highly of me, so I need to play tennis better.”
4) If you are this person and you direct your body from your mind, then you will take your body to the tennis courts where your mind will push it to play better.
5) And your body will play at the level the body is capable of doing so at this moment.
6) Your mind, if it is still so attached to this idea of how to fix the experience you had in step 1, will continue on its thought pattern that this is all about playing tennis better. You might think something like “oh my gawd, I am no good. I am not good enough at tennis. Those people will never like me. All is lost.”
7) Your body and your nervous system hear this information and experience this information. Your body will most likely experience this information as if you are in danger. It hears “all is lost”. And remember, you started this process with a body that was already feeling small or disconnected or dissatisfied or uncomfortable, and NOW it is having another sensory experience in response to this danger your mind is telling it exists. Your sympathetic system will kick in to support and protect you from the danger. When this happens, your body will most likely be flooded with cortisol, epinephrine and adrenaline, which are all chemicals which make it extremely difficult to think effectively because their purpose is to get your body to move against the danger and/or toward safety. Except in this case, the danger is an abstract concept in your mind so the body may very well feel caught in this loop.
8) Unless you are able to step out of this mind-directed loop, you will go round and round until your body is forced, finally, to take over. There are several scenarios that I can imagine might happen:
Perhaps your mind will keep pushing your body to try to play tennis better, possibly pushing even harder than in your first attempt, until you injure it.
Perhaps your nervous system ramps up so high that your body experiences a panic attack and forces you to stop, until your mind picks up those persistent ideas again and you return to the cycle. Repeat and repeat and repeat.
Perhaps your nervous system collapses into overwhelm and your systems stay stuck in this pattern of somatic experience related to the persistent belief that you are not good enough, and your mind churns over this patterned ideas that keep you in this cycle. Again, repeat and repeat and repeat.
Perhaps you have the awareness that you are in a cycle and you try to reframe, to think yourself out of this situation. You might use angry thinking, “f*(k them, I didn’t want to be their friends anyway” which gives your body the adrenal push it needs to walk away from the situation and your mind believes that all is resolved. Or perhaps you use what is often called positive thinking “It is okay. I am a good person. If they don’t want to be my friend, I am better off” which may soothe your nervous system just enough that your mind believes that all is well. This sort of mindbody activity can be very helpful towards a temporary relief from the cycle, however, you have not repatterned the cycle.
You have not done anything to change the pattern of your experience and the attached cycle of mindbody reaction to your experience.
The reality for the body remains. The sensory pattern of smallness or disconnection or dissatisfaction or discomfort or unease that started this process in step #1 was not tended to yet. The experience was completely ignored and the focus became the mind’s story and how the body needed to enact the mind’s solution to the problem the mind created.
And the unfortunate reality is that this sensory experience of unease may now be even more firmly laid down into your neurocellular patterning because it has been replayed again, in yet another scenario that provides yet another and current piece of mental information that the mind can grab onto easily the next time your body feels small or disconnected or dissatisfied or uncomfortable.
Do you see the pattern? Do you understand the ineffectualness of this pattern if what you desire is change or growth?
*************************************************************************
Please know, the sensations you experienced in #1 are pieces of information.
They may be information in response to the current environment. They may be information in response to something your mind recalls as you experience the current environment. They may be information in response to something that your mind is recalling that is taking you out of your ability to experience the current environment. And yes, they may be a complex combination of all three, which can feel pretty uncomfortable.
Sensations of discomfort are pieces of information important to growth and learning.
Growth and learning requires a capacity to be present with our discomfort without getting overwhelmed.
To tend to our natural growth and development effectively (as is the intent of Covey’s book) we need to be able to tend to our discomfort in effective ways, and, in my experience, this requires a bodymind approach to change (with or without the support of the more mindbody approaches such as reframing, positive self-talk or affirmations).
*************************************************************************
In a future blog I will share more about the bodymind approach to change and possibly a bit about how I use it therapeutically with all my clients, whether they seek me out for support in their process of physical, spiritual, mental, emotional or creative change.