Craniosacral Therapy - Wendy Nell

16/11/2023

S1/E7 The Polyvagal Theory: IMMOBILIZATION AND NEUROCEPTION

Stephen Porges found it necessary to give us a word to describe a realization which grows from his Polyvagal Theory.
Our conscious brain is busy ‘thinking’ and ‘explaining’ or ‘worrying’ and misses a lot.

Porges wanted a word to describe what the BODY knows that the brain is not conscious of. This may seem strange to you if you think the brain is aware of everything!

However, we all at times have the experience of being very upset or even feeling physically sick and we don’t know why. For example, we don’t know what is causing us to feel nauseous or to experience diarrhoea.

Porges coined the word NEUROCEPTION to fill this gap:

• Neuroception describes the BODY’S awareness of what has happened in the environment around us that has upset us,
• or a feeling from within our bodies that we are not conscious of that is unsettling us.

He made the connection to how it is for us when we feel safe in a relationship as adults or safe in a classroom with our peers and teacher when we are children.

When we feel safe it normally would come with good co-regulation and at this point the old vagus gives the body/brain the message that it can immobilize without fear. At this point we can take full advantage of, be fully partaking, the social engagement system.

Immobilization without fear in a marriage or couples relationship is what we call intimacy.

• All our defences are switched off as we hold each other
• When we are near each other we don’t need words
• Our bodies can form and feel safe with each other.

In other close family or family-like connections (also a form of intimacy) we also connect through feeling safe.

• Think how wonderful and fortunate children are who get to snuggle in Mum and Dad’s bed in the morning. The bodies can feel safe with each other.

• Think also how special it is for learners in a classroom to feel completely at ease and safe, knowing they can trust and depend on their teacher without fear.

The ability to co-regulate, be safe and have intimacy in our relationships is an important goal in life.

Often we are unaware of the cues that tell us that a relationship has ruptured, that something has disrupted us.
• We have this visceral body and often a pedantic thinking mind which are at odds. When you get angry with someone, you also upset the other person and might accuse them of not supporting you –
• how do we learn to build our understanding of the link between what our body is aware of and what we are conscious of?
• How do we get out of a cycle of poor or negative co-regulation?

• Polyvagal Theory says that you get out by giving others cues of love and safety - this is the opposite of your saying “you did this and you should know better”.
• This is a continuous process throughout our growing up and in all our relationships – it grows from our sensitivity and a sense of awareness of self.
• Such an important goal in our developing relationships.

Some practical ideas that may help, you will find in S1/E8 tomorrow!
Robin 082 499 1344 [email protected]

17/08/2023

"One of the first things you'll notice is that there's a lot going on in the present moment, But one thing you can count on, no matter what else is going on in your mind, for instance, is that, the body is breathing, no matter what's going on in your life. And so it's kind of a reliable anchor for your attention." - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Download your Mindfulness Meditation from Jon Kabat-Zinn today.
👇👇👇
https://jonkabat-zinn.com/downloads/

14/08/2023

“Practice letting go, and eventually you will find yourself in a seat of awareness that can’t be disturbed by anything you are experiencing.” - Michael Singer

Tap ❤️ if this resonates with you.

More from Michael Singer and his course, Living from a Place of Surrender 👉 https://bit.ly/3OpFgjs

14/08/2023

25/07/2023

Leonard Cohen said his teacher once told him that the older you get, the lonelier you become, and the deeper the love you need.

This is because, as we go through life, we tend to over-identify with being the hero of our stories.

This hero isn’t exactly having fun: he’s getting kicked around, humiliated, and disgraced. But if we can let go of identifying with him, we can find our rightful place in the universe, and a love more satisfying than any we’ve ever known.

People constantly throw around the term “hero’s journey” without having any idea what it really means. Everyone from CEOs to wellness influencers thinks the hero’s journey means facing your fears, slaying a dragon, and gaining 25k followers on Instagram.

But that’s not the real hero’s journey.

In the real hero’s journey, the dragon slays YOU. Much to your surprise, you couldn’t make that marriage work. Much to your surprise, you turned forty with no kids, no house, and no prospects. Much to your surprise, the world didn’t want the gifts you proudly offered it.

If you are foolish, this is where you will abort the journey and start another, and another, abusing your heart over and over for the brief illusion of winning.

But if you are wise, you will let yourself be shattered, and return to the village, humbled, but with a newfound sense that you don’t have to identify with the part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know.

This is where your transcendent life begins.

So embrace humility in everything.

Life isn’t out to get you, nor are your struggles your fault. Every defeat is just an angel, tugging at your sleeve, telling you that you don’t have to keep banging your head against the wall.

Leave that striver there, trapped in his lonely ambitions.

Just walk away, and life in its vastness will embrace you.

~Paul Weinfield

Art by Olga Grigoreva

02/12/2022

❤️💕❤️

10/07/2022

"Everything hangs on one's thinking... a man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is." — Seneca

21/06/2022

Dr. Panda is a Professor at the Salk Institute. He has authored nearly 100 scientific and popular articles on the topic of circadian rhythm in health and dis...

13/06/2022

“When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life. It means fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change. The Roman philosopher Tacitus rightly observed that 'the desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.' If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into aliveness, alertness and creativity.''
- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

‘Lion Spirit’ by Silvio Vieira

24/05/2022

I love that his increase in happiness lay in his diminishing preoccupation with himself!! So true!

What is the secret of happiness? Bertrand Russell's answer.

"The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile. The world is vast and our own powers are limited. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give. And to demand too much is the surest way of getting even less than is possible. The man who can forget his worries by means of a genuine interest in, say, gardening, or the life history of stars, will find that, when he returns from his excursion into the impersonal world, he has acquired a poise and calm which enable him to deal with his worries in the best way, and he will in the meantime have experienced a genuine even if temporary happiness."

— Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Part II. Causes of Happiness, Chapter X: Is Happiness Still Possible?, p. 140

"I was not born happy ... In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of su***de, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know only more mathematics. Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more.

This is due partly to having discovered what were the things that I most desired, and having gradually acquired many of these things. Partly it is due to having successfully dismissed certain objects of desire — such as the acquisition of indubitable knowledge about something or other — as essentially unattainable. But very largely my current happiness is due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself.
.. Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to centre my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection. External interests, it is true, bring each its own possibility of pain: the world may be plunged in war, knowledge in some direction may be hard to achieve, friends may die. But pains of these kinds do not destroy the essential quality of life, as do those that spring from disgust with the self.”

― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Part I. Causes of Unhappiness, Ch: I, What Makes People Unhappy?, p. 9

The Conquest of Happiness (1930) by Bertrand Russell pre-dates the modern genre of self-help popular/philosophy by decades. This work lays out Russell's rationalist prescription for living a happy life, mainly the importance of cultivating interests outside oneself and the dangers of passive and base pleasure. The Conquest of Happiness (1930) is often cited as one of Bertrand Russell's most accessible and favorite books.

17/05/2022

Let someone love you just the way you are... as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.

~ Marc Hack

art | Arthur Melville

17/05/2022

Never be afraid to let someone know, if they brightened the room they just walked into. Or if something they said, inspired you to change. Never be embarrassed to share a compliment with a stranger and don’t ever fall into the trap of believing that the people you love know that. Say it. Always say it. Your words may land a little awkwardly at first but in the dark of the night, those seeds will plant themselves into someone’s mental garden and start to bloom. Sow seeds, wherever you go.

~Donna Ashworth~

29/04/2022

01/04/2022

Unknown Author

24/03/2022

23/03/2022

Add to that reducing stress and sleeping better, and you’re on the way to a healthier lifestyle that benefits both your body and your mind.

In my Masterclass series, and I discuss the basics of Functional Medicine, including diet, inflammation, stress, and sleep, and why it’s important to start reducing chronic disease right now to live a longer, healthier, vitality-filled life.

Take a listen to the full episode titled, “How To Get To The Root Cause Of All Chronic Disease,” on your favorite podcast app.

23/03/2022

"When you hate ..."
Bertrand Russell

“When you hate, you generate a reciprocal hate. When individuals hate each other, the harm is finite; but when great groups of nations hate each other, the harm may be infinite and absolute. Do not fall back upon the thought that those whom you hate deserve to be hated. I do not know whether anybody deserves to be hated, but I do know that hatred of those whom we believe to be evil is not what will redeem mankind.”

— Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), Part I: Ethics, Ch. 6, Scientific Technique and the Future, p. 271

Image: Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970) was a philosopher, mathematician, educational and sexual reformer, pacifist, prolific letter writer, author and columnist. Bertrand Russell was one of the most influential and widely known intellectual figures of the twentieth century. In 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his extensive contributions to world literature and for his "rationality and humanity, as a fearless champion of free speech and free thought in the West." Russell died at his home in Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales, United Kingdom on 2nd February 1970, where his ashes were scattered over the Welsh hills.

10/03/2022

You do not heal 'from' trauma.
You simply come to know yourself
as Life Itself.

And you turn towards the wounded place.
And you flush it with attention,
which is love.

And maybe the wound will always be with you.
Maybe you will always walk with the hurt.
But now, you hold it. It doesn't hold you.
You are the container, not the contained.

It doesn't control you any longer, the wound.
Because it is drenched in awareness now.
Drenched in You.
Loved by You.
Even celebrated by You.

You do not heal 'from' trauma.
You find healing 'in' the trauma.
You find yourself at trauma's sacred core.
The One who is always present.
The One who can bear
even the most intense feeling states.
And survive.
The Indestructible One.
The Infinite One.
The Powerful One.
You.

- Jeff Foster

17/02/2022

My heart needs rest,
my mind wants action.
My skin needs touch,
my soul wants air.
My curiosity needs different,
my comfort wants same.
My dreams need big,
my fears want small.
My love needs change,
my loss wants safe.
I'm stuck like this, all of
my days, in the hot coal
of human paradox,
hanging somewhere
between the illness &
the cure, between the
dust of yesterday & new
scents of tomorrow,
unfinished like all books,
writing new chapters of
myself with every bit
of ink around me.
Nobody told me that
the messy Now &
terrible Unknown could
dare to be so beautiful.

Author: Andrea Balt

Artist : Arini Gambar

17/02/2022

🌀Yes we have an update on this post including an author credit and in case it wasn't clear before, a notice that this image is being used in the capacity to critique & comment on it and use it for the purposes of teaching and research.🌀

Our critique of the comic is this: WE LOVE IT, obviously!

A+ content that we feel that it embodies the discourse surrounding certain topics in today's day and age and we give it the caption:

'2022 big tech censorship be like... 🤣 😂 🤣'

The original author of this comic Crustacean Singles reached out to let us know that it was their original work and expressed frustration that it had been "stolen quite frequently and used outside the context for which it was made".

We understand the frustration mate and we always try to give due credit when information is available. In this case, we saw it somewhere else on Z**kerbook, and the credit had already been removed. Since you reached out, we have updated the post to give that due credit and reinstated the original image that contains it (*pro-tip: put your signature in the middle where it can't easily be cropped out by as****es)

Anyways, the author then linked us to a page on their site noting their displeasure that: "Multiple disingenuous bad actors have stolen the above comic, cropped off the attribution at the bottom, and shared it as part of science-denying, conspiracist, and frankly evil agendas, particularly in anti-vax circles. Let it be known in no uncertain terms that CrustaceanSingles thoroughly and unequivocally condemns the anti-vax movement, its ideas, and every last ignorant, selfish, reckless person who espouses them.".

They also asked us to remove the post 🤔

Our critique/comment: You are entitled to your opinion on when you think this kind of thing applies and when it doesn't...without further info on the details of your beliefs we can't say too much more but find it ironic that you want to police how it gets shared and how it gets interpreted. Is art not subject to the interpretation of the viewer? You made something real, clever, AND true mate, embrace it!

(please be kind and courteous to our Crustacean friend, and throw some money to them to support their creation of original art!)