I am always looking to find different tools to play with and stretch the edges of what patterns and habits my brain has become familiar with in order to allow for more possibilities. To be clear, I am not always in search of calm or peace, I am just as much in search of the disruption necessary for change. For me, embodiment and sports have helped me build awareness and change a lot of patterns. First, climbing taught me how to be with my fear as opposed to try and fix it. Climbing requires your brain to strategize and your body to feel. Fear dismantles your ability to do both. When you are 100’s of feet off the ground, we should be afraid. It is actually adaptive to be afraid because it could save your life. It then becomes how you sit with the fear and navigate it as opposed to avoid it or stop it.
Boxing became another tool I used to retrain my brain. Initially, I used it to flood my nervous system, using sparring to practice regulating a flooded nervous system. This helped me be more adaptive with my fear in life and even more in climbing. When I consistently activated my nervous system consciously and then practiced regulating it, it began to give me more ways of adapting my nervous system to unexpected triggers in life. Instead of looking for calm, I sought out agitation and flooding, to help practice new ways of responding.
Simultaneously, I used boxing as a way to move feelings through my body such as anger and grief. Feelings are the language of the body and they need to be met with the same resonance as the feeling itself to be acknowledged. Anger for example needs reverberation. Grief needs to sometimes be dislodged and always needs to be given the time and space to unfold.
To train my brain, body, and nervous system with new skills, I started to say “how can I”, instead of “I can’t”. Naturally I am not coordinated, I was the kid who would trip walking on a flat side walk, could not follow choreographed dance moves, had no rhythm, was tone deaf and had very bad hand-eye coordination. I wanted new possibilities, so I learned to box, dance, climb and even sing to learn how to adapt how I navigated my world. Don’t get me wrong my default is still clutzy and I still miss the beat often, but I have practiced other possibilities so much, I have adapted and now have more options in how my mind and body can respond.
“Can’t” is a mindset, but so is “how can I”. In boxing I moved from copying and pure force to brain jiujitsu, thinking of every small movement I needed to do to correct my form, at all times as often as possible. The problem became when my brain got tired - I couldn’t keep up with all the tips and I would get less coordinated. I would loose the skills I had developed or get overwhelmed. I knew the feeling well, because this is also similar to when we get tired after being hypervigilant or hyperfocused for long periods of time. There is only so long our brain can sustain holding and controlling every possible detail.
My boxing coach would tell me, I needed to feel it. I realized how similar this is to adapting your nervous system to something new. Even if it is more efficient, effective or adaptive our brain and subsequently our nervous system will choose the comfort of familiar over anything else. First you have to become aware of the familiar comfort zone patterns, then disrupt them consistently. Finally, the new habits you have been consistent with have to integrate into your body so you can feel it - be it - as opposed to just think it.
We often skip the feeling it part- the being verse doing part. And, as a result the change does not get integrated and we fall back to our default brain and nervous system patterns. So, how do you feel it verse think about feeling. My suggestion is whale noises. Yes, I mean moan and groan the noise of what you feel or want to say, instead of using words and see what reveals. You can even do it in your head. The body experiences feelings, the mind hears thoughts. Talk to your body in “whale”- in the sound of feelings, so you mind can’t start a story - in words and thoughts. Then, dig deeper. This is when you need perseverance - resistance and defensiveness will show you when you are successfully threatening familiar, but outdated patterns. Find the support and accountability of others to keep you on track to let the change settle into your system and be sustainable.
If we become aware of something, we can change it. But to change it we have to be consistent with it. Make a new choice. And, keep practicing that new habit over and over until it is integrated. We discover that we have to practice longer if the old habit overrides the new pattern again, because it shows us it hasn’t quite stuck yet.
Currently, little white bugs on my house plants are driving this point home to me. If I ignore them, they infest more plants. If I take a half hour every few days to kill any new growth they begin to disappear. The problem becomes that I get satisfied with their decline and stop the practice of searching for them every few days, because I don’t see them as a threat. Though only a few initially survive, it becomes an infestation again because I didn’t stay consistent after some success.
How do you stay consistent when the pain that caused you to make the initial change has lessened or is no longer there? How do you stay consistent when you feel resistance- maybe it comes as boredom, disinterest, frustration, or a drive for being busy?
What do your most prevalent patterns and habits show you about what you are prioritizing most in your life? What would it take to change the habits you don’t want? How would you adapt to what is here and now, in the present moment, to feel good now as opposed to wait for your circumstances to change?