Experience vs Reality

What if your Reality is Just your Current Habit?

Over the years, I’ve become very interested in both habits and change. And the more I learn, the more it really seems that our reality is colored, and arguably created by our habits.  In other words, it seems that our physical, our mental, and our emotional realities are created or perhaps aptly said, reinforced by our habits of movement, thought, and emotion.

Body Patterns: The Mind Body Whisperer Therapeutic Massage Method has taught me that our muscle tensions and movement patterns are strongly influenced by our habits – for example:

Clients often report shoulder pain and discomfort – not entirely certain why they are experiencing such pain.

Yet, when exploring driving and even sleep habits, we learn a few interesting things.  For example, if we curl up comfortably when we sleep on our side, we actually keep our pecs contracted for 6-8 hours each night and as such, keep our back and shoulder blade muscles over-stretched all night long.

– Given this dynamic of contracted pecs, and overstretched back shoulder muscles, our back shoulder muscles lose muscle tone and thereby do not have the strength to balance the strength of the pec muscles. – PS This in turn becomes part of our “shoulders forward” habit during the daytime (and of course, visa versa.)

OR

If our body remembers an old injury, our posture and/or movement patterns often reflect our body’s attempts to prevent that old injury from reoccurring – i.e.

1. a shoulder forward posture can be reminiscent of an age-old sledding injury or

2. a hesitance to readily look to the right (AKA rotate the neck comfortably to the right) may be the body’s attempt to avoid revisiting an old memory of a hurtful interaction with a loved one

OR

Mind Patterns: Abraham Hicks frequently talks about how our reality is based on the things we think about most of the time. (x) I find this rather fascinating.

Similarly, neuropsychology hypothesizes that we have approximately 60,000 thoughts every day – and that the vast majority of those thoughts are the same throughout the day as well as day after day (x).

I’m also aware that if I get into a “mood,” it’s easy to think about some situation in my personal history that carries a similar mood tone – and, rather easily I might add, I seem to build a chain of similar “memory-based circumstances” that carry the same vibe (though I would argue that we can create similar thought chains based on aspirations and our Mind and Emotion-based expectations.)

Abraham Hicks suggests that if we hold a particular thought for 17 seconds (x), another similarly toned thought will connect to the first – and after 68 seconds, our original thought carries an advantageous momentum.

Science teaches us that our thoughts and our muscles are each activated and sustained through repeated neurons firing patterns further enhanced and our body chemistry.

In 1949, Donald Hebb, a Canadian neuropsychologist, found that “neurons that fire together, wire together.” This tendency creates mind-body efficiencies.

Following, it seems to be that the things we think about become wired in our brains and create a familiar habit of thought.

Similarly, I would argue that when the neurons in our muscles consistently fire together, they effectively set up our habitual movement patterns – AKA how we walk – as well as our habitual muscle tension and pain patterns.

So, as I reflect, one of my “Aha Moments” has become that “My History can repeat itself – through the things I consistently think about throughout the day as well as how my muscles move me in my day-to-day world.”

The Mind Body Whisperer Massage Method attempts to utilize these findings to your advantage!

During our massage therapy sessions, we work to release muscle tensions and re-initiate optimal muscle mechanics and movement patterns – with the further idea that we’re getting the neurons to begin to fire along optimal muscle patterns both in brain and body.

And the more we reinforce those patterns through our in-session massage therapy AND the pattern optimizing exercises that you do daily, in between our sessions, the more quickly you will be able to create Pain-Free movement and ultimately, Pain-Free Living.

Two high TMBW Massage Recommends:

• Charles Duhigg – The Power of Habit

AND

• BJ Fogg – The Power of Tiny Habits

Have a Fabulous Today!