Expand Your Ability: Embodiment, Somatics, and Feldenkrais

00:01
Welcome. To start, I'm curious if you've had any of these thoughts. They are so amazing. Why would they want to be with me anyway?

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I'll be better off on my own. Ugh. They're so needy. It's pathetic.

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I've ruined everything. If you said yes to any of these, take a listen to this episode. It has some important ideas for you. Welcome to the Expand Your Ability Podcast. My name is Jeffrey Schwinghammer and I'm your host. This show is about developing embodied awareness so you can heal from old pains and develop new skills.

00:49
My goal with this podcast is to introduce fundamental ideas from the Felling Christ method as a way of finding internal security that you can then make the world around you more secure. On today's episode I will introduce a bit of attachment theory. But before we get to that, let's start with this idea here. Your insecurity is predictable. And what do I mean by that?

01:17
Your insecure thinking isn't unique to you. Insecurity has common manifestations that will emerge in different people regardless of their life experiences. So I'm a fan of attachment theory. If you've had a conversation with me in the past year or two, you will have heard me talk endlessly about attachment theory.

01:45
I think it's a really helpful framework. And it's a great explanatory framework for describing secure and insecure behavior. Now, my first experience was reading the book Attached by Amir Levine. When I read sections about insecure thoughts, like the common insecure thoughts in this book, it stopped me in my tracks. It described...

02:14
thinking patterns of the two primary insecure styles in attachment theory. But before I go further, let me lay out briefly what attachment theory is. It's, in short, a framework for understanding how people pursue emotional connection or move themselves from emotional connection. It's the it's a person's ability to feel loved, or to offer love, to feel accepted.

02:43
or to offer acceptance to others, to build a fulfilling relationship or to not. So there are these three basic attachment styles or strategies. The first is secure, which is good. Ideally you wanna do the secure stuff. And then there's two types of insecure, anxious preoccupied and anxious avoidant. Now these are generally called anxious and avoidant for short.

03:12
The anxious types tend to cling to ensure closeness, to avoid abandonment. And the avoidant types tend to withdraw for their own space. Avoidants tend to build in space from the people they're with. Now there's also a third insecure style or strategy, and it's called disorganized. And that's a bit of a mixture.

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of the two types of strategies. So in different situations or at different times, you might do more or less of the strategies. Now, if you are insecure, you make life more complex, harder than it needs to be, and you kind of make things a mess. And I know from personal experience. So let's take a look at what this book has to say about insecure thoughts.

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I'll read a few of the thoughts from the anxious side. The first one is a sort of mind reading. That's it. I know they're going to leave me.

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Or I'll never find anyone else. I knew this was too good to last.

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I've ruined everything. There's nothing I can do to mend the situation. They can't treat me this way. I'll show them.

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I have to talk or to see them right now.

04:47
They are so amazing, why would they want to be with me anyway?

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All right, those are some thoughts from the anxious style. Do you feel that's true for you at all? Have you heard that in your own experience? All right, let's go over to the avoidant. All right, the avoidant thinks something like, I knew they weren't right for me. This proves it.

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I knew I wasn't made to be in a close relationship.

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They're taking over my life. I can't take it.

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Now I have to do everything their way. The price is too high.

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I need to get out of here. I feel suffocated. I'll be better off on my own. Ugh, they're so needy. It's pathetic. All right, how about those thoughts? Did any of those resonate for you?

05:48
So if that's true and you heard yourself in that, isn't that interesting? You've never read this book before, probably, and I read these thoughts that you've had. I think that's really interesting. And I think it points to how insecurity can manifest as these common ways of thinking and acting between people with very different experiences. They have different hurts, different pains, different struggles, live in different cities.

06:17
all these different variables, but we can all learn the same lessons. We can all learn these ways of protecting ourselves from the world, and these lessons persist as habits in our bodies as well, in our muscular tension, much longer than we think, and often it's quite invisible to us.

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And this invisibility, how these habits play out, is such an important idea.

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When we feel insecurity, that insecurity is self asserting. It feels true, like it's hard to argue with. I'm feeling bad and it's through my body, my whole body, the sensation, the tension, my thinking, it's just over and over and over again. And I can't imagine anything else. That's how insecurity operates. It maintains itself.

07:21
because it feels so true. But if your insecurity is this predictable that I could find it in a book and read it to you, I don't think that insecurity is really you. I think it's a constellation of habitual patterns that you have assembled over your many years for your own safety to keep you alive and safe in what you experience to be an unsafe, untrustworthy world.

07:50
that didn't meet your needs. So these insecure thoughts I don't think are you. I think who you are is somebody who's far more spontaneous, far more creative, far more stable and open. My guess is that deep down who you really are is someone who can be playful when it's time to play, that you can be firm when it's time to be firm.

08:19
that you can grieve when you need to grieve, that you can seek help from others when you need help. I believe that the full human experience can be available to you. And the ways you resist by protecting yourself, by maintaining these tension patterns, or holding yourself small, deplete your own vitality. Every chronic tension you have.

08:48
is a cost paid by your nervous system, by your brain to maintain that activity. You are far more capable than you've ever imagined. And it's this insecurity that comes in and dismantles you. It takes you in chaotic directions because somehow that was safer for you in the past. It was even rewarding because it kept you out of some sense of danger.

09:16
but that insecurity needs to be questioned.

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And that's the big ideas. If these insecure behaviors are predictable, then I suggest learn what are insecure thoughts, learn what are insecure behaviors, and see if you can catch them in your experience, and then question them. Now you don't have to change them perfectly and do the exact right thing. None of that. The first steps.

09:50
is about building awareness, catching these moments when, oh, that's it. I'm doing that thing. I'm getting inside my head or I'm seeing other people as enemies, whatever it is. When you can catch it, you can then question it. You might not be able to change it right away, but when you question it, you wake up from that slumber of being stuck in your habits. You wake up.

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to the possibility of something new. You question it, and you go, wait, this might not be true. What I'm feeling, what I'm sensing, might not be the best representation of reality. I need to get more information. Who can I talk to? What help can I get? Question it. I wager that these insecure thoughts are not truly you, not...

10:48
essential to your personality. By questioning and observing and becoming curious with your own experience, you can begin to detangle the past and how it's woven into your being, but it's not essential to you. You can take it apart piece by piece. And the big thing here is awareness. You have to become aware. Otherwise you're asleep to whatever you're doing.

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Now that's where the awareness through movement process in the Feldenkrais method comes into play. So for Moshe Feldenkrais, the inventor of this work, his goal was not to have you move as an ends to itself, but to use movement to help inform your awareness. Awareness of what you're doing, including those insecure behaviors, those ways in which you pull yourself away from connection with others.

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or that you give yourself up in some sense to overextend yourself. How is it that movement can be helpful? Well, our thinking is not just in our brains. Our thinking is manifested in our bodies. Our emotions are manifested in our bodies. By learning to become clear about how we move, to reduce excess tension, to reduce excess effort, makes us

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better calibrated to notice and observe differences in our body, and we can catch more clearly those moments when our insecurity arises, and we can catch them and go, wait, hey, this thing here, what is it? What is it I'm doing? Okay. Do I want to keep doing that? No. I want to pause this one. I want to try something new. And from there, we can step into choice. Step out of insecurity.

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and step into choice and novelty, and we'll discover for ourselves what is security for us.

13:00
I would like to recommend some resources. So the book, Attached by Levine is a good book. I've read some of Stan Tatken's books, they're good. But my favorite resource is Adam Lane Smith. He's on YouTube, he's got a book. I'm a part of his attachment community online, and he's a real, real awesome teacher. And he explains attachment in a super clear way.

13:30
that if you go onto his YouTube channel and just search, find some titles that you like, just get in there and start putting the pieces together. It's been so helpful for me to get his teachings of what are the phrasings of insecure behavior? And what does secure behavior look like? What is that gold standard? What is it that's worth aiming at?

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So he's been really helpful for me in that. So I recommend his material.

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In conclusion, I want to encourage you to question your insecure behaviors. Learn what they look like and give yourself some grace. Like when you catch them, when they arise and like, oh, I'm doing that thing again. Give yourself some grace. You're learning to catch something that you haven't been able to catch before and to change it. And that's a big deal. And it's worthwhile. Please.

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Be kind to yourself. Work diligently. Catch the insecure behaviors. And seek help when you need it. Get input from others. You will find links to those resources in the show notes. Also, you'll find some of these resources in the show notes as well. If what I talked about today resonated with you and you could...

15:01
sense that insecurity as it plays out in you, in how you move, and how you think, and how you maintain yourself as small or tense, or you have these aches and pains that come with it. I am offering online one-on-one private sessions. We use the Feldenkrais method to explore and connect mind and body, to use attention and

15:29
break down these insecure habits, and to build some new ones. You'll find in the show notes a link to the free discovery call, where we can find out if we're a good fit for each other. Also, in the show notes, you can sign up for the newsletter and learn about new offerings as they become available. As always, I invite you to talk about these ideas in this podcast with a friend.

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and strengthen the new connections of our learning. When we have great conversations with others about meaningful topics, we build in connection. We make our lives more secure. My final question for you today is, if you saw yourself in the insecure thoughts that I shared, what cost are those thoughts having on your life?

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Alright, thank you for your attention.