The great part is that by becoming aware of how the mind organizes itself through patterns and by learning ways to consciously become aware of old patterns, you can begin to consciously create patterns that serve who you are today instead of who you were 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

The process of pattern changing and creation has five different aspects:

1. Having a greater understanding about the nature of habits and patterns and what they represent
2. Identifying your habits and bringing the unconscious elements of the pattern to the surface
3. Evalutating which habits serve you today and which ones need changing or modifying
4. Honoring and acknowledging how pattern served you in the past if it isn’t serving you so you can release it
5. Modifying and changing the patterns that need updating

A client of mine, Marcy (name changed), last week had a piece of this pattern awareness show up for her in our session.  Marcy wakes up every day between 5-6 am but finds that she can’t get up despite the fact that her body doesn’t feel as good when she stays in bed.  She was trying to identify why if she is being awakened by her body in a way that feels right and natural to her, she doesn’t have the will to get up. 

Often we associated willpower as the culprit in not being able to make a change or follow a natural cue from the body-mind.  However, the truth is often that is has less to do with willpower than with not understanding the underlying patterning and legitimate need the body-mind is trying to honor.

In Marcy’s case, she realized that as a child she would wake at this same 5-6 am but her parents, who didn’t want to wake up or have her get up, gave her a very strong message that it was not ok to wake up at that time.  As soon as she connected these pieces, it became very clear to her that her continuing to stay in bed after she woke up was a remnant of that old childhood message and pattern.

In this case, her old childhood pattern was in conflict with a current need.  Once she was able to recognize where the conflict was coming from and understand the two pieces, she was able to step into the place of deciding how she wanted to alter the pattern.

I will be teaching a coaching workshop on this very topic of “How Childhood Patterns Shape Actions Today”on Tuesday, February 2, 6:15-7:15 pm.  If you find that you seem to be reacting today in ways that don’t seem aligned with who you are or you want to change your patterns, I invite you to come explore!

I recently had a client for whom this example proved to be true.  Although Susie (not her real name) came in for BodyMind Coaching and we did uncover many connecting pieces to her larger goals, as she reached the end of her course of sessions, she still had residual constant pain in her right hip and leg.   Although she had been working with a chiropractor and I had also been using CranioSacral Therapy during our sessions, she wasn’ t finding any long lasting change. 

Although Susie hadn’t asked for soft tissue massage work as part of her coaching, which is an option with my clients, during our last session I suggested she might incorporate a bit of this modality to see if we could affect any change in her pain.  I have seen the phenomena before – a person who has tried other forms of treatment for pain finds significant release through massage.  And this proved to the be the case with Susie.  After just one session, she enjoyed a week free of pain – something that hadn’t happened for several years.

 Now, I’m not saying that the massage was the magical cure-all or that it was necessarily a better treatment.  Because in reality, what she had been doing before very likely could have played a role in having this particular massage be effective – kind of like you trying to unscrew a jar lid for 5 minutes then the person you hand it to opens it on the first try.  However, it does highlight the point that sometimes what needs to be released truly is just the muscles – the physical tension. 

Are you feeling tight?  Get a pre-holiday massage so you can enjoy the holidays with less stress!  Want to keep that stress down?  Take advantage of the holiday special and buy a package of 10 massages and get the 11th free.  Call my office at 262-782-1616 to get yours today.  And yes, they can be shared within the family so spread the love.

I had a client recently who discovered just such an expectation, which in her case was around exercise.  My client came to coaching to be able to function better in her life, specifically in managing a pattern of anxiety.  Part of this management revolved around the balance in her daily activities in taking care of her family and herself.  Within a couple sessions, she had a new anxiety tool kit in place and was functioning significantly better.  It was at this point that she choose to explore how to make exercise a more consistent factor in her self care.

As we looked at her exercise patterns, what kept coming up was that exercise didn’t make the top of her priority list yet she had a continuous underlying message that she “should” be exercising more often.  As we delved into the should and what the exercise should be and look like, she found that both her background as a nurse and her husband’s way of exercising had created expectations about what exercise should be for her…but that deep down she didn’t fully agree with them for herself.  Just by seeing the origin of the expectation, she was able to begin to look at the role SHE wanted exercise to be in her life.  She flipped the external expectation to a personal intention.  And with that change, she changed the energy around how she felt about exercise. 

She is now exploring the idea that exercise doesn’t have to be the same and have a rigid look or feel.  Rather, she is looking at how exercise can fit into her life with flexible ease, as part of a natural desire.  I’m confident that through her realizations and change in perceptions that she will develop a new, empowered relationship with exercise to fit her own needs.  And the critical component in making this change was the recognition that she was holding someone else’s expectation.

Are you feeling stuck?  If so, look and see if you have a hidden expectation lurking beneath the surface!

My client, Jane (not client’s real name), came for BodyMind Coaching because she didn’t like the way she responded with others and how she came across in her communications.  She was also experiencing a high amount of anxiety from her interaction and was wanting to develop new skills around communication and feel less inner tension.    Jane was fully committed and invested in changing this pattern, which is a key factor in succeeding.  So, from the outside this sounded like a perfectly reasonable and doable goal.

Initally she had great success with new skills she learned with me and was feeling less anxious and more confident inside.  Then she returned to work, which for her right now is within the family business, and the old pattern returned with a vengence.  She came in feeling distressed and wondering how she would ever be able to make a true change.

Her experience is quite normal.  Many patterns have been around for a long time and are deeply entrenched within you.  Therefore, creating a new pattern requires patience, time, and consistency with putting your energy into the new pattern which will replace the one you no longer want.  However, before you can transition into your new pattern, you need to be aware that there are layers or strands of belief within the old pattern that you need to identify and explore before you can move forward.

For Jane, she discovered two other strands in our last session.  Underneath the anxiety, she realized that she had a belief that the anxiety served her through providing a motivating force for change.  However, on further inspection, she realized that rather than moving her forward, the anxiety only served to keep her agitated and unhappy but didn’t get her out of the situations she doesn’t like.  Realizing that, she was able to release the belief that anxiety was required to make a change.

Then we explored a bit more because Jane still didn’t feel completely comfortable without the anxiety.  And as we explored, vital clues about her communication style rose to the surface, namely that her family uses a high degree of emotion in their communication to reflect a sense of importance or caring.  The message that she received growing up and still today within the family business is that if she isn’t responding with emotion and agitation to an issue, she is not taking the matter seriously.  Aha!  She found the root of the pattern which she had unconsciously agreed to as a child but have never fully realized. 

She has now found the critical elements in her pattern and is exploring what to do next to create a new pattern.  Without understanding all of these strands, however, she would not know what was holding her back or how she needed to move forward.

To me, parenting is the most challenging experience I’ve ever had.  It has all the makings of a great epic saga…the ups, the downs, the drama, the lessons on both sides, and even the budding romance (which we haven’t hit yet but I’m sure it’s on it’s way!).  Unlike coaching where I hold a neutral space and allow clients to discover their own best answers, as a parent I definitely do more guiding and laying down the laws.  As my daughter is getting older, though I will obviously still hold the “parent” space, I am hoping to give her more of the opportunity to discover her own best answers.  Sometimes there’s an overlap…her choices blended with seeds I have unconsciously or consciously planted.

This trip was my daughter’s idea…a counter proposal to my offer to send her to a language camp this summer.  She has expressed interest to be an exchange student and we both thought she needed a bit more skill before heading off for a summer.  Recognizing that she doesn’t like going to camps or being in strange places, she chose an opportunity for herself which met her goals and honored her comfort levels.  The seeds for this trip, however, began with my own passion for travel.  We’ve had the opportunity to go to Europe three times (my mother and her husband have lived in Germany 7 of the past 10 years) and we hosted a French exchange student and a Spanish exchange chaperone.  I’m excited that she shares my wanderlust and is open to expanding her horizons through learning about other cultures.  I don’t think I push but I certainly encourage and support the experiences she chooses to explore.

With each experience, I see her grow into her name…Grace.  Last year she stayed in Germany with my mother an additional three weeks after my son and I departed.  It was not all roses for her, though it had been her choice.  But that experience, with it’s challenges, allowed her to step onto the plane this morning with a new level of confidence that I can’t help but admire.

Here’s to the next generations…may they carry the best of us with their own unique skills born of this time in society.

Anyway, back to the teleclass.  David Neagle, who is a prominent life coach with a rags to riches story, was talking about two critical elements he discovered early on in his journey that were breakthrough tools to his moving forward.  The first was an internal shift that he sums up as “change your attitude”.  He recognized that a stumbling block, at that time, was his current attitude and beliefs.  He had been told to change his attitude by others but at some point it became an “internal aha” that clicked.  And changing his attitude was key.  Just in changing his attitude, his behaviors began to shift and he opened up to receive new opportunities in his life. 

He reinforced this shift by modeling the behavior of someone who held the picture of success that he was looking for.  And this was his second element to moving forward powerfully…finding mentors who can shorten your learning curve by not having to re-create the wheel.   He used growth seminars then coaches but one could use many different things as a mentor.

Both of these elements…aligning your beliefs to serve who you want to be today and finding resources to achieve those goals…are things I not only live but also offer up to my clients.  And one tool that I use to achieve both is Kundalini yoga.  Yoga may not on the surface look like a mentor because it’s not a particular person, at least not for me since I don’t have a single guru.  However, the teachings as a whole in Kundalini yoga offers a road map to living a life of healing and harmony that has been invaluable to me.  It is 5,000 year old, time tested technology and I see it working everyday in my life.  It is powerful and quick in transforming outdated patterns and is the single greatest element I have found that has transformed my life in huge ways.  The mantras and meditations also serve to expand my beliefs and align my mental beliefs with my higher truth.

What resources do you use to inspire and transform?  Taking a moment to reflect on this question can in itself me an important step on your journey.  As you explore this question, you might also be inspired to discover new resources to support yourself.

Here you can watch my journey in aligning my actions with my truth so I can live in health and harmony.  How do I do this, you might ask?  Great question!   I do this by trying to follow the cues and signals coming from my BodyMind and my communicating my needs and truth with greater clarity back to my BodyMind.  It is a vital street of 2 way communication.  

The term BodyMind for me refers to  the integrated nature of body, mind and spirit that is connected to my Infinite Self and inner wisdom.  I believe that our natural state of being is one of healing and harmony.   We have dis-ease and dis-harmony in our bodies and our lives because we are out of alignment with our core truth.  The answers to live connected to this truth are already there – in the language of the BodyMind.  The key is to be able to understand this language and communicate effectively.  In this blog, I am going to share with you how I have learned to do this and how these skills help me live in health and harmony.

No, I am not perfect in this alignment!  It is an on-going practice but one that I continually get better at and becomes easier.   This blog is a way I can share by story so you can see how dialoguing effectively with the BodyMind can expand your life in powerful and positive ways.   I will also share case studies from my practice as a BodyMind Coach.  We all can learn from each other’s stories. It is my hope that you can gain insight, connection, and tools from the stories to help you on your own path towards healing and harmony.

Feel free to post you own stories as well and join the circle of sharing and support.