Your body has a story to share about your experiences with connection and belonging.
Can you relax in the presence of another person?
Does the connection feel tight? Spacious? Grounding? Destablizing?
Do you overextend or withhold care?
Can you feel connected to yourself while you connect with others, or do you habitually prioritize one over the other?
Do you feel consistently misunderstood or long for more attention in your relationships?
What triggers you?
What needs feel consistently unmet?
Our patterns in relationships - how we feel, what we do, what we think - are not random, but are maps of what we have chartered.
They show how connected we’ve felt to other people and what those connections have been like for us: if we’ve felt safe and secure in relationships, if we’ve been able to trust its longevity, or if we’ve had to fight for attention, if we’ve had to rely on ourselves.
They reveal what has been lost or missing: what our bodies are hungry for.
While we may not consciously hold memories that make us make sense, our bodies remember. They remember everything we’ve experienced since conception and at least some of what our ancestors experienced.
Your body can share some of that wisdom with you when you slow down and explore the sensations and impulses that arise as you interact with your body, other people, and other aspects of your environment.
The Relational Movement Cycle
The Relational Movement Cycle offers a framework for this exploration based on the Basic Neurocellular Patterns, which are a series of automatic movement patterns that emerge in infancy. (This framework comes from Body Mind Centering and the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen).
These movements shape how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world.
When these developmental movement patterns occur without major disruption, our bodies integrate these movements into their repertoire and can easily access all of them as they are needed. There is no hierarchy to the movement patterns, they are all important and needed.
However, when these movement patterns are disrupted due to abuse, neglect, poverty, illness, and other traumas, they can remain incomplete and become patterns where we feel stuck and emotionally unmet.
Let’s explore each of them individually:
Yield
Yield is how we experience gravity; it is a state of relaxed alertness and receptivity to support. In infancy, yield is the experience of being held and supported in that hold. If the circumstances for yield were not present you might struggle with chronic tension or collapse.
Push
Push is how we begin to experience embodiment and independence. Pushing into the ground is how babies begin to sit up and eventually crawl. The increase in movement provides our bodies with important data about where we end and the rest of the world begins; it is the foundation for embodying Self and our ability to say no and set boundaries. If push was not supported when you were an infant (or in your ancestors' lives), you might have rigid or porous boundaries that make connection difficult. You might not have a strong sense of who you are.
Reach
Reach is where we begin to say yes. It’s our curiosity and longing. Infants eventually begin to reach out and touch objects. They learn pretty quickly if their curiosity is encouraged, punished, or ignored. If reach has not been supported, you might overextend yourself for connection or, conversely, close yourself off from the world. You might worry you will never have the kind of life you’ve always longed for.
Grasp & Pull
Grasp & Pull are separate movements but work together. They help us bring the things we want and need toward us. If grasp and pull were not supported, or if resources were scarce (in your life or your ancestors’ lives), you might struggle to feel for “enough”ness and consistently end up taking more or less of something than you need.
Exploring how these movements feel in our bodies, which are more or less familiar, and which we feel entitled to or undeserving of can help us understand what we might need in order to feel more connected and able to offer that connection to others.
It’s important to note that while the movement patterns that are unintegrated may reveal things about our caregiver's parenting abilities, it is likely even more true that they reveal things about their own experiences of receiving support and nourishment, which is then a reflection of their caregivers, and so on. The ways that we struggle in relationships and in life in general are never personal failings and not always about our personal experiences, but protective patterns rooted in real experiences that may span generations.
Belonging Building Blocks
You might see yourself in some of these descriptions or feel curious to know more.
Belonging Building Blocks is an opportunity to explore each of these movement patterns on a deeper level. Registration for this round is open through Friday, November 1st.
I'm looking forward to holding space and practicing with you!
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