EMBODIED TRANSFORMATION
Master Somatic Leadership Coach Amanda Blake and author of Your Body is Your Brain, has written an absolute must-read paper, The ABCs of Embodied Transformation. Blake hypothesizes that just about all of us get stuck with bad, stubborn habits that are difficult to change. So why is it that we tend to remain stuck in ingrained, unhealthy habits for so long? Blake writes it’s because we innocently use the wrong kind of intelligence to get unstuck”.
A major premise of Blake’s paper is that “the brain has its roots in the body. And this kind of behavioral pattern-learning is a whole-body process”. The brain is not just the command center that we have in our heads (what she calls the “head-brain”) – “your brain is actually distributed throughout your entire body”. This takes place via the body’s nervous system and so, “your body is your social and emotional sense organ”. The concept of embodiment is based on the realization that “our everyday experience of the world is inherently embodied”.
Unfortunately, for most of us, we’re unaware of the sensory information that gives us clues as to why we act and behave as we do. One class of sensory information is called interoception – “the class of perception that tells us about the world inside our own skin. Interoception can also be divided up into five perceptual organs: the heart, gut, lungs, skin, and connective tissue”. It is interoception that often drives our behavior and yet we are so focused on our external environment that we ignore the sensory information that resides within ourselves. Blake writes that “biologically our internal experience is a bit harder for us to access”. Additionally, our education system focuses on training our intellect and ignores teaching us “the messages that are hidden in your everyday sensations”. No wonder it’s near impossible for us to understand our sensations and our embodied intelligence.
Compounding the problem is the reality of the early growth of the human brain in infants. The young brain and its structures develop over time and “as they develop, they will take on a physical shape that is uniquely tuned to that infant’s early environment”. This includes the child’s social and emotional environment. Blake writes, “In our early-life rapid-growth mode, social and emotional behavioral patterns that work to optimize safety, connection, and respect are wired in very quickly. And once wired in, these patterns tend to be very persistent”. The complexity in adulthood stems from the fact that “the patterns we learn early in life are the most deeply rooted and long practiced. And these patterns become physically rooted in the brain and body”.
As the brain takes shape in response to its environment, “we develop embodied patterns that later trip us up”. What’s important to understand is that “Our behavioral patterns — both our strengths and our stuck spots — are stored in implicit memory. And one of the hallmarks of implicit memory is that you “remember” by enacting the thing you remember how to do”. Blake gives an example of a child raised by a loud family with lots of siblings. In response, the child must engage in shouting matches to be heard and “becomes loud and flamboyant in order to be heard”. Flash forward to adulthood when the adult is critiqued at work for engaging in bullying and overbearing behaviors. Blake writes that “your loud, pushy behavior is a memorized embodied response that happens more automatically than by choice”.
These stuck behaviors become inherently embodied. Blake gives another example of a child who grew up in a difficult family environment. To cope, the child became angry and learned to “bite back her words” and stay quiet. From an anatomical perspective, “biting back your words requires you to keep your mouth shut. And to keep your mouth shut, you have to tighten the muscles in your jaw”. Repeating this pattern for several years a neuromuscular pattern develops that holds your jaw tight for you. It’s not something you do on purpose — it’s just something that your body-brain does for you, constantly, all of the time. You’re so used to this state of affairs you may not even notice your jaw; you’re probably not even aware it’s tight. It’s just how your face feels”. This tight-jaw pattern becomes deeply embedded in the child’s brain-body and the associated behavior – not speaking out – persists time and time again.
The major premise of Blake’s paper is – “It’s this process of becoming who you are — of coming to embody certain ways of being — that gets you stuck. At one point in your life, you learn something useful. And you, being an exquisitely intelligent biological organism, puts that useful behavior on autopilot. Later your situation changes, and it turns out whatever you embodied then is no longer so useful now. But now that pattern is physically wired into your body and brain so that it emerges from you automatically, naturally, and effortlessly. Even (and sometimes especially) when you least want it to”.
Blake has developed a process – Study Then Shift™ – that helps you “embody new, more resourceful behaviors that give you more options and choices”. Simply put, you “must engage in an embodied approach to learning and change”.