Reading that link back, my stance back then is quite different to what I believe now.
These days I can’t see beliefs as being separate from the body. We absorb information through our senses, and so at root all our beliefs have their basis in our bodies.
This is illustrated in much of the NLP work I’ve done with people. If you manage to elicit a belief during an exercise and then ask the person to track back to where that belief came from, and if you’ve done enough to establish trust, rapport and a decent enough trance, they’ll almost invariably have a specific memory resurface as the source (often an experience they won’t have thought of for years, or maybe even something they’ll have repressed). They may not understand the memory at first, because the sensory modalities will surface from their unconscious before their consciousness has had time to track how the train of their own idiosyncratic logic has abstracted from that sensory bundle into a belief that has become deeply held.
Nevertheless, the belief is rooted in this mixture of what is usually visual and auditory memory (although sometimes powerfully olfactory and/or gustatory – the two are linked in may ways) with a strong kinaesthetic hook (in other words the attachment of value to the memory by means of the emotional response). From this source experience all further thinking is abstracted. To change the belief is to change the relationship to that experience, which will change the kinaesthetic relationship to it.
We don’t experience the world, we experience the effect the world has on our bodies. Because the root of belief is physical there’ll be physiological states that go along with them, which you’ll also elicit if the person you’re working with relives the memory that is its source. Their breathing and posture will change, they’ll exhibit the same muscular tension, the kinaesthetic sensation of the source experience will return.
Now imagine the effect this has on our physiology from when we’re born. A huge amount of our belief building happens in the first few years of life, when our body is developing. Patterns of experiences will produce specific muscular tensions, and we’ll build a repertoire of belief-associated physiological states based on what we have perceived has worked for us in the past. At this crucial stage of our development our bodies are altered as a result of these habitual patterns we fall into, and as a result some ways of being become built-in.
Any successful belief change systems have to take this into account. I’ll give you an example based on my own life.
My body type is quite top heavy; I have a very well built upper body that has nothing really to do with the amount I exercise. I have broad shoulders and strong arms. By contrast my legs - while not being exactly underdeveloped - are not accustomed to taking the strain of my upper body without locking at the knees for extra support. As a result I’m not hugely well balanced unless I put effort into bending at the knees and relaxing, which makes me feel more grounded. I put effort into becoming a better dancer by working on my legs, my footwork, but I still find my legs starting to vibrate and become energised when I relax my knees and become more flexible.
This is born out by some of the ways I talk about myself: “I have a lot on my shoulders right now.” Previous girlfriends have said they feel “safe” in my arms. I have a strong and protecting body.
The other side of this is that my physiology seems key to the fact that I project myself as something I’m not (or at least projects an idealised version of me), which is linked into many of my unconscious beliefs about myself (my body is my mind and my mind is my body. I am my body). I can have a charisma or persona that is at odds with my deeper, inner needs. Psychologists of the Reichian school (specifically Alexander Lowen and Sandy Cotter) would say that I developed physically in that manner because at some point I felt it wasn’t right to be myself, and so my entire body pulls upwards from its basic nature. Some of the memories that these beliefs are rooted in are accessible to my conscious mind, others are not and may never be. It’s probably that the earlier belief is the more crucial it is in the formation of this pattern and the less likely I am of experiencing that memory in consciousness at this point in my life.
Now over the last couple of years many of my friends have told me I’ve changed beyond recognition. I’ve changed jobs twice, started and finished two NLP courses, finished my marriage and started a new relationship, ceased self-defining as Christian. Two grandparents have died, my parents broke up, I’ve moved house three times, and my current girlfriend has a young son. I’ve just started driving, and have a brilliant band that I’m proud to drum for. My circumstances have changed hugely, and so have my beliefs about myself and what I’m capable of. My attitudes towards relationships, sex, life goals, spirituality – all these things are drastically different.
All these are what I’d refer to as surface beliefs (apart from maybe the stuff about sex). That’s not to belittle them – they’re powerful and important and they have resonance throughout my whole life. My physicality and the effects it has are still current, however. My tendency to try to hold the world’s problems on my shoulders is still there. My projection of my own problems until they reach cosmic proportions is still there. My ignorance of my own inner needs from my less developed inner core self are still there. My tendency to hide my flaws is still there.
These are things that will be with me for a while, because they’re built into my body. I can try exercises to build my lower body and its ability to support me, and I can try to stay diligent and notice expressions of this habitual behaviour as and when they occur, and try to do something different instead. It’s going to take time and work, whereas often surface beliefs can change in an instant when conditions are right and the right lever is used.
The physiological beliefs tend to be much more pernicious, because they’re physical and habitual and exist outside of consciousness for the most part. You tend to think you’re on top of them, when you’re only really on top of a tiny proportion of how they manifest in your behaviour. All of a sudden you experience a breakthrough when you’ve been feeling stuck for a while, and you realise it’s because the same old habits are manifesting in new ways. It keeps you on your toes.
It’s worth also noting that I love my body, and I love the traits that I have as a result of having my body. It’s not something that I want to fight against necessarily. A teacher who I respect once told me that the masterstroke with my type of personality/physiology is to turn the natural strength, protectiveness and kindness of my projected persona inwards on my inner self, so that I am the recipient of my own love and support. The reason I developed in this way is because I learned coping strategies for difficult experiences, and that’s something to be grateful for. But learning and growth demands that new strategies are found, and if I am to change and develop significantly as a person I have to turn a significant proportion of my attention to my body.
Because I am my body. |
