Hello Reader!
This week, i've explored the process of change with a number of clients (and in my own life). So many of us have a version of "I should be better by now; i've tried this and that, and still nothing changed; I just need to get rid of this trauma/pain/blockage... and then I will finally be happy or at peace". I myself have sought to get rid of grief, imagining some fictional door I would suddenly upen into liberation. Yall... it's not that simple ... and thank God for that!
Musings
Are we there yet? Remember asking that from the back seat of the car when you were a kid? I wonder whether we ever really stop asking. We just change the destination. Once the pain is gone, once we've "resolved" the old trauma or finally fixed whatever is 'wrong' with us, then, surely, we'll be able to live fully.
But... what if there isn't a 'there'? I don't mean that nothing gets better, or that we should stop wanting to recover from pain or heal after loss. Of course things change. Pain can ease, we can regain mobility, relationships and circumstances evolve, and what felt unbearable becomes manageable or goes away. But the person living through all of this - you and me - that person changes, too. We are changed by every learning.
I find something incredibly liberating and deeply compassionate in this: we are always becoming. The way I experience myself today is not necessarily the way I will experience myself tomorrow. Accepting that there is no permanent, finished version of us doesn't take away our agency. If anything, it places it exactly where it might matter most: inside the process, rather than in some imaginary place outside ourselves from which we try to control the outcome.
Think of the way we relate to pain. When it becomes the condition for everything else (I'll start enjoying my life when it stops), we can end up organizing more and more of life around the absence of pain. The bracing that created protection becomes a tight prison. Instead of boxing ourselves into an avoidance of discomfort, we can attend to the body we have today, discover what is possible, and experiment with something different. A different way through. Grief has taught me something similar. Grieving isn't a threshold we cross once and for all into a world in which the loss no longer exists. It's an intimate process of living, learning and reorganizing around what has changed. The true value of it lies in the process, not in its end.
This is where imagination comes in. I think it is a fundamental part of agency. If we can only picture ourselves as we have always been, we limit the possibilities we are willing to explore. But we can imagine a different movement before trying it, a different response before making it, a different future before we know how to reach it. Imagination doesn't guarantee an outcome. It opens up a possibility for experience.
This is what I mean when I invite people to meet themselves where they are. Not where they should be, not where they used to be, and not at some promised finish line. Right here, as a living, sensing, learning and evolving person. What happens next is not entirely ours to control, but we are agents, not passengers.
Special private event - October 29 — What Moves You?
I'd like to invite you to explore this in person, in a small private gathering on October 29. What actually moves us? What gives us room to choose, to experiment, and to experience ourselves differently? Together with my friend Audrey Amar, a Change Management Expert, we'll explore these questions through movement, sensation and conversation.
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🎁 NeuroSomatic Practice of the Week
Let's make this embodied. I'm returning to one of my favourite NeuroMovement® lessons, the Pelvic Clock. Before you begin, notice your range of movement and what you expect to be able to do. As you explore the different directions, try imagining some of them too. Don't push to a result; just notice what you can sense, what changes, and whether another possibility becomes available. You can stop after ten minutes, or enjoy the full lesson.
The Pelvic Clock — explore, imagine, notice
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🧠 NeuroMinute...
Our brains do not just record what happens to us. They use experience to anticipate what might happen next, and to prepare possible responses. Imagination draws on overlapping systems involved in memory, planning and simulation of future events. Research on motor imagery also shows that imagining a movement recruits some of the networks used to perform it, even though imagining and doing are not the same thing.
Agency is the feeling that you can act to effect change. It is not the same as controlling the outcome. A sense of agency emerges in part as the brain learns to predict the consequences of our actions and compares them with what actually happens. We act, we choose, we receive feedback, and we update. That's what makes a small movement experiment so interesting: we can feel ourselves participating in change instead of waiting for a fixed result. Often what happens when we are injured, or depressed, or when we face big life changes, is that we feel helpless - we feel as though our sense of agency has taken a hit: what can we do? I think a large part of any recovery, and of resilience in general, is to conserve a realistic sense of agency: faith that we can act to change something.
And about that 'I'll finally be happy when...' thought: studies of affective forecasting find that we often overestimate how much a particular future event will shape our emotional lives. This does not make our goals meaningless. It reminds us that life continues to unfold before, during and after their achievement.
Earlier NeuroNotes: When Change Finds You
Earlier NeuroNotes: The Weight of Grief, the Gift of Release
Coming up — November 8: The Lab
On November 8, we'll take this exploration further in The Lab. A space to experiment with movement, imagination, and the possibilities that appear when we pay attention to ourselves in process.
Maybe the interesting question is no longer 'Are we there yet?' but 'What could I discover from where I am now?' Next week, I'd like to keep exploring what all this has to do with playfulness, joy, and vitality.
PS: You don't have to be finished to be alive.
Warmly,
Joana
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