6:30Hi Reader!
Thanks to those of you who let me know that last week's post resonated; I love hearing it. To me, it means something special that we share parts of our human experience. This week has been governed by the realization that, once we give space to our fears, we also create space for change. For me, it was trying to find new ways to adapt to a set of changing circumstances, some of which are totally outside my control.
Musings
I think, like everyone else, there are circumstances in life that I cannot change. I can't change the fact that my children need me, a lot, and that right now this leaves me with very little time for myself. I can't change my son's disability. There are responsibilities I carry, realities I live in, and limits to how much time, energy and freedom I have on any given day.
And yet... I've been realizing that saying I can't change this can mean several very different things at once: There are things I genuinely cannot change. There are things I could change, but choose not to. And then there are things I think I cannot change, perhaps because they have been this way for so long that I've stopped imagining them differently.
Being able to tell the difference matters.
For the things I truly cannot change, perhaps the work is acceptance. Not resignation, but recognizing the boundary of what is actually within my control, so that I stop exhausting myself pushing against it. For example, living with a chronic illness, or accepting a physical limitation, or traumatic events of the past.
For the things I don't want to change, there is something different to recognize: this choice brings me something, and I am making a choice. I may not love everything that comes with that choice, and sometimes the cost may feel very high, but recognizing that I am choosing and what I get as a result of that choice gives me back some agency. And maybe an opportunity to find that something in a less costly way?
And then there is that third category, which I find particularly interesting: the things that feel fixed, but perhaps aren't. The routines, assumptions, relationships, ways of organizing our time, our bodies, even our thoughts, that have become so familiar that we no longer see the alternatives.
I've written before about freedom, and about how freedom isn't necessarily the absence of constraints. I'm thinking about that differently this week. Maybe it's about degrees of freedom: the possibilities for movement that remain available to us within the constraints of our lives.
Because even when I can't change the larger structure, I can ask: Where is there room to move?
Maybe I can't create an entire free day, but I can create an hour. Maybe I can't remove a responsibility, but I can change how I organize myself around it. Maybe I can't change another person, but I can change one part of how I respond to them. Maybe I can't make the painful thing disappear, but I can move differently enough to discover that it isn't painful in every direction.
And sometimes the change available to us is very, very small. That's okay.
I wrote in the very first issue of NeuroNotes that healing is a process of making small changes until, eventually, our inner state is completely different. I still believe that. Perhaps the question isn't always How do I change my whole life all at once? Perhaps it's simply: Where is the space for change in my life, and what is the smallest change I can make there?
Because finding one place where something can move may be enough to remind us that we are not entirely stuck. And perhaps that is where hope begins.
🎉 NEW — The NeuroSomatic Lab 🧠
I'm launching a new monthly online event: the NeuroSomatic Lab, a 90-minute space where we'll take one question about the brain, body and nervous system and actually experiment with it together.
Each month, I'll bring a little science, a question worth exploring, and a series of NeuroSomatic experiments using movement, sensation and attention. There is nothing to achieve and no right answer to find. The point will be to get curious about what happens when we change something and notice what becomes possible.
LAB #1 — Where is your space for change?
Thursday, November 12 · 6:30–8:00 p.m. ET · Online · CA$55
We'll explore how very small changes in movement, attention and sensation can create new possibilities — and what that can teach us about change beyond movement.
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🎁 NeuroSomatic Practice of the Week
For this week's practice, I'm bringing back one that fits this exploration particularly well. This time, instead of simply looking for ease, use the practice to notice where you have a little more room to move: your degree of freedom.
🧠 NeuroMinute...
Your brain doesn't change as a single unit. Learning can begin with changes in particular connections and local circuits, while the effects of learning are expressed through networks of interconnected regions. Experience can alter synaptic connections, local circuitry and patterns of functional connectivity, which means that a small change in one part of a system can influence how the larger system organizes itself.
Movement gives us a particularly useful way of understanding this. Your body has an enormous number of degrees of freedom: many different joints, muscles and movement combinations can accomplish the same basic task. The nervous system doesn't have only one possible solution available to it. It learns to coordinate among many possibilities.
Motor-learning research suggests that exploration and variability can play an important role in discovering those solutions. Variability isn't automatically beneficial (meaning randomly doing things differently isn't a magic recipe for neuroplasticity) but carefully exploring variations gives the nervous system new information to compare, discriminate and learn from.
This is one of the reasons I work with such small variations in NeuroSomatic practice. Moving a little differently changes the sensory information arriving in the brain. That new information gives the nervous system something different to work with, and the opportunity to reorganize.
We don't need to change the whole system at once. Sometimes we simply need to find the place where movement is possible, introduce a small difference, and see what becomes available from there.
So, where is your degree of freedom?
Warmly,
Joana
Take the next step...
Come and explore this work with me. Book your private session today.
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