How to find out – with a quality connection within ourselves and accept feelings and insights even when they are inconsistent with our plans and desires.
To become better, we need to exit our comfort zone and go beyond our current abilities, but not always and not at any cost.
The fact is that athletes find it increasingly difficult to progress and remain unharmed due to their reduced ability to concentrate, as today’s workouts take place too much by force. What’s missing is paying attention to motor intelligence. An athlete should train accordingly for a natural increase in strength and speed, without unwanted side effects and understanding of the equal importance of emotional stability and intelligence for healthy progression towards a set goal.
There are multiple reasons for the state of disconnect between the mind and body. Man’s upright posture raised the head above everything else. The human brain is extraordinary, and the most complex thing known to man created by nature. A human’s ability to understand and thing surprises and inspires us. Achievements created in culture or important scientific inventions and discoveries lead man to connect his mind with God. This idea is already expressed in the Bible.
Man was forbidden from eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge so that he will not become like God. We know that man eventually did eat from this tree. Through civilization’s development, a divide between the body and mind began, but it is becoming increasingly clear that upsetting this balance is a severe diversion.
The divide
Despite having the same body structure and functions like other mammals, he is the only one truly balanced in an upright posture. Its basis is the increased role and strength of our buttock muscles. Upright posture has exposed his body’s vulnerable parts (abdomen, neck, crotch) to the world. Exposed like this, he became more aware of his emotions and developed the ability to express them.
At the same time, his arms gained a new purpose and meaning. When you observe a pianist playing the piano, you feel like their hands have a life of their own. Humanity owes their hands for a highly developed sense of touch, which is extremely important to understanding reality and is the one with the most influence on the mind’s development and operation.
Fortunately, we have become increasingly aware of how important the body is and not an entity different from the spirit and mind. The ancient Greeks said: A healthy mind, in a healthy body.
Simultaneously, there is the fact that thoughts and feelings do not always coincide, and the mind and body do not go hand in hand. A person can think without moving the body. At the same time, a person can perform an unconscious move. Are we aware enough that the mind’s condition influences the body, while the condition of the body influences the mind? Understanding these two aspects of mind and body, their surface polarity and inner unity were brought to us by Reich with his concept: the mind and body need both opposition and unity to function, as they work through common energy.
The AEQ method digs into the roots of chronic muscle pain and its consequences, eliminating only a change in the sensory-motor loop.
On the surface, the body and mind act on each other. The mind influences the body, while the body’s feelings and impulses influence the mind. However, at a deeper level below the membrane, this separation no longer exists. Still, only a unique organism with a life energy collector at its core (which collects mainly in the abdominal cavity) allows both mind and body to function. The body responds to this energy with movement and acts, while the mind creates thoughts, wishes, and images that we can be aware of or not. However, muscles generate biological energy by converting the chemical energy of food and fluids in the presence of oxygen.
Chronic muscle contraction of the body causes blockages and distortions in the flow of this energy, leading to permanent changes in sensations and impulses from the inside towards the body and mind’s surface. This blockage divides the body and mind even further and throws them off balance. We consciously understand and are convinced that the connection exists, but it does not work deep enough due to the blockage and therefore does not reach our basic unity.
The blockage creates a divide in the unity between our personality and character, our ego and persona. Not only does it separate the psyche from the body, but it separates consciousness that is limited to the surface of the body. Thus, man no longer perceives the state within himself, and a divide is created between the present and the past.
Hope
The divide caused by sensory-motor amnesia cannot be eliminated only by knowledge of body processes and the interdependencies of mind and body. Knowledge is a surface phenomenon and belongs to the area of consciousness. To function properly, we need to feel the flow of energy and feel the bodily sensations and emotions. Only then will understanding become perception. We need to fulfill and comprehend theory through practice because only then does knowledge become useful.
He wants a ripe apple in May and a baked pie in half an hour, and at the same time, he is surprised that the taste of the apple or pie is not as it should be.
But for a man to bring his feelings to the surface, he has to consciously relax the tensed-up muscles and lower the loss of the elasticity of his fascia. This is much easier said than done, as muscle stiffness was created in childhood precisely to prevent this expression of feelings and emotions. Such a person isn’t ready for it, for life to take over control over the ego. He is too afraid of the consequences, or, more accurately, the feeling of powerlessness that develops when he surrenders a part of that power to the body.
To denounce the dictatorship of the ego, man must hope and believe in himself and his body. But hope is the exact thing that he lacks since he perceives the body as weak, unreliable, and in need of constant control. The only thing left for us in the absence of hope is control of consciousness over the whole.
This division and distrust are felt very clearly during performing AEQ exercises correctly. You will feel and understand the extent to which your condition is unrelated and change it with them. However, this will not go without resistance from the ego, and an abundance of blinding maneuvers that will be used to deter you from change. These maneuvers help you understand and change the teacher’s AEQ method.
The method enables the re-learning of a person’s primary natural perceived movement, which improves self-awareness and raises efficiency in movement, which is the most important factor in an athlete’s success. A person suffering from chronic or acute muscle pain or disturbed movement and asymmetry learns to observe, change, and sacrifice his body’s sensory-motor systems.
Education of this kind enters an area that science and the medical field haven’t yet covered. Namely, relieving, eliminating pain and relaxation, and improving muscle and nervous system function is key to a healthy life. They help make movement smoother.
The blockage creates a divide in the unity between our personality and character, our ego and persona.
The AEQ method digs into the roots of chronic muscle pain and its consequences, eliminating only a change in the sensory-motor loop. We can achieve this with the help of understanding, which will change the way our brain functions. They send impulses to the body. They are also reprogrammed using the AEQ method, which is important in treating defects and inefficient patterns of functioning of the neuromuscular and skeletal systems.
This is the path to optimizing muscle tone, intermuscular coordination, energy systems, and the coordinated functioning of all parts of the system we call the catfish; man is not a machine, but a mind-guided body.
Most athletes develop a strong separation of bodily sensations and consciousness as early as childhood, allowing them to feel less pain. Therefore, they are better, faster, and more competitive than their peers; they progress quickly at the beginning of their careers. But this progress goes only to a certain stage since they have suppressed how they feel. This increasingly limits them; they get sick more often, get injured, and fall into various overtraining/burnout stages. They spend more and more energy on the way to the desired goal and thus get the feeling that they have to work even harder for it, which pulls them into a spiral of burnout, which is interrupted by an injury or loss of motivation.
Impossible goals
Simultaneously, this division causes set goals to be impossible to achieve, as they are determined based on distorted feelings and stifled intuition. The determination of the time needed to achieve the desired is distorted. The power of will and stubbornness at the expense of overcoming oneself is glorified. The role of pain is replaced, which, instead of pointing out inefficiency, proves the approach’s correctness.
To become better, we need to exit our comfort zone and go beyond our current abilities, but not always and not at any cost. An athlete with a mind and body divided becomes a victim of self-destructive behavior towards his body through setting impossible goals and a timeline to achieve it. He is not aware that he cannot achieve what he has set through the naturally conditioned strengthening of body and mind, which is much slower than what his ego sets for himself.
He wants a ripe apple in May and a baked pie in half an hour, and at the same time, he is surprised that the taste of the apple or pie is not as it should be.
The answer to the question “how to find out what my real goal is” is therefore conditioned by the quality of connection within myself and the ability to accept feelings and insights even when they are inconsistent with our plans and desires. With the ability to accept criticism and the realization that it will take much more time to achieve the desired or the desire to adapt to current reality and gradually raise it higher and higher through growth while maintaining sufficient control over the bigger picture to prevent too high a rise and fall in other areas of the athlete’s life.
We can observe this in top athletes who regularly fall into life crises and unreasonable decisions, frequent depression, and even death.
The AEQ method makes it possible to define the true goal better and dynamically change it through change and growth by enabling and encouraging the return of the mutual harmony of mind and body with which we were born into this world. In Western cultures, we all too often like to forget that the body is not just organs, skin, muscles… Even the mind cannot represent the superior aspect of human existence, while the body is merely supposed to serve it.
The subjective part of a person, represented by bodily feelings and emotions, is an equally important part of the puzzle that enables the solution from the loop in which most athletes fall.
