The influence of the modern era activates a stress response, while our consciousness isn’t aware of the threat, which activated the body’s stress response. This is also necessary if there are too many things causing stress and they affect us for too long because our consciousness cannot take it, using sensory-motor amnesia to protect us from the stimuli, which are all important, and the attacks from our surroundings, which are trying to get our attention and with it our money. Because of this, we remain in stressful situations and only vaguely and distortedly or are not at all aware of the long-term impact of these situations on us because to think about the long-term consequences of what is happening, we need to use the right hemisphere of the brain. The sympathetic state of the autonomic nervous system reduces its influence and puts the left hemisphere in the foreground, which understands the world in a short-term and narrow way.

The AEQ defines this state as the basis of modern life and behavior. Another basis is that the hidden stressors in the lives of most people living in the modern world are emotional. And just as laboratory animals cannot escape or fight abuse and helplessness, so too do people find themselves in relationships and lifestyles, and emotional patterns that are harmful to their health in the long term. The higher the level of economic development in a society and environment, the more anesthetized people are. They don’t feel their bodies and are unaware of the emotional reality, and lack the emotional maturity they possess. They no longer feel what is happening with their bodies and are unable to act in a self-defensive manner or cannot change what is destroying them.

Economic development is based on efficient time usage and an increasingly large number of events, stimuli, and actions in a certain time period. Which is contrary to the operation and principles by which emotions operate. These require adequate time for their development and impact, and the need for time is directly proportional to the strength and complexity of the emotion. Such an emotion, however, needs a body and the integration of body and consciousness for effective use. However, this is not the case for emotions in an economically developed society. Therefore, the separation of consciousness from the body is a logical and inevitable consequence of the demands of society, which is inconsistent with the natural functioning and structure of the body and emotions in it, as well as the importance of deeper relationships for the normal functioning of the whole and an appropriate attitude to stress. The deeper the relationship, the greater the trust, and the greater the trust, the less we overreact to the problems presented to us by everyday life.

A chronically activated stress response reduces the contact and connection of consciousness with the body, not because the “fight or flight” response is unnecessary but because it can no longer be felt, recognized, acted upon, and regulated. In the same way, we ignore the noise a train makes after living next to train tracks for a while. Just like stress, emotions are often activated and with a legitimate purpose. And just like stress, emotions also have multiple components. To understand the purpose of AEQ learning, knowing the levels of emotions in terms of their origin, awareness, and impact is very important.

Aleš Ernst, author of the AEQ method and AEQ breathing