AEQ teaches emotional maturity. Maturity means the ability to define and use the emotions we feel. It means understanding why we created these emotions, since emotions are always the result of an imbalance between ourselves and our environment. When we are able to determine the cause and express emotions in an appropriate and mature way, we can achieve what we desire. The same applies to emotions and influences that come from the environment and affect us. How we respond to these influences physically, subconsciously, and consciously is strongly dependent on our emotional maturity.
Emotional maturity determines the intensity of feelings and emotions under which our actions are still influenced by the frontal lobes. At such times, we consciously influence our state, behavior, and actions and are aware of the consequences of our actions in the future. However, if the feelings, emotions, and influences are so strong that they exceed our current level of emotional maturity, the influence of the frontal lobes on our future actions decreases, while the influence of the body and subconscious increases. Then we behave as we were taught in the past. This is not necessarily bad, as past responses can often be appropriate and useful, but it means that our future will be a chronic repetition of the past, taking into account the changed circumstances of the present.
Since today’s environment is quite different from the past, we often do not realize that the past is repeating itself, as it is not identical. However, with the help of an AEQ teacher, by observing our life more broadly and deeply and increasing our self-awareness during AEQ exercises, we can notice repeating events, relationships, and consequences. If these consequences are positive and improve our life, it makes sense to keep them, but if they are negative, they need to be changed.
To increase emotional maturity and expand it into areas where we find it insufficient, we must reduce sensory-motor amnesia. Only in this way can we properly recognize and accept feelings, emotions, and influences—even if they are unpleasant, threatening, or shameful. It is about defining the real emotion, not a relative feeling that might be more convenient in the moment. We can perceive emotions more realistically by reducing sensory and motor amnesia. Later in the process of increasing emotional maturity, the partner relationship also becomes more important, as it helps calm and stabilize the process by reducing fear and resistance to how the environment reacts to our increased emotional maturity. This allows us to become increasingly aware of our surroundings and ourselves within it and to find the causes of certain emotions more quickly and deeply. In this way, we increasingly respond to our state and that of the environment with the influence of the frontal lobes, thereby more often shaping our future through reason—reason increasingly connected with the body and aware of the relationship between ourselves and our surroundings.
Emotions can be manipulated in much the same way as we learn to manipulate movement during AEQ exercises. We can raise, intensify, or reduce an emotion when we realize that it is merely a past response that may be harmful today, even if it was once essential and useful. Just like it was important to know how to send a fax twenty years ago, but that skill is no longer needed today. In any case, we can direct the emotion more accurately and effectively—toward the right target, in the right way, and at the right time—to achieve the desired reaction. A desired reaction is simultaneously the desired future result. Higher emotional maturity increases the influence of the right hemisphere on our understanding of events, even at higher levels of nervous system arousal. This increases our chances of functioning well in a group and understanding the need for cooperation for more effective division of work and problem-solving.
In AEQ, through explanation, we increase understanding of the importance of proper emotional maturity, and through exercises, we reduce sensory-motor amnesia. This allows us to feel our body better, and then act more appropriately in the present for a better state in the future. When we feel the body better through exercises, we also better sense what is happening in the body when we are not doing exercises. We better perceive our emotions, understand why we have them, and thus can more precisely determine whether they are a real consequence of current events or a subconscious bodily response created in the past. We also more easily recognize when we are reacting inappropriately to an imbalance in ourselves or the environment due to past experiences. In other words, by reducing SMA, we allow the actual state to come closer to our consciousness, we become more aware of it, and are forced to understand and respond to it consciously. This in turn raises emotional maturity and enables further reduction of SMA and ever-increasing and expanding emotional effectiveness.
This increases our ability to direct our life energy in the most optimal way to achieve desired results, thereby raising the effectiveness of our life. Pain and illness are the consequences of ineffective living. The more we increase the effectiveness of our life, the fewer problems we have with pain and disease—especially if these are caused by improper functioning of the autonomic nervous system or are autoimmune or psychosomatic in nature.
Due to bad experiences from childhood, people often struggle to express anger in a mature and appropriate way. If we take a deep breath and open the chest, we allow anger to flow freely. Many therefore retreat into a defensive and passive posture of surrender. Those who are depressed or apathetic have surrendered and usually do not have anger in their emotional repertoire, even though anger is strongly activated as a secondary emotion they are unaware of. The body must establish defense mechanisms to reduce the harmfulness of this emotion. The most effective defense mechanism for reducing emotional intensity is lowering the quality of breathing.
The less oxygen reaches the muscles, the less life energy is created in them. The less life energy in the muscles, the less intense our emotions. Less life energy also means less vitality, as a lack of life energy leads to death. We obtain life energy from the oxygen we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Therefore, it makes sense to raise emotional maturity, as it enables us to maintain life energy at an appropriate level and to use it wisely and efficiently. However, emotional maturity according to the AEQ method should not be confused with emotional intelligence, as the two are not even remotely the same. The former cannot be raised without AEQ exercises, while the latter does not require such exercises.
Aleš Ernst, author of the AEQ Approach
