During the AEQ breathing program, for the first time, I consciously felt my diaphragm, how shallow my breathing was, and mainly, due to the tightness of the abdomen, only with the upper part of the lungs. During the day, I noticed that I was constantly tightening my stomach and abnormally...
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE AEQ METHOD
Home » AEQ method » The foundations of the AEQ method
What is the AEQ method®?
The AEQ is a method that, through a higher awareness of the body, helps us truly feel ourselves and better satisfy our needs. It offers us the knowledge we require to understand the discomfort we feel when we increase the connection with ourselves, thus allowing us not to become afraid of our reality, which is stored in the body and our subconscious.
What are the prerequisites for us to achieve change in our lives?
The first step to change is self-awareness. Observe yourselves: your thoughts, fears, convictions, habits, and even your inaction. Most of us believe that we alone forge our path in life with our decisions. But is that really the case? I’d say not. Depending on how spiritually developed we are, we may make hardly any decisions daily that would fully express that we are clearly aware of our path and ourselves in the present moment. Most of us actually act as robots, self-sufficient, automatically programmed, running on old habits that were developed form emotional events from our past. This affects our physical condition – chronic pain, as well as our mental state – depression, anxiety, anger, and emotional instability.
What does the AEQ method teach us?
By learning the AEQ method, we learn how to act consciously. We train our consciousness to observe our thoughts, which allows our decisions and actions to come true by supporting our goals and desires.
The AEQ method teaches self-awareness and control of movement, thought processes, and actions. It restores the ability to control one’s muscles, body, and will. It offers an original way of relaxing the muscles, which affects stress mitigation.Why is having a connection with the body important?
It is incredibly important to develop the ability to feel your own body. This way we can improve and maintain ourselves with AEQ exercises. Being aware of oneself is extremely pleasant, even narcissistic; you pay attention to yourself and are changing the way your body functions using your conscious mind. Who am I that I am so important? We are just as important as the important people around us, which we should respect or love just as we love ourselves. This is why we think about ourselves and try to get to know ourselves deeply, nurturing the spiritual explorer inside us.
Why is it necessary to reinforce our awareness of body movements?
Our body always takes us on the path of the explorer. Something causes us pain, or we simply aren’t relaxed enough in our own body, making us feel contracted when performing certain movements. We’ve lost our ability to move with full awareness long ago. We don’t listen to and observe our movement. We take movement for granted, an activity that does not require excessive attention or control. But we can control and improve what we are aware of. If we train awareness, we can improve control over our thoughts, words, actions, and, last but not least, our movement!
What is the AEQ philosophy?
When we cultivate our self-awareness, we start living life to the fullest, as we are most likely to gradually abandon unhelpful and/or harmful habits – both psychological and physical. Our responses will be more appropriate, using our newly discovered potentials. A person is shaped by hereditary material, primary family and society. Beliefs, habits, behavioural and thought patterns, and information should be the guiding force in our vigilance: keep a watchful eye on our inner happenings and actions! That way, it will be easier for us to determine which burdensome patterns aren’t even necessary.
Through somatic research and the AEQ method, we coordinate our movement and improve the efficiency of our functioning and life.
It's true, genetics can play its part as well as your spiritual aspects, but most of what shaped you comes from your beliefs, imitation, and information received from others.
Once we’re aware of the consequences of our bad habits, we can decide to change them. Beliefs and actions that fit our desires and intentions will support us in achieving a better control of our mind and body. We don’t want to be programming equipment, but an organic computer, which is able to evaluate and change, as well as improve the programming equipment within it to improve the functioning of the whole.
- Headaches
- Jaw pain (TMJ joint)
- Neck pain
- Whiplash
- Frozen shoulder syndrome
- Thoracic outlet syndrome
- Knee pain
- Tendonitis
- Plantar fasciitis
- Muscle cramps
- Balances unnecessary muscle tone
- Improves movement coordination
- Lowers the difficulty of everyday movement
- Lowers fatigue and increases our ability to move, work and do sports
- Shallow breathing
- Fibromyalgia
- Hyperlordosis
- Sciatica
- Piriformis syndrome
- Back pain
- Disc hernia
- Hyperkyphosis
- Pain in the joints
- Makes childbirth easier
- Improves balance and orientation
- Makes learning easier
- Improves attention and sensitivity to deviations from normal movement
- Lowers and eliminates menstrual pain
- Scoliosis
- Migraines
- Bursitis
- Chronic fatigue
- Osteoartritis
- Tendonitis
- Carpal tunnel syndrome
- Helps with depression
- Improves general well-being
- Makes us more self-aware
- Lowers and eliminates chronic fatigue and burnout
- Improves the connectivity between our skeleton and body
- Improves posture, breathing, and regeneration post-effort
As we mentioned before, beliefs aren’t necessarily right or wrong, true or false. But regardless of their value, beliefs circulate and travel from generation to generation until they reach you. Once you’re aware of this and feel the consequences of bad habits, you can consciously decide to let go of beliefs and behaviours that do not support your desires and replace them with ones that will support you in achieving better control of your body and mind.
Remember that thoughts lead to sensations, which lead to action, which leads to results.
With the AEQ method, we eliminate the causes of chronic pain safely, gently, sensibly and in the long term.
It is an educational process with which we ‘’re-qualify ourselves and consciously change our behaviour, posture and movement. AEQ is an active, not passive method. It is a successful way of sensory-motor organic learning, which teaches us how to eliminate causes of most chronic muscle pain and movement limitations that plague our lives.
How was the AEQ method created?
The AEQ method was created by upgrading clinical somatics which studies the soma. Soma isn’t only how we perceive our body in first person, but also how we control it. It is a collection of sensory-motor functions, some of which are conscious, desired (acting under the influence of our will) and learned, while others are those we learned as children, and then forgot about them as we grew older.
What is the cause of chronically contracted muscles?
The cause for chronically tense muscles is the loss of conscious sensation and control over muscle tone. We lose the ability to stop a move whenever we want and then do something completely different. This is caused by sensory-motor amnesia, which develops due to injuries, habits, and exposure to stress. Our muscles have become accustomed to being tense and remain so due to sensory-motor amnesia, regardless of how consciously we try to relax them. Stretching, massage, chiropractors, or painkillers won’t help long term. If we wish to eliminate our problems, we have to feel and then teach our endlessly tense muscles to relax.
How to relax chronically tense muscles?
The AEQ method knows the solutions for changing the uninterrupted and unnecessary muscle tension. It enables them through changes in our brain or nervous system and their control over muscles and movement. Due to sensory-motor amnesia, the brain does not feel the contraction and simply forgets how to relax the contracted muscle when its tension and contraction aren’t needed.
While we use most pain relief methods to try and eliminate pain in a particular area of the body (necks, hips, back,… ), the AEQ method understands that pain is only an integral part of a wider pattern of our dysfunction. These patterns reflect our characteristic responses to stress, which include muscle contraction. Sensory-motor amnesia and the dysfunctions it causes are manifested in three specific integrated movement patterns called the green light reflex (go forward), the red light reflex (stop, go back), and the trauma reflex (the result of injuries).
What is the basic purpose of the AEQ method?
The basic purpose of the AEQ method is to increase orderliness when it comes to contracting and expanding muscles which participate or should participate during certain movement. There are two ways for muscles to participate during movement: by contracting (tensing) or by expanding (relaxing). Even the smallest of movements demand all muscles to cooperate and coordinate to perform the movement orderly and efficiently. This is only possible if no sensory-motor amnesia is present and we gradually relax with the help of AEQ exercises.
The brain’s mission is to guide the muscles in performing correct movement and coordinate their cooperation. This is why the AEQ teaches you how to feel your body. The brain creates much-needed order in the soma. Our level of orderliness determines whether we can perform more or less complex movements. We perform the movement easily, painlessly, with a pleasant feeling, and without resistance if our fitness level for the movements is high enough. However, if the movement requires regulation and a level of control that our neuromuscular system cannot control, we feel fear, resistance, and the need to overcome our limits to perform the movement anyway. We never see this in children, as they do not perform movements they are not yet ready for but remain in a comfortable zone that shows them the limits of their current knowledge.
Children are led to discover skills by curiosity, which allows them to slowly and progressively increase their knowledge without fighting or overcoming themselves. However, despite the perceived slow pace of the child’s approach to improving the development of new skills, their learning leads to progress, which adults cannot achieve even with diligence, effort, and overcoming themselves.
With the AEQ method, we learn to increase understanding and feeling, as well as self-control. The more we feel our true state, the more we realize why we are tense and why something hurts us. Let’s find out where the solution lies. The final result is greater relaxation.
Read more about the foundations of the AEQ method
Principles of the AEQ method
Through many years of practice, I have noticed that 80 to 90% of chronic pain is caused by sensory-motor amnesia (SMA). This is a condition in which the sensory-motor neurons of the cerebral cortex…
Efficiency / Inefficiency
The result of order is efficiency, while the result of disorder is inefficiency. We feel the first as a pleasant emotion, comfort and satisfaction. The other is felt as discomfort, repulsive, anger and dissatisfaction. We all know…
Changes through self-observation
The first step to change is self-awareness. Observe yourself: your thoughts, fears, beliefs, habits, actions, and inactions. Put yourself under a microscope. Most of us believe we alone direct our lives with our own decisions.
The relationship between time, attention and energy
All three quantities are interdependent, and where one is lacking, the more it is necessary to invest in the second or third. Knowledge and motor intelligence have a strong influence on the relationships between them.
Closing the gap
The division between the physical and the energetic, which in the AEQ method is called sensory-motor amnesia, cannot be eliminated only with knowledge of bodily processes and the interdependence of mind and body.
The body and the subconscious
he body and subconscious have the task of chronically maintaining a state of apparent homeostasis (a process that allows the physiological processes and bodily structure of the organism to not change significantly despite…
A change in the structure and function of consciousness, subconsciousness and body
Learning the AEQ method by simultaneously acting on the body and consciousness allows for a real change in the subconscious if the person is prepared to do this process properly, which is anything but easy and fast.
Focus
If we wish to reach our desired goal in the most efficient way possible, we must follow this simple rule: Whatever the mind does, the body must do, and vice versa. We have all experienced something similar…
TESTIMONIALS
I'm writing this because I haven't had any serious problems with my body. The only thing that was happening to me was pain in the buttocks, and even this was the result of an injury - slipping on muddy ground due to my dog's movement. I had pain in my...
In June 2016, we discovered that our then-11-year-old daughter had scoliosis. A visit to the doctor and an x-ray scan confirmed that it was a 22-degree shift. They immediately recommended a conservative treatment...
I feel that participating in your breathing program has helped me take one step closer toward myself. Even though I am used to not listening to my body I am now more aware of how deeply my face muscles, neck muscles, back muscles and shoulder muscles are contracted. I am...
The more I perform AEQ exercises, the better I understand the holistic connection. Change is only possible when we take responsibility. Nowadays, I don't suppress my feelings and emotions to myself or hide...
I have been searching for solutions for many years with different teachers and therapists but I haven’t been able to achieve my desired results yet. I am glad that I finally found a teacher with an immense quantity of knowledge like you. This is the first time I’ve heard of...
I recommend the AEQ program to anyone who wants to eliminate or alleviate their chronic condition with the help of the AEQ method.
I joined this program because I learned, through previous programs, how very tense I am. I began learning how to relax and feel my muscles, as well as how to correctly perform and lead AEQ exercises. I realized how important correct nasal breathing is. Mine was the opposite. It was...
During the 3-week program, I made progress in the sense that I managed not only to become aware, but also to internalize certain states, awareness, posture, etc. I no longer wonder if something is right or wrong and I am not in a dilemma or struggling with the feeling of...
In the beginning, when I was still getting to know the exercise, I told myself what needed to be done as I read in the description of the exercises you sent us. When I understood the exercise, I mainly performed it automatically, like any other exercise. It was important for...
This was my second breathing program. Last year I attended the 60-day course, and this year I attended the 30-day one. Nine months have passed since the start of last year's program and the end of this year's. In between, there is training for the AEQ teacher's Level 1. In...
I was slowly giving up on my back and leg problems; Even a hip replacement at the age of 44 didn't fix the painful walking. Although the x-rays confirmed that the operation was a great success, to my great disappointment...
Raising emotional maturity is not an easy thing; there is no room for pretense. Aleš led the program professionally and creatively, with many additional explanations, which enabled the participants to understand our states and the feelings we experienced during the program. Sometimes the explanation was not pleasant to hear; it...
At first, I noticed how free my rib cage became and the increased ability to express happiness, love, and anger. Now I am learning how to use my anger more effectively – not suppressing it but also not going completely mad because, during the program, I also allowed myself this...
I have been dealing with hip pain for a while now. The results that I got back from traditional doctors have not shown anything special. They offered me painkillers but I rejected them because I knew this was not the right solution. The pain escalated at a workshop where two...