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. But is that really true? I dare say that no matter 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. For the most part, we act like robots, self-sufficient, automatically programmed, under the tutelage of old habits. By performing exercises of the AEQ Method, we learn to act consciously. We ground consciousness as an observer of our own thoughts, allowing our decisions and actions to materialize in ways that support our mission.
It is incredibly important to develop the ability to feel your body. We can maintain this with the so-called somatic movements. Being self-aware is extremely pleasurable, even narcissistic; you pay attention to yourself and monitor your body’s functioning with a conscious mind. Who am I to be so important, important? We are as important as the people around us, whom we should respect or love as we do ourselves. Therefore, let’s think about ourselves and try to get to know ourselves in depth and nurture the spiritual explorer in us.
But then there is always our body, which is the first to take us on the path of an explorer. Some of us are in pain, or we are just not relaxed enough in our own bodies, and we feel as if we are tight during certain movements. For a long time, we no longer know how to move with full awareness, by listening to the movements and observing them, movement is something we take for granted, an activity that does not require excessive attention or control. We can control what we are aware of; if we train our awareness, we can improve control over our thoughts, words, and actions. And movement! With somatic exploration, not only do we coordinate our movement, but we program our actions.
When we train in self-awareness, we begin living life more fully since we will most likely drop some useless or harmful mental and physical habits. Our psychophysical response will be more appropriate, using our newly discovered potential. A person is shaped by their genetic material, primary family, and society. Beliefs, habits, patterns of behavior, thinking, and information should guide us in our vigilance: let’s keep a watchful eye on our inner happenings and behavior! That way, we will easily discover which hereditary material, in the form of burdensome patterns we so faithfully carry with us, we do not need at all. When we become aware of the consequences of bad habits, we can decide to change them. Beliefs and actions that match our desires and intentions will support us in achieving better control of our body and mind. We become the cameraman, not the recording, the contents of the glass, not the glass. We don’t want to be software, but a computer that can evaluate and change the software on it so that it works better and better as a whole…
It’s true that our heritage and spiritual aspects can also play a role, but most of what has shaped you come from other people’s beliefs, habits, and information. As mentioned earlier, beliefs are not necessarily right or wrong, true or false, but regardless of their value, beliefs circulate and travel from one generation to the next until they reach you. Once you realize that and feel the consequences of bad habits, you can consciously choose to abandon all beliefs that don’t align with your desires and will replace them with convictions that will support you in achieving better control over your body and mind. Try to understand that your beliefs are not who you are and are not necessarily bound to you. Although you may believe them to be valuable, they have no more meaning than you give them credit for. Nothing has meaning in itself except the meaning that you give something. If you’re like most people, you’ll believe something, so it’s best to embrace beliefs that support you, free beliefs.
REMEMBER THAT THOUGHTS LEAD TO FEELINGS, WHICH LEAD TO ACTION, AND ACTIONS LEAD TO RESULTS.
With the AEQ method, we try to eliminate chronic pain in a safe, gentle, rational, and long-term way. This is an educational process with which we ‘retrain’ the muscles and consciously change our movement. It is an active, not passive therapy, it is a successful method for sensory-motor training that teaches us to eliminate the causes of most chronic muscle pain.
The AEQ method is the study of soma, where soma is not only how we perceive our body in the first person but also how we control it. Soma is a set of sensory-motor functions, some of which are conscious and voluntary (act under the influence of our will), and we have learned them, while others are those we learned as children and then ‘forgot’ about.
Aleš Ernst, author of the AEQ method and AEQ breathing
