A year ago, I contacted Aleš Ernst for the first time. I saw that someone called him a wizard, and I would agree. It is true that you have to actively participate, remain brave, and persevere under his leadership, which...
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.
Conditions that can be eliminated by learning the AEQ method
The AEQ method is very effective with relieving and eliminating chronic pain and conditions such as:
- 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
A conscious decision for change is important!
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
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