Cognitive – Somatic – Cognitive VS Somatic Cognitive (Adult leering versus early child development)
Recognition
During a recent Balance and A Fear of Falling class, participants asked how to get out of bed with greater ease. This led to an exploration of one of our earliest movement-learning patterns: rolling.
We began lying on mats, noticing small transfers of weight through the feet and pelvis as the bent knees moved gently from side to side. We then explored the weight of the shoulders, allowing the arms to move softly from side to side, followed by the head and eyes. Gradually, these separate relationships came together as a coordinated rolling movement.
From Spontaneous Movement to Conscious
Afterward, I demonstrated how the same rotational relationships could contribute to getting out of bed, with the legs providing counterbalance and the arms offering support.
Then I demonstrated rolling across the floor without interrupting the continuity of movement. Watching this brought back memories among participants of rolling down hills as children, and we began talking about the pleasure and joy that can accompany movement.
This experience brought me back to a distinction I have been exploring in my educational work.
Babies discover rolling through spontaneous movement, long before they have the words to describe what they are doing. Movement becomes part of their learning through direct experience.
Adults may begin with a question, an instruction or a desired outcome. Guided exploration can then provide an opportunity to experience movement before returning to conscious recognition of how its different parts relate.
What interests me is the distinction between movement emerging naturally and trying to create movement. As adults, we can become focused on performing a function correctly, sometimes overlooking the relationships of weight, gravity, support and rotation that make movement possible.
My growing interest is in how conscious recognition can help us revisit and integrate our lived experiences, rediscover movement possibilities and bring curiosity, pleasure and choice into everyday function.
Perhaps learning is not always about acquiring something new. Sometimes it begins with recognizing something we have already experienced.
How am I participating in creating balance in my daily life?
Creating Space for Conscious Recognition Through Lived Experience
By Renee Lindstrom founder of Inside Awareness Center of Integrative Somatic Learning
What becomes possible when we listen to another person’s experience without immediately interpreting it through our own?
This question has been part of my educational exploration, coaching and teaching for many years.
Through my work with somatic awareness, communication, relationships and the influences of our environment, I have been exploring how guided patterns of learning can support conscious recognition and expand our possibilities for participation in everyday life.
One particularly meaningful part of this exploration began through a sacred circle I hosted for four years.
The Experience of Empathy
The circle initially focused on Nonviolent Communication (NVC). I prepared the physical environment with intention, including an altar and arrangements traditionally associated with sacred gatherings.
Although our intention was to develop communication and connection, I began recognizing how readily interpretation entered our listening experiences.
During this period, I attended a residential learning gathering with Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Nonviolent Communication.
Each day began and ended in a listening circle. Participants could express what was alive in them in the moment, while others listened. Throughout the day, Marshall offered opportunities for learning through direct interaction and stories drawn from lived experience.
As the days passed, I began sensing a deepening quality of empathy within the group.
It was not simply something being described or demonstrated. It was becoming recognizable through participation.
During personal interactions, I experienced Marshall’s capacity to listen with an attentiveness that allowed deeply painful experiences to be expressed without needing to be corrected, interpreted or immediately resolved.
That experience offered an important recognition.
Empathy could be experienced through the quality of listening itself.
When I returned to the circle I was hosting, the participants began recognizing a difference in how we were engaging. Over the following three years, our exploration moved increasingly toward the lived experience of empathy.
We were not simply learning what empathy meant. We were exploring what happened when we participated in it.
Recognizing the Environment of Listening
At the same time, I had been exploring the influences of environment through Feng Shui.
My understanding of environment was expanding beyond the arrangement of physical spaces.
I was recognizing that our surroundings include people, their words, the ways they engage with us, and the internal conversations we have with ourselves.
Our experiences are influenced by what surrounds us, what takes place within us, and the relationships between them.
Through my environmental studies, I had been exploring entrainment: how patterns and conditions within an environment may influence the experiences of those participating in it.
As my listening work developed, I began recognizing something related.
The listening pattern itself could hold the space.
The quality of the gathering did not depend entirely upon the arrangement of the room or the objects placed within it.
It could emerge through the shared intention, attention, listening and participation of the people present.
This opened another direction in my educational work.
Bringing Universal Values Into Lived Experience
I began recognizing that people could be familiar with the names of universal values without necessarily having an inner, experiential understanding of what those words meant to them.
A word such as respect, autonomy, kindness, consideration or belonging might be understood conceptually, yet not be consciously connected to a particular lived experience.
Without that personal connection, the value might not be readily available in someone’s inner dialogue or everyday responses.
I began introducing a guided pattern in which participants explored one universal value each week.
We gathered in a talking circle, with opportunities for each person to express their own understanding of the value through their lived experience.
The intention was not to establish one correct definition.
It was to invite participants to recognize where and how that value had been experienced in their lives.
As people listened to one another, they could encounter different expressions of the same value without needing to replace their own understanding.
The word could gradually become more meaningful through conscious recognition.
This was another way of integrating values into lived function.
Rather than expecting someone to demonstrate respect because they had been told what respect meant, the learning experience encouraged recognition of what respect actually felt like, how it was received, and how it might be expressed through one’s own actions.
When the Pattern Becomes the Environment
One experience during these gatherings brought another recognition.
A new participant suggested introducing candles and other ritual elements to give the gathering a more recognizable sacred quality.
I listened to the suggestion and began considering what was already happening within our circle.
Unlike my earlier sacred-circle gatherings, I had not arranged the room with ceremonial adornments. This was not intended to exclude ritual or diminish its value.
It simply wasn’t our focus of attention.
Our attention was directed toward listening, recognizing and expressing the meaning of universal values through lived experience.
As I listened to the suggestion, I recognized that something I had previously associated with the preparation of sacred space was already being experienced through our participation.
The quality of space we were seeking was becoming available within us and between us.
The talking circle itself offered a pattern through which presence, respect, consideration and connection could be experienced.
The experience did not require participants to adopt a spiritual or ceremonial interpretation.
I believe Marshall’s modelling of empathy influenced an important development in my understanding of the environment of listening. Through his presence and participation, I witnessed empathy becoming a lived experience rather than remaining a concept or technique. I had previously encountered profound qualities of presence through Tibetan Buddhist teachers, where devotion and spiritual practice provided an important context. With Marshall, I encountered something related through the ordinary human experience of being heard. I began recognizing that the qualities I had associated with sacred space could also emerge through the way people listened and participated together. This recognition later became increasingly visible in my own talking circles, where the pattern of listening itself began to provide the shared environment.
It emerged through how we listened, how we expressed ourselves and how we participated together.
This became another important relationship in my understanding of environment.
An environment can be influenced by physical arrangements, yet it can also be shaped by the patterns of attention and interaction taking place within it.
And through repeated lived experience, some of the qualities initially supported by an external environment may become more available within ourselves.
Returning to Listening
Recently, I hosted a gathering between two people experiencing different stages of regret and pain within their relationship.
The listening pattern I introduced was not new to my teaching or coaching practice. However, this particular experience helped me recognize its potential for more clearly organized educational programs.
The intention was not to negotiate an outcome, determine who was right or wrong, offer therapy or prescribe reconciliation.
It was to provide a shared environment in which both individuals could express their own experiences and have an opportunity to be heard.
The gathering revealed moments of recognition, emotional expression and greater understanding. It also revealed how easily established patterns of interpretation can return.
This contrast brought greater clarity to the distinction between listening to recognize another person’s experience and listening while preparing our own interpretation of it.
Interpretation is a natural part of human understanding. The invitation is not to eliminate it.
Rather, it is to recognize when our interpretation begins replacing our attention to what another person is actually communicating.
That recognition may create an opportunity to pause, become curious, clarify what we have heard and respond with greater awareness.
An Invitation to Listening
The accompanying diagram illustrates relationships that are present whenever two people communicate.
Listening to myself: Recognizing the sensations, emotions, memories, thoughts, interpretations and values arising within my own experience.
Listening to another: Allowing another person’s experience to be expressed without immediately correcting, analyzing or replacing it with my own.
Listening within relationship: Participating in a shared environment in which clarification, curiosity and reciprocal recognition become possible.
At the centre is Inside Awareness—recognizing what is happening within ourselves as we participate in an experience beyond ourselves.
The intention is not to teach someone the correct way to feel, think or respond.
It is to create conditions in which conscious recognition may become possible.
From Guided Patterns to Lived Function
These explorations have been part of my educational work across several subjects, including movement, communication, personal values and environmental awareness.
The learning environments may differ, but an underlying principle remains:
A guided pattern can direct attention without prescribing what the learner must discover.
In movement, we may explore unfamiliar possibilities through relationships with gravity, skeletal support and the surrounding environment.
In communication, we may explore unfamiliar possibilities by recognizing our inner experience while listening and responding to another person.
In both, the learning begins through participation.
I now see opportunities to organize these longstanding practices into listening programs suited to different environments, including personal reflection, families, educational settings, workplaces and community groups.
Each setting may require different considerations for safety, participation, clarity and consent.
The intention remains consistent.
The program does not prescribe reconciliation, agreement, therapy or resolution. Its purpose is to support a shared environment in which spontaneous recognition becomes possible.
At the heart of this exploration is an inquiry that continues to guide my work:
How do I remain myself while participating in relationship with someone whose experience may be different from mine?
Perhaps the possibility begins with recognizing that listening is more than receiving someone’s words.
It is also a lived experience of relationship—within ourselves, with one another, and with the environment we create through our participation.
An Invitation to Listening Guided Patterns of Learning for Lived Function
Over the past several days, I have been bringing together patterns of learning that have developed through many years of observation, teaching, personal exploration, and lived experience.
The accompanying diagram reflects an emerging integration of three areas of study that have been central to my educational work:
Nature and human nature through Feng Shui: exploring the relationships between people, their environments, and the nine life areas through which lived experience unfolds.
Inner and outer patterns of transitional movement: exploring how the body organizes itself in relationship with gravity, support, balance, movement, and changing circumstances.
Inner and outer patterns of listening and interpretation: exploring how information is received, sensed, interpreted, and expressed through inner language, communication, behaviour, and choice.
Although these areas have often been presented as separate educational subjects, I have increasingly recognized a common process connecting them.
How do we organize ourselves in response to our experiences, and how much of that organization is habitual rather than consciously recognized?
In functional movement education, a person may have developed familiar ways of shifting weight, finding support, or transitioning from one position to another. These patterns can become so automatic that other possibilities are no longer readily available.
The same question can be explored through inner language, listening, and communication.
A person may respond to a situation through a familiar interpretation without recognizing the process through which that interpretation arose. Their response may feel immediate, natural, or inevitable, even when another possibility exists.
The diagram introduces three interconnected dimensions of lived experience.
The inner process represents how an individual receives information, senses, interprets, and responds to experiences arising within themselves and from their environment.
The orientation of attention explores how particular values, intentions, and life areas may influence that processing, sometimes without conscious recognition.
The nine life areas offer a way to differentiate the contexts in which life unfolds, including Health, Relationships, Community, Career, Knowledge, Past, Future, Wealth, and Fame.
At the centre is a person in nature.
This placement is intentional. A person participates in the natural world and in relationships regardless of whether they consciously recognize the processes influencing their choices.
The nine life areas are not separate compartments of living. They are distinguishable orientations within an interconnected lived experience.
One or two areas may become so dominant that they influence how a person interprets and responds within many others. This may restrict available choices without the individual recognizing the underlying pattern.
The intention is not to establish equal attention to all nine areas or prescribe a correct way of living.
It is to make the organization of experience more available for conscious recognition.
This is also the foundation of Awareness Through Movement learning.
The learner does not have to reproduce the experience the teacher helped create. The learner can begin to recognize how learning happens within their own lived experience.
Through guided patterns, the learner is invited to notice familiar responses, differentiate the processes involved, explore variations, and discover possibilities that may not have been previously recognized.
This emerging educational focus brings movement, communication, inner listening, and life orientation into relationship without requiring them to become the same subject.
It is an exploration of the difference between habitual participation and conscious choice.
How am I participating in the process of my own experience, and can I discover another way?
Feldenkrais® is a system for learning new actions through movement to increase function and quality of life. There is no dogma or self-image attached to this system of independent self-learning. This means it introduces a focus upon what you can do, not what you can’t. It reduces limiting beliefs by increasing focus of attention in the present moment. As an empath, I can trust the Feldenkrais® experience as it deepens my inner understanding, clarity and skeletal support through perception. It taps into the same dynamic of inner support I trusted as a baby to stand up and begin taking my first step.
I recommend it to everyone longing to be free of the past and to shift the fear of the unknown future. I especially recommend it for those who have been given labels and now identify with them. The only way to transformation is through a new action.
Dedicated Feldenkrais Focus, influenced by Somatic Dialogue & Awareness of Environment Stimulation to function
by Renee Lindstrom, founder, Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning
Bus Stop Feng Shui
Announcing Feng Shui for function
….in first person…..I have just announced this focus on the topic page titled Awareness through Feng Shui.
Announcing a new integrative focus on Awareness through Feng Shui. Not a new focus my work as a practitioner, consultant and mentor, a new focus in Feng Shui and a newly differentiated topic on the Urban Feng Shui web site. Feng Shui is a program of one of the nine pillars at my learning center, Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning. It is a program in the Knowledge/Educational Life area for creative lifestyles. Feldenkrais is in a the pillar area of Health with a focus of attention on functional integration that originates with the skeleton in postural transitions… I have differentiated the life areas life activities fall under for increased integrations, understanding and increased mindfulness. This differentiation increases intellectual clarity through enhanced mindfulness. Watch these web pages if this topic interests you as there will be a new and interesting perspective on design and health. The relief is it will not be from the marketing perspective of advertising furniture will a lack of understanding the skeletal needs for optimized functional movement.
A woman demonstrates a sequence of recovery poses from lying down to standing up during a workout.
1. Standing
2. Sitting
3. Prone
Here are some reflections of this Feldenkrais Practitioner prior to a Breath Workshop held in April, ’26 to center and ground prior to leading a group through a specific guided patterns of movement. .
The focus of attention in the verbal guided patterns to go beyond the busy mind of thinking into an expanded awareness of the somatic experience
The process of observing the guided pattern suggestions is another focus of attention for balancing the somatic experience with cognitive conceptual function. This focus in this pattern leads with somatic experiences to redirect cognitive functional focus of attention. In the process of this focused pattern, the mind can enter a state not unlike a mindfulness meditation. In this mindfulness like state the cognition can expand beyond beliefs, opinions, evaluative thinking and social conditioning into a field that cultivates deeper awareness.
The guided micromovements focus on the body’s structural design for potential movement beginning with the core – the skeleton.
Why? The natural design of the bodies ability to transition through postural shifts is through the bone pressure using the force of gravity. Original movement transitions are not through muscle and soft tissue lifting the bone and bearing the weight of the bone matter. That only creates constraints, pain and limited function. Organizing the skeletal bones to transition through flexibility and expanded range of motion increases ease and effortlessness in functionality.
Micromovements through the perspective of skeletal function is its own separate type of workout from what is currently focused on, and this focus can be far more challenging than the current mainstream focus is aware of
Imagine repeating changing patterns of micromovements toning the muscles through available functional transitions that release the few muscles that have become the primary motivation for controlling movement. New muscle patterns are created as habitual holding is released through the tonification and dormant muscles are activated, while the organization in the brains is expanding through conscious awareness.
These guided patterns go beyond the conceptualization of cognitive intellectualization that has locked movement into patterns that eventually create diminishing capacity through its limited understanding. Beliefs, opinions and evaluative expressions lock down the brains functional capacity. This is expressed through a lack of flexibility in all qualities of function; mentally, emotionally and physically.
This suggests that these guided patterns for integrating movement through a focus that taps into conscious awareness that balances both the somatic experience and cognitive function can give all aspects of functional experiences a workout from perceptions, mobility to brain function. Ihe focus is completely on expansion and identifying limitation whether it is through thinking, emotional and physical patterns.
This fantastic connection in this process is that it is through organic functional movement, the brains focus of attention and mindfulness. Imagine a fitness workout that is actually a pattern for learning and going beyond what we know into a expanded reality that reduces fear, pain, effort and suffering into ease, flexibility, groundedness and agility.
Learning focus here is through the bones and not socially conditioned thinking patterns that come through titles, names, labels, trends and images of right and wrong beliefs. Current examples are the bastardization of the cultural practices of yoga and tai chi where cognitively designed exercises have been turned into chair yoga and chair tai chi. These are exercises packaged as a concept and they lack the somatic awareness component of the source philosophy. It’s the development of a marketing strategy for creating an image that taps into the focus of attention of society’s ego concepts of self image. Are they beneficial for becoming active. Yes, however they are examples of misleading advertising that is associated with the mindfulness and expanded consciousness of the traditional philosophies.
The above is an evolution of deeper understanding of social conditioning and the lack of balance between somatic experiencing and cognitive conceptualization that is developing from the focus of attention and observations of the practitioner of functional integration.
It is an example of reflection for tapping into and grounding thought patterns for organizing a focus on balancing the mind to guide patterns that will open students consciousness and not reflect boxed in cognitive concepts. Pausing to organize thoughts to set them aside to guide others into mindfulness is an important part of this practitioners process. I hope you enjoy the content.
Body Mindfulness – Core Body Functional Breathing Audio
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of NorthAmerica
Consideration can only be truly achieved through the ability to balance the actions of listening and speaking equally.
COV’s Value observances in Nov to date :
Friendship
Peace, Clarity, Understanding & Resolution can only authentically be achieved through leadership training in the skills of listening and speaking
Dialogue and Listening are needed to have a balanced conversation of meaning. This balance brings success and achievement for all in relationships equally. When someone speaks they are leading the conversations and the listener is following.To have equality the speaker becomes the listener. This means the listener becomes the speaker.Leadership is a balance of giving and receiving in dialogue.
This pattern was developed from a talking circle. The format was to go around and ask each participant what the focused value word meant to them. Sometimes a definition from the dictionary was read out first. People often did not know the definition meaning. ‘Renee Lindstrom’
