Tag Archives: Balance

2026 innovative & heathy lifestyles Newsletter

Posted on December 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

Innovation

Here are some considerations for innovative and healthy choices if you long for ease in the natural flow through all nine lifestyle areas as we collectively shift into 2026. The interplay of life areas that Inside Awareness topics focus on are education, career, community, past, health, future, wealth, fame and relationships. Each of these life areas can be explored separately or combined with other life areas for advanced learning that increases clarity and wellness. An example is the Relationships life area and the Health life area. The topics in the Health Life area include communication, food awareness and functional movement. These topics would enhance relationships. Especially learning a language that enhances empathy and compassion. The nature of the topics that focus on learning through the somatic experience creates ease through their integration. This integration leads to clarity and attainment that is balanced throughout the nine life areas.

The topics have a focus on cultivating awareness through the somatic felt senses. It is an interesting shift of inner behaviour for many who have had universally dominant socially conditioned behavioural training where one size fits all, and that has eliminated the inner connections to unique individual sensory responses. Instead of cultivating conscious awareness and guidance on how to process somatically, the scientific approach emerged with a pattern of consciously dumbing down the somatic experience through evaluative expression and definition. The mainstream has not caught up to the shift in science, where society is not being trained in how to process the somatic felt senses and lead with them This leaves a large segment of society in the dark and vulnerable.

An example of a life area with topics that can be an individual focus of attention, or combined with others, is the health life area. These include:

  • somatic functional movement integration of the inner physical, emotional, mental and conscious awareness processes
  • foods for eating plans to increase brain and gut function
  • somatic communication patterns for developing healthy inner and outer vocabulary skills

Rather than gatekeeping, the founder of Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning shares patterns of learning that are organic and natural at birth. Patterns that everyone is entitled to relearn without jumping through hoops, or the labels model holders give them as gatekeepers to retain ownership over them. Luckily, one living non-gatekeeper was a model who didn’t hold the pattern of learning hostage as gatekeepers do. This was Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, the author and founder of Nonviolent Communication. He didn’t present as a gatekeeper. Another non-gatekeeper from history is Siddhartha Gautama. We all know him as the Buddha. He is a man who attained enlightenment through a pattern of self-introspection and learning through his experience. Did he give himself this title? He did become a teacher as others recognized a quality that they wanted to mimic in their experiences. Did he gatekeep? The same with Jesus. Did he give himself a title? He also demonstrated qualities others wanted to mimic. Did he gatekeep his experiences? Humanity learns through mimicking. Who introduced gatekeeping to higher knowledge?

The founder of the Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning is a somatic empath. A growing awareness emerged through self-focused learning to better understand the qualities of a somatic empath. This growing awareness was a realization that this natural learning state was being held hostage through the isolation and categorization upheld by gatekeepers. A separation of a natural experience was being presented in a way that was creating division and separation.  

The focus of Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning is on practical applications for living a creative lifestyle that incorporates early learning patterns into the dominant analytical focus to balance it out and create understanding in current behaviours that is dragging society down. Society is being dragged down by a gap in conscious awareness that is limiting mental, emotional and physical intelligence.

Knew News

Inside Awareness Center has joined with four new affiliate partnerships. Read more on these affiliates that have joined Richters Herbs as an affiliate partner. These are:

  • Richters Herbs
  • Energy Muse
  • Crystal Herbs
  • Wishgarden Herbs
  • Grooni Earthing

Look to the right upper side columns to view their specialty products from essences, tinctures, seeds, plants, dried herbs, crystals and frequency generators. Each picture is a link to the individual retailer. Be sure to check them out.

Learn more about 2026 for setting intentional goals

2026

2026 Numerology
Master Creator for 2026

Check out Inside Awareness fundraising Fire and Water goal-setting program to support

Somatic Educational Legacy Program

Fire & Water Somatic Goal Setting Program

Intro to Evolution of the Nine Life Area Integrative Lifestyle Programming Menu at Inside Awareness

Check out some of the articles in the nine life areas that is the focus of learning here at the Inside Awareness center below. For ease in understanding the different life areas, these web pages are articles and information on this featured program. Each one can be an individual focus or, as mentioned previously, combined with others for increased connection to the interactive nature of these nine life areas.

New articles in each of the 9 life areas:

1. Knowledge

Divine Feminine

Is the self realizing somatic feminine the divine feminine?
Language that creates false images & confusion

Western Integrated Feng Shui

Feng Shui Basics

2. Career

Intro to Awareness through Career
Eronomics in the Office from a Feldenkrais perspective

3. Community

Social experiences in healthy and unhealthy community networking based upon a background in hospitality – the ultimate networking experience

4. Past

Living patterns conditioning Food Marketing trends and vica versa
Awareness of Social & Cultural Conditioning

5. Health

Integrated Lifestyle Health Topics

Somatic Touch Self Care for Hand, Finger, & Wrist for Pain & Flexibility

Communication – Somatic Dialogue & Effective Listening

ATC: Connection versus Disconnection in the Action of Comparison inside and out
Practical Integration 1st Pillar
Practical Integration 2nd Pillar: Speaking
Practical Integration 3rd Pillar: Acting

Eating & Food Integration for Function

ATE: Liquid Whey effect in Breadmaking
Carbonated Flavoured Whey

Movement – Feldenkrais

Exploring the anatomy of head, jaw, neck, clavicles, first ribs & shoulders thru somatic sensing with focus initiated by the jaw
AWF: Trust in your body thru somatic awareness of partnerships within functional movement
Chair Posture
The Silent Educational Patterns of Environmental Design

6. Future

Children

About ATC

Goals

somatic focus to ’26 goals

Travel

Introducing Awareness through Travel

7. Wealth

Abundance

8. Fame

Grand Master

9. Relationships

Announcing Awareness thru Relationships

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Mindfulness through the Somatic Senses

Posted on December 1, 2025 | Leave a comment

by Renee Lindstrom, founder of the Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning

Identifying balance in the two streams of consciousness & there are available doable living patterns. It is a choice.

The bliss of somatic sensory awareness, expansion & waking up consciously

 In the above post, Renee, founder of Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning, explains the origins of the seed intention at the core of the lifestyle learning programs. Since 1990, she has actively pursued clarity on the duality she was witnessing in people’s behaviour with themselves and others, and the influences of it in the environment and community. This behaviour has crossed all hierarchies and social conditioning. It expressed itself equally through opposing forces, for example, advocacy for environmental causes. The force of aggression was equal in the entitlement displayed on both sides of the table.

A choice to respond to life through the somatic sensory awareness while balancing thoughtful and mindful attention

In the personal post linked above, she shares a personal journey resulting from a year of transitioning through losses that triggered an activation in her stream of consciousness focus. Prior to that year of losses, there had been a heartbreak event called broken-heartedness in the Buddhist Teachings of the Shambhala Center. There is a heart opening in this state of being that is tender and soft. Combined with the shift into heightened levels of somatic sensory awareness and perception, there was an experience of expanded consciousness beyond the limitations of a socially conditioned and educated left-brain experience. She eventually identified this experience as the state of mindfulness one finds in a committed sitting meditation. The difference is that it was an active living experience, and not an organized practice of achievement. It was an obvious experience that could be defined as different than those around her. The shift into this somatic led state felt like spontaneous combustion was a four-year transitional period of little combustions leading up to the major eruption. The fifth year was dedicated to stepping back to fully immerse in the potential for understanding and finding answers. The answers didn’t come in a year, and it took years of commitment to tap into and explore patterns that could cultivate the awareness that was being sought out. This even meant entering educational programs where the mentors described themselves as having achieved what she was longing to learn, only to somatically discover they had not yet achieved it. The choice was always based upon the model of doable patterns that was being taught and integrated from someone else’s innovative teaching origins. The balance between the left brain and right brain had not been achieved yet, and they themselves didn’t know it. Why? They hadn’t experienced it yet. You can only know something when you have experienced it. This meant they were never offering their own system. It was only borrowed patterns where they assumed authority over with a sense of ownership. Even with many of these programs focused on somatic awareness and mindfulness, they did not recognize anything outside their closed perspectives. The only way she could know this is that for two years, she was in this creative connected state of being without any loss of her developed left-brain experience. The difference was that the left brain did not dominate in this experience and instead, collaborated.

They say all things happen for a reason, and now in hindsight, it may be fortunate that she experienced a mother’s emotional and mental absence, or abandonment, as a child. The basic physical needs were met, yet it lacked loving kindness. For her, it resulted in a continued state of early somatic learning that wasn’t corrupted by a shift in focus that didn’t encourage the same somatic awareness through the five senses. By corrupted, Renee is suggesting this means attention shifted to critical thinking and institutionalized learning.

Insight & recognition of the value in somatic sensory led mindfulness awareness for the aging process

Those early challenges now provide insight and recognition of their value. The clarity is a benefit for understanding the differences in socially conditioned behaviours. As a somatic empath experiencing the maturing students and their aged logical and analytical processors now, Renee finds they have difficult transitions into retirement and old age. They have long lost their connection to early somatic senses and continue trying to navigate through their focus of attention placed on outside strategies to fix their physical, mental and emotional functional losses. In their disconnection from engaging with their felt senses, she recognizes the loss in their abilities, mentally, emotionally and physically, for supporting themselves. They lack trust in their mental and physical abilities to support themselves. Without a connection to their five senses, they do not trust themselves and are fearful of their own bodies. As a practitioner who engages them in learning to connect through their five senses, Renee observes a shift in their levels of confidence and fear where their trust in themselves increases.

Learning gap in education is creating inner combat between critical thinking consciousness & felt sense consciousness

When a child enters into an adult-generated learning model, it becomes the dominant educational conditioning pattern, and the loss of connection to the five senses begins. The aging process lacks the conscious awareness of the five senses. At some point in early learning, the child is redirected from their inherent spontaneous early learning patterns using the five senses and into a focused structure of organized learning. Renee stresses that this is a significant challenge in the aging process. It also shows up as a challenge in processing emotions and throughout childhood development. If a lifetime is lived with no self-directed learning choices in behaviour, reactions will be childlike with no logic. When acting out it will be through the trigger of the somatic senses without control of it. The gap in learning from the adult-designed educational patterns is eliminating the maturation that comes from processing through the five senses and understanding how to process them. Instead of processing them through the stream of consciousness that is activated, those children are being spoken at from another stream of consciousness. effectively forcing the felt senses to be stymied and judged from a perspective of right and wrong thinking. Imagine for a moment having one stream of consciousness in conflict with the other within one’s operating system. Our education is setting individuals up to do battle within themselves, critical thinking versus somatic felt senses. Incredible!

Anger tantrums at 55, 65, 75, 85, 92……

Imagine being sixty-five and still reacting from the age of five somatically while in reaction. Imagine feeling so out of control at 65 and not being able to differentiate feeling reactions. This is serious at sixty-five, as one is considerably stronger physically than at five. If not outer aggression, consider the inner fear, panic and anger. By sixty five the smallest event will trigger survival. Remember, the logical left brain doesn’t feel emotions, and it is not spontaneous.

Perceiving through the five senses and using the left brain with more efficiency for cultivating mindfulness & awareness in the present moment

From a living experience and a focus as a somatic functional integration practitioner, Renee considers how a baby is born with the ability to learn somatically through the five senses and no verbal input. A baby has all the tools they need to begin shifting their weight to physically roll over, get up and function through walking, thinking and talking. There is a name in Buddhist Meditation that is called “Beginners mind.” This name is a pattern of someone starting a mindfulness meditation. This meditation is for engaging somatically in the environment while focusing the left brain abilities to calm down and become quiet enough to follow the somatic sensing. This pattern is not maintained by Western culture, and the pattern is reversed. The mind controls the somatic experience

Summary

Renee has recognized two streams of consciousness. She once differentiated it as left-brain and right-brain dominance. Expanding her programs to include the somatic five senses has increased her willingness to begin to articulate the two streams of confidence she observes. This ability to engage from the origins of the five senses first, as in early childhood, while harnessing cognitive function to follow the sensory input, versus leading from socially conditioned learned patterns, has been a game-changer in student abilities. This suggests increased mindfulness and empathic states of being are valuable qualities for supporting students through physical, mental and emotional constraints that are limiting. These limiting experiences often translate into pain, anger, sadness and an inability to support themselves. The student will have to choose which side of the fence they are going to lead with. There are three choices, believe it or not.

  1. Perceive through socially conditioned critical thinking.
  2. Perceive through the five senses, sight, sound, taste, smell and touch, in the filter of power and control of critical thinking.
  3. Perceive through the five senses, sight, sound, taste, smell and touch and harness the thinking function beyond trained critical thinking, for balance and collaboration that creates living mindfulness.

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Fire & Water Somatic Goal: Example Daily Action 1/31

Posted on November 7, 2025 | Leave a comment

Fire & Water Somatic Goal Action on 1st Day

There are 31 daily actions to participate, and explore in this integrative experience of goal setting. These goals are different than the typical pressurized canned model of making goal statements designed to push through fears to take action on outside strategies to achieve an outcome. This goal pattern has a focus on changing behaviour from the inside out, and not the outside in. The inside focus first is aligned with core values and has an essence in expanded learning and connection to conscious awareness, while the other has a focus on outside strategies to achieve influence. The focus on somatic goal setting is active mindfulness that expands the interconnectedness to spontaneous reactions to environmental stimuli at the level of the five senses, while the focus on outside strategies is a mental focus that has been the existing patterning in social conditioning that eliminated the somatic learning patterns of early learning. It combines contemplation first to identify the value needs (intention) as the core influence. The process creates a new pattern for learning behaviour that increases self-actualization with a change in process inner behaviour with patterns connecting the meanings of the words inspiring reactions, responses and motivation. Its focus is from the inside, with growing confidence based on increasing personal worth and self-value instead of outside strategies for personal gain with a false bravado. Somatic goals can inspire an increase in self-value that leads to a felt expression of abundance that is embodied, while the old pattern of goals develops a type of confidence that has a limited viewpoint and is dependent on strategies to generate confidence. This limited viewpoint is usually on wealth and fame, which are only two life areas. One embodies function, and the other fragments it.  

Somatic Goal Setting Daily Action Example

Example of a doable daily action for integrating balance through inner and outer actions in the environment using intention that includes a focus on defining core values and becoming comfortable with feelings.

Read more on the Fire and Water Somatic Goals Setting Program – Visit

Somatic Goal Setting Programs – Fire and Water

Fundraiser for building a Culture of Values through educational components and integrating them into educational institutions and organizations.

Remember, a Culture of Values from this perspective is not a religion. It is a model of integrative learning to enhance organized learning in institutions, organizations, parenting and childcare. It is not exclusive to one demographic. Rather is designed for all functioning people of all ages.

This first workshop for the Inside Awareness Center for Somatic Learning will be a fundraiser for building the Culture of Values educational programming to bring focus to the needs for maintaining the early learning patterns and partnering them with the current system that is oriented from the perspectives of adults contained within an institutionalized system. These early learning patterns here are not the typical strategies from an adult perspective of coming up with strategies to implement into a system. It is the actual patterns of integration for developing the inner processing capabilities for a child to develop into a healthy functioning adult in society. Education currently has a focus on memorization, solving puzzles with strategies and debate conversation entrainment. These educational programs will introduce the needs of the students who have retained their dominant sensory input as a form of viewing and processing incoming worldly information, and will strive to balance out those who are dominant analytical thinkers. These learning patterns will focus on developing a healthy inner and outer understanding of behavioural relationships between the elusive inner body responses in functional responses to any stimuli. This will be through transparent guided patterns designed in the same model of early learning in babies who have no input from adults intellectually in learning how to roll over, sit, stand, walk and talk. These abilities are inherent and not transmitted through an adult’s outside influence. These programs will integrate seamlessly into existing programs designed to increase recognition of inner responses for the ability to self-monitor and process reactions. This model has been initiated by a somatic empath who has recognized a gap in social conditioning while in a journey of self-discovery to find clarity and learn how to navigate in a world that has been educated to project outward from a dominant thinking behaviour, instead of having increased clarity and understanding of their inner process for creating healthy habits for good relationships and lifestyles later on. The intent for the educational patterns will be to create a healthier relationship and lifestyles that have less conflict and increased shared values.

Participation & Contribution

Renee Lindstrom, Founder of Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning, is seeking business partners, sponsors and those interested in supporting a model of education that will redefine behaviour through clarity, understanding that retraining the brain along with the subtle inner body responses that are one. At some point in history, the body systems became isolated and separated in people’s minds. The compartmentalization has fractured full function and understanding of the inter-relationships between felt senses, physical transitions, emotional responses, and finally the inner process for creating thoughts. For those who would be inspired to join this project, please express your interest and how or what you would like to contribute. Email is the best form of connection due to personal obligations to long periods of time with the phone turned off.

Contact to express interest or Donate

Let’s build a Culture of Values Educational system together

Donate

Link will go to Conscious Learning for Health. Due to Renee’s name not being available she has spelled it Reene.

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*Please note that there will be a component of training the trainers and mentorship available in the mix later on that you may have interest in if you’re an existing practitioner. This could be your entry point into this amazing project. If you’re a seasoned veteran, you may be valued as an advisor if you can connect to the potential through your experience. At this point, the essence of the material is at a stage of not be reinvented by new strategies that haven’t been through the apprenticeship of application.

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Expansive body awareness of jaw, skull, vertebrae, clavicles, shoulder blades, ribs and shoulder joints through verbal guidance

Posted on October 19, 2025 | Leave a comment

by Renee Lindstrom, Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner,’07

Cultivting awareness through felt sense movement guidance

Before an Awareness through Movement workshop yesterday that had a focus on the jaw joints, I wrote a short blog post to put myself into the mindset of the intention for the upcoming lesson being introduced. I write spontaneously as though through some elusive inner direction. This simply means I do not have an outcome in mind when in free writing mode.

Arriving at the workshop space and while setting up the room, I was approached by someone ahead of time who inquired if this workshop would benefit them. They mentioned their jaw experiences that I was able to confirm it would be, all the while thanking whatever inspiration it was to have me free write on it before coming. It seems the statement from that post about creating a safe environment was going to be the dominant theme of the workshop! It was the intention, only I didn’t know it at the time of writing that statement. I did my best to create a deeper opportunity for the experience of safety so that the participants could release their habitual holding behaviour in their jaws they have patterned to protect themselves and their jaws. By this point, it is their protection!

I slowed my roll down (flow of words) and began to guide participants with more words than usual to give functional reassurance. Needless to say, it was a powerful workshop for many. I wondered partway through if everyone was benefitting, or not, due to the wordiness in the verbal guidance. Remember that the guidance is not focused on cognitive strategy thinking patterns. Rather, it is all practical micro movements, yet the focus is on the somatic senses. Basically, it is helping people to tap into their felt sense awareness using some of the five somatic senses we all have, yet ignore.

While I was focusing on creating a safe environment and the patterns, the participants did experience something as beneficial takeaways. I heard about this after that reassured me that everyone benefited from my decision to use words to support a deeper inner reassurance for them to test out the patterns I was talking them through. It was a reminder that Awareness through Movement is just that, ‘awareness.’ It is not rule-oriented, which shuts the door on one’s expanding conscious awareness, no matter what way you look at it. It is open exploration with a curious mind. That is what I heard as feedback. Many responses of how much people took in that they had no connection with before the workshop. That is what brings me joy. To hear the feedback that the participants discovered something new within, increasing their potential. It’s called self-discovery. In a nutshell, that’s what I facilitate, a practice of self-discovery.

For information on the next class series or workshop, hit link below.

Feldenkrais Classes & Workshops

Awareness through Movement link to Playlist on our learning center’s YouTube Channel:

Visit web pages dedicated to Awareness through Movement news posts, tips and articles link below

Awareness through Movement

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Copyright 2014 – 2025  Renee Lindstrom, GCFP,
Feldenkrais® Practitioner ’07, Communication & Empathy Coach , Art of Placement

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Announcement for 2026

Posted on October 17, 2025 | Leave a comment

Center for Inside Awareness Channel on YouTube

I sent this news out to my students today.

I wanted to share some updates with you that I may not have brought up outside of our focused integrations sessions, whether in movement, communication/relationships or spatial awareness and placements.  For the past ten to 15 years years I have been integrating the interplay between these areas with a deeper focus on habitual or automatic behaviours and choices.  For the past two year’s this has shifted to writing it out in an organized way.  Beginning with the Learning Center Topics, starting with separating the nine life areas with an eye on behaviour and interactions.  There are somatic programs in each of these nine life areas to support the topic they are categorized under. Many of you may have participated in.

In 2026,  I will be launching a new system of interactive patterns in expressive communication where this separation of life areas will be a core focal point in the model.  These practical and actional patterns support an authentic somatic and empathic perspective.  As written by an actual somatic empath living within their interactive experiences 24/7.  Trust me, somatic and empathic expression in behaviour is not based upon the outside strategies of someone trying to describe them.  It is one of the influences towards developing a somatic learning system that goes beyond what is being described in current social conditioning trends. 

A companion book titled  ‘Somatic Archetypes’ will be available.  This will be a foundation pattern to support a practical reference to core reactive responses.  Practical in that they will focus on actionable somatic understanding and not have any focus on evaluative expressions or right or wrong thinking.  The intention is to marry this understanding in active interactions in the moment.  The shift includes somatic engagement, versus old thinking patterns of social conditioning that shifted focus away from it in organized institutionalized education.

A new understanding of social conditioning has emerged with a powerful influence to cut through a term I learned in meditation, spiritual materialism. This is a result of the practices of functional integration and mentoring in how to speak authentically and with integrity that began in 2002. Spiritual materialism is an evaluative expression for the ego self-image.  In Feldenkrais, there is an understanding of an inner felt self-image that supports a new defining inner experience of it that isn’t built up through socially conditioned learned reactions that are focused on materialism through strategies.  Rather, it has a focus on being present from within and sensing from the inside first before outward actions of functional movement or spoken words. This means leading through the felt senses consciously to replace leading through thinking.   

Renee Lindstrom @somaticlifestyleinnovator Channel on YouTube

To support this upcoming launch, I have put my YouTube playlists in order. I have three channels. One has playlists to support the topics of the Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning. (Pictured above).  This includes the nine life areas broken into separate playlists. ie. Feldenkrais is in the Health Center. It is joined by Communication and Eating Plans. In these playlists, you will see early attempts to engage people to shift their focus of attention. For example, the #yyj Nature Walks, which is under the playlist of knowledge. There is also the Culture of Value program for early childhood development in that playlist that demonstrates the first stages of its development. The other channel is in my name, and it is for somatic innovation. The focus was to connect to the environmental triggers that stimulate types of behaviour to educate. 

Podcast

Finally, the third just started this past summer and fall, is my podcast.  Currently, it is voice audios of articles I have written to lay a foundation.  It will evolve and expand to include lives and interviews.  

As a dominant somatic empathic learner myself, I have first-hand experience in the alienation of children and adults with these learning styles. There is very little consideration given to the value of these learning styles and in fact, they are categorized, labelled and diagnosed as conditions, with an aim to drug and eradicate the differences they display to the expectation in the tightly defined patterns of Institutionalized education. Patterns that were designed for learning concepts with ease and little variance in the organized structure. This cognitive focus included debate-style communication development that lacked empathy training. In this context, empathy training is the skill development for good listening patterns where the core inner response is an interactive, flexible, and open-minded process, versus the closed-mindedness that results from judging the context of what is being heard as right and wrong based upon personal judgment and understanding.  

The programs at the Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning are focused on a mindfulness that balances both sets of needs of the cognitive style interpretation, and the somatic and empathic. It harnesses all components through functional integration of the physical body working in partnership with the emotional responses that generate the filter for thinking.

The intention for these YouTube platforms is to build an audience and to develop financial opportunities that will support this focus on somatic education.. Until now, I have funded it with my time and energy. I look forward to taking it to the next level. I am hoping you will consider viewing my channels, liking and subscribing to help build this lofty goal. If the content appeals to you, I hope you will share it to support getting a buzz going on these topics.

The following are the links to the YouTube channels. Please keep in mind, these are early developments that have been a learning process and for the process to grow a level of comfort and ease in being on stage. The last link is to a page on the Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic learning explaining the nine life areas that are the core foundation in my perspective of functional integration, somatic dialogue and spatial awareness.

Center for Inside Awareness @ https://www.youtube.com/@somaticlifestyleinfluencer/playlists

Article of explanation @ https://wp.me/p17H3e-h6I

Renee Lindstrom – somatic lifestyle innovator @ https://www.youtube.com/@somaticlifestyleinfluencer/playlists

Renee Lindstrom – Podcast @ https://www.youtube.com/@somaticlifestyleinfluencer/playlists

Copyright 2014 – 2025  Renee Lindstrom, GCFP,
Feldenkrais® Practitioner ’07, Communication & Empathy Coach, Art of Placement

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Mastery of Fear & Anxiety stimulated by the physical environment of pain, from memories of past pain somatically

Posted on October 1, 2025 | Leave a comment

by Renee Lindstrom, GCFP, Author of Somatic Archetypes

On Podcast – @ReneeLindstromofficial

Since 2007, this author has had the opportunity to work with people who have had long-term chronic physical pain. In these cases, the body has been the environmental stimulus to inner messages and emotional responsive reactions. Usually, in Canada, people in these circumstances will seek out acute care to resolve the pain complaints. In some cases, the results of seeking solutions can backfire. The backfire comes from the interactive seeds of socially conditioned language. In this health wellness area, physical constraints from pain, the evaluative assessments by practitioners are conceptual and focused on fixing strategies. Sometimes this works, and other times it doesn’t. It only works with certain personalities. In some personalities, it increases anxiety. The current socially conditioned language is such that some people take it personally, which essentially means internalizing it. Others brush it off. Both responses have their peculiar consequences.

There is another communication perspective that is grounded in somatic awareness. In this form of communication, it starts where you are in the moment. It is not conceptual. This means the first focus is not on labelling and diagnosing, it is on the behaviour. Yes, physical function has a behaviour! It’s called one’s posture and postural transitions.

Here is an example I have created to demonstrate what a somatic response might be. It’s not based upon anyone in particular. In this example, someone is seeking understanding, support and reassurance after the disillusionment of conceptual assessments and labelling………

Here is my written response:

  • Nerve pain assessment:

With regards to the nerves in these circumstances, they were the last to be ignited from the environmental stimulus contributing to their flare-up.  Stands to reason, if the environment calms down, they will as well.

  • Somatic perspective of integration between mental, emotional and physical:

I am going to respond from a meditative mindfulness perspective.

You’re triggered. Something has happened that has stimulated past reactions to old injuries and events in your life that have come forward into the present.  Perhaps not with conscious awareness in a way to catch yourself, however, somatically.  It’s a somatic response directing your focus of attention through reactive conditioning.  A reaction that is familiar and shaped by past events (muscle, mental and emotional memory).  Does it present in the way that has been suggested?  Perhaps to someone who has learned to diagnose and label living experiences as conditions.  

So, let’s look at the past.  Yes, you have acute situations that have created a familiar pattern of response that has reared its ugly head due to the many factors all playing out at the same time.   Unfortunately, this means your physical body constraints in your movement patterns are similar to ones that have given you grief in the past.  Your responsive reaction is conditioned by those old experiences.  

How to engage your focus of attention differently? 

  • By shifting your focus of attention. 

Easy for me to write as I am not feeling the pain you’re having.  However, the hyper focus on it can increase the levels of discomfort more than 10-fold. 

How to shift your focus of attention? 

  • By changing the thought sentence structure in your inner mental pattern of thinking.  

Shift what if, or ……(whatever you’re saying to yourself), to, I have been here before and moved forward out of it. 

Your new mantra, “I have been here before and moved forward out of it.  I have been……..”

Micro Movements to shift focus of attention for calming the nervous system

The hyper focus is an aspect of your brain that is an alarm.  It is a warning system of the brain, and right now, yours is in a glitch as all sorts of events have hit all at once.  In meditation, we would focus on our breath.  This is the absolute hardest when experiencing this glitch.  

2.  So, move your body in the breathing patterns I have shown you.  This is where the body’s micro movement abilities can come in differently and play a big part in calming this glitch down.  Right now, the glitch is telling you an elusive story that your body is letting you down, and it’s not your safe haven in the moment.  So let’s change it.  The body can be fluid or it can be rigid through the constraints conditioning it.  Your body has gone into constraint due to circumstances.  That’s all. 

  • What do we know from past interactions? 

The physical function is not isolated from the emotional reactions and thought stories in our mental process.  It’s all one process,  all stimulated together and interplaying off one another.  Your glitch is your emotions reacting to the stories you are telling yourself.  What you’re telling yourself is stimulated by the real felt patterns you are somatically aware of.  The mantra above is what you tell yourself immediately upon catching yourself having these thought patterns that are not based upon the felt senses in the moment. 

  • Why?

You can take care of yourself.  You’ve done it before and have a historical pattern of it.  You are identifying the past and what didn’t work, now identify what did.  Balance it out. See number 3.

3.  In meditation, we learn to create gaps between our thoughts to calm our thoughts that run together and create havoc in our emotional responses.  We learn that thoughts in our mind run through in patterns that are not logical.

So we focus on our breath in sitting and watch these damn thoughts while attempting to become present in the moment.  Soon, we notice that the thoughts slow down.  I mean they, ….slooooowwwwwww down to the point of having significant spaces between them.  That’s when the magic happens.  That’s when somatically, the connection to what is really happening can be experienced.  This is when you learn, the thoughts are the illusion.  They have you spinning in circles, trying to catch your tail.  In these gaps you see, hear, touch, smell and taste batter.  All of a sudden, you can begin observing and taking in so much more information that is restricted by the thinking patterns you have learned.  That all thinking is – learned patterns of thought.  They are not real!  They are your perspective based on old information and learning. 

  • Let’s look at what’s real. 

Your skeleton is real.  It’s the strongest part in your body and lasts centuries after everything else is gone.  Begin to adjust through the skeleton.  However, if the pain and fear are too great, begin by focusing on your out breath. 

  • As you breathe out, count, starting at one. 

Each exhale will be different.  Redirect your mental function by giving it this job.  Count your breath. 

  • Get a straw and exhale through the straw.  Get your mental function to set a time for one minute and count the number of out breaths in that one minute. 
  • Then continue to exhale through the straw without counting for another 2 minutes. 
  • Come back and exhale while counting again, and notice if the number has changed from the first time.  Notice if the breath out is slower, longer and if there are spaces in between.

Come back to it many, many times to train your brain with this pattern.  Integrate it.  Do it in times of non-fear to have it as a tool in your kit for when you are. 

When you are in fear, focus on the exhalation, not the in breath. 

Recap

We have a mantra, a perspective and a pattern of breathing.  This will calm your nervous system and the glitch to create a new starting point.  In this new starting point, your constraints,  physically, mentally, and emotionally, can begin to limber up, increasing your windows of tolerance.  

We have been through these cycles together before.  You have this somatic experience, yet right now you are in a moment of old thinking that there is an acute care that will resolve this outside of you. It is an old pattern seeking relief and reassurance.   That’s just one focus of attention that is decreasing the window of tolerance.  Start by building the window of tolerance from inside.  You’ve got this.  I have witnessed it. 

You’ve got a few people to sit in this with you to begin to build up your levels of tolerance.  Recently, you’re strategies in bringing new people on board while in the acute stages didn’t support you rather added to deconstructing it.  

Follow Renee’s podcast and stay up to date on somatic learning, from the inside out.

@ReneeLindstromofficial

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Feldenkrais® Practitioner since 2007, Communication & Empathy Coach since 2004, Art of Placement since 2001

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Posted on September 6, 2025