News for parents on parenting is that their needs are not the same need as their child. Awareness is recognizing the needs of the child. The relationship is taking the time to pause, connect and recognize their needs as having value. It doesn’t mean you give your parenting needs up, it means your children are not invisible and that they are valued, seen and heard! This starts pre-verbal and begins with parents having skills to identify their own needs.
Tag Archives: Education
‘Empathy and our Brain’
by Renee Lindstrom, founder, Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning
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Empathy can transform reactions at the core conception that forms a cognitive perspective. An example of a shift is a change in feelings of shame, anxiety, or irritation into feelings of understanding, patience and regret.
Responses to outside stimulus are based upon left- brain or right-brain dominance
When the brain is triggered beyond windows of tolerance, the response is fight, flight and freeze
Some of the physical, mental and emotional experiences when going beyond our windows of tolerance could be:
- discomfort, distraction, confusion
Some cognitive reactions when we’ve gone beyond our limits of tolerance could be:
- denying responsibility, advising, diagnosing, educating, making demands and moral judgments, blaming and comparing
Some short-term emotions could be:
- anger, fear, yelling, violence, slamming doors, hanging up, leaving
Some long-term reactions:
- overwhelmed, mortification, terror, dissociation, numbing, going into a trance, leaving your body, going deeply into confusion, being unable to feel your body, shame, not caring what happens to you
Read more on: Physical reactions and the reactions of the left and right hemispheres, to the stimulus of gossiping, sniping, criticizing, moral superiority and logic.
Cultivating effective empathic responses can be learned and experienced mentally, emotionally and physically
Ways of learning and integrating empathetic responses are:
- Awareness through Communication
- Values & Empathy integration in communication transforms disconnection into connection
- Awareness through Movement
- Learned posture responses mimic tolerance or lack of tolerance, translating into unconscious behaviours
- Awareness through Environment
- Cultural patterns create habitual or, lack of tolerance behaviours
- Awareness through Eating
- Brain, body, emotional and cognitive function response to food and drink consumed
More on:
- Feldenkrais Movement Benefits
- InTouch with the Brain – Right and Left Hemispheres
- Introducing the Cerebellum
- Dr. Bolte Taylor on Youtube discussing her experience.
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Copyright 2014 – 2026 Renee Lindstrom, GCFP
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North
Tagged advising, Amygdala, Anger, being unable to feel your body, blame, Body & Brain Function, Brain, Brain Activity, comparison, confusion, demands, denying, diagnosing, discomfort, dissociation, distracting, diverting, Education, Empathy, Fear, Fight, Flight and freeze, Function, going deeply into confusion, going into a trance, hanging up, Hippocampus, judgments, leaving, leaving your body, mortification, not caring what happens to you, numbing, overwhelmed, Physical Reactions, Prefrontal Cortex, Reactions, shame, slamming doors, Social Engagement, Stress, terror, Tolerence, Violence, yelling
Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning 