Tag Archives: Mindfulness

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 Setting Program

Posted on November 5, 2025 | Leave a comment

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

Audio to listen along in the author’s voice

Integrating Awareness through Feng Shui,

Feldenkrais & Communication

3 Signature Programs at Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning

First edition – 2013

The cover picture of this book demonstrates the elements of fire and water. Fire is the action that bursts up through the mindfulness qualities from a state of contemplation and reflection. This goal program is a design that is a perfect blend of the fire and water qualities.

Read more or listen to the audio, or listen to the audio and follow along with this explanation.

Before getting started, Fire and Water Somatic Goal Setting will be released on November 19, ’25. In time to begin using the tips after the hustle and bustle of this holiday season. A couple of options for enjoying the program will be offered. These will include purchasing the book and reading it independently, or following along with the author in an online group reading. The third way is to join a workshop that will explore the daily contemplations and actions in depth.

*The January Fire and Water Workshop will be a fundraiser for building and sharing an Educational System with Culture of Values as the core focus. More below post *

Now, let’s get to the audio and written article explaining the program.

Actions for grounding & motivation through intention

Integrating mindful focus of attention with actions

Support turning your goals and intentions into reality with tips designed to develop your conscious awareness.  Increase the likelihood of success with techniques to stay on track and move towards your goals to replace disappointment.  Learn how to replace letting yourself down with building yourself up somatically.

One way you can bring your goals into reality is to consider these daily awareness techniques and actions to define your intention. Bring them alive by making time to manifest physical change in your living/working space.  It takes a few minutes a day.  Designed for slowing down and consciously pausing to reflect, notice and take actions. It is for creating your dreams and taking actions to make them happen that combines mindfulness and physical action to create your space of ‘success’.  Each day, follow one action tip to support the changes you seek!

If you are following these steps in January, imagine taking this time to clear your space and set your intention for the coming year.  “Clear the old to make way for the new.”  These steps have been written with this concept in mind.  This program can be started at any time.   The focus is on goal setting for personal change and growth.

It is recommended to integrate these or similar techniques before making any major changes in your current life experience.  Life experiences such as getting married, moving to a new city, looking for new employment, changing your personal relationships or health challenges.  

In her book, ‘Willpower Instinct’, Dr. Kelly Mcgonigal, PhD., stresses the highest rate of success for changing behaviour that has become automatic is if you pay attention to it first before going cold turkey.  She suggests that there is less chance for success with cold turkey resolutions.  If you develop a conscious awareness of your behaviour your brain has a better chance of controlling it.  Paying attention to it is noticing your triggers and the feelings attached to them.  Her tip is that once you become familiar with your behaviour begin to delay whatever action you would like to change for a few minutes to disrupt the habitual behaviour to develop new willpower muscles consciously.  She strongly recommends that you know your behaviour, know what you want, and know what the change will give you and the feelings you hope to replace blame, shame and/or guilt. Those practicing getting InTouch communication methods will recognize these suggestions!

Taking this time for your goals over a period of time allows you to develop clarity.  It develops focus with a pattern to shift attention mindfully with a repeated pattern each day that guides an action for the intention of devoting time to you and your success.  The action is focused on developing a healthy connection with the environment to increase conscious awareness of the influences of environmental stimulus.  For example, by clearing clutter, an environment of support makes room for something new to enter.  With one change per day, it becomes doable and not overwhelming.  Unlike New Year’s Eve resolutions spoken at the last minute and that were not well thought out, and lacked any preparation for success ahead of time.  Anywhere from 80 to 92 percent of those making New Year’s Resolutions quit within 8 weeks!

Somatic Goal Integration

This model of guided patterns incorporates Awareness through Feng Shui Principles, Awareness of Feldenkrais from the perspective of Functional Integration of the mental, emotional and physical responses and action and Awareness through Communication from the perspective of core triggers to reactions that shift them into mindful actions.  

This goal program suggests a mindfulness action each day for 31 days.  It takes two weeks or 14 days to create new habitual behaviours.  These patterns are designed as actionable steps for changing the inner filter that receives information through the five senses and processes it to enhance conscious awareness.  Imagine creating habits to become consciously aware of the intentions behind your actions? 

Video Short of Daily Action 1/31

Visit IA’s Somatic Goal Workshop Page to find out more about the Fire and Water Somatic Goal Setting Workshop Series starting in January, ’26.

Somatic Goals Workshops

Inquire about Coaching, Mentoring, Consulting or Personalized Classes

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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.

*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.

Fire and Water Somatic Goal Integration is in the Awareness through Future Life area of the Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning. Follow the News, Articles and Tips on the webpages for Cultivating Life through Goals. Click picture link:

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Copyright 2013 – 2025 Renee Lindstrom, GCFP
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration® are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North America. Feldenkrais Method®

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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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The Somatic Archetypes – The Fantastic Five

Posted on September 10, 2025 | Leave a comment

by Author Renee Lindstrom of The Somatic Archetypes

Audio above at link to listen or follow along while reading

The Archetypes

This introduction to defining these five senses includes both the noun and verb uses of these identifiers. It begins with a noun to describe sight, sound, smell, hearing and touch using a pattern that refers to conscious awareness for the intention or purpose to perceive and regain their felt sense.

As a Feldenkrais Practitioner, teacher and mentor, I have experienced these fantastic five somatic triggers as the core receptors of environmental influences that stimulate inner functional responses. These receptors are the beginning of any and every response that travels through the body, back and middle brain, and finally to the prefrontal cortex last. It happens quicker than one can track and control. The only thing that can be controlled is mental function and the information going in. Even thoughts of memories can influence and activate these five senses, suggesting there are internal and external sources of environmental influences. These five Archetype patterns for functional integration of the environmental stimulus that triggers receptors are introduced below. An important point to consider is that these Archetypes stimulate each other’s sensory awareness prethought. They have their own expressive language.

The Artist

The Visionary


Most babies are born with the gift of sight. Sight is through the beautiful body design of vision that includes the lens that takes in the world. Artists take in the world and interpret it through their unique abilities. An example, developing the quality of one’s eyes that was present at birth, would be the experiences of meditation. Mediators have spent time and energy softening their eye habits from which to take in the world, to retrain their brains that have developed a harsh and critical focus looking at the world. A subtle yet profound shift in quality of life.

The eyes are located in the head in direct contact with the brain.

The Musician

The Vocalist

A musician has developed their sense of hearing in an advanced way to differentiate musical sounds and notes. The universe is filled with musical tones that formed early music perspectives. There is a belief that primordial creation began with sound in some Eastern philosophies, such as Hinduism. This sense is as important as sight, touch, taste and smell. A sense that may be taken for granted until it is dimmed. It inspires and motivates action. For example, music. If a piece is playing, it will either heighten moods or it will create agitation. It can even inspire movement through dance spontaneously or provoke immediate frustration and annoyance. This is a hidden influence of behavioural responses. Hidden suggests unconscious awareness or taking this sense for granted. If sound is a dominant sense, the tone of voice or sounds a person will make will be another hidden environmental influence in controlled or spontaneous responses.

The skill to hear vibrations is a gift that translates into the health and well-being of individuals and relationships.

Sound is received through the ears that are directly connected to the brain.

Sound is expressed through the mouth, yet originates from below the head in the voice box at the base of the neck in the front.

The Somatic

The Toucher

A baby will be sensitive to the somatic touch of all the textures and levels of denseness of articles and items they come in contact with. Their skin is receptive and a source of information. The hands are known to make a larger map inside the brain of neuro-pathways as the baby gathers this intel through touch. The skin is an organ that covers the body. As a receiver, the skin responds to what the other senses are hearing, seeing, smelling and tasting. When these senses send signals to the brain, it sends signals to the skin that responds immediately. It happens faster than any identifying label or word in our common vocabulary to describe it. This somatic sense is at the core of function and integrates all the senses. The other senses influence one another similarly, yet the somatic sense of touch encompasses them all and is a source of awareness that can be conscious or unconscious. This is the Milky Way of our universal responsive experience to explore and investigate.

Touch encompasses the whole body through skin contact with solid surfaces, and elusive and unsolid influences like the wind, heat, cold, water, and emotional waves emanating from people and animals

The Perfumeur

Scent Enthusiast

Dual Activation of Scent Responses

Digestion

The sense of smell is a powerful activator. It is how a baby senses their mom and begins to locate their food source. The connection continues through life as smell is what activates the taste buds to create the ability to taste flavours. Smell will activate taste buds to taste flavours and begin the function of processing and digesting foods even before it is put in one’s mouth. It activates the stomach to receive the food with the right digestive enzymes and stimulates the organs to prepare for processing it through the gut. Digestion begins before putting food in one’s mouth and chewing.

Attraction

Scents create attraction that is confirmed through generations of creating special perfume scents for both males and females. Scent is a silent expression of attraction and a powerful expression for mating. The sense of smell will be one of the first unconscious expressions that will attract a person to another. This personal scent will only attract a few matches. It will not attract the general population. It is like a mother who has a connection to the scent of their child. You will often see them smell their child’s head. It is a form of expression and affection.

Scent is through the nose, located between the eyes and mouth on the head and direct link in the brain

The Taster

The Supertasters

The mouth function is the first dominant sense used at birth. Immediately, a baby begins to feed long before being able to focus their eyes on objects. The ability to suckle at birth is an inherent functional action of survival. When a baby begins to receive new foods to explore from three months on, their taste buds stimulate conscious awareness of different tastes. Some of these babies will have a stronger taste sense and be able to differentiate flavours. Many of those with this ability become tasters of fine wine and foods to classify them in the industry, or become critics of them for the benefit of others. However, it is the sense of smell that activates the taster buds.

The taste buds are in the mouth, on the surface of the tongue located in the head close to the brain

Early Somatic Development

Most babies are born with the gift of training their mental patterns to process information to fit within their social structures. This suggests that they learned the conditioning of those in their surroundings. I call this an environmental influence. It is a lifelong influence that is passed down to future generations. It’s taken for granted. When this thinking behaviour is taken for granted, it doesn’t include insight, especially if the educational system guidance is using the same patterning. The person sitting in meditation is retraining themselves not to attach to the random pre-conditioned thoughts and reactions that are arising. This begins to create a gap between the thoughts that leaves space for silence. It is in the silence that recognition unfolds, and one begins to recognize who they are outside the social conditioning of their family, friends, peers, etc. It is a profound experience to tap into the real person inside the layers of trying to belong and be what others want you to be.

Through the practical development and experience of Feldenkrais, I have discovered that there is a similar experience, as described in meditation. The difference for me as a student, practitioner, teacher and mentor is that it takes this meditative experience to the next level. It is in living action while in the engagement with day-to-day interactions and actions.

It is through the:

  • freedom of eye movement patterns that are spontaneous
  • sounds in the environment and inside your functioning body and thinking brain
  • touch of solid objects for feedback, and the elusive waves in the environment
  • smell stimulates attraction or warning, and stimulates digestion
  • taste, a somatic receptor, like touch and starts digestive functions, like smell

Patterns that have been lost through reactions of a lifetime of social interactions and conditioning. It adds the component of awareness and spaciousness, which increases windows of tolerance in ongoing daily activities.

The Thinker

The Intellect

Thinking is not a sense. Often, it is confused with the ability to hear, using the term auditory. However, thinking is a separate inner function for processing information that has been learned through social conditioning. Anyone using auditory to describe thinking is minimizing the ability to hear sounds separately from the ability to think and obtain memories from which to understand and process information.

Thinking is also a separate function from seeing, smelling, touching and tasting. However, thinking puts thought forms into statements that often reflect belief systems, opinions, and perspectives. These beliefs, opinions and perspectives are taken from long and short-term memories of past experiences and learned conditioning of our individual and unique social and cultural conditioning.

Mindfulness through thought patterns

coming out of the shadows of projections into the lighter qualities of present moment clarity

Memories are the past that shapes thinking patterns in the present and future.

Thinking in the present through the experience of the fantastic five senses and expressed somatically, not thought projections, can be conscious awareness in the moment that redirects and retrains thought focus.

The fantastic five senses can be a focus of attention for determining the value needs for creating the future using intention to create motivation.

These fantastic five somatic archetypes are at the core of Inside Awareness Center’s Integrative Learning programs. These programs are somatic dialogues, somatic movement and function, somatic spaces with support programs that are environmental influences in relationships, behaviours and function.

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Copyright 2014 – 2025  Renee Lindstrom, GCFP,
Feldenkrais® Practitioner since 2007, Communication & Empathy Coach since 2004, Art of Placement since 2001

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Culture of Values – 5 Easy Steps for grounding

Posted on October 17, 2024 | Leave a comment
Active Grounding ExerciseDownload

These guided grounding patterns compliment the Culture of Values Educational Program

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Compatible grounding integrative experience with values, feeling and needs, mindfulness and history through the walking pattern of the labyrinth

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Copyright 2014 – 2024 Renee Lindstrom, GCFP
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North America. Feldenkrais Method®

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Tips to Achieving Your Goals Somatically

Posted on January 3, 2024 | Leave a comment
Reflection of yin and yang balance (feminine and masculine energies)

Yesterday I shared an exercise to introduce a connection to mindful intention and action in one’s personal environment. It is the first tip of 31 created to cultivate somatic and mindful awareness. 

In 2013 I wrote a little booklet to support an introduction for practicing techniques to ground and expand mindful connection using focused attention on the integration of intention with action. The purpose of these tips is to cultivate conscious awareness. One way you can bring your goals into reality is to consider these daily awareness techniques and actions to define your intention. Bring them alive by making time to manifest physical change in your living/working space.  It takes a few minutes a day.  Designed for slowing down and consciously pausing to reflect, notice and take actions. It is for creating your dreams and taking actions to make them happen that combines mindfulness and physical action to create your space of ‘success’.  Each day for 31 days there is a short pattern or exercise to integrate in one’s environment to support change and connection!

Here is the second tip on day two for you to investigate and experience. Each January I follow this program to remind myself and reconnect to my space and things with intention and mindfulness. 

Here is a pdf of exercise 2 for your enjoyment! 

Leave a comment and share back how this exercise was for you. For me I felt pleased after doing this task that I have done numerous times before with no sense of joy, rather felt effort previously. The difference was the connection to my intention and purpose. It change the inner vibration in the action that began with a different mindset. My mind was refocused and the thought stories were of a higher vibration. 

glimpse-into-goal-setting-somatically-day-twoDownload

Cultivating Success with Awareness through Goals Programs

 1st Level – Getting Started (Introduction & Pattern)
 2nd Level – Getting Intouch (Experiencing & Connection)
 3rd Level – Integration (Embodiment)

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by Renee Lindstrom, GCFP @ Inside Awareness,  
Copyright 2014 – 2024 Renee Lindstrom, GCFP

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