Here are the YouTube channels for Inside Awareness with playlists you can like and subscribe to if you are interested in supporting the Legacy Project of Inside Awareness. Each playlist has individual videos you can listen to, like and support. This objective is to monetize the channels and playlists to help finance this legacy.
Renee also has a podcast with interesting topics. For example, one that is relevant and has been discussed in mainstream media recently is on the incorrect use of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The label of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs isn’t used, yet the points made in the article are the same. It identifies and demonstrates the inverted use of this pyramid to block and stop people from moving forward in their lives. This is currently playing out in the global experience that encourages us to develop the consciousness we need to change these behaviours, or at the very least call them out as we recognize them.
This Legacy project educational focus aligns with organic somatic learning in early childhood and can transition these early learning patterns to counterbalance socially conditioned ones. There are many lifestyle benefits to this objective, like aging well.
Remember, the only place to donate is on the Inside Awareness website – www.insideawareness.com under the legacy tab. This website will demonstrate years of work in blog posts and pages to confirm its authenticity. Authenticity can further be explored at http://www.reneelindstrom.com.
Here are the playlists on YouTube channel for Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning – Click individual pics to link to plalist
Here are the playlists on YouTube channel for Somatic Influencer
Here are some examples of podcasts on Renee’s YouTube channel
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North
Here are the Facebook pages to like and follow if you are interested in supporting the Legacy Project of Inside Awareness. Each page has individual posts you can listen to, like and support. This objective is to monetize the page to help finance this legacy.
This Legacy project educational focus aligns with organic somatic learning in early childhood and can transition these early learning patterns to counterbalance socially conditioned ones. There are many lifestyle benefits to this objective, like aging well.
Remember, the only place to donate is on the Inside Awareness website – www.insideawareness.com under the legacy tab. This website will demonstrate years of work in blog posts and pages to confirm its authenticity. Authenticity can further be explored at http://www.reneelindstrom.com.
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North
by Renee Lindstrom, founder, Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning
Launching Somatic Body Mindfulness Series on Audio Video
Guided Somatic Patterns for Centering
Listen on Youtube audio – Authors Voice
Cultivating Awareness & Grounding through Body Mindfulness
Somatic Body Mindfulness is a series of guided movement patterns based upon the Feldenkrais® Method of Somatic Education through the perspective of Renee Lindstrom, GCFP ’07 . Renee has been teaching Lifestyle Models in the community since the mid-nineties, which has expanded her perspective, clarity and understanding of learning and aging.
These Somatic Body Mindfulness audio videos will align body, mind and emotions. These patterns will calm the nervous system and increase inner peace. With an increase in the felt sense of inner quiet, there is an increase of clarity in the felt sense movement patterns in the shifting body parts as they transition postures. This mindful connection to the movement and physical response in transition increases conscious awareness and organically integrates the pattern into movement behaviours.
Somatic Body Mindful guided patterns reduce tension, stress, anxiety, fear, frustration and anger and increase inner calm, peace and relaxation. SBM guided patterns support an increase in the range of motion and can reduce constraints that restrict movement.
The positive mental and physical functional outcomes of these SBM guided patterns increase clarity, focus, inner calm, mindfulness, stability and physical balance. These patterns will create a balanced alignment between the mental, emotional and physical functions. This alignment improves flexibility and spontaneity. The positive emotional outcomes are an increase of inner peacefulness, contentment, groundedness, connection and belonging.
Some of the conditions that SBM guided patterns that Renee has observed improve are:
Anxiety and Depression
Artheritis
Back and Neck Pain
Loss of Balance
Bell’s Palsy
High Blood Pressure
Shallow Breathing
Chronic Pain
Eating Disorders
Fibromyalgia
Lack of Flexibility
Hip, Knee and Ankle Joint Pain
Injuries
Insomnia
Pulled Muscles
Multiple Sclerosis
Parkinsons
Locked Shoulders
Stroke
TMJ
Some of the Benefits that Research has shown are:
Improved:
proprioception
coordination and ease of movement
posture and stability
well-being
feeling of confidence
breathing
Decreased
pain
spasm
Research Evidence:
Improves:
body awareness: Multiple sclerosis, pain, stroke, able-bodied
mobility
stability
coordination
ease of movement
posture
balance confidence
mood
breathing
well-being and quality of life
sleep
self efficacy and health locus of control
self image
greater recruitment of the affected part of the motor cortex (stroke)
Reduces, decreases:
decreased pain
fatigue
anxiety and stress
medical costs
To learn more about this Research on the Benefits of Feldenkrais, go to the link in the description box and tap the link
How to purchase and enjoy this introduction to a grounding and centering somatic experience:
Introduction: Grounding thru Body Mindfulness
Experience Somatic Body Mindfulness by aligning felt sense observation and anatomy
Introduction to the anatomy using guided patterns and mindful exploration for cultivating awareness through the felt senses and the skeleton.
Use QR Code to Purchase or go below
Benefits:
reduce and reverse aging
increasing flexibility and resilience
develop body awareness
reduce body tension, pain, anxiety and effort
increase relaxation and windows of emotional tolerance and self-connection
improve sleep and sleep sounder
increase body functions, cognition and emotional responses of calm, mindfulness and joy
Exploring the body anatomy through the felt senses increases inner awareness and trust. This body exploration is a different type of strength training. The difference is the focus of attention on the body, mind and felt senses through guided patterns designed to expand conscious awareness of the body function. The strength of feeling one’s body through moving joints and bones deepens awareness of physical connections as postures change, like in the shifting transitions from sitting to standing and back to sitting. Movement is a series of shifting postures. The functioning healthy body is not stationary, nor poses. It is designed for a continuous flow of integrative movement patterns.
Feedback On Body Mindfulness Introduction
“I am excited!!! This is great! It is like you are there with me step by step. It’s what all of us are looking for, real Feldenkrais support” S
“That was great, Renee! You have such a calm and lovely voice. I’m happy to add this to my calming strategies.Thank you. ” H
“I really like this sort of thing and would welcome further “installments” in the series and/or a revised version of this one. I liked the pace at which you spoke, not too rushed and left enough time to do the exploration of the particular area of the body to which you were drawing attention.
I liked that you offered options re leg position (straight out or with bolster under knees) but wondered whether one position or the other is preferable. Or is it just that one would notice different things, depending on how the legs are positioned?” K
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of NorthAmerica
by Renee Lindstrom, founder, Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning
The nine life area goals identified in the poster above were painted as a creative personal connection to intentions in each area and framed last night as the calendar is about to shift into 2026. This poster is hung facing the door to my office/creative space as a visual reminder as I move about and sit at my desk. This interactive poster is placed prominently with the intention of manifesting life through creative expression in living and learning. It is a visual focus of intention for creative living in 2026 that expresses from a thoughtful core connection. It is my ‘Shining North Star’ guiding my 2026 experience. A Shining North Star that contains what is alive and meaningful in the present moment of reflection. Each year is a stepping stone on an elusive journey, and this poster identifies the present location of this North Star on this pathway. It creates groundedness in the spontaneity of living an interactive and innovative lifestyle.
Shining Star
by local #yyj artist from my children’s school in ’01/’02
In the center of the Shining Star, in the above drawing, one can imagine the burst of creation. Creation that creates form. This activity, shown in the poster above, demonstrates intentional action for creating an interactive board that connects to what is meaningful at a core level. It is the elusive structure that contains the form for bursts of spontaneous action in alignment with core intention.
The board replaces outside influences and realigns my decision-making focus to make independent choices in alignment with what is meaningful, rather than seeking outside advice and opinions. It has proven to be a strong support that eliminates the unnecessary projections of others that do not have the same inner patterns for processing information. Each of us has an inner pattern for processing information that is unique. No one can duplicate another person’s inner filter or processing patterns or tell someone what to do effectively, based on the separation between inner programming. Programming that I identify as social and cultural conditioning.
In simple terms, this means that the poster above reflects a lifestyle model where consideration was given to determine important next steps. These stepping stones guide the coming year at a core level and become the source for checking in for reassurance and guidance that outside actions are in balance with inner values. My yearly considerations go back to 2013 or thereabouts. Each year became a stepping stone on a journey that unlocked a natural and organic model of elevating conscious awareness. It is one of the pillars that has become an educational pattern for expanding beyond the constraints of learned social and cultural behavioural conditioning. How? It has replaced outside authorities with an inner one.
What does outside authority versus an inner one mean?
Outside
An outside authority is exactly how it is written. In this context, it means looking to others (false guru’s) for guidance on what is right and what is wrong based upon their opinions, belief systems and limited living experiences. Anyone with a closed mindset that looks outside themselves at status (what others have) and self-image (how things appear) has limitations in clarity and life experience. It’s all contained within a closed circuit and small-mindedness. If they have a title, it is even harder to discriminate, as the Indoctrination creates a false belief system of superiority.
Google writes: Indoctrination is teaching someone a specific set of beliefs or ideas, often political, religious, or ideological, in a way that discourages questioning or critical thinking, making them accept it as truth without examination, like brainwashing, but can also be a less harsh form of cultural teaching. It’s about instilling a doctrine or viewpoint repeatedly until it’s accepted uncritically, differing from general education which encourages independent thought.
Inside
An inner authority means checking in mindfully or thoughtfully to tap into what is meaningful in the present moment. This suggests a structure for learning core values, and trusting them in a sea of outside opinions, perspectives and beliefs. It suggests owning one’s own power, instead of being in the habit of giving it away. This is an action of leadership that can be challenging. It means letting go of blame and shame to justify the action one is taking, or has taken.
An example of blaming others for personal actions. As a kid, I blamed a sibling for taking an action to shoplift. I was 7 years old. I told my dad …….made me do it. Only,………wasn’t there!
Not only is considering intentions for the coming year important for cultivating awareness of personal needs, its accountability training. It can be an elusive pattern with a spontaneous outcome. It shifts the blame and shame learned thinking behaviours into a focus on self-value and accomplishments.
Reading more posts on Cultivating with Goals on our Goal news webpages:
by Renee Lindstrom, founder of Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning
Example of a foraging focus that demonstrates learning about a topic that retrains the lost art of nature wild crafting and connection
Pictures by Renee Lindstrom
These web pages, Awareness through Nature, were created in 2014. The pages were to document a journey into nature’s abundance in the surrounding landscapes of front and back yards, and the city blocks in the neighbourhood. It began with edible weeds, unique garden plants, herbs, trees, bulbs, roots, leaves, etc. It included naturally occurring growth and those purposefully planted.
The intention was to explore their nutritional and medicinal benefits, and create homemade tinctures, teas, infusions, essences, skin and hair products, and natural dyes.
This spring and summer, attention shifted back onto these pages as foraging came back into focus. The owner of some rental units let the landscaping go, and it inspired the wild crafting to emerge. Foraging has continued into winter. This includes mushrooms, lichen and tree needles for carbonizing water.
More new additions – three new affiliates. The intention for these affiliates is for those who are not actively making their own plant remedies. I do make them for my personal use and share ways for others to create them, yet, know not everyone has the time to make them. Here are fun and reliable sources for those interested in natural remedies.
Energy Muse
Crystal Herbs
Wishgarden Herbs
These three affiliates join the original Richters Herbs.
Energy Muse offers a nice range of crystals and accessories. This year, they began offering frequency generators that I am in love with. Crystals Herbs offers flower essences, while Wish Garden Herbs offers plant tinctures. A reminder that Richters offers garden seeds, plants, dried herbs and recently began to offer essential oils. Their logos are along the sidebar at the top of the page. Tap the logos to visit their websites.
Back to the evolution of these web pages. This site is one of many developed. The process was to learn how to interact online for business development and integrate lessons in a way that made sense. The streams of focus needed to have a unified focus. This year it came into alignment and came together.
At the time of developing practice sites, I spent time supporting coaching students in building theirs. This included social media accounts. One of the intentions was to offer them a way through the constraints they stated blocked them from moving forward. It was interesting to work with them to build these online accounts, only to discover that this isn’t what was blocking them from moving forward. It was a lack of confidence. It was a fantastic way for them to begin to let go of the story dialogue and begin focusing on their self-confidence.
The web pages have more than one learning focus at the Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning. The center’s educational programs focus on lifestyles and are broken down into nine life areas. There are webpages for each of these nine life areas. Some of the webpages in each of the nine life areas may crossover into other life areas. Like this webpage. It is located in the higher learning life area, yet I would like to announce that its creation has a perspective that links it to the career life area. The articles featured focus on learning the abundance available in the natural world. However, the development of it provides another learning focus on intention and building sites. This suggests the web pages will have an individual intent for cultivating awareness, and all the sites together will have an intention to encourage the use of intention, placement and the five elements in building business sites. The purpose isn’t to teach building sites specifically. It is about expanding consciousness of alignment with intention and the natural elements, and the social conditioning aspect that is becoming culturally conditioned behaviour in business.
I hope you will like and subscribe to stay updated on the weekly featured sites, or click the link to the feature webpages below to check it out to get a felt sense of the site and offerings.
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North America. Feldenkrais Method®
Copyrighted Property posted on Renee’s authentic accounts only:
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.
Perceive through socially conditioned critical thinking.
Perceive through the five senses, sight, sound, taste, smell and touch, in the filter of power and control of critical thinking.
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.
Feldenkrais®, Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement®, and Functional Integration®, are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North America. Feldenkrais Method®
Copyrighted Property posted on Renee’s authentic accounts only:
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.
Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning 