Quotessence
Home / Topics / Body Wisdom Quotes

Body Wisdom Quotes

Browse 16 quotes about Body Wisdom.

Body Wisdom Quotes

“In these pages, we keep returning to one foundational principle: providing the possibility of emotional/relational safety for our people, be they patients, children, partners, friends or strangers. We are able to make this offer when they are experiencing their own neuroception of safety, not continuously, but as the baseline to which we return after our system has adaptively moved into sympathetic arousal or dorsal withdrawal in response to inner and outer conditions. When we neuroceive safety, we humans automatically begin to open into vulnerability, and the movement of our "inherent treatment plan" (Sills, 2010) has a greater probability of coming forward. When we have a neuroception of threat, we adaptively tighten down at many levels, from physical tension to activation of the protective skills we have learned over a lifetime (Levine, 2010). In that state, our innate healing path will often wisely stay hidden until more favorable conditions arrive.”

HopeTrustProtectionTrauma HealingPerson CenteredPsychological SafetyBody WisdomPolyvagalInnate Healing Plan
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image

“Depression always brings to mind the possibility that the person's SEEKING system may have been turned off ... Our mutual trust in his system's wisdom kept us from being swept away by the despair he felt. We began to ask, "what is this depression, this one who is so still, wanting to tell us?" Then we waited. We stayed with the one who felt dead inside, acknowledging his protective value even when though we had no cognitive awareness of who and what he was sheltering.”

HopeTrustDepressionWelcomePresenceTrauma RecoveryPerson CenteredBody WisdomSomatic Healing
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image

“I smiled broadly. " ...This is your body's wisdom speaking to us, sensing when it is safe to go forward, pulling back a bit when it might be too much. You and I are just getting to know one another, so I really respect the caution and protection in your inner world." ... With visible relaxation in her body and strong eye contact, she said, "All my life people have criticized me for being cautious. It means a lot that you like that I'm that way." W”

TrustAnxietySafe SpacePerson CenteredPsychological SafetyBody WisdomSomatic HealingTherapy Case Study
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image

“There are so many valuable techniques for regulation, for exploring and integrating traumatic experience, and so on. Once we get to know these protocols, they may pull on us in ways that invite us to seize control of the therapy. The other pathway suggests that her system holds the answers and that if I can offer enough safe support, it will likely begin to speak with us. At least cognitively, I can recognize that this person's inner world contains much more information about the root causes of her upset than I do. From this perspective, I am less interested in dealing with symptoms than moving towards making room for the implicit origin to emerge so that the protective systems can take care of themselves.”

TrustSafetyPerson CenteredPsychological SafetyAttunementBody WisdomImplicit HealingFlexible TherapyMultimodal Therapy
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image

“We stayed with the one who felt dead inside, acknowledging his protective value, even though we had no cognitive awareness of who and what he was sheltering ... 'What is this depression, this one who is so still, wanting to tell us?”

HopeHealingTrustDepressionMental HealthTrauma HealingPerson CenteredImplicit MemoryBody Wisdom
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image

“If we can approach these implicit arisings as a gift rather than an attack, as an opening towards healing, we may be able to help our people get into relationship with their implicit world in a more compassionate and collaborative way. Perhaps we can begin with considering these memories, no matter how challenging, to be messengers of life-giving truth.”

CompassionAwakeningTherapySelf AcceptanceTriggersImplicit MemoryBody Wisdom
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image

“Remembering that the impulse to control is an indication that we are having a neuroception of danger, perhaps we can be compassionate rather than critical of ourselves when we do step in to overtly manage the process. Perhaps we can begin to ask inside about the nature of the threat that brings on the need to assert control and fix. As always, dropping the questions into our right hemisphere and not expecting a particular answer in this moment opens the way for a deeper understanding to emerge bit by bit.”

ControlSelf AcceptanceImperfectionPerson CenteredPsychological SafetyBody WisdomSelf Compassion For TherapistsInner ListeningImperfection In TherapyNeuroception
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image

“All of us develop the protections our implicit memories need to keep what are perceived to be worse dangers from us. ... Our initial work is ... about respectfully acknowledging that our people's system is acting wisely in this moment, no matter what it looks like on the outside. Holding this firmly in our own body, heart and mind is of inestimable benefit to those who come to us.”

HealingSelf HarmReactionImplicit MemoryBody WisdomEmbodied SafetyAddition
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image

“Through mirror neurons and resonance circuitry, we are taking in each other's bodily state, feelings and intention in each emerging moment (Iacoboni, 2009). This gives us an approximate empathic sense of what is happening in the other person, but it is important to be aware that the information is also being filtered through our implicit lens. This filtering colors our perceptions and pretty much guarantees there will be ruptures that invite repairs, as our offers of empathy will sometimes not reflect what the other person is experiencing.”

ListeningTherapyResonanceTrauma HealingAttunementBody WisdomSomatic ExperiencingMirror NeuronsRupture And RepairEmpathy Tips
Book:The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships
Create image

“You'll know that you're aligned with the truth of your deepest wisdom when your body feels light and expansive. You'll know when something isn't right for you because you'll feel constricted, awkward, fidgety, tense, or edgy.”

WisdomTruthSpiritualIntuitionGuidanceTensionLightnessBody WisdomWholeheartedExpansive
Book:The Call of Intuition: How to Recognize & Honor Your Intuition, Instinct & Insight
Create image

“From her very flesh and blood and from the constant cycles of filling and emptying the red vase in her belly, a woman understands physically, emotionally, and spiritually that zeniths fade and expire, and what is left is reborn in unexpected ways and by inspired means, only to fall back to nothing, and yet be reconceived again in full glory.”

SpiritualFlesh And BloodBody WisdomWomen Who Run With The WolvesMensesDance Of Body And SoulFeminine ImageryNatural Ally Of Skeleton Woman
Book:Women Who Run With the Wolves
Create image