Mental Moment-Isolation
Your head isn’t isolated from your body. They continuously communicate back and forth. The things that happen to you in your life are not isolated from each other. They are all interdependent on each other. What makes this complex is that with movement, situations & events move feel like we just move, act and do but we don’t generally understand what produces those things to happen. It’s not physical, it’s psychological.
Head-body
The body does not just move. It moves with information from your head. There are moments in situations that you do what you want to do; the right move. You’ve practiced it and the muscle memory in your brain has the correct sequence. Although a disruption in the correct sequence (i.e. anxiety or loss of focus) throws you off and you end up doing something; usually something unexplainable. For example, you’ve practiced Beethoven’s symphony 9 over and over. You’ve perfected the notes, the highs and lows and have come up with a really great rendition. After having played this perfected piece over and over your mind and muscles are in sync with what you want to do. The day of your audition you start off well but hear someone on the panel whispering. Your brain thinks ‘who is whispering’. This takes you out of your focus. Your brain continues thinking ‘how dare they talk while I am playing’ and ‘now they’ve totally screwed up my piece’. Your brain is unraveling (and you probably don’t recognize it) and your perfected sequence is unraveling with it. You travel down a path you (may) have never been on.
None of that is random or isolated. If you are having a ‘bad passing day’ (from Tuesdays blog) it’s not because your body all by itself wants to do something other than what you want it to. Your brain is the driver and must be off thinking about something else.
Life
The mind-body connection IS! It just is! It is as a performer and it is life. When the dog chews your shoe and awhile later you find yourself angry and yelling at assistant are they isolated instances? They might feel like they are but they probably aren’t. And that’s a small example. Imagine trying to get healthy in an unhealthy environment. You want to eat healthier and workout. You have a lot of the tools. Your spouse on the other hand does not want to eat healthier and workout. Eating healthier and working out is a lifestyle. If two people in a relationship are at complete opposite ends of the spectrum are they each going to be impacted by the other? Can the spouse with all the tools toward health really make the complete leap without the support of the other? Wouldn’t that spouse always be pulled back toward the unhealthy side? And there is whole host of unconscious messages between them. For the spouse who wants to get healthy, does having a second plate of food that he doesn’t need or want during dinner have anything unconsciously to do with the environment or spouse? He may not consciously be thinking it does but that’s exactly (part of) what’s going on.
You can certainly say things like I am not sure how that happened or I am having a bad day but what’s probably more accurate is that you are not sure what is going on psychologically to produce the actions that just occurred. Your life is not random and it’s definitely not isolated.
Happy end of the week!
Dr. Michelle
Photo credit: sharingbipolar.com
