Your psycho-emotional environment moves you.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes your body will do something and sometimes it won't?

Or that sometimes you're willing to move in one way and sometimes you're not?

That tension and openness and mobility and strength aren't exactly fixed experiences?

I mean, sure, you have your typical range, but perhaps you've noticed that there's quite a bit of variability within this range.

At the HeartBody Santa Fe retreat this last weekend, we talked a bit about context. About the way a particular emotional context impacts movement. 

You've surely seen this in terms of your physical environment, how the placement and prevalence of furniture, e.g., leads to particular movement choices. This is why I've made some changes to my environment. I want to move more and if my physical environment doesn't invite in that movement, I am less likely to move. If there's a couch, I will sit on it (with a tucked pelvis!). If there are a bunch of chairs, I will sit on them to do everything. But if there are floor cushions, I will get up and down off the ground a hundred times. If there's a squatty potty, I will use it when I go to the bathroom. If there's a foam dome in the kitchen, I will stretch my calves when I'm washing dishes.

This is no less true for your psycho-emotional environment, too, and all the factors that go into creating a safe (and motivating) space for you to move. 

We move less when we feel tense or angry or defensive or afraid. We move differently when we don't feel cared about or are made fun of. We become sedentary in the midst of apathy and unfelt emotions. 

Part of what made HeartBody Santa Fe so amazing was that we created a psycho-emotional context for more movement. Not only did each person show up ready to do their inner work, but together we created connection and intimacy and safety. This safety opened us all up to moving differently, to seeing differently, to being different. Possibility emerged that hadn't existed before.

If you want to move differently, look to your environment. Yes, to your physical environment. But also to that psycho-emotional one, too.

Look to your own inner world and the larger environment that it creates for the physical you. How are you feeling? What beliefs aren't supporting you? What is the terrain of your psyche?

Look to your relationships and how they do or don't support you. Where do you have allies? In what ways are you alone? Who needs to be kicked out of the inner circle?

Look to the clues (or absence thereof) in your physical environment that tell you you are safe and worthy and home. What objects bring you a sense of beauty and meaning? What are your needs regarding clutter and dirt? What things inspire you? 

When you can begin to see how your psycho-emotional environment intersects with what's available to you in your body, you can start having some compassion for some of the obstacles you face in your movement. You can also start to change your environment. 

(And please, give yourself some space. Allow for the fact that your psycho-emotional environment isn't going to be some version of perfection. We - and the people around us - are always moving though "stuff" and the movement of our bodies will reflect that sort of movement, too.)

I'm so grateful for and inspired by the work we did together this last weekend. Sometimes, changing our environments just means stepping away for a bit, entering a different time/space continuum and letting the new environment move us. You might want to add that to your list of possibilities, too!