Have you ever wondered why your tension returns a week after your massage? Or why, despite your weekly yoga classes, mindfulness apps and hours of talking therapy, you still find yourself dropping into stress patterns you've held for years? You're still triggered by the same people or situations even though you have done so much of "the work". Chronic pain and symptoms persist, and you feel inflamed, burnt out and just not yourself. You want more for yourself, but how much harder can you try? You're jumping from one quick fix to the next in the hope that one day, something will stick.  Welcome, your nervous system. The brain and body connection. That, along with your hormones, controls everything. Consciously and subconsciously, it holds emotion, trauma, love, fear. EVERYTHING.  Yes, every time you have repressed an emotion, a cry, a fear, a frustration we may appear polite in society but we rob our bodies of the chance to complete the cycle of that emotional response. Rendering it held in your body. Of course sometimes we have no choice, but sometimes we do. Do this for a week and you'd feel pretty pent up, yet we're doing it for months and years at a time.  Your body is always on your side and working every moment of every day for you. Your body is not the enemy, though to many it can feel like that's the case. So you decide it's time for change, you simply cannot live this way anymore. Yet the exercise spikes your stress response, the healthy food doesn't seem to make much difference to your inflammation and the meditation makes you want to scream. This is where working with your body to release emotion and built-up energy can change everything. Here we don't need to talk about and continue to relive the experience in our mind. We don't need to unpick everything that's ever happened to us to work it all out. Instead, through movement, energy work and bodywork we embody the emotion or energy, we let the body whisper, speak or roar. We provide safety and space for it to be felt and then we let it move, unravel and release.  The first time many experience this it can feel huge. A big satisfying cathartic release. In human nature we tend to get to the point of popping, seek the release, life feels more manageable and we repeat again and again.  Any way you choose to live is fine, but what I'm talking about is walking through the door of connection and grabbing a new way of living with both hands. It's a regular practice of embodiment, release and connection. again and again and again.  Healing happens in layers. Messy, imperfect and emotional layers. It takes time and it's not linear. Healing also isn't about being happy or "regulated" all the time. It's about having more capacity, more resilience and more reactivity. So yes, face that stressful situation head-on. But have a system that can come back into the parasympathetic once it's done. Yes, engage in injustice and stand up for what's right, but be able to also experience joy and softness without guilt. And yes.. have so much more of a capacity to love, because the love you cultivate for yourself becomes deeper and more sure.  ​ ​