I was reading a book on Somatics (a way of increasing flexibility, health and happiness by movements of the body) and I came across the term ‘sensory-motor amnesia’ (SMA for short).
SMA is the term used to describe the memory loss of how certain muscle groups feel and how to control them…This happens naturally to everyone as we grow older and results in poor posture, bad backs, strange muscle pains and premature ageing…
Put in laymen’s terms, as we grow older, we forget how to use our muscles and body in the ways it was designed to…we get amnesia for the patterns of movement that are in built and start taking up bad habits that can cause us physical problems…
In my opinion this form of amnesia doesn’t just happen in the body it also happens in the mind…
When you were really young you were happy, free of anxiety and floated through life in a blissful state of being…It’s a human beings natural default setting to be in this state and it’s not until we grow up and start to make lots of negative assumptions and learnings about ourself and the world around us that we forget about this natural default state…
Human beings are incredible learning machines…it’s what has accelerated our evolution in comparison to other animals and allowed us to become the dominant force on the planet…
This ability to learn is obviously a tremendous gift but, unfortunately, it also comes at a price…Because we learn so well we learn lots of stuff that simply isn’t useful…we make gross generalisations, distort information and stop seeing things that are there in order to function effectively in the world…
This can lead to lots of mis-informed opinions that cloud our vision and make us forget about our natural state of anxiety free happiness we were born with…
Here’s the good thing though…what’s forgotten can always be remembered…in the same way that you can begin using your body and muscles in the ways you used to you can return to this natural default state of blissful happiness and anxiety free way of being…
A lot of people say that, in order to be relaxed, happy and anxiety free you have to work hard at building new neural pathways in your brain so that they supersede the old ones and then, finally, you get to feel happy.
Now i’m not a neurologist but, from experience, I’m convinced this isn’t the way it works…In my opinion you already have the neural networks to be happy. To feel relaxed around people, free of social anxiety and in the moment enjoying your on going experience. You may have to go through a process of re-connecting with this way of being but you are not starting from scratch…
It’s like the sci-fi film ‘Equilibrium’ starring Christian Bale. It’s set in the future at a time where those in a positions of power have decided that the root of all conflict, war and evil is ‘human emotion’…
So, in their wisdom, they decide to ban all emotion, making everyone inject themselves daily with emotional suppressant drugs…
The most poignant scene of the film occurs about 20 minutes in when Bale decides to stop taking his emotional suppressant drugs and, all of a sudden, he starts to experience his first true, raw emotion…
As he watches a beautiful sunset he starts to cry with tears of joy, overcome with joy at the natural beauty of what he is seeing…
Re-connecting with your natural default state of happiness is a bit like stopping taking the emotional suppressant drugs and fully remembering what it’s like when you are truly at your best…
It take a bit of practice and I’m not saying you’ll always stay in this place but the more you can go into it the happier, more relaxed and anxiety free you will be…
So…the million dollar question…how do you do it?
I’m going to be talking a lot about this in future posts but for now you can start to re-connect with this way of being by answering the following simple yet powerful question:
“Who are you when you are truly at your best?”
Fully explore this question as much as you can as it contains some of the most important information you have inside of you. You may have to go back to when you were very young, that’s okay, do anything you need to do to come up with as detailed a description as you possibly can. Also make sure to involve as many senses as you can. See, hear, feel, taste, touch and smell…
The answer to to this question is not nearly as important as where your mind has to go in order to answer it. By fully exploring it you will find yourself returning and re-connecting with your magical sense of happiness and ‘just being’ in the world…
To quote Marianne Williamson, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, it’s that we are powerful beyond measure”. This is a way to start re-connecting with that power…
Like I say, i’m going to come back to this in a future post but, for now, you’ll find this a great place to start…
Enjoy & let me know how you got on…
Steven Burns, The People’s Coach, NLP, Trainer, Coach & Therapist
P.S For more info on how to overcome social anxiety disorder check out The People’s Coach Guide to Social Confidence
The Social Anxiety Blog 