You feel good when your body feels safe!

Self-love and safety in your body

Imagine your body as a house. A home should be a place where you feel safe , where you can be yourself, and where you can welcome others. When the house is solidly built and has a pleasant and warm interior, we can relax and build a life. There's space to explore your inner world, your feelings and thoughts. You have a good sense of who and what you want to let in and when you can shut it off. A true "Zufluchtsort" (place of refuge).

If the foundation is lacking, you can't feel good about yourself and often have problems with boundaries. You're completely influenced by your environment or you shut yourself off too much from it. You lose yourself in it. You'll often find yourself living in the attic—your head. Too many rooms are locked. Keeping the doors closed is possible, but it costs a tremendous amount of energy, tension, and anxiety. (Inspired by Dieuwke Talma, author of "The Body as a Story").

Reflection question

What does your house look like? Think about the foundation of your house. Is it solid or wobbly, or completely absent? Is there warmth and light, or more hardness and darkness? What about your boundaries? Do you sense your boundaries, or do they feel like they've vanished, leading you to adapt and others to overstep your boundaries? Do you live in your body or in your mind?

Basic safety and self-love

Behavioral and thought patterns for false security

When the foundation is lacking, behavioral and thought patterns emerge. This is perfectly normal, a coping mechanism, a temporary anchor, a false sense of security. This prevents you from accessing the rooms, your feelings, your memories, your body. While these patterns provide temporary relief, in the long run they hinder the building of a solid foundation, and over time, you will experience increased tension: a feeling of emptiness, anxiety, sleepless nights, and physical pain such as migraines, backaches, and so on.

These patterns can be different for everyone and are influenced by what you learned in childhood, who your role models were, and your personality. The following patterns are common:

*take some time to consider which ones you recognize and which ones you would add:

• Behavioral patterns : eating, perfectionism, seeking approval from others, avoiding situations, withdrawing, distractions in social media, TV, porn, alcohol and drugs.

• Thought patterns : over-analyzing, downplaying, black-and-white thinking, “I’m not good enough,” predicting, clinging to what happened.

When building a foundation within yourself, it's important to examine your patterns. What keeps you from letting go of them, what needs do they fulfill, and what do you need to learn new patterns? Self-love and gentleness are the tools for change.

Met EFT, tapping, doorbreek je je patronen.

Body-oriented therapy

Body-oriented therapy is about getting to know your body and its patterns with a loving and curious perspective. Techniques used at Move to Feel include psychology, yoga, and EFT (emotional freedom technique, tapping). You will discover what gentleness and self-love mean to you. Movement, feeling, and letting go are all components of body-oriented therapy at Move to Feel.

What does your heart desire?

Just feel what your heart desires. What's your first step to feeling safe, relaxed, and yourself in your body again?

It could be anything: a warm shower, self-massage, loving words, a bouquet of flowers, a new hobby, time with loved ones, healthy food, etc. You choose and feel what is important to you NOW.

It's also good to feel: should I do this myself, or should I ask someone to stand beside me? Sometimes it's easier to look at yourself from a distance, to feel, and to process. I'd like to invite you to knock on the door of a loved one or a professional. You don't have to be able to do it alone, or do it alone!

Love, Kristin