Sometimes you feel that things aren't going the way you want. Maybe everything comes crashing down around you, or maybe it's just one thing, but you strongly feel that it is you that is actually getting into your own way.
In that case you've got a few options: continue as usual and even step it up a little, you could also run away from it (ignore it, have a glass of wine, look out for some nice distractions), or you could get frustrated and get angry with yourself and your surroundings.
Or you can choose to stay present and begin to feel within yourself, to feel profoundly what lives inside. And I'm not talking about intuition or "knowing what to do". I mean this sometimes raw layer that we all hold and where our deepest beliefs are hidden, intertwined with old emotions.
Essentially, Amanae is all about the breath and your presence.
The breath can create space in your body around the frozen tension, and it can guide your awareness towards it.
We all have a physical body, thoughts and emotions. And energy to keep everything up and running.
Amanae uses these different aspects as an entrance for you into your being. Depending on your affinity, the focus may vary,
but a therapy session always starts with getting your presence into your body.
Deep breathing together with deep and firm contact on specific activation points help you connect to your physical body and whatever it holds. The sensations in these points, like feelings of pain or numbness, are just alternative ways for your body to express hidden emotions.
Sometimes your own stories, insights, and convictions help you to connect with the layers beyond. Voicing what was never allowed to be said. Coaching focused on sensations helps you not to dwell in the story, but rather to stay present with whatever arises inside you. So instead of turning your back on yourself once again, you can finally hold yourself compassionately and without judgment.
Sensitive people can feel overwhelmed by everything that goes on inside and around them. In fact this is true for most people, it is only more visible when you are sensitive. During a session, the physical bodywork and spoken guidance help you to stay present instead of becoming overwhelmed.
The pressure and activations used in Amanae are not just physical. They are embodied presence and energy. And as such, they provide another anchor in connecting to the stilled feelings inside your system if you're sensitive to the flow of energy.
What you are experiencing is resistance. It is your resistance to a pain that you don't want to feel. And this is uncomfortable, even painful. The discomfort also becomes something to resist, making you struggle even harder.
You want to, but you don’t really want to, because you’re afraid of yourself, afraid of not being good enough, afraid you won’t be loved anymore, afraid to lose what you have, afraid to lose yourself.
Because that’s what it takes: you must be willing to lose your old self, the self that you created. Lose the masks that you identify with, the identity that has kept you safe but is now holding you back. It doesn’t mean you will lose yourself. On the contrary, you will finally find your self again and there will be no holding you back anymore.
Losing your "old self" hurts. It means you will have to allow yourself to feel all the frozen feelings you so desperately tucked away. Accept and embrace the child in you that holds them tight. It means you will have to allow yourself to feel the effects of all your convictions. How they weigh you down, wear you down. How they take away your breath and smother you. How they tighten you in life. How they restrict you.
It hurts because you don’t want to feel all this, because you’re running away from this pain, this experience, instead of embracing it, instead of allowing it.
But a feeling has no judgment, it just wants to be felt.
So how do you allow these feelings and sensations while your whole system is trying so hard to keep them suppressed?
The short answer is "presence", but to understand this, you need to understand how things got stuck in the first place.
Let's rewind to the time your feelings could still flow freely. For some, that may be way way back in time. Your body simply responded to the outside world. When you felt pain, you cried or became angry. If you felt love, you loved back.
There's always a moment, however, when you were set aside as a child or young adult, and you felt severly cut off from love. A very intense and unsafe feeling, that was simply too much to deal with. It may have been something small, or very big. You may have been forced to do or hear something, once, twice, or over and over. So you did the only thing that you could do to survive. You froze those feelings in time. You held your breath and stored them inside of you, so you would never need to feel this pain again.
But together with those feelings, you froze a part of your natural way of being. And you filled the gap with behavior and convictions. You became silent and withdrawn, or a rebel, a clown. You became serious, in need of control, sick, the best, the unseen underdog. The good girl, the brave boy. You became not you.
In the absence of a loving presence, like a loving and compassionate parent, we cannot safely allow and experience overwhelming emotions when they arise. So that part of us is stored inside our body. That's our inner child, lost and confused, and confined in terror.
To find that child again you need to be present, or you will surely flee again from the pain that it still holds. You don't need to know why it happened, nor do you need to remember what happened. All that is needed to heal your inner child is for you to stay with it, and to offer it the loving presence that it once missed.
Once fully present, you may start to cry, to laugh, to kick, to shake, to sing, to scream. Some feel it more as energy swirling throughout their body. Others feel power surging through them, or a deep sensation of silence, peace, and rest. A feeling of connection and belonging. Anything is possible, and everything is welcomed. Your inner child is allowed to live once again, and so are you.