UP #43: Embodiment is Enlightenment with Toni Bergins

If you were to think of one powerful method to release old hurts, emotional baggage, future worries and outdated memories that keep you trapped in feelings of lack, limitation, and low self worth, what would it be?

For many people, the go-to answer is therapy or counseling – a typical response from the status quo bag of conditioned tricks. Traditional therapy evokes images of an ambient office, a cozy chair, and endless appointments with a kind stranger who profits from your pain. A stereotypical generalization but as “they” say, stereotypes exist for a reason.

I’m sure that therapy has its place, but I’ve always been someone who looks outside of the box for solid solutions far removed from the cultural norm. Therapy keeps us trapped within the limited realm of the mind which is why it is painfully slow and often offers few tangible benefits.

If there are any traditional therapists seething from my words, please hear me out – I’m not completely knocking what you do. What I am saying is that there are better methods, faster methods and more effective methods to expedite the healing journey in ways that completely bypass the cumbersome analysis of the intellect. When we get out of our heads, connect with our bodies, breathe and move, magic happens.

So what if I told you that there was a more effective way to turbo charge your healing journey and it has nothing to do with talking, nothing to do with thinking, and nothing to do with resurrecting old wounds into your conscious awareness. What if I told you that by losing your mind, getting your groove on, and fully connecting with your body, you can heal yourself in lightning speed revealing a more powerful, authentic, and loving you in the process.

**spoiler alert…dance. Read on…**

Here’s an interesting nugget of information; the body processes information at an unfathomable 3 trillion cellular interactions per second whereas the mind can only process 7 +/- 2 bits of information at any given time. That’s not even per second. This is why we need to make lists. For most people, lucky number seven of anything is all we can manage before the intellect craps out. The intellect makes a terrific servant but a lousy leader. Imagine if we had to think about every heartbeat and every breath; if we had to think about digesting our food, blinking our eyes, or growing our hair. The body is the magnificent gift that helps us move through the world without thought. It’s also a powerful energy processor (read emotions) when we mentally get out of the way and allow it to work its magic. The body is an amazing creation that is constantly processing the information and physical processes that bring us to life.

If we had to intellectually manage everything that the body does intuitively, we wouldn’t be long in this world. The intellect is often a serious deterrent to our personal growth with its sloth-like processing speed. This is why traditional talk therapy can drag on for years. It’s about remaining within the confines of the mind while talking circles around lifelong issues and long suppressed emotions which were never properly expressed.

Talk-based therapy models are all about what happened, how it happened, and why it happened – never really allowing what once was to just move through. When we lose the need to know and simply accept that sh*t happens, we expand our consciousness. With this expansion comes an openness for new possibilities to emerge.

When we have specific thoughts, an emotional circuit is triggered and numerous chemicals are released throughout our body in response. Here’s the deal, the body takes a mere 90 seconds to flush these chemicals until the emotional feeling passes. This is called the 90-second rule. So why then is it that some emotions continue to plague us? Well, at this point it’s no longer the original emotion, rather, it’s an emotional response triggered by a thought.