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Hello Reader!

I hope you are doing well and enjoying the arrival of summer, wherever you are☀️!

There have been many weeks when my life inserted itself into these emails, and it's been quite a ride! Call me an optimist, but I tend to find learning in everything. It's also my own way of coping, I think. So before we return to our usual conversations about the strange and beautiful ways in which our brains keep changing, since quite a few new readers have joined us in recent weeks, I wanted to pause and introduce myself, and this work, again.

Musings

I am a NeuroSomatic therapist and certified NeuroMovement® practitioner based in Montreal. I work primarily with people who are living with persistent pain, anxiety, stress, trauma, or patterns of tension and protection that no longer seem to shift easily.

I did not begin my professional life as a therapist, although, in a different way, my previous career was also about resilience. I found my way into this work through my own experiences with illness and recovery, but also through my son, who has Down syndrome. It was through him that I first discovered NeuroMovement®.

What fascinated me was that the movements themselves often seemed almost inconsequential. They were small. They were slow. There was very little effort involved. And yet they seemed to generate changes and learning that drilling and repetition had not produced.

Over time, I began to understand why. As I trained more deeply in NeuroMovement®, applied neuroscience, counselling, and somatic practices, I began bringing these different strands together into my own approach to this work: NeuroSomatic Therapy.

Movement is not simply something your body does *after* your brain gives it an instruction. It is an essential function of life, and one of the primary ways in which the brain learns . Through movement (external and internal, large or microscopic, and I include the movement of your senses), your nervous system receives a continuous stream of information. Movement informs the brain in millions of ways we take for granted. It forms our image of self, and it is the only way our brains experience the world. Emotion, too, is movement.

Movement organizes the brain, and brains like efficiency so they create patterns. This matters because the patterns we live with are not always conscious - or useful.

If you have been living with pain, you may notice that your body braces before you even begin to move. If you have been living with anxiety, you may find yourself holding your breath, tightening your jaw, or preparing for something to go wrong even when nothing is immediately threatening you. If you have lived through trauma, your body and brain may continue to respond according to lessons learned a long time ago.

These patterns are not arbitrary. They are attempts to protect you. But a protective pattern can become so familiar that the nervous system stops looking for other options.

This is where NeuroSomatic Therapy can help. By moving slowly enough to notice small differences, reducing unnecessary effort, and exploring variations rather than forcing a particular outcome, you begin to offer your brain new information. You create an opportunity for it to discover that there may be more than one possible response.

Sometimes the first change is subtle. A breath becomes easier. A shoulder softens. A movement that usually feels guarded becomes slightly more comfortable. You notice that you have a little more choice. And sometimes, as your experience of your body shifts, the way you think and feel begins to shift with it.

The practices may appear simple. But the processes at work in your brain are extraordinarily refined.

If you are curious, I wrote a fuller explanation here.

And if you are wondering whether this work might be relevant for you, we can speak briefly about what you are experiencing, what you have already tried, and whether working together would make sense.

🎁 NeuroSomatic Practice of the Week

🧠 NeuroMinute...

Movement isn't just about moving your arms or legs. Your nervous system is continually registering change: vibrations become sound; pressure and stretch become touch; your eyes do micro-movements as they sample the world; your brain scans where your body parts are in space (especially your head); and signals from your breath, heart, gut, and muscles help your brain sense what is happening inside your body.

Neuroscientists call this internal sensing interoception. It plays an important role in how we regulate ourselves, but also in how we experience emotion. Anxiety, anger, sadness, and relief are not only thoughts. They are felt through changing patterns (of movement) in the body. Your brain then combines all these sensations along with memory to formulate a response to the world (an organization or... a movement!).

How you use your body can therefore change your brain. Research by pioneers like Michael Merzenich and others has shown that attention is the “magic ingredient” of brain change. In practical terms, it means that even the smallest, gentlest movements when done with increased awareness can create shifts in how the brain functions.

Warmly,

Joana

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