How to release stored emotions with breathwork without revisiting the past

What if your body is still protecting you from emotions you thought you had moved on from? Today we'll be talking about body armoring, how stored emotional patterns can show up as tension in the body, why insight alone doesn't always change the cycle, and how breathwork may help build more capacity, safety, and emotional freedom. Welcome to Beyond Diagnosis. I'm Rita De Michele. This podcast is for people looking beyond symptoms and exploring what else might be possible for their health through expert conversations and real-life stories, we explore functional and holistic approaches to healing, well-being, and feeling like yourself again. Brought to you by the Beyond Diagnosis Collective, your connection to trusted holistic practitioners. Today I'm joined by Mark Moon, Sydney-based breathwork practitioner, holistic wellness coach, and the founder of The X Breath. Welcome, Mark.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

I did get to know you through one of your sessions. I mean, it was over 2 days. It was sort of like brief introduction into your breath, your breathwork and how it can work for people. But what really captured my interest was this, when you mentioned about body armoring. Let's talk about body armoring and what does that actually mean in simple terms?

Our body armoring is those parts of the body that are holding onto chronic tension, that are holding onto movement patterns or ways of holding your body as a way to protect. Usually based on some sort of life experience that has created something in the nervous system that has put a certain holding pattern or a certain way of moving or a certain way of being that is really there as protection, as a defense, but also to realizing that that defense is there ultimately to keep us safe. So it usually does have a positive intention behind it, but the armoring is the way that the body's holding and it's usually chronic tension that has us holding ourselves in a certain way to move through the world as safely as possible.

How do these physical patterns connect in the body emotionally and affect our behavior? And what sort of patterns do we see in everyday life?

There's 7 main sort of belts of armoring that we have in the body. I'll go through those a little bit later. It can show up as chronic migraines, can show up as chronic neck pain, it can show up as Chronic jaw pain, always clenching the jaw, can show up as the words that we don't speak, how we do or don't communicate. It can show up in the way that we can take in nourishment, whether we do or don't eat enough, or whether we feel like we receive enough nourishment or care or attention from caregivers or loved ones. It can show up in the back of the shoulders and the neck, and that chronic upper body holding can show up in The disturbances within our digestive system can show up in the way that we breathe. Ultimately, that's for me, most of the stuff that I work with is how these show up in the way that we breathe and the way the body moves when we breathe. It can also show up in the lower back with chronic back pain, hip pain, all those sort of things. So most of those parts of the body that most people do have chronic tension and holding, not always, but ultimately, or most of the time, it does come back to some underlying emotional connection.

It always does. It's the whole mind-body connection, isn't it, that everyone keeps talking about? But this seems to go into a much deeper, more expansive sort of explanation about why you have something and where you have it. What got me when we were in class was when you actually spoke about, you know, the clenching of the jaw. Like, most people don't even know they're clenching their jaw. They're walking around with their shoulders up near their ears. When we were in class, I remember you saying, now breathe deeply, and where is that tightness? Tightness across my chest. The breath was so shallow, like, I— it was so tight I could hardly get that breath. And even just after like 2 days of doing— I don't know, what was it, Mark? An hour was that session? After 2 days?

Yeah, the workshop was an hour, and it was only like a little bit of the exercise stuff. A lot of it was just talking and explaining and interacting.

A few movements that you told us to do, some breathing, shaking of the body, get the nervous system, you know, starting to relax, and then bending over. From sitting cross-legged, I was in so much pain. By day 2, at the end of it, I could just sit there. My back wasn't hurting. You know, I could take a big, deeper breath.

Yeah.

And I could start feeling like emotions were starting to come up. This armoring, this body armoring, is such a fascinating concept of where do we hold the emotions mainly in our body, and is there a corresponding emotion to that area?

And there is a bit of debate around this as well as to whether we actually hold emotion in the body as such, or whether our body has taken on a certain holding pattern in response to an emotional charge or a, an experience that never had the time to fully complete energetically. You may have gone through an experience when you were younger that brought up a lot of anger and you weren't able to express that anger. And quite often that can be held, or that movement of energy can be held through the back of the body. Because when we get angry, we think about, and quite often we'll have analogies where we'll compare them to what you would see in animals in the wild. So when you would see an animal get angry, what would it do? It would probably get its back up. The back of the neck would scruff up and, you know, the, the fangs had come out and the jaw would be ready to You know, go for it sort of things. When the, the energetic or charge comes up through the back of the body and sort of out through the, through the, through the mouth and the teeth to, to attack or to kill or do whatever it needs to do, energetical, uh, charge gets completed in that process. But if we go through a process where we have this charge of anger, just as an example, or something that comes up through the body, but then isn't able to actually complete. Then the energy gets stuck. It's incomplete. What we're really looking at doing and why people will have those emotional reactions is not necessarily because that part of the body is actually holding anger, but that's the part of the body that helps to express the energetical charge of anger.

Oh, that's different.

And as we're able to complete that movement, then we'll often have that release of, you know, as we remember in the workshop, some people felt really angry and had lots of Just stuff coming up when they were doing the one where we're shrugging up and holding the shoulders, because that's where the flow of anger would actually naturally move through the back of the body. So we're helping to move the energy through once again that may have been stuck. Whether it means that anger is actually physically trapped there or not is debatable. Depends on sort of, you know, there's a lot of studies around it, but ultimately though, there's no denying that there's a flow of energy or an excitation of energy that moves through the body in response to certain actions that we could or couldn't get to complete.

The completion of the energy that you've wanted to release. And we get shut down, whether it's a parent saying, don't raise your voice, or be quiet, or you're not allowed to do this. Don't get angry. Don't express yourself too loud, or anything.

Boys don't cry. Girls don't make noise. You know, whatever it is, whatever we were brought up to believe is the way that we should be.

Yes.

That in itself creates a holding pattern, that creates armoring, that creates a, a, a physical structure in the body of how we believe that we need to shape ourself. It's what we would call characterology in, in the work that I do is looking at the character and the way that it is structured. And that is a direct result of the way somebody was brought up and the environment they were in and what they believed was acceptable or unacceptable when it comes to behavior and, and the expression of our human beingness.

My family, like my father, you know, being— I'm first generation Australian, so they were immigrants, and it was very much about, uh, don't bring attention to yourself, don't draw attention to yourself, you know, because, you know, back then, you know, there was a lot of racism and all of that sort of thing. So we were taught to hide, you know, like Be quiet, be a hide. And I found that, you know, I've had a lot of thyroid issues. And some people like, look, you know, they say, you know, not being able to speak your truth is around the thyroid. Do you think it's someone's individual makeup or is it someone's individual experience to where they may have problems in the body and organs, et cetera, and where the armoring may be sitting or expressing itself?

Personally, I think a lot of it comes down to what the person's experience was. And then also just as importantly, what the experience was, but what they believe that meant about them.

Oh, that's an interesting thing.

Right? Because there's always this mind-body-emotion feedback loop. So we don't separate the mind and the body, like the body-mind, the mind-body complex. So it's a. It's a continual feedback loop. What comes up first, that's also debatable, depends. But I think in a lot of the work that I've studied is that there's a biological response that actually rises up through the body first. And then the mind creates a story or a meaning around that, which then gets fed back through into the body, which then gets fed back up through. And so it's this continual feedback looping of bodily response to the environment. What do I believe that means about me? And then a posture or a way of being taken on to, to hold that belief or to keep the body safe within that belief. And then it continually goes. And until we then take the time to not just look at what the beliefs are, but look more importantly at what's the patterning, what's the holding, what's the structuring, what's the Armoring in the body in response to, to that.

I like what you said about it's the individual response because everyone's different. Like, uh, siblings can have, be brought up the same way, but one will interpret it one way and another will interpret it another, like you said, depending on their individuality. So someone could have chronic neck problems and someone else could have chronic digestive problems. But it's not just about the, the physical, is it? It can also express itself, like I did a bit of research and it's also around, you know, the people pleasing. The emotional shutdown, the avoidance of conflict, not being able to emotionally be open with someone, even an intimate partner. It comes in many forms. They're all forms of armoring.

That's exactly right. So you can, you can say that the armoring is, is our, are our defenses. The other side of that too is that our defenses also usually have a what I call a superpower to them as well, because what we've done to keep ourselves safe, we've usually become very, very good at.

Yeah.

So what I also say to people when they start to look at this work and, and work within yourself is to not get caught in the trap of everything being negative, because the defenses there do have a positive intention to keep you safe. And those defenses do also create something that you become very, very good at. So for example, somebody who may not have been nurtured enough as a child, a defense actually could be that they are very nurturing towards other people. But the trap is then seeing whether or not they are a people pleaser and what the nurturing is on behalf of, if it's to get something in return or whether it's just to, because they are naturally a nurturing person. So it's then also looking at how We play out these roles or the masks that we wear in our everyday life to get something in return, I guess. And that's what we need to then look at as the person is operating in society as to how are these defenses showing up? Where are they showing up in a way that is holding you back from what you want in life or moving you forward to what you want in life? And that's really ultimately the work that I do is looking at how the body's defending itself and where we can soften armoring in certain ways and possibly step into other ways of being?

That would take really good introspection or awareness of self. And I think that's one of the issues around this, why the healing for people to heal is that's not necessarily easy because you actually have to stop and slow down for that to happen or have the courage to really tap in or see someone like yourself to be guided Into that. And is that why even when people do sort of understand the issue in their mind, like they realize, why am I always running around for everyone else and not for myself? But they find to break that pattern of the emotional behavior or the physical behavior, they keep repeating it. Why is that?

Usually we'll just keep repeating cycles until we've become consciously aware of those. But then also not just being consciously aware, but then also putting new ways of being into daily practice, which is why things that we do are called practices. It's the same as doing yoga or doing any physical exercise, going to the gym. You do things in different ways to then create new behavior patterns, new exercise routines, reshape your body in a different way. The hardest thing for most people is even knowing where to start or being able to determine what these defensive structures are, which is actually why breathwork becomes so powerful when we use it in this therapeutic modality kind of way. Because when you start to create more of an energetical charge in the body, the way that we do in the breathwork practices that I use, it will very quickly start to introduce you to, you will start to meet these defensive structures in the body because The charge is going to start to highlight where the body's holding really, really quickly. And that will show up in the way that people move in a breathwork practice. It will show up in the way that the body starts to hold itself. People start to get a lot of tension through the arms, or they'll start to really feel lots of pain through the back, or they'll start to really notice these parts of the body where there is that chronic holding. And then we can start to work with that because when we breathe in a certain way, it drops us more into the unconscious parts of the body rather than just always thinking about what the mind is processing.

Going back to when I was in session with you and I realized that my breath was so shallow and tight across the chest. And, you know, if someone said to me, oh, that's because you're always in survival mode or you're in, I would then most probably say, well, not really. You know, I've done so much work. over the years, you know, I'm not in survival mode, but there is a reason why I'm still clenching it and it was so hard to release. We did, you know, like you said, you didn't know anyone in the group then. It was an introductory, uh, course. Explain a few of the, the movements that we actually did so someone understands breathwork a bit better who's never done breathwork or doesn't really understand what happens. And what did— explain what we did and what breathwork is so someone can go, you know what, I think this is what I'm experiencing and I think this is maybe what I need.

When it comes to breathwork, for me, I break it into a couple of different categories. When I do workshops, I very much focused on the breath awareness piece, which I did a lot in the workshop that you did, which is unfortunately probably one of the parts that people will avoid. Very, very easily or want to go to like more advanced kind of techniques and processes as such. But really the basis of it, and what I would consider to be like a daily practice as well, is really first breath awareness, is taking the time to really notice. And I ask people this all the time in any process that I do, whether it's teaching yoga, running a basic meditation practice, and even at the start of the breath workshops, is take the time. How is your body breathing? Before you start to apply any techniques or do any sort of intensive practices, really start to notice how is your body breathing? Because most people haven't even started to connect with that yet. And so once they then start to notice, oh, well, I can't even, you know, breathe and fill out the chest, or I actually don't even know like where my breath is landing in the body, or they don't even realize that their breath is really short and shallow. So just starting to form that basic awareness of around how your body is breathing. And then from there, you can start to apply different techniques that are going to help to regulate your nervous system. Because as you said, like we can start to realize, oh, like I've done quite a lot of work. So no, I'm not in survival mode. So cognitively, you might have the understanding that no, I've done a lot of work and I don't believe that I'm in survival mode. But underneath that, physiologically, your body is actually still operating on another level of belief. This is what the breath shows us. So the reason the breath is so powerful is it will show you what's below that cognitive recognition or the conscious awareness, dropping into the unconscious awareness or more of the body awareness that we're not always realizing or connected to, or even taking the time to start to Acknowledge it, even though consciously we're no longer aware of it.

Well, the pain or the history of it is still in the body. Is it always necessary to do emotional release, or do you find that this armoring and, and tension and tightness in the body is something so much deeper?

It's quite deep. Um, the emotional release side of it, I always say to people, don't chase an emotional release or don't judge the the value of the process based on how much emotion you think you are releasing as such, because sometimes people can have extremely profound and transformational processes that don't actually seem overly emotional. What's most important is to notice how am I different when I'm moving out into everyday life? Because somebody can come into a session and have a very deeply connected process And have a very profound aha moment that's like, oh, and they feel an energetical shift in the body. And then they notice when they go out into life that they actually are feeling different. They are communicating differently. They are showing up differently.

Mm-hmm.

And at the same time, somebody can come into a breathwork process and have a big, massive cathartic emotional release, but nothing changes when they leave the room. Because you've really got to be checking in with and noticing what has the shift been and what is under that deeper level of awareness. So the emotional release side of it isn't as important as really connecting to and noticing what was that emotional release on behalf of. Because for me, like one of the things I've realized quite a bit recently is that when it comes to an emotional release, the release isn't as important as the connection. Yeah. To what was actually moving through you energetically in that moment. Whether that was grief, sadness, whether that was joy and ecstasy and pleasure, or whether that was anger and rage, or whether that was real fear and contraction. What's most important is taking the time to really deeply connect to, oh, like this was from, or this is because of The way that I can't process grief or something that happened in early childhood, or the way that I will never let myself express anger because that wasn't allowed when I was growing up or whatever it was. So the emotional release isn't as important as the deeper connection to what is that underlying pattern within your nervous system. That's ultimately what is embedded within your body.

That's so true. Everyone goes for this huge cathartic release.

Yeah.

But it's like you were saying, that connection. And then that seems to be once you realize the connection and what's happening, that's where you can start changing the behavior. Otherwise you can have this huge release and 3 days later you're doing exactly as it, like it's nothing has shifted. And that's why people will come back and say, well, this stuff doesn't work. And it's not, it's because you haven't connected to your behavioral pattern and understand why you've done it to then start making the changes. You know, this stuff does work.

That's exactly right. It does work. And it's really, really powerful stuff. Quite often what we'll see is people fall into the trap and it's unfortunately the way that a lot of these processes are marketed these days as 10 years of therapy in one session, you know, do one big emotional purging releasing session and your life miraculously changes. And sometimes people can have one big session that is Very, very profound for them. It's not that easy. And I think that by saying things like that, we're actually really doing our clients a disservice because it gives them that unrealistic sense of achievement. We also need to remember too is you'll often hear terms like breathwork brings stuff up to the surface to be processed. Yes, it does. So then it needs to be processed. You don't bring it up to the surface and just leave it there and go, here you go, here's all your stuff on a platter, but we're not going to process it. Like, that's only half the job done. You've then got to process it. And the processing is in The deep connection to what that experience was about for you and what was the story that, or the, the meaning that you created around that, the, the self-belief that was embedded within that. And then you start to see, well, how does this show up in all of the areas of my life? How does this show up when I'm at home in my intimate relationships? How does this show up when I'm in the family dynamic? How does this show up when I'm in the work dynamic? How does this show up when I'm in a social dynamic? How does this show up as a parent or however it's showing up for you in life? You've got to then start to see, well, where are these patterns filtering through all the areas of my life? And then as you start to see that, oh, okay, this is where that defensive structure is coming into play. And sometimes defenses will show up in one part of your relationship, but they don't show up in other areas because depending on how important that is to you. Like we could act one way in an intimate relationship and we're completely different when we're out in the work environment, right? Because what's happening here in the intimate relationship probably isn't being triggered so much in the work relationship.

Do you find it's also have to come to the realization that they have to accept change or allow, not accept, allow change to happen? Because you can go through all these things and think you're doing great, but on some level, like the armoring, like we're talking about the armoring, not allowing change to happen. Or, you know, is a form of armoring, I guess.

Absolutely right. I actually did a post the other day on social media and it was basically saying quite often the things that we don't realize, or people can often get caught in this trap of thinking they need to constantly fix something, right? So they'll keep doing sessions, keep doing sessions, keep doing sessions trying to fix something, but they're actually not taking the time to just allow what's already been worked through to unfold and integrate a little bit more. And that within itself can be a defensive structure in the body. Constantly fixing, fixing, fixing to actually avoid the real feeling integration of what is really unfolding here on a deeper level.

We see that with a lot of things, don't we? When people go to extremes of anything. I go for a run, but someone else has to go for the extreme of running. You know, like it's almost running away from what they're meant to be feeling. It's, it's, we do it in so many areas. So if we're going to do all this work, how do we build capacity in our body to be able to enable this? And what does that mean for our emotional well-being?

The 3 categories I work with— the first one is, is awareness, and the second one is building capacity, being able to work with the regulation of your nervous system to either upregulate or downregulate, looking at the way that your body responds to the environment Around you. I call this one like going to the gym. So you go to the gym to increase your strength, to build stamina, to run faster, lift heavier, do whatever you want to do. But what it's doing is it's building the capacity within your nervous system to be able to tolerate or be able to be with a certain experience. What is the current capacity for your body to hold an energetical charge or an Or an experience in life before it has to go into survival mode as such. So what is the current bandwidth in your nervous system to be with an experience and stay present to it without either shutting down, closing off, running away, putting up a fight? And this is what's going to start to let you know, what is my current capacity within the nervous system's ability to hold an experience? So we want to become very aware of that, right? So once again, awareness and capacity and the third level, they're always working within each other. And this is how we then start to see how are the patterns unfolding. So they're never really disconnected. So I'm always looking at the awareness, building the capacity, and then going into the transformational practices or the therapeutic practices, which is that third pillar, but they're always working together and linking with each other. They're never really separate, but the more that we build and create awareness, And the more that we build the capacity within our nervous system to hold an experience, the deeper we can go in our deeper transformational or therapeutic style practices when it comes to breathwork.

Yes.

The trap that we often see is that people wanting to go into these deeply transformational therapeutic practices, they've got no awareness, they've got no capacity. So then what happens is you go into one of these 3rd level experiences And your body just goes, not gonna do it. You know, freezes up, shuts down, gets overwhelmed, becomes hypervigilant. And then someone will go, oh, you know, breathwork is dangerous because it gave me panic attacks or made me do this or this or that. The person didn't have the awareness and probably didn't have the capacity to actually be in that experience. This is why it's so important to be able to understand and know What levels are we constantly working in and how do we move through those seamlessly and simultaneously to be able to take ourselves to these really deep, profound places in a way that your body can actually be in the experience and be present to it and maintain self-awareness and not actually want to split off or shut down or freeze up or, or do whatever it does.

Fear around change is, I think, one of the biggest things stopping people from actually going there because they don't know how they're going to feel and they don't know what is at the other end.

So there's a couple of different parts to it. There is a level of needing trust, and I use the word trust quite a lot. Quite often you will hear the term safety used in breathwork or, you know, being trauma informed or being trauma aware. For me, it's actually trust that builds the container of safety. Because I can say to somebody, I hold a safe space, I run a safe workshop, this is a safe container for you to be in and do what you want. But if that person doesn't trust me, doesn't trust the other people in the space, doesn't trust the environment that it's in, or doesn't trust something else that's happening in that moment, it's not going to feel safe no matter What I say.

Yeah.

So for me, really, it's trust. The person has to have their own trust to be able to then feel safe enough. And somebody will know, because if you can stay present to the experience, then that would pretty much determine that you are trusting the process enough to be able to be with that and not need to fight it. If it feels like you are really fighting against the process, then probably your body doesn't yet have a certain level of soft safety and trust to be able to let that process move through without wanting to contract or fight against it.

I can see that happening with someone who's highly, highly anxious or, you know, maybe depressed or some of those sort of mental health issues. Would someone need to do some other form of, uh, like psychotherapy or any other sort of therapy before they come to this sort of process with you? Or do you take them through it? And if you do, what's the first smallest step that you take them, that you start with?

They don't necessarily need to be in any other form of therapy. I do think they work very well together. You'll obviously have people will prefer what they do as such. I think we need both. You'll often hear people say talk therapy doesn't work and you need the body therapy. And then some people will say, You know, body therapy doesn't work, you need to talk therapy. I think what we need to do is stop saying it's one or the other and start realizing it's actually both, right? Because if you are doing all body work, but then not actually doing any cognitive reprogramming, then it's not a complete system. If you are only ever focusing on talk therapy and never actually looking at what's moving through your body, then it's not a complete system either. So I think that people doing both is what I would consider to be a more integrative and holistic approach. I do both with people, so I don't think someone needs to actually be in actual psychotherapy as such, but they need to actually be doing some spiritual inquiry, some sort of self-inquiry, some sort of realization work and behavioral work that is supporting the way that their body integrates what they're going through in the actual breathwork processes as well.

It is an integrative approach, isn't it? Like to say or to work in absolutes. I don't think that's very helpful, whether it's emotional, mental, physical. It's usually a collective sort of care plan. And like you said, integrative, which works the best. Can you give a little snippet of a change that you've seen in someone that has worked with you? Like when they have stopped pushing against their body and they started releasing some of this armor that they have and they start listening to their body. What change have you seen?

For me, one of the biggest changes that I see is people actually starting to notice a lot more of what is happening in their body as such.

Mm-hmm.

So as an example, a client I'm working with at the moment, when they first started sessions and we would sit down and do a little bit of talking first, everything was up here. It was very thought-focused. It was very hard to actually just, uh, to connect with what the body was experiencing. And I don't always ask people what are they feeling or what is the emotion with that, because quite often that can be hard to connect with to start off with. So it's just simply getting more of the felt sense in the body of what am I experiencing right now, whether that is I'm experiencing that I feel cold or I feel hot or I feel really itchy or uncomfortable, my back hurts, or people can start to, to notice that a lot quicker. What I notice a lot is people will come into sessions and they will be very cognitive first and always thinking around what the thought is and not being connected. But then usually after a couple of sessions, you'll naturally start to notice that somebody will sit down before the session and they'll just start talking about what they're feeling.

Mm.

Right. And that's usually what I see straight away. And I've noticed this quite profoundly in clients recently where after, you know, 3 or 4 sessions, They come in for the next process and the, the body has really dropped in. They can sit and be like, this is what's happened the last couple of weeks and this is how I felt about it and this is how I responded. And you can just start to see people talk more around, I'm connected to what my body's feeling as I go through these processes and I'm not so cognitively loaded all the time.

I can tend to be up in my head a lot more. You can actually forget. And there's, I can't remember what that, uh, condition is where you can actually literally forget that you even have a body.

Yeah. Dissociate from the body. Yeah.

You've dissociated from the body, like, and that's more of an extreme sort of case, I guess. But yeah. What is a simple shift someone could do today to start connecting back with their body?

Yeah. For me, it always comes back to this first pillar of breath awareness. So simply, you can do it laying down or just find a comfortable seated position. Bring awareness here to the diaphragm area. So just below, kind of like if you put your finger there where the rib cage meets and then where your navel is, just kind of go halfway in the middle and just imagine that area there. And I say, imagine it like a ball or a sphere of energy that's expanding out as you breathe in and relaxing as you breathe out. And if you can take the time and you're not even changing the breath at all, you're not Trying to apply any technique, just get a feel for how your body breathes, right? And just sit there and take the time over, you know, 3, 5, 7, 10 minutes. How's your body breathing? Because our breath has a pulsation to it, right?

Mm-hmm.

It's, there's an expansion and a contraction of the diaphragm as you breathe. The ribs will expand and open out as you breathe. And most people aren't even connected to this basic fundamental movement of the breath mechanism. And I always say, right, so just like your heart is beating for you, your body, your diaphragm is breathing for you. Your body is breathing. It's a natural autonomic response. You haven't got to tell your body to breathe, but you can also apply techniques and use different practices that can manipulate the breath to create different states within the body. But most people just need to sit there and just start to connect with How's my body breathing? How's my body breathing? Where am I holding? Because I'll even do this as a morning practice. This is my daily morning practice. I just sit there and just watch how the body's breathing. And it's like, oh, I'm holding here in the belly, or there's a lot of tension in the shoulders. And just sit with that and just watch the pulsation of my body breathing. And then before I know it, I've just drifted into the deepest meditation and just being with that. Because then as the body starts to soften and relax and start to Unwind some of that holding in the— I'm not free of it either. Like, it's a— I always say, like, for me, this is a living practice, right? So it's the things that we're constantly doing, but just being with that and noticing. And over time, you will start to notice quite profound differences in how your body holds tension and even your posture and how open you are and how expressive you are or how grounded you feel. Just that simple daily practice for me is my non-negotiable go-to. And that's what I always get most people to do. It's actually the one most people miss, right? Because it can be very easy to want to go into all the, oh, I want the technique. What's the technique to fix this, right? That's the second pillar. Like I'd, so I always talk to 3 main stages and you said this before with allow, right? It's funny you said that because I go anchor, apply, and allow. So firstly, you want to anchor in breath awareness, and then you apply techniques to build capacity, and you've got to let the transformation unfold. So you've got to allow that to happen. So I'm always working in these 3 pillars with these 3 different steps, and those 3 steps are actually applied within each stage as well. So first one is just anchor yourself in breath awareness, you know, and if you apply a technique, just keep it really light, really simple, maybe coherent breathing, and just allow your body to respond to that. Most of us don't give ourselves the time to allow our body to respond. We want result like that and then off to the next thing. And we don't even take the time just to sit there and allow our body to really start to integrate these changes unfolding within us. And if we don't allow that to happen, we're kind of fighting our body all the time.

And it's such a simple technique to do in the morning to get in tune with yourself before you start all your what I have to do all the time.

Exactly.

But the word that came up for me while you were explaining all that was control. We don't need to keep controlling everything. Sometimes just allowing the unfolding is the most beautiful path.

That's exactly right. And control is one of those defenses in the body, um, which I didn't really sort of go into much before, but if we've got time, I'll sort of go through different belts of tension, right? So the first one is the ocular region. So The eyes, forehead, and the scalp. The second one is what they call the oral region around the jaw, mouth, and then into the cervical region, which is the throat, top of the neck. Chest, the diaphragm, which is actually the first armoring to take hold because when we go through a moment of stress or something that shocks us, usually the first thing someone does is they hold their breath. That's the diaphragmatic armoring. The abdominal armoring and into the pelvic armoring. So they're the 7 kind of main belts of tension. The, the face, the facial segmentation can be considered to be one as well, which is our social engagement network. Because when we're interacting with the world, a lot of our interaction is through the, the senses, which is what we see, what we smell, what we taste, what we hear. Like you've got a lot of sensory input around in this facial segmentation, right? And then obviously, you know, touch as well. These different parts of the body can quite often hold Chronic tension or armoring. And yes, there can be emotional attachment to them, but the emotional part of it isn't as important as just noticing what is the chronic holding pattern and being able to, to release that through different exercises, different breathing practices, different processes. And the more that we're aware of something, then it's able to change as well. Because if we're not aware of something, then how do we know how to change it? As we're going through, especially in the first 7 years of life, we go through these different stages of developmental structure. And if within one of those stages of developmental structure, we went through an experience that created a core belief or a, um, a core wounding, you would say, then that can often create a holding pattern or a defense within the body without sounding negative, but it is a defensive structure that will create a certain holding pattern within the body structurally. And usually also creates a, a character structure, a way of behaving to stay safe. And so that first one, which I think I went through these with the workshop that you did, was, you know, looking at firstly when we're first born and how we connect into the world. And there's a couple of different, I guess, modalities of this that have different terminologies for these. And some of them are a little bit softer, some are a little bit more sort of I guess pathologizing as such, like they used to be quite a long time ago. But the way that I explain it now and the way that I've learned it over the years that I've been studying it is that firstly, we're looking at how our body senses the environment. This would also be called what they would call the leading pattern or the visual pattern. It can, because if the senses are overly stimulated, then the body can often freeze. Quite often the question here will be, is it safe to be here or is it safe to exist? Because our body is sensing the environment firstly to make a decision. Is this safe? Can I be here? If the answer is no, then quite often the body can fragment or the energetical structure can be to split off or fragment or to freeze because the, the sensory stimulation is just way too much. This is also called the connection theme in the, the NARM model, and I'll give you different resources and Sort of put, because I always like to credit sort of what modalities these different things have come from, but most of the armoring stuff comes from like Reichian therapy, which is from the '20s, 1920s and '30s. Like it's quite, it's not new stuff. Over the years it's been redeveloped through different, I guess, psychological layers or terminologies. Once we've like moving from sensing, we then move into the ability of receiving, right? Which is very much The oral structure, which is around nourishment and not just receiving nutrition, but also receiving information. So our body can often be undercharged if we're not being nurtured or not receiving. And that will then show up in the way that we feel in the body energetically, whether we want to collapse because we just don't have the energy and the sustenance to actually move forward and out into the world. So quite often a theme like this, this could also be called the merging theme. It's also called the attunement theme because if the body doesn't feel like it can actually have the energy or survive on its own, it can often become codependent or clingy or feel like it needs something or somebody else to basically hold it up and support it. And then we move into the theme that could be called the trust theme or what I call like reaching. It's also often called the aggressive theme or the challenger. Not aggressive in a way that it is violent as such, but the energy is aggressive. Like it's got to, you know, reach forward, get out there, conquer the world kind of thing. And quite often it's a controlling pattern. And this pattern is very much around controlling the environment and the outside world. And it's also called the trust theme because it is Whether or not it can trust or whether or not it can move out into the world and feel safe enough to assert itself as who it is. So quite often it can be around dependency as well. Like this theme can feel like they don't need anybody else to help them. So it's different to the first 2. Can be a very overly independent sort of person, which is usually the one that's, the one that's out in front, the leader, the challenger, the the defender pattern, the aggressive, the, the inspirational person, but it's often a defensive structure that I don't need anybody to do anything for me, I can do it on myself. And then from there we move into the next pattern, which is very much around autonomy, which is what I call like standing, like being on your own 2 feet, not necessarily needing to be right. It can often be a dilemma between was I good or bad, or was that right or wrong? Can question their own their own autonomy and their own freedom of expression. This can also be called the supportive theme or the enduring theme. Can often have an overcharged body as a way of protection as well. And then the last theme is our relating. Can often be called the, the love sexuality theme, the intimacy theme, also called the rigid theme. And quite often this theme is an overly controller of the self. So whereas the trust theme is Controlling the environment, the relating theme or the rigid theme is very much around the overly controlling of self. I need to be a certain way. So it's very much the person that has to do everything, say the perfectionist. This is actually my dominant theme, the perfectionist, the full body armoring, the one that might look the part but be quite disconnected internally. That was my thing for years, right? I always said like I'd spent 30 years working on my body, but I wasn't in it. And so people would think like I'm quite embodied because I'd spent so long in the gym, but really physically I was, you know, a certain way, but emotionally I was very disconnected.

Yes.

Because this is then how we believe we need to show up and how we relate to the world. Because quite often this theme can be quite cut off from themselves emotionally and energetically. So they will look a certain way, but not actually be able to connect with how they're feeling at all. So in relationships, there can often be a split between a loving intimate relationship and a sexual relationship. So this theme can often be a bit of a conqueror or a bit of a, you know, there can be a difference between a loving intimate relationship and sexual conquest as such sort of thing. And you'll see this, all these patterns weave through in people's ways of being in the world, whether or not somebody is anorexic, like can't take in enough Nourishment, can't take enough and enough food or enough energy. Somebody who emotionally eats as a way to regulate that sense of receiving, right? Somebody who's overly dominant and can't be in a situation where they need to trust somebody else or be in a situation where they're not in control. They'll have to always control the environment. Somebody that is in situations where they can never feel like they Can express how they really, really feel about a situation. So they hold everything in, very much about holding. And then those who then get into addiction or gambling or any other ways of really numbing the body from completely connecting to what it's actually feeling. And so as we start to work with clients and look at what the dominant themes are, we can then start to get more of an idea around what these core woundings might actually be just from knowing what the defensive structures in the body are. That's how the work becomes quite valuable and extremely powerful in its application.

As you were speaking, I could see myself in it. I could see my siblings in it. I could see friends. And you start going, is that why they're behaving like that? Oh, I start to understand. And it actually helps once you develop an understanding around this. It actually helps to develop a little bit more of a compassion for people as well, because you think they're not just doing that to be annoying. If someone feels their sensory is so high and they don't want to be here, it's almost— I thought of, uh, people who are neurodivergent or autistic and going inward because they're sensory overload— they're sensory overloaded. By not speaking and not being present, it's almost like they don't want to be here. Or interact with others.

The different modalities that I use and all the studies that I've done, what I've sort of started to do with it now is put it into this way of how is the, and if you look at bioenergetics and all of the work of Alexander Lowen, like he'll talk a lot about the organism as such, right? So without sounding mechanical or making it sound unhuman, it's actually extremely human because we are an intelligent, self-organizing intelligent being. So I look at the spirit, the soma, the body, and the self, right? So that's the kind of little triad that I'm always working within. So our body is a divine expression of spirit. There is a universal cosmic intelligence that is driving the replication of our organism, our, our body. We don't need to tell our body how to replicate cells within the body, right? It's just doing it. There's a divine intelligence that is constantly moving through you, whether we realize it or not. That divine intelligence is expressing in certain ways. It's sensing, receiving, reaching, standing, relating. So as we're moving through these, it can often be a bit of a trap to want to identify and then start to pathologize with, oh, you're the rigid character, or you're the masochist character, or that's the aggressive character, that's this character. For me, that can actually keep people a bit more stuck. What you want to start to look is and go, okay, what's the organizing pattern within the nervous system, within the organism, within the body that is responding to the environment in a certain way? Oh, it's, it's the level of sensing. Overstimulation is making me, you know, all split off. This is also called the schizoid theme, right?

Yes.

Or for me, like being the rigid theme, it's all around relating. So, and also as we start to understand these, as you said a moment ago, it gives us a glimpse into how other people might be reacting as well. And it's very helpful for me because then I can be like, oh, okay. Because I have a tendency to often think everything is about me. So if I'm relating with somebody and then something shifts and happens, I can be like, what have I done wrong? Oh, you know, what does that mean about me? But actually all of this stuff has been really, really helpful because I go, oh.

Yeah.

What's happening for them? If we can start to think, oh, what's hap— oh, too much stimulation, or not being able to receive, or don't have the ability to reach forward, or something's happening when it comes to relating to the world. If you can start to see the patterns in yourself, we can start to see the patterns in other people. We can start to realize that everybody is going through their own moment of how am I responding to the world? How am I moving out? Or am I pulling back? I mean, we're all doing this, right? There's this constant pulsation within the organism, within the universe, and we're a part of that. We're not separate from it. And that's why I say to people, how is your body breathing? Because when we are responding to the environment, it's usually our breath and our body that actually responds first. So the environment creates, or the surroundings create a stimulus. So stimulus and response. And that's the way I frame it all the time. So spirit, soma, self within the stimulus of your surroundings. And we're working with that and we're pulsating with that every moment of every single day. And as we can really start to, to see that and be in that, we can create really profound change.

Well, that's the key. You have to do the work. You have to be prepared to do the work. And as you said in the beginning, If someone is highly anxious or doesn't know how to connect with themselves or whatever the reason, you can start with the baby steps. And this is what you work through. It's not something you do in 2 days. It's not like you said before, you know, fix yourself in 48 hours or whatever it is.

Yeah.

You know, it's not. It's a process. And, you know, you took a long time to get here. It's going to take a while for it to evolve.

It's like anything else. It's a, it is a choice whether you want to eat certain foods to nourish your body in a certain way. It's something that you are doing every single day, right? You are consciously aware of every single day. And yes, sometimes we fall into traps where we'll comfort eat or, you know, eat things that aren't the most healthy for us, but the nourishment we take into the body, it's a choice as to whether or not we want to do exercise or Oh. Build more strength in the body to have strength or whatever you want to have. This kind of work is the same, right?

Yes.

It is the same. You've really got to have, I think if you want to profoundly shift your life and have a different life experience, you need to give it the same focus, awareness, and attention as you would your nutrition and your exercise and what you do or don't drink and the people that you are around. There's a constant feedback loop with all of that. And our personal development is no different to our nutrition and our exercise program.

For me, I think the shift happens when we move from it's something I have to do to something I want to do. And I want to make it as, you know, the same as getting up in the morning. You know, it's like it's just part of our whole holistic way of being. You know, we drink water because we have to, we eat because we have to. It is the choice that we make of What type of food, et cetera. And this is really should be on the same level. It is something that we want to do because it, it nourishes and helps and we have better health by doing this, you know, whether it's emotional, physical, spiritual.

And what you said a moment ago is one of the reframes that I always give to people is we can often get into a habit of saying, I have to do this. And I've got to go and do that, and it becomes this laborious task. You actually get to do those things, right? Like, you get to wake up in the morning, like, you get to go and do things, you get to have these life experiences. But how we frame that in our mind creates a big difference as well, whether you have to go and do this or whether you get to go and do that.

Mark, I'm so glad we touched on this in the end because, yeah, that was something that was Did stand out for me, um, in the workshop. It was one of the reasons why I did come up to you and say, I need you to have you on the podcast, was for this last— for the whole thing, but especially this last section, because that is so powerful for people to understand.

Absolutely.

And to step back and even recognize, you know, just have a look. I know someone who's very armored and was— had a lot of bullying in younger years, and they do walk out with He does walk with his chest right out and, you know, and when you speak to him, he's already ready to fight. You know, it's like he's always on the defense sort of thing. So you're always watching how you frame things, how you say things, that wounded part of himself that's got that armor. And this is the perfect type of work that doesn't break it down, but helps resolve, soften resolve and help you become aware. Mark, it has been fantastic. And for everybody who has absolutely loved everything Mark said today, say. All his show— all his details will be in the show notes. There'll be his website, his socials, how you can contact him. Uh, I believe you'll give me those resources that you—

Yeah, absolutely. Always love talking about this stuff, so thank you.

You're welcome. It's been a pleasure.