Your Thoughts Are Creative
A reflection on thinking better and why it matters
Thought as Directive Energy: How Your Mind Shapes Reality
There are two schools of thought currently taking hold regarding mental health and wellness — one being the self-help, ‘change your thinking change your life’ school, and the second being a new surge of learning about trauma and what we have experienced, and learning to accept and be present with our current mental and physical health experience.
And the reality is that both are true (just like any actual truth — the answer we seek is held within both sides of a seeming polarity).
Because our thinking IS directive. Mystic teachers, sages, yogis, physicists, even mathematicians have proclaimed this throughout time, location, culture, and language. Physicists are now learning what teachers have shared since time immemorial — that our thought and emotion are energy, and this energy directs what materializes from wave-potentiality to particle-form. What I focus on, what we focus on, matters.
AND
We have been taught our ways of being, perceiving, thinking, and feeling by our society, culture and family within the first three months to three years of our lives. Thus, our ways of thinking have become our physiology, operating as what is known as our PNIE system (psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrinological system). This means that our thinking directs our brain, nervous system, hormones, organs, and immune system, and that these systems within our body perpetuate our current thinking. All to say — it isn’t EASY to just change our thinking.
Why changing your thinking is hard and how somatic practices can help
Changing the way we think is often easier said than done. From early childhood conditioning to the ways society shapes our beliefs, our thoughts are embedded deeply in our physiology, operating through the PNIE system, which encompasses our brain, nervous system, hormones, and immune system. This means that simply “deciding” to think differently rarely works. The good news? Somatic practices, such as awareness, tracking sensations, and pendulation, provide a path to gently shift the body’s patterns and transform limiting thoughts.
So, how do we reconcile that focusing our thinking is important, AND changing our thinking is one of the most difficult things for us to do as humans?
We honour that truth lives in contradiction, or both/and circumstances. Therefore, we don’t need to write off one thing because we are now in favour of its opposite. We can hold contradiction, and this practice will lead us to the answer we are seeking.
We can learn about physiology and how we learn to perceive, think, believe, and feel, so that we can understand the under current of our thoughts, and what lies beneath our experience on a daily, embodied basis. If this interests you, click the link below to learn and become an expert and facilitator in physiology and somatic education.
We can learn somatic practices that offer us a slow and kind pendulation from how we have been thinking towards what we desire to think. For example, if I have been having self-deprecating thoughts my whole life, I cannot immediately think loving thoughts about myself and truly believe them. We must learn to locate the original thought and notice where we feel it in the body, as well as locate where in the body a loving thought resides. It is through this pendulating from one to the other with awareness that what we long to think (and thus experience) can become our reality (without bypassing).
It has been immeasurably helpful to study the science of thought. HOW is thought directive? WHO is telling us that it is? The fact that SO many people from all walks of life throughout the past 2000+ years have been telling us the same thing has me finally believing it — after 15 years of studying it, I can no longer deny its truth! But this doesn’t mean it’s an easy jump. I had to look at it from all layers, all difficult circumstances, make sense of it amidst life’s most difficult tragedies. And I have discovered — it’s the way it is. So why not — or we MUST — learn how to operate within this law, so as to create the change we seek in our own lives, our communities, and the world.
In year one of Brain Body Being we take a deep look into the somatic perspective of contradiction, physiology as thought-provoking, and the somatic practices of awareness and pendulation to truly change your limiting thoughts — for good.
Journal prompts for exploring contradiction:
What do you feel in your body when you consider that the subject of your thinking is important?
What do you feel in your body when you consider that we also must honour how our thinking has become what it currently is?
What do you feel in your body when you consider that both our thoughts are directive AND we can honour our current ways of being and thinking at the same time? This is called contradiction and bringing your awareness to your body amidst contradiction expands our capacity for both/and-ness.
What do you feel in your body when you consider that we can shift our thinking in the direction of thoughts that feel good and direct our lives in the direction(s) we long for?
Disbelieving and contraction are normal. We often discover this is our experience before feeling the excitement that shifting thoughts changes life.
Mallorie Buoy
Mallorie is the founder and lead educator at Homebody School of Somatics. She currently practices as a Registered Master Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Clinical Somatic Therapist, as well as a psychedelic-assisted therapist. With over 15 years of studying mysticism, movement, and exploring the rich truth of cosmic law, alongside the science of it all, she now teaches others to become somatic educators and therapists without the stress or overwhelm of a traditional university setting.
Explore our 500-hour ISMETA Approved Somatic Educator and Therapist Training at homebodyhealing.org.