Pre-loading our minds. Our thoughts and actions as habits

Thoughts and Habits: using the lens of Spontaneous CORE

We come into every experience of our lives with pre-loaded information. This seems unstoppable. We can find routes to balance our physiology, to pause from stories, giving our nervous system a chance to rest and heal. 

Imagine going into movement practices with a pre-loaded mind in fear. How do you think we would move our bodies from this place? And what kinds of deep grooves would we reinforce? We often aren’t aware that a large part of our thoughts and actions are more habitual than intuitive. Habits are patterns of thought or action that have been repeated for so long, they’ve become automatic. Some habits may support our wellbeing and growth, while others may subtly undermine us. This is all super obvious, however, do we notice these things?

Problems arise when old habits evolve into limiting beliefs—shaping our lives without our awareness. We tell ourselves stories from the moment we wake. And we wonder why do we feel drained some days? Some of these stories drain our energy, steeping us in fear or worry, and and we don’t even notice the internal dialogue. They set the tone for how our day unfolds.

If you have been working with me for a while, you may find the correlation with Spontaneous CORE concepts and how they can transform these internal habits through four powerful pillars. Let’s look at them simplistically in their basic forms for now, and we will look more deeply in this article:

• Crown – Support: Begin by noticing the support structures in your life. What thoughts, patterns, and practices help you get out of bed with vitality for the day? Where do you feel lifted, internally and externally? What centres you and gives you stability, like the feeling of being held or the feeling of balance from all sides? If nothing comes up, don’t worry, we will come back to this. 
• Override – What No Longer Works for you: Gently identify the habitual thoughts and reactions that no longer serve us. These may come from fear, insecurity, or long-standing narratives. Like old software running in the background, they use energy and keep us from evolving. This isn’t a quick fix or change or even a designation to the garbage bin as right/wrong, or good/bad, it starts with seeing. We can influence it if we see it.
• Rehearse – What Works: Once we identify what causes pain, we can rehearse new patterns—physically, mentally, emotionally. Repatterining with  new, supportive thoughts create strong, new grooves in the mind. Rehearsal is conscious choice, moment by moment…. But is it enough?! Don’t worry, I will never suggest that we do quick “fixes” or that we discount the parts of our selves that are uncomfortable to be with. Our Shadow sides are equally important as are the brighter sides. We should not try to be walking facades of ourselves. We will look at the physiological responses that are cause and support, later in this article.
• Ease – Ahimsa (Non-Harming): As we rewire our internal stories, we do it with kindness. Ahimsa means we offer ourselves grace instead of judgment. We will not get very far if we bully ourselves into change. It’s more like a sitting with and witnessing ourselves. I will often look inward and see if there is a “little Lyndsay” sensation in my Mind/Body. It’s like feeling a component of my self from a certain age. Seeing, and being with the component of what feels like me from another time, creates a calmer me now, as if a bridge has been created where compassion flows in both directions. We can work on this more deeply during Yoga Nidra practices (Yogic Sleep Meditation)

The stories we tell are all real and felt in the mind and body. Our nervous systems will react to remembered trauma, by making us hold our breaths, or muscles will seize up, or any number of personal responses to a fear. 

To outline this, there is a TED talk by Alan Watkins, “Being brilliant every single day”, where he demonstrates by bringing up an audience member to sit in a chair and hooks him up to a heart monitor. He then asked the man to count backwards from 300 by 3’s. As the man is doing so, his heart rate is understandably a bit stressed and erratic, but then Alan starts to  jump into the man’s space, calling out random numbers. Obviously the counting man’s heart rate increases a bit more.

We see that the stressors affected the man, but after Alan talks for 20 minutes describing the underlying principles that guides our actions to be our physiology, he calls the man up for a second time. Now, with the heart monitor on, we see his heart is completely erratic, even more than during the actual stress actions from before. His heart rate is faster, just at the memory of stress. 

The extra fun part about this test is that we see this man’s heart pattern to be off the chart so to speak with memory of stress, but he is then guided to look at an image projected on the wall of a pump moving up and down at 4 second intervals. He is to breath to this rhythm. Within one breath, his heart slows down and it pumps evenly above and below a mean level line. We get to see in mere seconds, how his breathing and heart patterns link. 

We can take foundational steps in change by noticing. Take time throughout your day to pause and observe your thoughts before beginning a task. What is your inner voice saying? What do you habitually tell yourself before you interact, work, or rest?

Recognizing that our thoughts generate actions—and that our actions reinforce beliefs—gives us power. We can become the authors of our own stories, rather than victims of inherited ones.

I had really thought to suggest a writing practice of noticing what limiting belief you create before doing a task, or rehearsing a unique and opposite thought, however this is a bit simplistic to the thousands year old philosophical conundrum, “can we know ourselves, can we see ourselves, can we join with ourselves, can we see the world with a clean lens, can we be kind with this inquiry?” 

Feel free to try doing writing practices… have a note pad beside you when you do your sitting practice, or can we simply breath the even breath count every time we notice incongruent feelings, emotions, or thoughts. 

Pausing, and not preloading all your actions with deeply grooved thoughts that may really be outdated or mean. 

Instead, preload an action with a pause, and even breath. Start with one round and see where that gets you. It may become the alchemy of awareness.

In yogic philosophy, these deep-seated thought grooves are known as Samskaras—subtle impressions stored in the energetic body. Samskaras are like lingering scents, the “perfume” of past experiences, influencing our current reactions as if by instinct. Some are empowering; others keep us bound to suffering.

Eventually, we experience the fullness of life with clarity and calm. Emotions remain, but they’re no longer the captains of our ship. Our responses arise from the now—not the past.

Finding the balance between doing and no-doing. We need to pre-load or pre-plan our physiology until we don’t need to.  Growing islands of awareness for movement and thought help us to fly. Eventually it is possible, even if it is only for moments, to not pre-load. We grow this experience, and the islands we connect will be islands of integration, and wholeness. It is possible to love the soft animal of the self and allow it’s emergence in our movements and our lives (Mary Oliver). It depends on which wolf you feed (Lakota).