The Chair of Despair: Part 5 of Changing Your Beliefs

The Chair of Despair

You see the chair in this picture? That’s the Chair of Despair. It was dubbed such by my friend Kiela, the owner of this aesthetically pleasing but unfortunate piece of furniture.

At first it was just a chair like any other, and hadn’t yet earned its esteemed title. But then Kiela began to notice that whenever she would sit in this chair long enough, everything would begin to feel less okay, and she would find herself thinking negative, limiting thoughts. Then she noticed that when she and her partner Tara would have conversations about their relationship, if Tara was sitting in the Chair of Despair inevitably the conversation would not go as well as if she were seated anywhere else in the room.

During one particular conversation, when things started to take a turn for the worse, she looked at Tara sitting there in the Chair of Despair and noticed that she was curled up in the fetal position, her knees pulled in toward her chest, her shoulders hunched over. You see, the thing about this chair is that it’s shaped in such a way that it’s not really possible for a person to comfortably sit up straight. So inevitably, those who sit in it quickly find themselves in an extreme slouch. And from the position of a slouch, the world seems different, because the way you hold your body effects what you think, feel, believe.

Structure not content

In the last installment of the Changing Your Beliefs series, Caught in a Bad Romance, we talked about how to revise a belief using content – stating the belief you want and then going about creating and gathering the evidence to prove the truth of the new belief for yourself. In this last installment of the series, we’ll focus on changing your beliefs using structure, not content.

Your neurosomatic position

The way you experience the world, and literally the way you can experience the world, is a function of the neurosomatic position you hold. What do I mean by this? Well let’s look at the word neurosomatic.

Neuro = the nervous system, through which information streams in from the external world, goes to the brain, is processed, and then sent back out to direct the muscles.

Somatic = the structure of your body – the way you hold yourself. For example, the tilt of your pelvis, the tonus of your lower back muscles.

The Default

Unless you’re a brain in a jar, neurosomatics effect you. You have a body and the way you organize your muscles and where your patterns of tension and relaxation are form the structure of how you experience the world. Which brings me to the point of this post – everyone has a baseline neurosomatic way of being – a perfect position that, when you’re in it, allows you to experience the world in the most effective and satisfying way possible. It is the optimized version of you that leads to radiant health and deep satisfaction.

This position is called your Default. It’s the way you are when you’ve let go of everything and you just are…the way you were born to be. Unfortunately, this baseline way of being is interrupted by the little and big traumas that all of us experience beginning as early as the womb. But when you’re able to tap back into that original perfection, that default way of being, you’re operating from a place where trauma is not.

In a way, rather than learning how to access it, we could say that you’re unlearning the things that inhibit it.

When I’m sitting in the fetal position in the Chair of Despair, my experience of the world will be vastly different than when I am standing with good posture. Different neurosomatics yield different results. Different neurosomatics yield different beliefs! If you want to change your beliefs, change your neurosomatic position.

Accessing your Default state is usually done with an experienced facilitator who can guide you into the state and teach you how to access it for yourself. This is one of the fundamental aspects of the work I do with my clients. There are also other ways to experience it and I’ll be expanding upon this in future posts.

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Related posts:

1. The Healthiest Person You Know: Part 3 of Changing Your Beliefs
2. Caught in a Bad Romance: Part 4 of Changing Your Beliefs
3. Part 1: Changing Your Beliefs: The Key to Self-Healing
4. Sponges with Feet: Part 2 of Changing Your Beliefs

Tags: beliefs, default, neurosomatics