Article

The Balance Process:
A Means of Re-Educating the Mind / Body System

By Kathy Brown, M.Ed.

Not too long ago I was driving west on the I-10 freeway here in Phoenix and wanted to exit at 7th Street. A lot of people wanted to exit at 7th Street, and the exit was backed up all the way onto the freeway. I found myself at almost a standstill in the far right lane, with all the other lanes traveling by at full speed.

Unfortunately, the person in the car behind me didn't see that our lane was stopping. I heard the sickening squeal of brakes behind me, and then the sound -- and feel -- of impact as I was thrown forward against my seat belt. Fortunately, the driver of the other car had slowed considerably before impact, and I was left with only minor damage to the car and a nice project for my chiropractor. It could have been a lot worse.

But there was other damage that wasn't so easy to see, and I didn't notice it until I was traveling west on I-10 again. As I approached the 7th Street exit, I found myself not breathing and my body became quite rigid. I actually broke out in a cold sweat as fear ran through me. I realized that I was preparing myself for the impact of another rear-end collision.

Trauma had done a very good job of teaching my body that this part of the highway was dangerous to me. I now found myself reacting to conditioning that I certainly didn't consciously choose. I could tell myself logically that I was in no danger on the freeway, but every time I passed that "dreaded exit" I'd react in fear.

How Our Mind/Body Learns to React

As we travel through the countryside of our lives, we receive many different lessons about what's dangerous to us. Ridicule may have taught us that achieving or speaking out aren't worth the risk. A bad fall may have taught us to move forward only with caution. Physical or verbal abuse may have taught us to block out hearing or seeing the world around us. And each trauma holds its own specific set of reactions that now emerge in any similar - or even faintly similar - situation.

Most often we have no conscious awareness of what foundational issue planted the seed of our current state of operation. Usually we're just aware that in some aspect of our life we feel fearful, frustrated or "stuck."

In cases such as this we are reacting not to what's happening in this moment, but to the original trauma that occurred perhaps years ago, that this moment reminds us of.

How Does the Mind/Body Re-learn Ease?

Educational Kinesiology offers a wide variety of techniques that make stunning change for individuals. The primary technique of Edu-K and its core element known as Brain Gym®, is a process called a "balance."

Each balance session begins with setting a focused intention or "goal." Great care is taken to determine this goal, finding the words that focus attention most directly on the element that is the participant's obstacle to ease, and where they'd most like to see change.

In the balance process a wide variety of elements from the Edu-K program may be called on to bring resolution to the issue, often through the focused use of specific body movements and repatterning techniques.

The use of these techniques in the balance process offers the mind/body system the opportunity to re-learn how it would like it to hold tension (or not hold tension) in that situation. By the end of the balance session, new neural pathways are in place that support the desired positive goal or state, and the re-learning is complete.

The result is a feeling of natural ease and comfort in relation to the new behavior pattern, often with a bemused feeling of, "Could this ever have really been a problem for me? I'm so at ease with it now!"

While full integration of a balance may take up to two weeks, change is noticed immediately, and is cumulative with successive balances.

Far-reaching Results of Edu-K Balances

The key to an Edu-K balance is that, while focusing on the immediate issue, we are also creating a subtle focus on the "foundational issue" that created the pattern of dysfunction in the first place. Resolving the immediate issue through the balance process also resolves the foundational issue.

In this way, balances resolve much more than the single "problem" that one is addressing, as any single issue creates multiple reflections in one's life, as well. Resolving any foundational issue naturally creates other changes. It's interesting to see the effects of a balance beyond the original focus. The story of Alicia is an excellent example of this.

Alicia, age 11, a sweet but "reluctant student," was brought for a session to help with her reading and academic ability. Alicia said that she hated going school, and that reading gave her headaches. Together we created and balanced for the goal "I read easily and I like to read." By the end of the balance it was clear that significant change had occurred. In the days that followed, Alicia definitely reported reading more easily.

Beyond her balance for "reading easily" other academic issues also shifted. Almost immediately Alicia reported actually "liking school" and started doing her homework promptly and cheerfully -- quite a shift.

But the most remarkable change was observed by a long-time family friend. Unaware that Alicia had done a session of any kind, the friend mentioned that she was seeing striking differences in her: that painfully-shy Alicia was for the first time ever initiating conversations with adults in her life, and that she appeared more confident, self-assured and secure.

Her mother later reported to me not only that Alicia's grades had improved, but that she was a "different, more confident child" both academically and socially.

We had not balanced for any of these other specific changes, yet they manifested as the "foundational experience" that put the dysfunction into place was resolved.

By resolving foundational issues of life, the Edu-K balance process allows us to make "quantum leaps" in movement toward our optimally effective, ease-filled state.