How Moving With Awareness Brought Me to Living From the Inside Out
A personal reflection on somatic awareness and finding your way back to yourself.
For a long time, I thought the problem was me.
The sense that I didn't quite fit. That I wasn't quite enough. That there was something fundamentally off about the way I moved through the world. I didn't have a name for it but I carried a lot of shame with it.
What started to shift things was discovering trauma-informed parenting - which opened up a completely different kind of conversation with myself. That led me to Awareness Through Movement® practice. Gradually things began to change. What I knew cognitively to be possible was now a felt reality in my own body and mind.
I realized that all those areas where I had thought I didn't fit, that I was bad, that I wasn't worthy - they weren't character flaws. They were wounds. I had never considered that before.
I saw possibilities where I had only seen dead ends. I wanted to work on myself. To discover who I actually was.
How we learn to stop trusting ourselves
From the moment we arrive in the world, we are learning. Everything - how to move, how to feel, how to respond - is shaped by the people and environments around us. This is how humans have evolved, passing down ways of being from one generation to the next.
When boys are told don't cry when they feel hurt, emotionally or physically; when a child is hurt and is soothed with "you're ok, it doesn't hurt that bad, it's just a small scratch" they start to distrust their own feelings. When their natural response to sadness, fear or joy is too much or not enough for those around them, they learn to manage those feelings in the way that fits.
Over time, those adjustments stop feeling like adjustments. They become who we think we are.
I've been inspired by Brené Brown's work on vulnerability and belonging - and what my own journey has taught me is that the armour she describes doesn't just live in our thoughts and stories. It lives in the body too. In how we breathe. How we hold our shoulders. How we move through a room.
When the gap gets too wide
When we spend long enough disconnected from our own experience, it starts to show up in ways we can't ignore. We see it in people who are chronically unhappy, constantly dissatisfied, always finding something to complain about - because there is a growing gap between what they experience on the outside and what they actually feel on the inside.
It might show up as restlessness. A dissatisfaction that nothing seems to touch. Chronic tension with no obvious cause. Going through the motions without being present in them. Feeling lonely. Feeling slightly outside your own life.
It's not uncommon to move through entire days acting from habit, expectation and what we think is required of us, without ever pausing to ask: does this actually feel right to me?
That incongruency, when it becomes impossible to keep ignoring, is when we are willing to try new things.
What living from the inside out actually means
For me, living authentically means living from a place where you make choices based on what actually feels right to you. Where you know the difference between scared because something is new and a clear boundary you need to keep. Where you can feel in your body the difference between a yes that opens you up and a yes that shrinks you.
That kind of knowing doesn't come from thinking more but from learning to listen to yourself - in movement, in your responses, in the small seemingly insignificant moments of daily life. Recognizing and honoring your own needs and boundaries, not because someone told you to, but because you can actually feel them.
This is what Awareness Through Movement® practice offers - answers that emerge from within rather than seeking guidance from others.
Experience it for yourself
I'd like to invite you to feel what I've been describing. It will only take a few minutes.
Pause wherever you are and just sit for a moment. Just as you are, without changing anything.
First, notice your current emotional state. Maybe you're tired or a little scattered. Maybe you're worried about something or content. Whatever it is - just notice it without any judgement. You simply want to notice what is here right now.
Now bring your attention to how you're sitting. Which part of the chair are you on - the front edge, the middle, the back? Is your spine curved or straight? Notice the shape of your back from your tailbone all the way to the top of your head. Are you slumped forward? Is there a sense of heaviness pulling you down, or something lighter - as if your shoulder blades could float outward with each breath?
Now - without changing your physical organisation at all — try to shift your emotional state to something opposite. If you were feeling low, try to feel genuinely content. If you were feeling joyful, try to feel heavy. Keep your body exactly as it is.
Most people find this nearly impossible. And that's the point. Your body and your inner state are not separate things.
Now make one small change. Straighten your spine by just one vertebra. Or shift where your eyes are looking. Or tilt your head slightly. Or let yourself breathe from a different place.
Notice what happens. Does a small sigh come? Does your inner smile feel more accessible than it did a moment ago?
Make another small change. And notice again.
What you just experienced is at the heart of somatic learning. When you bring awareness with curiosity to how you are in this moment - without pushing, without performing, simply listening for what feels easy and alive - that awareness itself starts shifting things. The body is not a container for the mind. It is part of how we think, feel and know ourselves.
What becomes possible
When you begin having a real conversation with yourself in movement - without pushing, without performing, simply listening with curiosity for what feels easy and alive in that particular moment - it will trickle into other areas of your life. Because movement is part of everything we do. It includes how we think, how we sense and how we feel.
You start to relate to challenges differently because it's you that's changing. New ideas emerge. Things that felt stuck start to loosen. If I can feel better and move better when I allow myself to be guided by what actually feels good - what else could open up if I brought that same quality of attention into the rest of my life?
This is what I mean by living from the inside out. It's a way of coming back to yourself, again and again, each experience teaching you something about yourself, becoming more skillful each time and a little kinder towards yourself too.
Healing takes time. Coming to know yourself takes time. But each time you practice being with yourself - really with yourself - you are learning. You are wiring in new responses. Being grounded, responsive and genuinely you.
I know what it's like to spend years feeling like the problem, only to discover that what I was really missing was knowing myself. And I've found for myself that Awareness Through Movement® is one of the most direct paths I know to that kind of coming home.
If you wish to try it for yourself, you can find out more about working with me here.