Personal Development

Growth and Development match our authentic nature

Growth and development match our authentic nature. It is, as it were, written in our genes that we are able to long for pleasure, satisfaction, meaning and connection. After all, we have the ability to recognize, experience and name these states. We can fully satisfy our nature in interactions with appropriate others. That is why we selectively search for contexts and interactions throughout our lives that promise to:

• satisfy our basic needs
• assist us in integrating and uniting the polarities of our being
• support us in the expansion of our consciousness
• improve the development of our “pilot”
• validate and cultivate our being unique and potential.

At the Institute for Bodywork Integration (IBI), we have spent years researching and gaining experience of “people on the move” striving to live a more fulfilling and satisfying life. The work culminated in a Method engaging “everything” called Core Strokes.

Our approaches are aimed at eliminating pain, frustration, despair and alienation and finding a way to satisfy your basic needs. These needs are: Having your place in life, feeling nourished, having sufficient and correct support, Knowing your protection and being able to lovingly limit yourself and others.

Other objectives of our growth work are:

• the neurological integration of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere that plays the main role in our conscious, rational, abstracting, intellectual, cognitive, verbal and linear thinking and the right hemisphere that is the main responsible in our unconscious, emotional, spatial, artistic, intuitive, non-verbal and organismic thinking.
•  a sensorimotor development around action (motor skills), perception (sensory impressions) and integration (the skillful combination of perception and action in coordinated behavior).
• awareness of our behavior: helping to integrate and balance our expressive capabilities and our receptive capabilities.
• the symbolic: the masculine and feminine / yin and yang / animus and anima
• the energetic: energy is quite invisible at the “micro” level, but we have the innate ability to turn our energy into action at the “macro” level.
  • Action is behavior and movement that comes from feeling, “tension” or “emotional movement”
  • Action creates form: by consciously using and directing the energy in the body, we shape ourselves physically and mentally
  • Action is expression that follows a felt need.
  • We take action to communicate with someone or something and integrate things into ourselves and the world from that communication.
• the level of meaning: Meaning is the translation of our interactive experiences into conscious, symbolic, linguistic descriptive terms: We can articulate and discuss our experiences. In a group session we hold what we call “sharing rounds” where you can share your experiences from exercises and interactions, receive feedback and find deeper meanings.

When we look around us, we see that all living things grow and change. Trees are given branches. Caterpillars become butterflies. Birds make nests and lay eggs. Personal development changes your life, gives meaning to your life. Personal growth gives substance to your life.

• Your personal development makes you feel healthier. Partly because you are concerned with the dimensions of body, mind and soul, and partly because development itself makes you feel better. If you experience more satisfaction, more happiness, you also have more energy. If your mind and body feel better and function better, it makes sense that you are healthier and more likely to feel happy.
• Your personal development also has an effect on your environment. Your growth, in turn, is a catalyst for change around us and in others around us. Embodying the change you would like to see in others yourself is a beautiful saying that reflects this.
• Much of our work is aimed at supporting and accelerating your personal development. Many moments of ‘crisis’ are in fact invitations to personal growth. Crisis is not a dirty word to us. As you grow inwardly (in your body), your life becomes more pleasant and interesting. You feel alive, connected, aware and more present.
• If you are engaged in personal development, you can get into a flow. “Flow” gives the experience of satisfaction and joy.
• Personal development is actually inevitable if you have “autonomy” of paramount importance. Life moves, changes. We can go with this flow and use the changing energy if we want to. After all, we all have an intrinsic desire for self-realization. Unfortunately, this is often proclaimed by our conditioned mind (which has gone through a lot of “adjustment”). As a result, sometimes we no longer do the “right” things (we get out of our core (“= the center of the right energy”). Therefore, we contrast the concept of growth and self-determination with the concept of forced adaptation under pressure from something or someone different and dependence.

The Institute for Bodymind Integration supports your growth movement, physicality and health in a bodymind way: holistic, body-oriented, energetic, interactive, breathable, enriching …