Written by: Cheryl Whitelaw, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
In this fourth article on my series on reversing the impacts of aging, I want to take you on a small learning expedition – How we create our experiences and what that has to do with aging.
We are real beings with a concrete reality – my foot, my body, my eyes. How we know ourselves is a dynamic reality that starts with our core self. In my work with people who find their life limited by the impact of injury, health conditions like fibromyalgia or MS or the process of aging itself, this is a distinction that impacts the quality of their movement and the quality of their life that is possible.
Let’s start at the beginning. Before we know how to talk, we are aware of the movements of our bodies. As babies, we sense and we move. Each of the moments a baby senses literally creates their still-forming nervous system and brain.
We can say this is our core self – the self that is aware as I sense and move.
When you think of a memory of yourself – what is that memory composed of?
Do you have a picture in your mind? Do you recall a feeling, like pleasure or fear? Is it a scent that brings back a memory? Or the touch of a favorite scarf? You may have a preference for how you recall memories of yourself. Or you may have memories come into the front of your awareness when sensing something. As I write this, it is Thanksgiving in Canada, so the smell of roasting turkey brings a wealth of memories that include images, emotions, and sensations.
When I was 10, I remember the sense that time moved more slowly on Thanksgiving, smelling the roasting turkey in the hours leading up to a holiday meal. I also remember the sound of my parents bickering about when to start the potatoes as part of the waiting, a small feeling of anxiety intertwined with my growing hunger pangs. This mingling of anxiety with the sensation of hunger has stayed with me for decades. And for decades I have associated anxiety with the sensations of hunger. This is one example of how I created myself from my experiences.
When a baby develops from moving their hand to using their hand to control something in their environment, like grasping a cup to take a drink, it is a neurological leap to know they can create their own movement experience. As a baby learns to move and control the cup, a lot can spill during their learning curve. (Thanks be for the all-might sippy cup!)
So our core sense of self comes from:
being aware of how I move and what I sense,
the memories and images of myself that I add to my sense of self with each experience, and
my sense of myself as I move through space and learn to control and interact with my environment.
We tend to rely on some inputs more than others when we create our sense of ourselves. Let’s apply the way we tend to know ourselves to learn about a new neighbor. How do we get to know who she is?
Input 1: We can observe what she does – does she leave at the same time each morning? How does she look – does she look angry or sad? How do we know? Is she frowning or talking in an agitated voice as she leaves?
Input 2: We can listen to stories about her told by others, a mixture of observable facts and explanations that link together experiences into a story.
Input 3: We can talk to her and have our own experience with her including listening to her stories about herself. We can notice how she gestures, laughs, how quickly she talks.
How do we come to know who she is? Which information do we pay the most attention to? What information feels credible, believable about who our neighbor actually is?
We can ask this question of ourselves – what information do we pay the most attention to? What is the credible, believable information that tells us who we are?
Stories are powerful – they are an incredible tool to make sense out of events and experiences. We tend to create stories out of the memory of our experiences and attach ourselves to these stories as key markers that tell us and others – who I am.
Attention is also a powerful tool – we select and de-select information from our experience. What we attend to creates our experience. When we expand what we pay attention to, we become more consciously able to choose how we act in response to the information we select to include in our attention.
How does this way of creating ourselves in what we experience relate to reversing the impact of aging?
I can use my attention to press pause on the story that explains my experience. And put my attention to noticing my direct experience. The feeling of warmth from the kitchen. The texture of the cloth napkins as I set the table for the holiday meal. The homey smell arising from the crackle and spurt of the turkey roasting. The sound of my parents bickering over the potatoes. The sensation of aroused energy in my belly, a combination of hunger and anxiety.
This memory comes from over 20 years ago. Once I came into fuller awareness of what I had experienced each year in the anticipation of Thanksgiving dinner, I was able to use my attention to create a change in my experience. Wanting to keep the tradition of our Thanksgiving meals, I offered to cook for my parents, whatever they wanted for our holiday meal. But the deal I made with this offer – no more bickering!
What I find hopeful, is that by attending to more of what I sense and by leaving my own personal stories more open-ended, like a story that still has chapters to be written, I can find the power and possibility within myself to create changes. This connecting to my core self is foundationally available even after experiencing life-changing events. And the nexus for creating yourself from here, whatever has been written in the previous chapters of your life.
Even though I have accumulated 5 decades of experience, memory, and stories about myself, I can access my core self – what I sense and how I move to create my own experience. Simply by bringing my awareness to my senses and my movement. Cultivating this capacity is crucial for people whose personal history includes life-changing injury and health conditions to change both the quality of their movement and the quality of their life.
Cheryl Whitelaw, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Cheryl is a leader in using movement to improve brain and body performance, reversing the impacts of aging. As a child, Cheryl asked, “If we can do war, how do we do peace?” Her lifelong exploration of that question led her into embedding transformative learning technologies into adult education, coaching, inclusion, and diversity training and supporting people to recover their personal sense of wellness and wholeness after injury and trauma. A devoted practitioner of aikido, Tai Chi, and Feldenkrais, she is committed to her personal evolutionary path to integrate body, mind, and spirit in service of peace in the world. She has coached individuals in private, public, non-profit organizations, unions, and utility companies from over 12 countries around the world. She is a published author in the field of diversity and inclusion and is well regarded for her blog on how our movement can help us create a more potent and peaceful self in the world. Her mission: Move more; react less, and live more fully with no regrets.
