Change Your Physiology To Change Your Worldview
Shutterstock/Benjavisa Ruangvaree Art
Listen to the interview
In this discussion with Rhea Komarek, DC, we ask what happens to our worldview, our neuroceptions, when we bring ourselves out of our heads and into our bodies? Is this a “which comes first, the chicken or the egg” question? Dr. Rhea shares insights from Polyvagal Theory and Somatic Movement and how, befriending and tending our bodies, allows us to create the safe space that becomes the fertile, “tonified” soil for perceiving our world around us. As we say on Kindred, our worldview becomes our world. So imagine with us a growing collective of adults committed to self-awareness and self-regulation practices.
“When our physiology changes, our worldview changes. We can also use worldview to help us change physiology. There is so much we can do to tonify and nurture our physiology – to get ourselves into a healthier worldview. They can work together, the intellect and the intelligence. It is not a battle, but people need to be safe enough to shift their neuroceptions.”
In this Kindred interview, Dr. Rhea shares:
- Her personal story of moving from a wellness to wholeness approach, and discovering the roots of dominator culture thinking in our quest for an intellectual understanding of “wellness” instead of a relational experience of wholeness within the living energy of our bodies. “One is befriending and accepting, and one is shaming,” Rhea says.
- Her personal story of moving through injury and “panic states” when trying to approach her body, and discovering the neurobiological roots of her body’s responses.
- How she uses practical self-awareness and self-regulation exercises that both model for her son that these states are possible, and enrich his own capacity to co-regulate.
- How a community of adults who understand and practice co-regulation is a part of our cellular memory and expectations as human beings.
- How the Polyvagal science helps to explain our lack of “listening” in our culture and how its practical skills can be used for conscious activism.
Dr. Komarek is a chiropractor in Napa, California specializing in helping people move from states of stuckness and stress into more embodied states of health and wholeness using hands on care, applied polyvagal theory, and somatic movement. You can visit her site here.