Remove Your Brakes

Categories: Blog Dec 14, 2014

[caption id="attachment_2372" align="alignnone" width="350"] Release the brake![/caption]

When I was 16, and just learning how to drive, I drove about 10 miles from my church to my house. When I got home, my car (it was my mom's minivan) had smoke pouring out from under the back tires. I had been driving around town, all ten miles of it, with the emergency brake engaged. When I realized why the car was smoking, I thought, "No wonder the car just did not seem to drive right." I had been hitting the gas, demanding it to "go", all the while the emergency brake was on.

Cars don't drive so well when the brakes are on. They stop pretty well, but they don't go so well. The body is really not that different when it comes to moving. Sometimes we don't move so well because we have brakes that are engaged. Yet, even though our brakes are engaged, we demand our body to move and perform well. Many times, just as when I was 16 in my mom's minivan, we don't even know that our brakes are on. We push ourselves, we strive to move better and perform better, but we just don't seem to be "running" right.

The body does have brakes. The brain puts brakes in place when it feels it needs to protect us. The brakes are engaged so that we don't break. Yet, we unknowingly try to remove them, override them, or ignore them in an effort to move better, perform better and feel better. For example, say a person has "tight" hamstrings and they cannot touch their toes. Many times the brain may put the brakes on one area, such as the hamstrings, in an effort to protect the body. If a person does not have a reflexively strong center, the brain may tighten up the hamstrings to prevent a person from moving into danger.

What is the solution in this example? To Stretch the hamstrings, right? Not if the hamstrings are tight to protect the body. The tight hamstrings would be a symptom of the root issue, but not the root issue. To stretch them and become successful would be equivalent to overriding a strategic brake put in place to protect the body. In other words, to stretch tight hamstrings could be like exposing yourself to an injury - ESPECIALLY if the hamstrings are only tight because that is the brain's defense response (compensation) because the reflexive foundation is not fully in operation as it should be.

Here is the truth: Your body was made to fully express mobility and strength with grace and power. When you move, animals should stop and stare because your movement is so beautiful that they become envious. Did you catch that? We should not be envious of how the gazelle moves, they should be envious of how we move. The body can only express it's full mobility and strength when it has a solid foundation of reflexive strength. If that foundation is lacking, if you don't have all of your reflexive strength, then the brain puts brakes in place to prevent the body from going into dangerous territory. In other words, compensations, like tight hamstrings or tight shoulders, are strategic brakes used to address a faulty foundation; much like splints and braces that may be used in an old building to keep it from collapsing.

When these brakes are in place, you CANNOT express your full movement and strength potential. Mobility and strength are expressions of how confident your operating system, your nervous system, is with how much reflexive strength you have. Your reflexive strength is your foundation for movement. It is your body's ability to reflexively respond to movement as, or before, it happens.

Having your reflexive strength, what we call your original strength, is the only way your body can express all that it was meant to be: poetry in motion. Without your original strength, you will have brakes in place that prevent you from moving and feeling as you were designed. The best way to remove the brakes from your body is to reengage with your original operating system, and embrace the very movements that were designed to build your reflexive foundation from the start. In other words, the best way to restore your original strength is to simply press reset.

Press Reset. Reboot your operating system. Restore your reflexive foundation of movement and strength.

Breathe the way you were designed to breathe. Remember how to control your head. Learn how to roll with ease. Rock your body to totally integrate all your reflexes and melt your cares away. Crawl to completely tie everything about you together. The effects of pressing reset can be experienced immediately in most people; brakes are removed. With time and consistent engagement, full reflexive strength, your original strength, can be restored and maintained throughout your lifetime.

You are supposed to be the ultimate expression of movement. Remove your brakes. Make the gazelles green with envy. Move with freedom.

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