Habits

Habits.

I’m curious what thoughts and associations bubble up for you when presented with the word.

What about the idea of ‘movement patterns’?

We often tend to use the word habits to describe a small subset of our repetitive behaviours and those behaviours tend to be dichotomised into ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ And there is a tendency to go seeking support in ‘stopping bad habits’ and ‘creating healthy habits.’ This oversimplification can serve us in some ways but misses a lot of the context and complexity.

In reality, most of our movement patterns are habitual. And those patterns aren’t just behaviour on its own. There is a complex interweaving of our thought patterns, emotional patterns, behaviour patterns, nervous system patterns, social patterns, biochemical patterns… From our inception, we are continually creating and reinforcing this complexity of interrelated movement patterns in response to the environment and our own needs as humans, such as safety, connection, discovery, expression and learning (here’s a more fulsome list of these needs). As beings, we are designed to create and reinforce habitual movement patterns. When patterns are habitual, we can repeat them automatically and unconsciously.

Can you imagine what life would be like if we had to pay attention to every movement we made? If you’ve ever watched a baby learn how to walk, you notice how their complete attention is focused on each aspect of their movement. Without the capacity to create habitual movement patterns, all movements would require this much focus and attention. Yet, because we can learn and add movement patterns to our repertoire, we have the capacity to create, do and experience so much more in life.

The idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ habits also severely oversimplifies why we create and reinforce patterns. All movement patterns serve a purpose. They are all a complex interplay of beliefs, emotions, needs and many of this is outside our conscious awareness and connected to parts of our brains and experience that predate language and understanding. There are many therapeutic processes that help us uncover some of these aspects yet life is far more entangled and complex than the language-oriented part of our thinking brains can fully grasp.

The oversimplification of habits also contributes to how badly we can feel about some of the persistent movement patterns in our lives – guilt that we have a pattern that we know has some negative consequences and belief that there is something wrong with us or we’re lacking enough willpower to change. There tends to be an idea that knowing a pattern isn’t the healthiest pattern for us should be enough to change that pattern.

It's not.

Just as the myriad and complex patterns we’ve created in our lives only became automatic through a lot of practice, if we want to change any aspect of how we’re being, moving, and thinking, we need practice. Most of how we move through life is habitual and automatic and it’s easiest to stay in those grooves. Our tendency will generally be to move back into the grooves we have. We create and deepen new grooves through practice.

So it’s both of these pieces that are critical in shifting aspects of our life and experience – awareness and practice and both of these things are ongoing. Practicing awareness brings our attention to what we’re doing (and feeling and thinking) and intentional practice of new ways of doing (and feeling and thinking) is what supports the new grooves we are wanting.

Awareness and practice are things we can do on our own and they also tend to be greatly supported by the presence of others. Whether it’s our friends and families that we invite in to help us grow or teachers, therapists, coaches, and mentors or groups and classes we participate in – others can help us in reminding us when we fall into old grooves, provide the space and feedback to support us in being our best selves, provide accountability structures to help us come back to awareness and choice, help us heal aspects of our existing patterns, and practice alongside us.

The movement patterns we have were created through an interweaving of many levels of movement, including internal sensing, nervous system, physiological, neuronal patterns and interrelated cultural, familial, social patterns. Intentionally engaging what’s happening inside and outside along with others in our lives can create strong and supportive new patterns.

What are the new patterns you’re wanting to cultivate in your life?

And who would you like alongside you in the journey?

Some authors/practitioners I’d like to acknowledge for their inspiration of this work include:

Kimerer Lamothe ‘Why We Dance’ (2015)

Amanda Blake ‘your body is your brain’ (2018)