Anyone who has been met with loss, trauma, injury, tragedy, disease, or a dark night of the soul meets the opportunity of deepening and developing further as an adult human being. Robert Kegan is credited with Adult Developmental Theory, which did not exist when he began studying psychology at Harvard in the 1970's. Developmental Theory was studied only in children.

In the decade prior, neuroscience began debunking the long-held assumptions that the human brain had a finite amount of non-renewable cells. Neuroplasticity, explains that the brain can adapt and reorganize in response to new experiences, behaviors and learning. Neurogenesis is the formation of neurons that can happen in multiple areas of the brain. Not only is the brain able to create new cells, but it can change, and heal. Taken together this is powerful proof that developmental potential continues throughout life.

Further, if we are to avail ourselves of this potential, we must understand that the body is a brain with 80% of afferent sensory signals going from skin, organs and tissue to the CNS (which includes the brain). And 20% of efferent motor signals traveling out from the brain to the body. There are three classes of embodied perception: exteroception (the 5 senses); interception (gut, skin, heart, fascia and lungs) and proprioception (inner ear, specialized muscle cells and fascia).

In Your Body Is Your Brain, Amanda Blake writes, "Embodied self-awareness ... encompasses all of interoception, exteroception, and proprioception. It is a whole-body sensory process that involves your entire extended neuromuscular system, your deepest visceral sensations, and some of the most emotionally-oriented parts of your brain. "

Having been a Neuromuscular Therapist for 30+ years, I think the key to humans developing beyond socialized mind, to self-authoring and self-transforming mind depends on the self-awareness of embodied cognition.

Embodied Cognition and Self-Awareness

In College, I studied Quantum Physics for a couple of semesters, which inspired my devotion to innovating in integrative therapy most of my adult life. Western science was proving what Eastern Wisdom had long illuminated. Gautama Buddha who lived in the 5th or 6th century BCE, talking about mindfulness centered on the body--he is referring to what we now call embodied self-awareness as opposed to conceptual self-awareness. And yet, in our Western culture, it is still a cutting edge, new age, suspicious concept that struggles to gain traction. Mindfulness, a secular practice is integral to Buddhism.

There is one thing that, when cultivated and regularly practiced, leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? It is mindfulness centered on the body. Gautama Buddha

When we look at how Kegan describes the stage where the 58% of the adult population bases their life, we see greater conceptuality and conformity.

• cross categorical thinking (linking one durable category with another)
• increase in abstract thinking
• majority of thoughts are about how others perceive us
• support is based on mutually rewarding relationships and shared experiences

The Transformation requires unhooking from codependence that moors us to the prevailing conception of social life and relationship. This potentially prevents us from building the three critical aspects of Self-Authorship.

Robert Kegan's Theory of Development Stages

Stage 1: Impulsive Mind (early childhood)

Stage 2: Instrumental of Imperial Mind (adolescence, 6% of adult population)

Stage 3: Socialized Mind (58% of the adult population)

Stage 4: Self-Authoring Mind (35% of adult population)

Stage 5: Self-Transforming or Inter-Individual Mind (1% of adult population)

Most of us intuitively understand Stage 3, Socialized Mind, as the process that we go through to become a contributing member of society--the aim and goal of our institutions, schools, and training for careers. We are experiencing evolutionary inflection points throughout the World since the pandemic. It changed the way we conceive of our ways of being and knowing in every dimension.

In my coaching work, I guide clients through the transformative transition from their medical careers through the process of creating their freelance medical writing businesses. They are MDs leaving practices, pharmacists leaving an abusive system, nurses leaving the bedside, and scientists, all wanting greater freedom and to continue contributing their value and brilliance to help others. They are inspiring examples of adults who have decided to Self-Author.

Three Critical Aspects of Self-Authorship (4th Stage of Adult Development)

1. Learn to trust the internal voice Take greater ownership over how we think about and respond to events, people, places, challenges, inequity, injustice. Begin establishing independent but informed opinions, thoughts, questions and aims in our lives. Being reared by a Father and Mother who were heads of a boarding school, we were steeped in living at the intersection of the school's creed: Knowledge, Character and Community. We were encouraged to develop critical thinking skills, to voice our differing opinions and to explore not just higher education but growth and transformation of character and community.
2. Build an internal foundation This requires reflection, questioning, strength of character, exploration, and courage. In order to build an our own internal foundation, we must learn from our experiences, influences and make decisions about who we have been, and who we want to be. This is a time to go deeper into our foundational experiences--wounds, habits, gifts, resistance, fear, strengths and honoring our individual ways of knowing and being. It is a profound experience to chart one's own course. I pursued a therapeutic career because of my own experiences of being Highly Sensitive and because the shadow side of being in a family always in the limelight, required that I overcome the vestiges of perfectionism in my Mother's style. I took the path of the wounded healer, creating space and therapeutic treatment to compassionately witness and empower clients through their pain. Because I understood it, in my Self.
3. We must secure internal commitments Have you excavated your beliefs? What causes, endeavors, values, priorities and vision evoke your commitment? How will you walk your talk? You know how the math teacher used to say we needed to show our work? This is living in a way that shows who you are as the author of your own life. This is where choices are made to build mindful responses, to unlearn judging others and instead weed your own garden. There is a natural evolution that happens here as we create, over time, a living work. We become our own critic, our own guide. We hold ourselves to the standards we value.

The Deep Connection with Embodied Self-Awareness

I have been practicing and teaching embodied self-awareness for over 30 years, as a Neuromuscular Therapist who innovated in my field by integrating mindfulness, meditation, stretching, deep breathing, how to observe but not judge, how to engage with their pain, to learn what it had to teach. Pain and passion are both profound teachers. Our sensory awareness is intelligent.

We can expand our repertoire of being by connecting and aligning with our unique and imaginative, internal wisdom. Conceptual awareness based in thoughts, narrative, facts, interpretation, past and future awareness, logic, language and explanatory abstracts, is only part of the human equation.

With embodied awareness we become more present, basing our awareness in feeling, movement, action, sensing, spontaneity, openness, curiosity, creative, imaginative noticing we expand our choices, and the field of possibility. Pain, passion, energy, mood, emotion, pressure, breath is the basis a life of greater happiness and conscious growth. Embodied learning and change is the way we tap into the power of neuroplasticity and begin self-authoring our lives. Everything within us is prepared to respond to our world calling for it!

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Hi! I'm Liz Graham, Success Coach@Prospology | Adjunct Professor @ UMKC with 35 Years Supporting Clients with Tools and Practices for Pain Relief, Healing, Insight and Growth | Tibetan Buddhist Mindfulness Meditation Teacher

Talks about #powerofembodiment, #neuroscienceofchange, #mindfulnessmeditation, #integrativepainsolutions, and #transformativeleadership

If you are looking for one-of-a-kind transformative witness to partner with through a life transition, reach out and let's talk.