Only those who believe in themselves

…can pave their paths.

How to Believe In Yourself

The players are the underdog and they know it. Up against a fierce and superior opponent their bodies begin to collapse in defeat.

“Only those who believe in themselves can pave their paths”

Their coach, the “Professor,” reminds them in this way that all they have to keep doing is playing their own kind of ball as they usually do. The chances are one in 10 for a victory and they know it, but their goal is to beat the odds. They are ready for the challenge. The team visibly finds their resolve, gathering themselves and standing up straighter and more energetically. The music is upbeat and suspenseful. This is a classic baseball anime.

How to believe in yourself

This is a simple physical process. It is a function of the postural system, the muscles in the deep core. These are very close to our energetic center, the spinal cord, and and as our postural core they carry powerful emotional meaning. This action of finding your resolve, pulling oneself together, or “getting a grip” is a basic and automated function of the deep core postural system. It is not difficult to activate this consciously but it requires some anatomical self-awareness.

You can believe in yourself actively and consciously through the muscles of the deep core postural system.

You can repeat this process anytime that you want with a little bit of breathing and self reflection and some somatic practice. In order to pull yourself together like this you need to go inside yourself. Sometimes the environment makes it hard to even remember that this is possible. However the body is designed to make it easy, intuitive and natural. We now have the anatomical science to clearly describe this process and find it within ourselves interoceptively.

It feels unfamiliar at first but the truth is it has always been there working in your favor and always will be. By grasping this muscular new “body part” consciously we experience a boost in right hemispheric cognitive function. When we grasp this important and valuable animal intelligence that we possess inside ourselves, it is a kind of epiphany.

It is this phase shift that we are talking about when we say that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is what gets added. The epiphany we experience when mentally diverse things seem to snap into alignment is also the epiphany we feel when the deep core structure, so palpably in alignment, breathes. The act of. breathing for a number of cycles helps us to sustain our attention on this mind/body metastability until there is a phase change, or a mood shift, in the brain.

I call this biomechanical enlightenment. It is as simple, intuitive, and natural as a gentle smile.