Incorporating the Satisfaction Cycle Through Developmental Movement
Have you ever met someone who could never be satisfied, no matter how hard you tried? Nothing is ever good enough. Even if they have an abundance of blessings in their life, they are still unhappy. Why? Why do some people embrace this perpetual negativity as part of their inner self?
In the sixth module of the Embodied Early Developmental Movement and Attachment Therapy, we’re going to be examining the satisfaction cycle and how early developmental movement can help us better recognize and celebrate the good things in our lives.
So, what is the cycle of satisfaction? It's simply the way that we react to getting what we want in a healthy way. Take small children, for example. When they are sick or tired, children tend to instinctively broadcast a sense of unhappiness, even when they get what they want. The problem is that many adults do too, leading unhappy lives where they are never satisfied by what they have.
There are many parts of the cycle of satisfaction. One of the first is pre-motor planning. This is the stage where you get an idea of what you want and start to develop a plan to get it. On a basic level, this is how you know to walk through a door rather than into it. You want to go into the next room, so you make a plan to step forward, open the door, and walk through it.
Looking at this from a slightly move complex POV, imagine that you want an object of some kind. Let's say, a strawberry. You can see it sitting on the table in front of you. Now that you know it is there, you can instinctively reach out for it (one of our earliest developmental patterns), grasp it, and bring it back to you. Here is where the satisfaction cycle short circuits for some people. If you really want to be satisfied with this strawberry, you need to use your senses and take the time to enjoy it. Look at it, admire it, feel its texture, smell it, and taste it. Take the time to be "with" this object that you desired. Then, eat it!
This is a much-simplified version of the satisfaction cycle, but we can use this model to examine our situation in life and determine where it may have gone off the rails. To be blunt, this is all about "stopping to smell the flowers," and really appreciating them rather than walking by quickly without acknowledgement. Once we've identified what the satisfaction cycle is, we can start to incorporate this through early developmental movement.
Early developmental movement is the ABCs of movement. It's the foundation of how we learn to move. There are certain movements that we go through as a small child that actually contribute to how we react to things later in our life. For example, do you know that crawling can make your smarter? It's true! While walking is merely one foot in front of the other, crawling has a cross-pattern. Its complexity helps developing minds grow. When we skip these early developmental movements, for one reason or another, it can massively impact our life as adults.
Thankfully, it's possible to learn these movements later in our lives. That's what this module is all about. Once you've identified and learned these early developmental movements, you can start to see other people who are also missing these patterns and help guide them to their discovery. This is revolutionary, gentle, and simple work that is very respectful of the individual and their experience. And, most of all, it's fun!
The Embodied Early Developmental Movement & Attachment Therapy training course is specifically designed for psychologists and therapists, movement professionals, educators, and body workers. It is also a profound training program for parents. This is how I started my journey in this work.
Over the next two years, this course will be introducing concepts that might completely change the way that you view yourself and the way that you work with your clients. This kind of personal growth can be remarkable, leading to changes in your life that you can’t even imagine right now. I invite you to join us on this journey in the sixth module of The Whole Person: Embodied Early Developmental Movement & Attachment Therapy Intensive training course!
