Breaking Free
INTERVIEW WITH SHERINE LOVEGROVE, AWARD WINNING AUTHOR
About Sherine Lovegrove
Sherine has run a successful practice as a registered UKCP Neurolinguistic Psychotherapist, Coach and Trainer for the past 20 years. She holds a master’s degree in cognitive neurosciences and neuropsychology from Birkbeck College, London and has applied this knowledge to create her iCAN® Model, which uses brain-based techniques to not just help us change our behaviours but also to make those changes stick.
Her specialty is in areas of self-development, Energy Psychology and healing. Sherine’s greatest desire is that every person gets the opportunity to live a truly successful and fulfilled life. Sherine has a keen interest is the way that the brain changes because of how we think, feel and act and is particularly interested, in finding ways of harnessing the brain’s potential to generate transformative changes.
What is your best A-ha moment you ever experienced?
My best AHA Moment was when I chose myself – I put aside my DRAMA and stepped fully into my DARMA
My drama story was that at 52 years of age which wasn’t an issue but I was 55lbs overweight, suffering from physical symptoms and seriously very unhappy with myself because for the first time in my life I couldn’t lose the weight that I was carrying. I thought I was an expert at losing weight, something I was really proud of, so when this happened to me I didn’t know what to do. Being so good at losing weight I had only ever learned to take-off my weight never to maintain it – I hadn’t needed to.
So now, I was in the position where the very thing that I could count on failed me and I really had to face myself and make some tough decisions. This wasn’t easy because I was stuck in the DRAMA and I needed some ideas how to get myself out of it. Luckily, my AHA Moment happened and I got to see that to move away from the DRAMA I must step into my DHARMA (my truth).
Typically, I have found that we don’t simply step outside our DRAMA because there are behavioural issues that are usually getting in our way – KARMA. Now I know, the way KARMA being used here is not what is traditionally accepted, however, if we apply some neurological understanding to KARMA it can make a lot of sense.
Think of KARMA as the conditioned learning that we intrinsically inherit and extrinsically obtain. Our intrinsic inheritance is comprised of our basic genetic material together with the adaptive epigenetic expressive permutations (inherited through familial stress experiences) and extrinsic influences, those behaviours which we have learned throughout our lifetime.
Thus, KARMA could be thought of being more like behavioural imprints that set us up for challenges in our life. When we learn to overcome these challenges, they give our lives purpose and meaning.
So, how do we go about exiting the DRAMA and release ourselves of our KARMA so that we can step into our DARMA – our Purpose?
The simple answer is that we must act differently the moment we become conscious of being in the DRAMA. Very easy to say but can be very difficult to do because when we are in the DRAMA we usually are experiencing some sort of internal conflict or threat. This results in our innate stress response, otherwise known as the FIGHT – FLIGHT – FREEZE mechanism, being automatically activated. But, because we grow up in social groups we learn behavioural strategies that help us resolve uncomfortable or threatening feelings in a way that allows us to fit in. Thus, these behavioural strategies end up becoming our preferred automatic conditioned responses – KARMA.
Unfortunately, these behaviours now become part of us, influencing every decision or action that we make, and because they are modeled on how other people accept us, our parents, teachers, friends, etc, they might not really even belong to us. This means that we might end up living someone else’s DHARMA (ideas and beliefs) and not our own. So, when we stop and choose ourselves before taking action we get the opportunity to transform everything from that moment onwards.
Why stopping and choosing our actions works is because just prior to the activation of the FIGHT – FLIGHT – FREEZE response mechanism there is a moment of “Immobility, where neurologically it appears that virtually nothing is happening. It is as though neural information traveling down the nerve gets “held within the synaptic gap” and doesn’t get transmitted across the synapse to reach the next neuron.
This, I believe is where Transformation happens, where time appears to be suspended and where ‘Everything is held in Potential – nothing is yet coded and therefore no meaning is attached’.
At this moment can be our most GOD-LIKE because here we can become the Creator of our reality. Giving ourselves a suggestion at this point is crucial because it allows us to instantly create rippling effects throughout our body and mind. Furthermore, when this culminates across hundreds and thousands of neurons, each doing the exact same thing, it creates a whole brain effect known as an AHA Moment.
In my AHA Moment time stood still – it was a holding space where I could feel, see, hear the entire universe all as one. I told myself that I CAN lose weight and that I would be successful because I had the power in me, to do it. It was my best AHA Moment because I truly chose myself for the very first time.
From then on, I started walking another path and I know that you too can do that if you allow yourself to “s-t-r-e-t-c-h time” a little. If you learn to use that moment of “Immobility” to do the following steps that I have listed, You will obtain the Keys to the Kingdom.
· Stop – Whatever we are doing and notice what is going on | Slow Time Down and Breathe
· Reassess – The way we are thinking, our behaviours and our feelings and see if they are valid – Ask ourselves “Is this really true”?
· Re-evaluate – Ask ourselves “Is this in alignment with who I AM and who I Want to Be
· Act – Congruently act upon the information that we are being given
For further information please visit http://sherinelovegrove.com/
