The purpose of Optimal Self is to facilitate movement in support of a patient's awareness, healthy action, and authentic being with practical, immediate and ongoing results.

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Optimal Self is a synthesis of Susan's background combined with Harriet Goslins’ brilliant blend of work known as Cortical Field Re-Education.

 

Optimal Self utilizes the fact that:

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• ​Brains and bodies want to heal.  (We do not make ourselves get well from a cold or heal from a sprain).

 

• Our brains, bodies and behaviors all have a huge amount of plasticity (are malleable) and are available for change, given the right (safe) environment, provided it makes sense to the brain (not necessarily to mental thought).

 

Optimal Self and Cortical Field Re-Education work through the motor-sensory cortex and other parts of the brain to eliminate physical dysfunction and the related emotional issues, thereby freeing the habitual, self-limiting and protective behavior patterns associated with trauma. By releasing deep, long-standing muscular contraction - NOT LOCALLY - BUT AT A PLACE IN THE BRAIN WHERE IT IS ENCODED, we dramatically increase our ability to sense, feel and move. This work is about upgrading the clarity of the information fed into our organic computer, which is the agent of change.  

 

I appreciate that pain commonly has been in "that place" for a long time (perhaps unrecognized) and usually before their trauma or surgery. Why is it that when injury or trauma happens- it goes specifically into where the compensation already is? There was already an issue in that spot.

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We are learning organisms- we have the ability to register information from an initial experience and remember it.  If there is a pain associated with a certain movement, stretching and/or strengthening requires compensation. Susan finds and works with a new neural pathway of movement elsewhere that does not have a personal history (physical or emotional pain).

 

This opens possibilities in movement and in life for congruency between your structure and your life’s purpose (energy). The amount of difficulty and frustration in life is directly proportional to the amount of (effort) work expended on avoiding awareness.

 

When Susan works with a student, she is not concerned with improved range of motion.  She is working with increasing the precision and quality going to and from your brain and decreasing the conflicted intentions around that. What every body part is doing, some part of you told it to 

do that- even though at the time that directive went in, it was a brilliant idea.

 

By re-educating the brain-muscle-emotion connection, restrictions in movement can be released, freeing lifelong behaviors that have organized around that movement, restoring freedom of 

choice.

 

  The work is for:

 

• Those who want to improve their posture, flexibility, and breathing and deepen their sense of connection and belonging.

• Those dealing with aftereffects of injury or emotional trauma, and the professionals who work with them.

• Those who want to optimize their athletic and sports performance and reduce risk of further injury.

• Those who have focused on the spiritual without realizing that a healthy body, comfortable with itself, is a clearer channel for meditation and intuition.

• Those who are chronically tired and stressed and want to take better care of their neck, shoulders and back.

• Those who want to regain the ease and joy of learning and moving as they ad as a child.

• Those who have looked to the intellect as the answer, gradually relegating the body to the status of a vehicle to house the mind.