Extracted from Blog Post of December 3, 2025: Attachment-Injury and Movement Programming

I. Poor Attachment is an early interruption in the brain's development-- a kind of emotional miswiring that forms when a child isn't CONSISTENTLY seen, received or soothed.

Attachment is the first language the nervous system ever learns.

If the environment was chaotic, distant, or emotionally unpredictable, the child's awareness grows OUTWARDS (watching the room, tracking others, and in the modern day-- getting lost in screens) instead of inwards (tracking themselves.)

Later in life, this may show up as:

• difficulty sensing ones own needs
• trouble reading ones internal signals
• repeating painful relationship patterns
• feeling off, unseen, or unworthy without knowing why

This is NOT weakness -- its PHYSIOLOGY.

II. What Poor Attachment Does to the Developing Brain

Early Conflict Becomes the Blueprint: When parents are overwhelmed, inconsistent, or in conflict themselves, the child's brain learns to BRACE. This bracing becomes a long-term pattern that shapes how they relate to others and to themselves.

The Midbrain Takes the Hit: Emotional inconsistency affects the midbrain-- the center for regulation, tone and connection. Tone of voice, facial expression, and emotional presence matter more to a child that words ever could.

Children live from the "Gut Brain": Young children operate from a more instinctive, non-linear place. Without stable attachment, they can get STUCK in early brain states -- like "adult responsibilities" showing up in a little nervous system body.

III. Interrupted Attachment= Interrupted Development

When parents are emotionally absent or unavailable at key times, the child may get frozen in that developmental stage. This may lead to:

• Narcissistic Wounding: Not being seen>> Inflating the self to survive
• Fragmentation: Extreme sensitivity
• Relationship Confusion: Difficulty trusting or staying present

Ages 0-9 are Pivotal: During these years the emotional (limbic) system is their foundation. When injury or inconsistency occurs here, talk therapy alone may not reach the depth of the wound BECAUSE IMPRINT LIVES BENEATH LANGUAGE.

IV. How Poor Attachment Affects Movement and Exercise

A. You can't feel your body clearly: When you grow up tracking others more than yourself, your internal signals get fuzzy and movement can become confusing. In fancy trainer speak, your interoceptive and proprioceptive abilities may become compromised.

B. Self-Care feels unsafe or indulgent: If your early environment taught you to stay small, quiet, or hyper-vigilant, taking time for yourself can feel wrong. For an attachment-injured system, this can trigger old fear.

        So you quit before your start. Or your start but cannot sustain. Or you book but don't show up.

(Note to trainers reading this: Another reason to not judge our clients that are still finding their way to commitment success!)

C. The Midbrain's regulation system never finished developing.

Movement IS regulation. This is why people say: "I know what to do (exercise.) But I cannot get myself to di it regularly" IT IS NOT A MINDSET ISSUE-- ITS A REGULATORY GAP!

 D. Interrupted Attachment = Interrupted Follow-Through

When key developmental stages were disrupted, the brain learned that fragmentation as a survival tool. Maybe this has something to do with ADHD, but I am not a mental health worker, I digressed and shall not further.

Follow-through requires COHERENCE.

Coherence requires SAFETY.

So maybe your system can start, but can it successfully SUSTAIN?

 E. Movement brings up Stored Emotional Patterns: The body remembers everything. Stretching fascia, increasing breath, or engaging dormant

postural muscles can activate old emotional imprints. Without support, a movement program can become uncomfortable -- not because of the exercise, but because the body is surfacing what was once too much to feel. Your system isn't resisting fitness. It's resisting OVERWHELM. Also, the majority of Pilates exercises are belly-up (supine position in trainer speak) which is a highly vulnerable position for mammals.

V. My Pilates + Esogetic Approach, based on Integrative Medicine's top-down approach, fills in the developmental gaps:

• It strengthens the body's ability to feel itself, to come to its own center.
• It resets the midbrain's regulation system
• It restores the inner reward system that makes movement feel good
• It integrates implicit + explicit awareness
• It anchors safety directly into the fascia and nervous system, by treatments that regulate the HPA axis, calm the amygdala and hippocampus, which also is controls coordination.

Once the body feels safe. movement can become a homecoming-- not a threat.

Self care becomes good instinct-- with no guilty after-taste.

Consistency becomes a rhythm-- not a fight.

Movement is NOT medicine if the body is not ready! With its good and valid reasons!

I studied Energy Medicine and Esogetics AFTER two decades of Pilates teaching, so that I can widen the scope and fill the gap that is needed for good changes, joining a few colleagues that have bravely stepped out of the confinements of "movement teaching" to facilitate better success rates through preparing the brain to move.