Most methods start the same way: What is your problem? Tell me about it. When did it start? What happened?
FIVE MOVES starts differently. The first question is:
How do you want to feel?
No problem. No trauma. No narrative. Just a bodily felt answer to a simple question.
Why problem analysis strengthens problems
Attention is an amplifier. What you look at grows. Whoever talks about their problem 50 minutes a week trains their brain to see the problem. Everywhere. Constantly.
The brain forms neural pathways. The more often a pathway is used, the stronger it becomes. Whoever repeatedly goes into problem analysis strengthens the very patterns they want to solve.
Eric Kandel won the Nobel Prize for this: Neuroplasticity. The brain shapes itself according to what it regularly does.
What a desired feeling is
A desired feeling is not a goal. Not a resolution. Not an affirmation statement. It's a concrete, bodily felt feeling.
The desired feeling must:
Be positively formulated. «Calmness» instead of «no fear». Be bodily felt — not just a head idea, but something you can localise at a concrete place in your body. Resonate emotionally. It has a quality that touches you. Be present-focused. You feel it NOW, not sometime. And: It must feel real. Authentic. Achievable.
Antonio Damasio (USC): Emotions are bodily states that the brain interprets. The body feels first. The brain labels afterwards. That's why the desired feeling must be localisable in the body.
From «no more fear» to «calmness»
The brain knows no «not». When you say «no fear», your system hears: Fear.
That's why FIVE MOVES works exclusively with positively formulated desired feelings. Not: «I want to stop being afraid.» But: «Calmness.» Not: «I don't want to be alone anymore.» But: «Connection.»
This changes the direction. You no longer look at the problem. You look at where you want to go.
The desired feeling as safe harbour
The desired feeling is not just the starting point. It is the safe harbour for the entire session.
When the guide later asks «Where does the blockade sit?», the mover looks at the blockade from the desired feeling. Not from the pain. Not from the memory. From the safe harbour.
This is the difference between retraumatisation and transformation. And it begins here. With the very first question.
First safety. Then the question: Where exactly does the blockade sit?