The Body That Learned to Hold It All Together — Summer Symptoms and the Mother Imprint Pattern

When was the last time your neck was stiff, your shoulders locked up, your jaw ached when you woke up? And what did you tell yourself it was? The pillow. The drive. The stress at work. The heat. For most sensitive people, the explanation changes every time. The symptoms don't. 

In this episode, I'm walking you through the Mother Imprint pattern: what it is, why summer turns up the volume on it, and what your body is actually doing when it signals through your neck, your shoulders, your jaw, and your gut. This is not a body malfunctioning. This is a body that learned to hold it all together and is now asking you to listen differently. 

I also get personal here. I'm sharing my own version of this pattern, including the shoulder story that started in youth athletics and didn't end there, and why June specifically tends to be when the holding runs out of quiet. 

The Intro and Outro music titled “Find Your Why” is licensed through Soundstripe. 

Code: G9JNAIBGNEAOCVYI 

In this Episode:  

00:00 Preview of the symptom we keep explaining away 

01:55 How sensitive people normalize patterns by rotating the explanation 

04:50 The Mother Imprint pattern defined: the relational role, not the relationship 

08:00 Why June and summer activate the holding pattern and make it harder to sustain 

13:54 The four body sites: shoulders, neck, jaw, and gut and what each one is tracking 

19:00 Managing vs. addressing: what heat packs and massage do and don't do 

21:00 The Body Scan: how to stop treating the output and start mapping the pattern 

23:18 The Release Retreat: July 23 to 26 in Colorado and what it's actually for 

Other links mentioned: 

🪏 Eat Your Dirt Summit (hosted by Paul Wheaton): https://permies.com/wiki/106759/video-Eat-Dirt-Summit-hours 

✨ Book a Body Scan: https://bodywhisperhealing.com/services 

🦋 Join the Release Retreat: https://bodywhisperhealing.com/retreats/the-release-retreat 

🔮 Take the Cosmic Sensitive Quiz: https://cosmicsensitivequiz.com 

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Check out more from Amanda:
Website: Body Whisper Healing
Instagram: @Amanda.G.Smith
Facebook: Body Whisper Healing
Pinterest: AmandaGSmithBWH
LinkedIn: Amanda (Ritchie) Smith

Take the Cosmic Sensitive Quiz to find out what stresses you out most and why. It's fun, it's free, and it's only 7 easy questions. https://www.cosmicsensitivequiz.com/

Transcript

0:00

Think about the last time your neck was stiff, your shoulders were sore or locked up, your jaw was tight when you woke. What did you tell yourself it was? Think about that for a second. Was it the pillow, the drive, the stress at work, the heat? Maybe you just slept wrong. You know, those adult sleeping injuries that we get. Here's what I've noticed. After years of working with sensitive people, we like to tell ourselves stories. We like to explain the symptoms away. We like to blame it on something external. And the body is almost always pointing to something else entirely. That is what we're talking about today on Cosmic Body Shenanigans. I'm your host, Amanda Smith, former aerospace and mechanical engineer who worked on NASA projects and programs like Artemis, who has turned grounded mystic nervous system translator for sensitive bodies. Welcome to the show. If you haven't listened before, if you like what you're hearing, you're nodding along to what I'm saying, like, subscribe, share this with someone, please. I love to see new people listening to the show. So It's June as I'm recording this. And the heat is starting to rise. Here in Denver, we got to 90 degrees this week. 92 actually. And well, with that comes some interesting symptoms for my sensitive people. Some of those symptoms are those sleeping injuries, right? That as we get older somehow magically we wake up with a crick in our neck. Or we Come home from work after a mildly stressful day or a completely stressful day, and our jaw is sore, or we notice we need to do a little more stretching in our shoulders because I must be holding tension in my shoulders. Mmm, yeah. But generally speaking, you're not just holding it from that day. And that that's truly What we're diving into here. Sensitive people will notice these symptoms and then just go, uh, it's because I'm stressed out. It's because I have a busy schedule, it's because of the long drive. It's because of the heat. It's because of the hotel pillow. It's because I'm traveling. It's because the air conditioning in the restaurant was so cold that I needed to tense up. Yeah. Those are some of the explanations and these explanations can change, but the symptoms don't. And there there's the truth. I've learned with working with sensitive people that the body is very specific. And it doesn't produce random noise. When symptoms show up that are the same kind of thing, but possibly happening in a different situation, maybe a different type of intensity, that's not coincidence. That's a pattern. And most sensitive people, We just explain that pattern away. And we do it for years. So a pattern I want to point out today is the birth mother imprint pattern. This pattern isn't about being a mother. It's potentially not about your birth mother. It could be about your birth father. It could be about someone who raised you. But it's really about relational roles That sensitive people often slide into very early in life, usually around puberty, which hopefully you listened to the last episode. And if you haven't, go back to last week's episode about the puberty initiation and what you might have missed. Because right around puberty, we start some holding patterns. They show up in the body when we're younger as minor injuries. Might be uh if you're an athlete like I was at a young age, I started playing a lot of sports at eight years old. And I would have shoulder soreness.

Well, all of the sports that I was playing, they were all throwing sports: 4:55

volleyball, basketball, softball. Those are all one arm throwing. And We could point to, the shoulder issue is the throwing sports. But as I got older and I quit those throwing sports, we could go, well, it's because she played throwing sports for a very long period of time in her life, most of her childhood, all the way through to 25 years old at a very high level. Yep. We could explain it right to that. Or we could look at the pattern of holding tension in my shoulders so that I wasn't the one affecting all the people in the room. I was anticipating everybody's needs, making sure nothing was going wrong. reading the room before I even walked into it. Managing the dynamics that nobody else noticed. And performing okayness regardless of what was happening inside myself. And doing all of this without being asked, without being told, without being shamed about it, and without letting anyone see the costs. That's what sensitive people do. This role is developed as an intelligent adaptation to all of the sensory experience that's going on. And if you can feel the emotional weather of every room that you've ever walked into, the body gave you language for that. But the people didn't. The support system didn't. Managing that internal weather became logical response. Keep things smooth, keep people comfortable, keep it all together. And then the body signaled And that's its job to give you that signal without being consulted. And it's been doing it ever since. And that becomes cumulative as you get into later years. And by later years I mean your thirties, your forties, and up. So why June? June is not the time that the mother imprint pattern is created. It's the time that it's revealed. And usually it's because we have a full social calendar. We've got lots to do. For me, my kid is home. I don't like watching her just sit in front of the TV, letting the TV be the babysitter all day long. So we have a disrupted schedule. I have to reschedule how I do my business around keeping her entertained or taking her to friends and picking her up from friends or having her friends come over because she's an only child. And I know most the parents, my parent friends who have kids, multiple kids, two or more, they're just managing their relationships within the household and and breaking up fights potentially or making sure that they have food. And that's a chaotic schedule. But then there's also so much more travel during the summertime. I know for us, we have multiple trips throughout the summer. As a family, I also have retreats that I go to during the summertime for my business. And navigating that becomes a little more chaotic. But then there's also, you know, let's go to a concert. Let's go to an outdoor movie. Let's go to the park Because the weather's beautiful. I like to play outdoors all year long. I don't have a thing against the winter, but my friends like to come out more during the summertime. So my social calendar is getting full. And I'm hosting gatherings also. And that creates a little more chaos. I'm hosting the release retreat. If you've been paying attention to anything that I'm doing in Body Whispering World. Then you probably know about the release retreat that's coming at the end of July. that's a big planning going on. And it's an event that needs my attention outside of all of the other things that are going on. And ah the holding pattern that gets created during this time, it becomes way more frequent For us sensitive people. it has a different type of intensity during this time of the year than the quieter months, if you allow yourself quieter months. And if you've been listening to the Cosmic Body Shenanigans podcast for any amount of time, you've probably learned a little bit about the quieter months. November, December, January. We treat those a very specific way. And Then we've got the physical load of summer. This is when we do outdoor projects. I have been working on my garden. if you've known anything about me, I love to garden. It is how I connect with mama. And it was one of the first online businesses that I had success in. I created a summit called Eat Your Dirt, which Paul Wheaton still sells to this day, and I love that fact. Because that's the salt of the earth kind of stuff that gets us back into this grounded place. People who garden live longer. I just saw this statistic. So I'm doing a lot more physical labor on top of still prepping for powerlifting meets, though I am in a recovery phase, uh off season, which is so nice. And at the same time, it's if you can hear it in my voice, I'm still struggling with some illnesses, detoxes that are taking a toll on my physical self. So there's also that. And then there's the heat. The heat adds a little bit of disruption to our systems and it reduces the body's capacity to hold things quietly. Something has to give. And what gives for sensitive people is the body. For solas and baros if you've taken the cosmic sensitive quiz, and if you haven't, cosmic sensitivequiz.com, go find out if you're a sola, a baro an empa, or a luna. So my solas and baros there's increased solar activity this time of year. In June and July, we have a bit more solar activity. In fact, I'm recording this here June 8th and we just had a solar flare last night that gave Colorado a little show. Not a big show, but if you know how to use your camera and see the Aurora Borealis, then that's getting to witness what's happening to solas and baros directly. So when the solar activity goes up So does the weather activity. So both solas and and baros are feeling this pattern flying through their system. And also it's amplifying this holding pattern and making it harder to sustain. For empas, you've got this social calendar that you're dealing with that has elevated how much you're absorbing from those you're coming in contact with, other people's emotional energy landing in your body. With nowhere to go. This is why I garden. I give it somewhere to go. I give it to Mama. Luna's summer pressure to be present and engaged conflicts directly with the body's natural cyclic need to retreat, and the conflict shows up physically in your body. So this season isn't the problem, it's the amplifier. You might have noticed that I am calling out specific parts of the body. There are specific sites where I have been tracking for a long time where sensitive people hold. And It's probably your first real moments of recognition if you're hearing this and nodding your head. The body doesn't store the mother imprint pattern randomly. The specific places, the shoulders. If you've ever dealt with frozen shoulder, or you felt your upper back lock up, or your neck. Like I described already, the waking up and you have a crick in your neck and now you can't turn your head left or right, up or down. This is your nervous system holding the jaw, the jaw soreness in the joint, but also Potentially soreness in the teeth from grinding or clenching. As a power lifter, I tend to clench a bit and that pattern kept showing up over and over again And then I started to notice I was grinding my teeth again. I used to grind my teeth as a kid so much that my brother and my parents could hear it in other rooms. but that went away and then when I started powerlifting it came back a little bit and there was this repeat pattern I had to address. The gut, especially for sensitive people, the gut takes a hit with the mother imprint pattern.

And I want to remind you: 15:37

none of this is a body malfunction. It's the body being extraordinarily specific about what it's carrying and where. So let's dive into the each of these. So upper back and shoulders are the architect of holding. The physical structure of bracing, of carrying, of staying upright under load. As a power lifter, I understand this unbelievably well when it comes to squats and being able to squat down with a load on my back and then stand up again. And deadlifting, I'm just ripping weight off of the floor and standing up. But carrying that load can sometimes feel very unsafe in my body. And there are tricks, and I want to put that one in air quotes, tricks, to helping your nervous system regulate while holding the load. So when a sensitive person is running the holding pattern hard, hosting, managing, coordinating, performing, showing up in the summer heat. The upper back and the shoulders are the first responders. The tension there isn't stress, it's effort. The neck and the jaw. They carry the record of what didn't get said. The words bitten back. The emotions swallowed. If you were ever told you're too emotional. You learned how to hold it back, not show it publicly. If you're an athlete in any shape or form, you learned how to either move quickly through your emotions, that's the healthy way, or stifle them. Not healthy. The times you smiled when you needed to say no, or nodded when you needed to ask for help. TMJ issues, neck immobility, grinding at night, grinding it during the day, clenching during the day. These are all the body's faithful archive of a long history of self-editing. And then the gut. The gut is the sensitive person's internal lie detector. It knows before the mind when a situation is going to cost you something. In summer, when the social load increases and the holding pattern is running constantly. Gut sensitivity, bloating, digestive unpredictability. Those aren't the symptoms of what you ate. Stop blaming it on the food. They're symptoms of what you absorbed. Again, none of this is your body malfunctioning. It's giving you exactly the signal you need. You just have to interpret it a little bit different. Understand in these situations, in the summer heat, if this is a pattern that has happened summer over summer over summer. That's a pattern. Don't explain it away. Let's talk about the difference between managing it and addressing it. There is a rhyme and a reason to get yourself out of pain, always. And to do that fairly immediately if it's a very intense pain. And then there is addressing why it keeps showing up, why it's a pattern and not just a one-off oopsies. Heat packs, anti-inflammatories, massage. Those aren't wrong. They offer pain relief. But they don't address the pattern. They don't address the pattern that's generating the symptoms. We want to get ahead of it. Noticing that you have a pain is an output. You're addressing an output and you're addressing it with stimulus that are tried and true. But actually understanding what's causing that pattern of pain, that that's the real work. And you might not be ready to address some of that real work. But if you are, I wanna talk about the body scan. If you are listening to this right now and you are pondering like Okay, yeah, I had a stiff neck the other day. I didn't have full range of motion and it prevented me from seeing my blind spot while I was driving, and I felt very unsafe with my kids in the car. Mm-hmm. Been there. How do I know that situation? Let's jump on a body scan. In this 20-minute call with me, I will very easily, quickly, and specifically tell you what the pattern is so that you can now stop addressing the symptom and start addressing the pattern. If you're ready for that, you have to be ready, You can find the body scan link in my show notes. So because this is the pattern that is still running in your body, creating these symptoms, the stiff neck comes back after the massage. The shoulder tension returns within a day or two. The gut settles and then flares up again at the next gathering. That's the loop. That's the loop sensive bodies get stuck in. So let's treat the pattern. The body's not broken, it's communicating with you, and the summer flare-up is the body saying, the capacity to hold this quietly is running very low. Something in the underlying pattern needs to change. That's intelligence. That is the body being unbelievably brilliantly logical and frustrating. But it deserves a response that matches it. So if your body is starting to get a little louder this summer and if what you heard landed for you, you know about the body scan. That's a great place to start. If you know that the mother imprint pattern really resonated for you, and you might have been doing this releasing of the mother imprint pattern for years and it's not sticking, this is where the retreat comes in. The release retreat is about releasing the mother imprint pattern, releasing the birth mother imprint pattern so that we can move into the earth mother imprint pattern. connecting in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains here in Colorado with other feminine forces that want to release this too. That that's what the release retreat is. And it is July 23rd through the 26th this summer, at the end of the summer, in the heat of the summer here in Colorado. But we'll be up in the mountains so it'll be nice and cool probably in the seventies, maybe the eighties if it's really hot down here in Denver. Regular price is available until July eighth. If that resonates with you, come to the retreat. You'll find the link for the retreat in the show notes or on a bunch of social media posts If you follow me on Instagram at amanda.g.smith If this episode had you nodding along, you've had any of the four areas light up for you in a pattern summer over summer, we call that the mother imprint pattern. Take the next steps. The first step, go find out what your cosmic sensitive type is, at cosmic sensitive quiz dot com. Find out if you're a Sola, a baro, an empa, or a Luna so that you know what I was talking about right around halfway through this episode. Subscribe wherever you listen so you can find out more about what's going on in your body this summer on the Cosmic Body Shenanigans podcast. Share it with someone that you know just recently shared with you, I had a sleeping injury. Or, oh my gosh, I could not turn my head all the way And I did not feel safe driving. That one, that one especially. Share it with them. They need to hear this. Stay curious, stay oriented, move with what's real, and trust your sensitive body. It knows.