What is the Brio Method, Really?

I haven’t spent a lot of time producing content that specifically outlines what the Brio method really is, it’s more than exercises, it’s more than posture, it’s a different way of looking at and interacting with the body – really it is a set of concepts, with a very wide variety of applications. 

So the greatest overarching concept of the Brio Method is that your body is an organism, that interacts with your environment outside of your consciousness. Your nervous system is constantly monitoring your environment and adjusting your parameters to match your needs. There are thousands of things going on in your body besides your heart rate and breathing patterns. Things are being digest, dissolved, transported, built, recycled, released – it’s really pretty mind boggling. If you had to be aware of all those things in your conscious mind, it would be very overwhelming and we would probably not thrive as a species. Sometimes it interacts with your consciousness through your hormone responses, like a sudden flash of anger, jealousy, anxiety etc. This underlying driving force in your body is adapt is sometimes called the lizard brain, or more recently the “triune brain” 

There is debate on the subject and how it’s defined, but all we need to recognize is that there is a layer of unconscious action that drives your body to maintain itself, and adapt to your willful activities. These adaptations are either to your benefit or detriment long term, and the brio method aims to curate what we expose our bodies to so those adaptations do benefit you in the long term. 

Some examples triggers to adaptations that effect your daily life

• Blue light patterns
• Posture adapts to positions frequented
• Movement patterns reinforce or dissipate over time
• Digestive hormone response patterns 
• Overall strength redefines to use
• Mobility up or down regulates to use
• Strength of your arch
• Sleeping patterns and bedtime routine

So in brief summary – your Brio Brain is always watching and always making notes. We want to manipulate the Brio Brain with intelligent stimuli to make it do what our concious mind wants. A change coming from within the body is much stronger than an external force. 

That was pretty long winded, but hopefully it makes sense. 

Building on that, another concept I hold high in the Brio Method, and specifically in posture and ergonomics is that the body is a lot like a fluid. Think about it, the body is over 70% fluid and that’s a low % – some say upwards of 90%. Fluids have particular properties, and the body shares some. Like water filling a container, if you put the body in a position where gravity rests against immobility – the body will begin to organize to find a legitimate position of rest. Pushing, pulling, rolling, massaging will not do this. Putting your body in a position with control points to guide the change, will produce a lot of change in your tissues, takes about 2 minutes. Many of the most powerful posture attivitas utilize this concept. Body like water. 

It’s a fun concept because in my personal philosophy I admire how water effortlessly changes it’s state under a given set of conditions. This lack of attachment is a pillar of buddhism and supposedly the way to end suffering. If your body can change it’s state, I think it will not suffer. It’s unmoving things about us and our bodies that cause suffering. I had a personal experience after reading the book Siddhartha in 2017 that lead me to this line of thinking. It’s a western produced story of the Buddha, he goes all over the world trying many different things looking for the highest point, the greatest teacher. In the end he becomes the Buddha after learning water is greatest teacher of all, from a busted old ferryman. In addition to my experience, I decided to make my change of state more effortless and quit a job. Quitting that job opened so many doors for me, and I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this to you if it were different. 

Complete coordination is another major concept of my work, and it relates to the physical body and the mind as well. Many of have strongs parts and weak parts, many of us cannot unite the whole at all. I worked with someone yesterday for the first time who said his upper body was very strong as long as he didn’t need to use his legs. He described being broken very well, the parts just aren’t going together. Part of an unchecked Brio Brain adaptation is a strong hip and a weak one, to your typical stance. Overtime the supportive hip grows stiff and strong, and the kickstand legs becomes week and stay flexible. This is fine and typical, until the differences from one side to other are too great, they become unorganized and then you begin to suffer. The Brio method uses positions and activities that generally force the body to organize as a unit, and it’s not rocket science. The Brain map is a term I use a lot when discussing this, there is a map of you in your brain. Parts of you that are always firing together begin to wire together. For example, the low back and hamstrings. The neck and traps, or even the neck and the hips. When your body is a complete unit, so will you be. If you are working to ignore one part of your body, or one part of yourself then you will lose touch with everything. Brene Brown discusses this beautifully in her ted talk on shame. 

Another aspect of complete coordination, is balance. If your body is not working together, it’s not balanced. The actions aren’t balance, the positions are not balanced. Part of organizing your body is creating balance through that coordination, because form follows function. You have to put control points into an environment and give the body only 1 way to go, the way you want it to. One of my keystone attivitas is straps. By pressing out on a strap from within, the only option your body has is to oppose itself and very naturally produce a balanced effort. Repetition creates more organization, when the function is organized, the position will also be. 

So with these major things in mind

The Brio Brain 

Body like water – The Fluidity Concept 

Complete coordination

The body has an incredible ability to heal and maintain itself, when these concepts are left to rot, those abilities are impeded. With respect to these, and some time and practice there are few physical issues you could not solve. 

With these 3 concepts in mind, activities to bring what you want into your life (Brio) is easy and variable. You could apply them to change almost anything about yourself, even beyond your physical body. Your happiness/sadness rating is based on inputs your body receives too. Energy levels, everything. 

I hope your enjoy my smattered explanations. I think one of my talents lies in collecting a lot of information, and bringing it down to a simple and solid concept that is relatable and applicable to many things. I want to make the biggest dose response of wellness and success for the least effort and time investment. People are suffering, and we need to help our bodies adapt to the modern world, right now we are just letting it kill us.