For a long time, I believed that my emotions were a simple reaction to what happened to me. Someone said something – it hurt. Someone ignored me – I felt fear. Something went wrong – shame or sadness appeared. It seemed to me that the world was simply like that: difficult, judgmental, unsafe.
Only later did I begin to understand that between an event and my emotion there is something else – my thought. My interpretation. My inner commentary.
This is what IKE means to me – the world is as I think it is.
When someone didn’t reply, I thought: “I’m not important.” And I felt a tightness in my stomach.
When someone was distant, I thought: “I did something wrong.” And tension appeared in my body.
When I had to speak in public, a voice in my head said: “I will definitely make a mistake.” And my body reacted as if there were real danger.
Nothing had even happened yet – and I was already afraid.
I understood that my nervous system does not react only to facts. It reacts to what I believe.
I am a sensitive person. My system reacts quickly and deeply. One thought can trigger a wave of emotions in me – tension in my neck, faster breathing, sometimes even freeze. If I think, “I am in danger,” my body defends itself. If I think, “I am safe,” my breathing slowly calms down.
I began asking myself questions:
Is what I’m thinking a fact?
Or only my interpretation?
It was difficult, because many of my thoughts had roots in the past. I grew up in an environment where I was often corrected, where I had to adapt. I learned to think that I must be careful, that I might do something wrong, that I had better watch myself. Those beliefs stayed with me for years.
Today I know that the world I saw was largely a reflection of those early experiences.
Working with my body helped me a lot. I understood that emotions do not live only in the mind. They are stored in the shoulders, in the stomach, in the way we breathe. Sometimes my body reacted faster than my mind.
During a Lomi Lomi massage, for the first time I felt what it is like when touch is truly safe. Flowing movements, a rhythm like waves – something inside me began to soften. Sometimes memories came back during the massage. Situations I had once interpreted as “my fault.”
When I changed that interpretation to “I did the best I could then,” the tension in my body released. As if my body had been waiting for a new sentence, a new truth – because my thoughts stopped being a prison and became a choice.
As a Lomi practitioner, when a client asks me how to change chaos and a difficult outer reality, IKE gives a clear answer: healing is work with thoughts, the body, gentle touch, and presence in the NOW.
Then I understood the meaning of IKE more deeply.
When I think, “People want to hurt me,” I live in tension. But when I look at the same situation not through the lens of my past beliefs, the perspective changes: “Some people are imperfect, but that doesn’t mean I am in danger.” And I feel more calm.
And what about sensitivity? In the past, when I thought about it, I felt shame. Now, when I shine light of love and acceptance on that thought, tenderness toward myself appears. “My sensitivity is a gift that needs protection.”
The world around me has not completely changed. Difficult situations still happen, misunderstandings, tensions. But my inner dialogue has changed. And with it, my experience has changed.
Today I know that fear is often born from the picture I create in my mind. When I brighten that picture, when I add kindness and realism to it, my body stops fighting.
I used to think I wasn’t smart enough to achieve something, to realize my dreams. But when I understood that my mind is afraid of difficult questions and will always try to question them, I stopped punishing myself with other people’s words. Questions became an important part of my life, and through them I reached the source.
Because would I be in this beautiful place I am today if I were truly inadequate, foolish, or incapable?
IKE became for me not a theory, but a practice. A daily choice to check my thoughts. Not to believe them unconditionally. To speak to myself more gently.
I discovered that the world I carry inside truly affects how I feel in the outer world. And when I begin to think about myself with love, the world becomes less threatening and more human.
Then I feel that I really have influence – not over everything that happens, but over how I interpret it and how I allow my body to experience it. 
IKE is freedom, because we have choice, influence, agency. Just as I can create my reality, I can also change it.
IKE does not mean naive optimism or denying pain. It means awareness that we influence how we interpret our experiences – and that interpretation can heal or harm.
The outer world may stay the same, but the inner world can become calmer. And then we truly understand that the world is as we think it is – and we can learn to think about ourselves with love.
with love
Magdalena