GOOP. Someone said this to me over a year ago, and I didn’t fully understand it at the time. Only recently, it landed. GOOP is the pull of needing the Good Opinion of Other People.
Before I understood it, GOOP felt like a subtle override — a quiet pull to behave in ways that weren’t fully aligned, especially in my old Pilates teaching life. Over the past few months, I’ve been studying Biodynamic Psychotherapy, and I’ve started to see myself more clearly — not just intellectually, but in my body. When I feel judged, it lands in my gut — a familiar tightening, a learned response from family conditioning, like I’ve done something wrong, or I’m in trouble.
Now, in my morning practice, I move. I stretch, hang off doors, twist into shapes that look like strange performance art! Dancers are used to having a barre — something stable to hold onto, but even that isn’t always steady. Put six dancers on one long barre in the middle of a studio, and it starts to shift, slide, move with you, like a horizontal May Pole of sorts.
At home, it’s doors! Movable, slightly unpredictable… and yes, occasionally there are questionable life choices in my reality! It’s not something I plan – because it happens in the moment. Waiting for the kettle, or while something is cooking… my body just knows it needs to stretch and release. This gives me freedom — less pain, more flow, more ease in how I move about. And, in those moments, something shifts. The discomfort releases, my thoughts clear and I can continue. Sometimes it works beautifully and sometimes it doesn’t. To someone watching, it might look ridiculous. Unhinged, even! And just to be clear — Please don’t try this at home!!
In the past, if someone had walked in at that moment, I probably would’ve tried to explain why I was stretching while hanging off a movable door… this says everything to me. I would have kept myself small, adjusted my language, softened my edges, kept the peace. In the past, I was trying to protect something — maybe my reputation, maybe the idea of being ‘good’ or ‘right’ in other people’s eyes, who knows. That’s where it used to live, in the imagined gaze of others of the quiet question: What do they think of me?
Now, what I’m beginning to understand is this: It doesn’t come from others. It attaches when something old is stirred, or your where system is already dis-regulated, this is when the body remembers the score.
Over the last 18 months, a lot has shifted — leaving teaching Pilates and stepping into a life more honest, and with that, my self-worth has grown — not as confidence, but as steadiness. There’s less need to explain, less need to be understood. And, I just continue because energy is movement. A body will not change its motion unless a force acts on it, this is Newtons 1st Law.
When I notice GOOP now, it’s different. It shows up in moments of challenge, in conversations, in friction, in old patterns resurfacing. And instead of sidestepping it, I stay. I process. I listen. And I choose. Because at the end of the day, that’s what it comes down to.
Not control. Not perfection. But Choice.
If you notice where this shows up in your own life, stay with it for a moment — there’s usually something there worth listening to.
Live the life you love, not just the life you fall into.
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