The Energetic Roots of Hypermobility

How Bending for Others Shows Up in the Body

During my kinesiology training, a fellow kinesi classmate Lisa said something that stopped me in my tracks…

“She told me hypermobility is often rooted in emotional and energetic flexibility learned in childhood.”

The moment those words landed, I felt it in my entire body.

Every cell said: Yep! That’s me!

That sentence was the beginning of this blog — an exploration into the emotional, energetic, and behavioural patterns hidden behind hypermobility.

Because the more I’ve lived my life, the more I’ve realised:

My flexible joints were never just physical.

They were energetic.

They were survival.

They were who I had to become.

My Story:

A Childhood Built on Bending

When I was five years old, my entire world flipped inside out.

We moved countries.

Everything familiar was gone.

Family, culture, community — all stripped away overnight.

Three months after we landed, my sister was born.

Another seismic shift.

Every part of my identity was suddenly up for negotiation.

Extended family was no longer around to stabilise me.

And I was the eldest child trying not to take up too much space and trying to help out everyone so everything was calm!

So my nervous system learned fast:

• Be adaptable

• Be bendable

• Fit in

• Don’t disrupt

• 
  

Flexibility became my safety mechanism.

If I could bend, blend, and mould myself to others… then maybe everything would stay okay.

Flexibility as Survival:

The Energetic Pattern

I learned to bend to belong.

If I shifted, softened, or accommodated…

I was accepted.

If I held my own ground… I was “too difficult” or “too much.”

So the pattern set in:

“What’s easier for you?”

“What works for you?”

“I can fit around you”

“I’m flexible”“I don’t mind”

“I can squeeze you in”

“I’ll make it work”

Flexibility became my identity.

A shape-shifting survival pattern.

My body mirrored what my energy was constantly doing:

Over-extending

Over-accommodating

Over-bending

The Body Mirrors the Pattern:

Tension Holding Me Together

The thing is,

I haven’t always looked  hypermobile at all.

I look stiff…

Tight

Rigid

You could easily assume I’m not flexible because my muscles can hold so much tension.

But the truth?

When I’m stiff, my body is clenching to hold me together — because I feel like I might fall apart!

It’s wild, isn’t it?

I am hypermobile underneath…but tensing myself into rigidity to survive emotionally.

When I started doing energy work, the tension began to release — and over time the flexibility has reappeared.

I’ve realised:

“Oh my god… I’ve been bending for everyone my whole life.”

With clients

With partners

With my family

With schedules

With expectations

With emotional labour

I’ve bent myself so much…

I no longer knew where I was.

The Pilates ahhh haaa Moment

I did restorative Pilates for four years — building some strength, but never truly stabilising.

It helped…but it didn’t fix the pattern.

Because the pattern wasn’t physical — it was energetic.

It wasn’t until I took a break from Pilates, went deep into energetic work, and rewired my internal landscape that everything clicked.

And then — after returning to Pilates a year later — I had the moment that lit up my whole brain.

My physio looked at me and said:

“When you feel like you need to stretch, you actually need to strengthen.”

It landed like lightning.

Every time I felt pressure, my instinct was to bend more.

To stretch more

To give more

To be more flexible

But the truth?

Energetically, I didn’t need to stretch.

I needed to anchor.

I needed to strengthen my core — physically and emotionally.

I needed boundaries.

I needed self-holding.

That sentence changed everything about how I saw my body and my life.

Energetic Insight:

Hypermobility Isn’t About Stretching — It’s About Strengthening

Here’s my big revelation:

Hypermobility isn’t a flexibility issue.

It’s a stability issue.

In the body → hypermobile joints need strength, not more stretch.

In energy → hypermobile people need boundaries, not more bending.

In behaviour → hypermobile adults need to reclaim identity, not please others.

For me:

• I didn’t need to soften more — I needed to stand firmer.

• I didn’t need to give more — I needed to hold myself more.

• I didn’t need to adapt — I needed to anchor.

• 
  

This was about returning to myself — not because flexibility is wrong, but because my flexibility had become my survival strategy.

How My Human Design Explains All of This

My chart tells the same story my body does.

Gate 55 – Emotional Freedom

Huge emotional waves.

Deep sensitivity.

A childhood theme of bending to keep emotional climates safe.

Shadow: adapting to avoid conflict.

Gift: standing in emotional truth.

Gate 59 – Intimacy / Permeability

This gate is energetically porous.

It feels others deeply.

Easily shapes to what people want.

Healing: selective intimacy, not universal openness.

Gate 6 – Boundaries / Emotional Containment

The gate of conflict and emotional truth.

Teaches me to hold my ground, not dissolve into others.

Healing: strong, clean emotional boundaries.

2/4 Profile – The Natural Connector

I’m built for harmony.

Built to adapt early.

Built to blend.

But my real magic only emerges when I hold strong boundaries around my energy.

Sleeping Phoenix – My Incarnation Cross

This is the cross of rebirth.

Of sovereignty.

Of becoming unshakeable.

My entire life theme is literally:

“Stop bending to survive — rise to thrive.”

Kinesiology:

Repatterning the Nervous System

When I finally found kinesiology, I didn’t think I over-gave or over-bent.

I truly thought:

“I’m just easygoing. I’m just helpful. I’m just flexible.”

I didn’t realise those behaviours were survival patterns until they started unravelling.

Kinesiology helped me:

• Clear inherited survival responses

• Release the “don’t disrupt anything” conditioning

• Drain emotional residue from early instability

• Repattern the belief that belonging requires bending

• Strengthen my internal boundaries

• Rebuild my sense of self

• Reconnect to my core identity

• 
  

It’s subtle work — sometimes so subtle you don’t even realise how much you’ve been over-extending until your body finally relaxes.

Physically → we strengthen muscles and our core

Emotionally → we strengthen self-worth

Energetically → we strengthen boundaries

Spiritually → we strengthen identity and connection

From Flexible to Unshakable

Here’s the empowered truth hypermobility taught me:

I don’t need to be bendable to be loved

I need to be anchored to be whole

I don’t need to stretch more.

I need to stabilise.

I need to come home to myself.

I need to stand in my centre so deeply that I no longer fracture at the edges.

This is what strength looks like now:

Unshakeable boundaries

Clean energy

Sovereign identity

Deep self-connection

Flexibility by choice — not survival

The Work I’m Here to Do

As a kinesiologist, I now see hypermobility — in the body and in behaviour — as a signal.

A message.

A pattern.

An invitation.

If you’ve lived your life bending, merging, accommodating, blending, softening, adapting, and stretching yourself thinner than your body can withstand…

You may not need to stretch more.

You may need to strengthen.

You may need support in coming back to yourself.

Reclaiming your core.

Rebuilding your identity.

Unlearning survival patterns.

And reconnecting to the self you lost while trying to fit into everyone else’s world.

That’s the work I’m here to walk with you through.

If this story feels like your story — even in whispers — this work is for you.

Much love

Carleigh

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