The three most important tools of personal integrity in 2023

We live in a world where we have to make faster and faster decisions with less and less information. The stakes can be high.

If inner cohesion is important to you, being in touch with yourself in different life situations, whether on a professional or personal ground, then you cannot forget about your body.

The 3 most important tools of personal integrity in 2023

  • CENTERING
  • GROUNDING
  • BOUNDARIES

It is your body that provides you with these most important tools. They are available when you listen to your body. In any situation, you can appeal to your own body sensing, and these three tools will help you develop this skill.

In the body, you can feel your centering when you make decisions in harmony with yourself; It’s the sensations in the body that tell you when your boundaries are crossed and when they’re respected. It is the sensations in the body that tell you when to say “stop”.

Body sense is the same as a sense of being, a sense of being ourselves. It is our first identity that we develop as children. The child thinks and experiences with his/her whole body. Without a body, emotions do not have a container in which they can be and through which they can express themselves. Without a body, it is impossible to survive on earth, and this means that there is no possibility to experience life, learn, develop your abilities and consciousness.

The body is present when I feel my emotions.

I feel a cramp in my stomach when I’m scared. My jaws clench when I’m angry. When I’m happy or curious, I experience a tickle moving up and down my belly. Contact with the body requires closeness with oneself and taking care of oneself. Without it, we won’t sense the signals by which the body tells us how we react to what’s happening. And then we lose the ability to consciously relate to what is happening and make our own choices.

A person who has poor contact with the body is more likely to be overwhelmed by feelings and lose the ability to distinguish what is within their area of ability and what is outside it. Similarly, the sense of the body works when we think – it grounds our thoughts. When the feeling of the body does not hold thoughts, there is a risk that we will get lost in them or we will not be able to revive these thoughts – put them into action.

Use these tools. This can be a “game changer” in your functioning.

Where can you start now?

Ask yourself – what am I sensing in my body right now?

And ask yourself this question as often as possible in different situations. This is a good start.

Read also:

Boundaries are not defensible – they are for exchange

 

Boundaries are not for defense – they are for exchange

This is my discovery from recent times, based on my own work with the subject of setting boundaries, crossing borders, and most of all feeling them in any way.

Setting boundaries is a very important topic. When I can say “NO”, I can set a boundary, but when I say “YES”, do I still have my boundaries or not? Because that’s how we can understand it. And yet sometimes it happens that in some role, e.g., at work, we can say “no”, and in our personal life, with close people, we fail. It can also be the other way around. The combinations are many and at that point things get a little complicated, at least for me.

And how doknow where my boundaries are if I don’t feel them, understand them? I have been thinking about it for some time because I had a great inner need to touch them, to build some image of them. Be itwall, or a wooden fence, or a moat, or maybe something transparent, luminous or velvety to the touch. I was wondering.

What are they REALLY for?

According to the Bodynamic system that I study, our ability to set boundaries runs on 4 levels, at different stages of our development as children, although in practice we develop this skill or recall it throughout our lives. These are:

  • Physical boundaries
  • Boundaries of personal space (energetic)
  • Territorial boundaries
  • Social boundaries

We learn physical boundaries by sensing the skin; energetic boundaries are the feeling of one‘s own personal space separated from other peoples spaces. We usually mark territorial boundaries with our own things, geographical places, our property. The boundaries of social space are related to belonging to a group, and this at the same time is in connection to creatingplace for oneself being in a group, filling ones space being visible. Not occupying space makes us invisible.

Setting boundaries is seen as the ability to clearly distinguish between what is me and what is not me and is supported by the sensations coming from the body.

Boundaries protect my center, what it is, what is important to me.

If I don’t have a center becausedon‘t know what’s important to me, I don’t feel myself and I don’t have a connection with myself, then I dont know what needs protection and when.

Then eitherhave no boundaries – everything flows to me and from me, whetherwant it or not, orset my boundaries exaggeratedly. I close myself to everything, because I do not know what serves me and what does not, and this also means closing myself to what is good to receiving and giving. We often need to do a lot of our own work to get to know ourselves in this aspect.

What is illusory is the expectation that someone else will take care of my boundaries and will not cross them. This is my task and my responsibility to know them and take care of them. But it also works the other way around. It is not my job to worry about the boundaries of the other person, because how can I know where they are, I can only imagine them, and this is often confusing and leads to conflicts and misunderstandings. They must be communicated both ways.  

Boundaries are not something that separates me. They are something that marks my space and serves the exchange between me and the environment on different levels. If I am aware of my center, of what is important to me and I can feel it in my body, then boundaries arise naturally, they just are.dont need to have any ideas about them anymore, I need to be in touch with myself and my center. Then I can be in conscious contact and exchange with the other person on a level that serves both parties.

And how do you sense your boundaries?

If you want to remind yourself about your boundaries and how they serve you, I invite you to work together. Do not hesitate to contact me.

Your mind can change your molecules

We are born with a specific gene pool, but they do not determine us at all, because they can turn on and off during our lifetime.

Our genes and their expression, and consequently the functioning of our body, are also influenced by external factors. External factors, including the environment, diet, physical or mental activity as well as stress, especially chronic stress, can affect those parts of the genome – our DNA – which under balanced conditions would prevent inflammation in the body, and under stress, with disturbed internal balance modify their action. Therefore, many diseases from stress are inflammatory disorders.

How can you help yourself? Take care of your TELOMERES 🙂

These are protein fragments at the ends of the chromosome that protect DNA from damage, when it is copied, during cell division, Telomere length affects overall longevity. Telomeres shorten during each cell division, which is why they become shorter and shorter with age. But not only with age.

It turns out that the length of your telomeres is also affected by epigenetic changes. Telomere length shortens under stress, fatigue, exhaustion from work, and this process can occur to such an extent that at some point there are not enough telomeres to keep and combine genetic material intact when the cell divides. And when this happens, the cell dies and your whole body starts to get sick. Inflammations such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus erythematosus have been shown to affect telomere length regardless of disease activity.

What we want for ourselves is long telomeres, because then we have a lot of units that protect genes. But it is not that simple, because telomeres can’t be too long to, so it’s crucial to have telomeres with the optimal length, and that means that we need to maintain the optimal amount of the telomerase enzyme, which repairs short telomeres.

The good news is that we can influence the elongation of our own telomeres and strengthen them by enhancing telomerase activity.

How to get it? The answer is MINDFULNESS

The key is PRESENCE and being aware of your body. Mindfulness-based practices affect your telomeres. Regular and preferably permanently incorporated into your life, mindfulness practice, e.g., meditation, supports the maintenance of optimal telomere length by increasing telomerase activity.

Today we know that what you do with your mind and your relationships with other people changes the molecules of health. It literally changes your enzymes, improves – lengthens telomeres – optimizes the production of substances that help protect you from inflammatory diseases. Being present in the here and now creates an integrated state of mind – the flow of energy and information in the body and brain as well as in connection with other people and the environment.

There are more and more studies that show that mindfulness can help prevent inflammation! With mindfulness and meditation practice, you can influence those areas of DNA that are responsible for inflammation.

Interestingly, studies comparing relaxation techniques and mindfulness practices show that only through mindfulness practices, mindful meditation, can you influence the epigentetic regulation of your genes and thus prevent inflammation and the development of inflammatory diseases.

Your mind is not just your brain – it is also your whole body and your world of relationship with the environment. If your body’s microcosm and social world are part of the same field of energy and information, they can be integrated by the presence of your mind in the here and now. In this integration, you influence epigenetic processes, optimize the telomerase process, influence the change in the level of enzymes in your body.

Everything is connected, you can create your habits and you can change them too. You can change your way of life, sometimes with the help of a therapist, coach, and often completely on your own.

Your relationship with yourself

Your relationship with yourself is the most important thing and affects everything in your life.

Transforming relationship with yourself you must address two key issues:

  • lack of self-love
  • lack of security in the body

and in order to achieve a permanent change these two issues need to be worked through effectively.

WHAT CAN YOU START DOING ALREADY NOW?

  • Observe yourself and learn to recognize in what mode your system BODY – MIND is in; Are you calm and balanced or in constant stress?
  • How did this state come about, what happened?
  • Replace unhelpful patterns and habits with those that help you and practice them every day to make them a part of you
  • Heal the emotions that underlie mechanisms and patterns that don’t serve you
  • Strengthen or rebuild your relationship with yourself and your body

I also encourage you to release from the memory of your body retained energy and blocked emotions that cause many tensions in the body and affect its functioning, through body work i.e. – craniosacral therapy.

This is a very gentle and at the same time effective and powerful technique. It supports the work of the nervous system and cooperates with the body without forcing anything on it. And this is in my opinion very important when the body is overloaded with stress.

If you want to release tension from your body, give some space to your nervous system so it can regain the balance, don’t hesitate to contact me at kontakt@exploreself.pl

All the best,

Agnieszka

What hurts the body or soul?

Body and mind are inseparable. The natural state of the body is harmony. When we respond with acceptance to various situations that arise in our lives, we remain in balance. When there is a problem and the tension associated with its solution or the inability to solve the problem, our thoughts and accompanying emotions give internal information to our nervous, endocrine and immune systems. And this makes us feel stress with our whole body. If such a state lasts a long time, then our suffering begins to manifest itself with health and pain problems.

More and more people suffer from various pains, unexpected, recurrent, chronic, or related to autoimmune diseases. Especially women. Shelves bend from painkillers, they will help for a while, but what next? What if your migraine no longer responds to medication, what if your shoulder hurts like hell, you can’t sleep, you barely get over it day after day, and at the doctor’s appointment you find out that you have inflammation of unknown origin or that it’s strange that your knee hurts so much? Maybe you’re exaggerating a bit? How do you deal with such situations?

Pain is a sensory and emotional experience, it is subject to learning processes, which leaves traces of memory at various levels in our nervous system and throughout the body. Your body remembers, and because of this, previous pain experiences can affect your current experience of pain and the intensity of your pain experience.

The anxiety of waiting for pain when you wake up in the morning and wonder how it will be today can significantly enhance the pain sensations. The emotions you experience then cease to be just a reaction to the disease, but become an important element in the struggle with pain. The emotions that most often accompany pain are: fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, denial, feeling helpless. Importantly, different emotions are experienced by a person experiencing acute, sudden pain warning that something is wrong, than experienced by a person suffering from chronic pain. In the case of the latter, the pain ceases to be a warning, but still evokes emotions, maybe of lower intensity, but still. Fear that I will not be able to cope with the pain, the unknown of how long it will last, a sense of helplessness, can turn into a constantly accompanying depressed mood, sometimes depression.

Our negative emotions about living with pain reinforce our perception of pain and the circle closes, the vicious circle of experiencing pain. And this is not the only vicious circle, because at the level of our physiology we also wind up a spiral of pain. Pain increases muscle tonus, which leads to impaired functioning of the endocrine, immune and nervous systems. Interestingly, researchers of these issues believe that the mechanism of the physiological vicious circle can occur both when the root cause of pain is somatic in nature and when it is of an emotional nature!

The immune system of a healthy person can heal the body when the balance in the body is maintained. If it is blocked by stress, destructive patterns of emotional reactions, beliefs that do not serve you, and there is also the memory of cells in which the emotions of our reactions to the original experience of stress have been stopped, then the body constantly reacts to internal and external stressors, and our immune system is not able to cope with it.

But perhaps, pain or illness are a lack of our acceptance of life as it is and the fact that life is a movement, a constant change? Maybe it’s our attachments to the old way, or our expectations of how things should look like, that create tensions in our minds and bodies that hurt more than physical trauma? And our soul, or some forgotten part of us, seeks our attention and asks us to stop and listen.

Your body wants to tell you something important. But what?

Stop and ask yourself: WHAT’S GOING ON HERE? What’s the point of that? WHAT REALLY HURTS ME? Is it “just” the body?  Or perhaps, through the body, your soul, the Self, or something, deep within you, is calling out to you and asks for your attention. What do you say to that?

To begin with, I encourage you to take a piece of paper and something to write, find a quiet place, calm your mind, and then answer the following questions with honesty. You can answer all questions or the chosen ones, and maybe only one that will move you the most.

  • Do you listen to yourself?
  • Do you respect yourself?
  • Are you on your side?
  • Do you take care of yourself?
  • Do you know what you want?
  • Do you feel yourself?
  • Do you love yourself?

Do you experience any sensations in your body when you read these questions or when you answer them? Those sensations, even subtle, can be an important signal to be interested in what is happening in you and why at this particular moment.

How well do you know yourself? Do you know how you physically react to different situations, what emotion or emotions accompany you, how you feel them in the body and where, as well as what effects they cause?

Write down your sensations, draw, express with movement. Ask your pain, “What do you want to tell me?” and let that question accompany you every day. One day the answer will come, because it is already in you.

I also encourage you to release from the memory of cells, tissues any blocked emotions, which cause a lot of tension in the body and affect its functioning, through the body work, for example, craniosacral therapy. This method supports the nervous system and thanks to its gentleness works with the body without forcing anything on it, which in my opinion is very important when the body is strained with pain.

I wish you patience and trust in the process, gentleness for yourself in weaker moments and add to it what else that you need.

And if you are struggling with pain, you want to release tension in the body, give some space and balance to your nervous system, and open yourself in a search for an answer to the question “what hurts me” then I invite you to contact with me.

Take care of yourself,

Agnieszka

Everthing is connected

The body memory of such emotions as: anger, rage, sadness, fear, rejection, regret, or a sense of one’s own inadequacy is contained in the cells of the body, intercellular spaces, and organs. The signals of these negative emotions trigger internal stress in the body. Our thoughts and emotions that accompany them in response to difficult and stressful external situations give internal information to our nervous, endocrine and immune systems. This makes you experience stress with your whole body. And we are particularly sensitive to feeling of powerlessness.
? We feel a sense of safety in the body, although we often think that the safety is felt in the head and given by what surrounds us. Our internal monitoring system – the autonomic nervous system works all the time, asking “is it safe?”, and that happens beyond our conscious mind, which is why the body is the last element that we pay attention to, until the moment when we start to feel pain, tension, internal tightening, sometimes even at the cellular level. Each of us feels it differently.
? Contact with your own body is crucial. Releasing tensions and blocked energy of emotions from the body, whether using craniosacral therapy or in other technique that is suitable for you, or even giving yourself a self-massage will allow you to soothe your body, and thus regain step by step inner peace and balance that you need, especially now.
Let’s not leave ourselves for later.  ??
Agnieszka

De-pressing is blocked emotions

Depression is the soul’s cry for attention, urging you to go deeper and listen to what is, and what you don’t give yourself, and what you really need. It is the impossibility of accepting life as it is.

De-pressing is blocked emotions, because of unconsciously avoiding or ignoring them. As a result, you do not feel emotions and unconsciously ignore them. Emotions are energy in motion. Energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed, moved.

Every emotion that we experience and that we do not allow to flow is stuck in the cells of the body.  When the body “notices” that emotions are stopped, it “compresses” them even more so that more of them can be stored. This is the de-pressure of emotions, experienced as mood depression, behind all the symptoms of deep sadness, negative thinking.

It comes at different times in one’s life. This is usually a “postponed” reaction to the traumatic experience in childhood, lack of support from the environment and inability to cope with life. In such circumstances, an automatically encoded emotional pattern of the reaction that paralyzes is revealed. There is no other alternative: escape (withdrawal), paralyzing fear, helplessness, a sense of low esteem literally overwhelms and commands you to “hide in yourself”. And then self-destruction begins – a massive emotional reaction that attacks the whole of oneself – giving a sense of meaninglessness, worthlessness of oneself and life as such. The more situations and problems, the more a person perceives them as very difficult, withdrawing more and more, self-annihilating until she/he reaches the wall, when there is nothing more.

This moment is the turning point – either of total annihilation of absolute desperation, or the beginning of everything – a new birth.  The awareness of reaching the bottom can be very liberating and self-discovering.  It shows all the possibilities – how to get out of the crisis, to be reborn, to start a new life.

Gentle work with the body that supports psychotherapeutic work can be a beautiful beginning of this new path.

 

Our intestines are the eyes and ears of the immune system!

Our gut microbiome is the ears and eyes of the immune system in our body.

Each system, organ, and even a single cell has its own microbiome. About 38 trillion organisms live in the gut alone (3818 , 38 000 000 000 000 000 000 ). The immune system in the gut is crucial and affects the immune system throughout our body. “Weak” intestines weaken our immunity, and increase susceptibility to other diseases, including, among others – various types of rashes, eczema, also neurological diseases, such as brain fog, which is one of the most troublesome symptoms of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

70% of our immune system is located in the gut.

The cells that make up the immune system are separated from the bacterial flora in our intestines by only one layer of cells in the intestinal wall, and they remain in constant contact with each other.

The key role here is played by dendritic cells, which are diffuse detectors of the immune system, with which the pathogen causing the infection can be quickly detected, and the appropriate antibody-producing cells stimulated to react efficiently and in the shortest possible time.

Importantly, a dendritic cell must receive a signal from the gut microbiome in order to activate and capture the pathogen, and then present it to the adaptive immune system! If the dendritic cell – this crucial part of the immune system, is not signaled by our gut flora, it “stays put” and waits on standby, but is not activated when the body is infected and starts to get sick.

Our gut microbiome also stimulates the activity of the vagus nerve, which receives signals from microorganisms in our gut. One wrong microbe can cause the vagus nerve to work differently. Its disturbed functioning affects the brain stem, which also begins to function differently, and this has an impact on changing our behavior, our moods, e.g. depression is related to the intestinal ecosystem. Stress causes damage to the microbiome, during long-term stress, the excess of cortisol produced damages the intestinal bacterial flora and promotes inflammation in the body by disrupting and weakening the immune system. Here too, the vagus nerve plays a role as it modulates the inflammatory response, and the inflammatory threshold is more activated when we are stressed.

We are a communicating vessel system and it is worth remembering.

The microbiome normalizes and returns to balance if we take care of it, especially the diversity of our gut flora. The first and most important thing is to strengthen it so that it works with the immune system. Simple supplementation of vitamin. C and zinc is not enough. Diet is important! Microorganisms in our intestines, with a proper diet, produce metabolites and it is these metabolites that build the body. Short-chain fatty acids are especially important, they are the product of bacterial metabolism in the large intestine and have a positive effect on the immune system. What you eat is information for your body.

Latest research on people who had a severe Covid19 showed that they had very low production of short-chain fatty acids. Eat fiber, in fruit and vegetables, 25-30g daily. According to scientists, the greater the dysfunction of the microbiome in our gut, the greater the risk of severe Covid19. High levels of Interleukin 6 increase this risk, and its level is increased by dysfunction in the gut, such as leaky gut, and the inflammation generated by it.

How can you help yourself?

Certainly take care of a good and nourishing diet of your intestinal flora. In addition, it is important to support yourself with techniques that will allow you to manage your stress, calm your mind and give your body a rest – breathing, meditation, contact with nature, it will also tone your vagus nerve.

You can also use, for example, a craniosacral therapy session, which supports the release of tensions from the body and harmonizes the work of the autonomic nervous system, the key part of which is the vagus nerve, thus increasing your body’s ability to physiological regulation and tissue relaxation, and additionally this therapy it is very pleasant and relaxing.

And if you feel that you need support, I invite you to my sessions. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact me: kontakt@exploreself.pl

Agnieszka

Read also:

Immunity comes from the heart

Relax your diaphragm and breathe your belly

Autonomous nervous system – our personal monitoring system

For immunity boost – sleep

 

Immunity comes from the heart

Cultures around the world have believed that the heart is the epicenter of the body and is responsible for our feelings, thoughts and behavior. Interestingly, today’s science is beginning to support this perspective by discovering that our energetic heart – not our brain – acts as a gateway to our higher self.

Our heart is more than just an organ that pumps blood around our body. Many modern scientists believe that the heart is more powerful, healing, and transforming than we ever thought it would be.

The heart has its own brain – an independent nervous system.

About 40,000 neurons in the heart are involved in communication between the heart and centers of the brain related to consciousness – the amygdala, thalamus, and cortex.

The heart sends more neural signals to the brain via its neurons than does the brain to the heart! Our hearts are so reactive and dynamic that they first respond to intuitive signals, and then the brain follows them. The heart does not use logic, filters and prejudices. It is the center of our intuition.

Synchronized and balanced work of the heart, brain and nervous system makes you feel inner peace, regenerate on the energy level, have a clear mind and a strong immune system.

 

Research by the HeartMath Institute shows that heart rhythm patterns reflect our emotional states. When you are under a stressor, you get out of sync. This disrupts your mental functions, and you consequently go into “fight-flight or freeze” mode.

The sympathetic nervous system mobilizes energy, while your parasympathetic nervous system works to bring the body back into “rest and digest” mode. When the two systems are out of sync, you experience irregular and chaotic heart rhythms. There are internal disturbances that can have a huge impact on your body and mind.

Your body develops to the rhythm of your heart.

The heartbeats are not the mechanical rhythms of life, but rather represent the intelligent and specific language of the heart. You experience heart intelligence when your mind and emotions are balanced and consistent.

If you want to strengthen your resistance, concentration, memory, as well as boldly make decisions and react more openly to changes, choose positive emotions! According to the HeatMath Institute, focusing attention on the heart and arousing such feelings as: love, appreciation, or gratitude, affect the shifting of the heartbeat rhythms, sinus rhythms, towards greater coherence. Practice contact with the heart, meditate, breathe. Just a few minutes a day is enough.

My experience of working with the heart, energetic, and to some extent also the physical, as part of the practice of craniosacral therapy, has shown me that we often live with a clenched heart. When we give it space to express, we feel much better.

I invite you to take a chance and experience the benefits of craniosacral therapy, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me by phone or e-mail kontakt@exploreself.pl

Agnieszka

Read also:

Relax your diaphragm and breathe your belly!

Autonomous nervous system – our personal monitoring system

Relax your diaphragm and breathe your belly!

The diaphragm is the main respiratory muscle that performs the most important work.

It is a muscular separation between the abdominal cavity and the chest cavity. In abdominal breathing, the abdomen expands outward as you inhale and the diaphragm moves inward. These two activities cause a drop in the internal pressure that pulls air into your lungs. As you exhale, your abdominal muscles contract and pull in slightly, and the diaphragm rises and pushes air out of your lungs. This gives you deep and regular breathing that allows your lungs to be almost fully ventilated. Thoracic breathing, involving only the upper thorax and the intercostal muscles, is generally shallow, rapid, and irregular with minimal air exchange.

The quality of our breathing is the basis of our mental condition. Diaphragm blockade is a form of our character armor, reflecting the ego’s inability to integrate the feelings concentrated in the chest cavity and express them through the solar plexus, pelvis, and thighs. The tension in the diaphragm embodies the reluctance to experience or articulate emotions, and the resistance to mobilizing a force in the solar plexus to act according to them. In this way, the inflow of energy to the solar plexus is blocked, suppressing vitality and a sense of fulfillment. We tighten the diaphragm because we are afraid to breathe fully, we are afraid to truly experience and feel.

The way we breathe is closely related to the bodily chemistry of emotions. On a psychological level, diaphragmatic breathing increases emotional stability, confidence, awareness, and perceived control of the environment, while thoracic breathing does the opposite. Diaphragmatic breathing reduces anxiety, depression and psychosomatic problems.

How to activate the diaphragm?

Lie on your back in a quiet place with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Use your fingers to feel the lower edge of the chest starting at the top, about 10-15 cm from the breastbone, and massage from the top to the bottom on both sides of the breastbone. Run your fingers along the edge of your chest, not under it.

Focus more and breathe to areas where the tissue seems to be sticky or feels lumpy or painful. It can be uncomfortable and even painful, gently massage these areas, don’t force them. Continue for a few minutes. Regularly relax your diaphragm.

Breathe your belly!

When the diaphragm is more relaxed, start using it.

Place your hand gently on your belly below the navel and direct your breath and attention there. Close your eyes so that you can fully concentrate on your breathing. Inhale air through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Breathe into your stomach until it rises, then let out all the air. Breathe slowly. Try to avoid the movement in the upper chest and neck (this is where we tend to breathing shallowly). Continue for two minutes.

At the beginning, practice lying down, increasing to 10 minutes a day. Once you are able to belly breathe in the supine position, try the same in a sitting position, and then move on to standing, walking and exercising. Incorporate belly breathing into your daily activities. Breathe your belly at the desk, in the bathtub, watching TV, walking the dog, and especially breathe your belly, you will feel nervous, stress, tension.

And if you feel that you need support in this practice and work on your diaphragm, I invite you to the sessions. If you have a question, please do not hesitate to contact me: kontakt@exploreself.pl

Agnieszka

Source: „Energetic anatomy. Body as Consciousness”, Bruce Burger.

Main photo: Michael Baussman, Pixbay