Finding steadiness on shaky ground

It hasn't been easy to sit with the state of the world these last few months. Wether you routinely follow the news or let information come to you unsolicited, the effects of our world's alarming developments can disrupt our routines, destabilize our functioning and increase fear and confusion. I speak of course from a place of privilege, of having had relative peace in my daily life, autonomy, and a somewhat relative predictability of what comes next. This is a privilege so many have not had throughout our lifetime and continue not to have.

Our nervous system is designed to identify threat and to mobilize the body towards the direction of greatest protection, even if that means freezing, dissociating, or keeping you in a state of hypervigilance. When life's events activate our fear response, it's not just your current situation you're responding to, (your body's sensations, the associated underlying negative narratives and the emotional response patterns), you're also responding to the imprints of previous threats and unsafe past experiences.

This layering of information and activation can overwhelm our system and maintain a fear response switched on, affecting every aspect of our functioning. We're designed this way (for now) because survival has always taken precedent, overriding all other needs. Sensing danger and preparing to deal with it, is the greatest gift our limbic brain could possibly do for us and it's been doing it for many millions of years. We have come a long way, or have we? Our frontal cortex's inherent ability to make sense, prioritize, evaluate, etc, is however insufficient in the face of such primordial, survival driven structure as the limbic brain.

Understanding and rewiring our physiological, neurological, emotional, cultural and generational realities is a life long process. Meeting the information that my body/mind are constantly providing, understanding the unique conditions that have shaped their inherent functions and lovingly inviting (again and again) to experience different patterns of breath, of movement, of thought, of action is at the core of this life long process.

There are endless ways to meet my body's reactions, to meet my stories (created to protect despite their face value and impact), to ease my fear, to move my body in a direction that frees me and with persistence, practice and a stubborn curiosity, it moves, it learns. I invite you to design for yourself the tools that resonate with you, the ones that create ease and safety even if for just half a second. Keep at it, anytime the fear rises in it's many forms, meet it, greet it, offer it a different pattern, a different breath, thought, emotional and physical wave to ride. Persist, keep insisting, gently, lovingly, let the fear know you understand it's value and keep inviting it to experience itself in a different way, in a different pattern, stay with it, again and again.