As we slow down over the Holy days of Easter, Ramadan, and Pesach, we can rest into what it means to be human and consider the difference between healthy chaos and unnecessary suffering. Of sacrifice/ servitude versus self-empowerment/ service. In order to do that I think it is important to distinguish effort from stress – our relationship to challenge and uncertainty and where unresolved grief and trauma or perceived “negative” emotions makes things stressful.
If you are pushing, striving, and “willing” something into reality from an inflexible nervous system nothing will change, which is why so many people describe feeling “dead inside” and disconnected. It’s soul loss. You have to stop working harder at what is NOT working.
……because there’s a vibrational incongruence occurring where your nervous system and the traumatic experiences trigger a survival response and then bump up against the aspect of you that wants to find a safe space to be able to create a different reality. There is incongruence or resistance between your parts.
When your heart is calling for attunement and alignment…it’s time to listen. The Mindfulness Change process will accelerate your healing by giving you that certainty and a solid foundation of trust, safety, and connection to yourself WHERE YOU WILL CLAIM YOUR PERSONAL POWER. Over the 6 hours we spend together you will compassionately listen to the parts that are afraid, expand the flexibility and capacity at the level of your nervous system to hold your parts steady. And then, when you are ready, effortlessly call all those fragmented and exiled parts of you at the age that you were when you decided this was the only way to keep yourself safe, home to your heart for integration and transformation.
If you’re looking for a coherent heart-body-mind-spirit (trauma-informed) approach to restore your true nature and use your unique gifts then consider your choices and ask for support.
The full moon is activating all of the energy aspects from the past two years, supporting you to restore inner alignment, balance, and congruence.
Together, may we let go of expectation – the idea that we need to sacrifice, be in servitude – forever the wounded healer, the martyr, and sacrificial lamb. May we find the courage to let the old stores die and out of the ashes welcome rebirth, integration, transformation, and expansion. Trust that we are here to be of service, not in service, and to inspire others to be their own medicine. Take some time to inspire your own inner healer, to celebrate how far you have come on this journey and everything you have accomplished to be here now in your personal power and 5D energetic sovereignty.
In today’s love missive, I want to speak about the Importance of distinguishing effort from stress and how you can create a more flexible nervous system in these times of so much unpredictability and uncontrollability. The difference between healthy stress and psychological, toxic stress and the power of choice that is available when you befriend your nervous system.
Does it make sense to you to realize that the combination of extreme sympathetic nervous system activation or extreme parasympathetic nervous system activation with the freeze response combined with a fair amount of negative emotion or unresolved trauma or stress from the past, will sensitize your body to stress in the future? If you had a lot of unpredictable, toxic stressors as a child, your history actually makes you more vulnerable to future stresses. This is why it is so important to rewire your nervous system – to build more capacity aka flexibility and resilience to move through challenges that create psychological stressors. If you don’t, that stress compounds until your body says no because it tends to lead to more stress, not just because you get sensitized but because you start to take on behaviors – survival/ protective patterns of adaptation which result in more stress in the future. This is why certain modalities or life changes, like socially withdrawing to protect your limited energy can temporarily restore safety so you can “come down” into rest and digest but do not bring long-term relief. This is also why the law of attraction or other models of “manifesting” your reality only work to the level of your nervous system and how safe you currently feel.
Time does not heal, it conceals. Without a flexible nervous system, the “hostile and dangerous” external environmental factors that affect the amygdala drives the nervous system on how you think and feel when you are under threat, including low-grade stress. It creates a kind of vicious cycle where the stress from yesterday primes your nervous system in anticipation of more stress in the present.
Unpredictability and uncontrollability are not going away. So you have a choice to either approach the things that are unpredictable and uncontrollable in your life with a kind of internal shock absorber so that you don’t feel invaded in your core or from a state of reactivity towards situations where it is hard to anticipate what you’re going to have to face or situations where it’s hard to influence the outcomes or ones that are designed to make you particularly stressed out. A lot of that rests on our own biological evolution through the ages – that things that tended to leave us stressed and inflamed are the situations where we were under a lot of threat and so we have evolved to pay a tonne of attention to them. It all puts a lot of stress on the body
Then there is the double bind – that if you want to drive somebody crazy hold them responsible for results that are outside of their control.
Stephen Covey in the 7 habits of highly effective people made a distinction between what is called the circle of concern and a circle of control and then overlapping that is what can you actually influence in regards to a health challenge or a relationship or your finances. And the opportunity to make a difference to what you care about it. That’s an opportunity for improving the territory where there’s a lot of concern but little influence and it is such a prescription for suffering and stressful suffering. Having the wisdom to understand that we have next to no influence over outcomes such as the war in Ukraine or poaching endangered elephants, rhinos, and pangolins in Africa. The difference between us and other animals especially prey animals is that we worry about things we don’t have any control over.
The animals don’t make themselves wrong or sick with irrational fear, judgment, shame, or criticism that stresses the body.
When you can befriend your nervous system and discern between rational and irrational fear, then your fight-flight-freeze response is useful when you need it. You can self regulate when the threat is over instead of staying in a hyper-aroused state which messes with your hormones, lowers growth and repair, and your ability to digest, physically and emotionally – to metabolize and move grief and trauma out of the body. In other words to have what you most need and desire – safety, connection, and belonging so that you can have healthy, loving co-regulation with other people. Why? because how you do anything is how you do everything.
A huge part of HOW you can do this is both fully claiming self-authority/ agency, really seeing clearly the ways in which you can influence your world in a positive way, and being able to recognize and accept your human limitations. When you have a flexible nervous system, it is easier to relinquish a feeling of control that was false in the first place and to speak to some of the things that are going on that you are concerned about – that you don’t have a lot of influence over. To put your energy and your concern towards what you can control in your personal life beginning with the foundational life changes.
For example:
-regular movement and exercise,
– energy management and deep, restorative sleep
-getting enough healthy co-regulation and social support from other people.
-to eat living, locally grown food
-and to use various mindfulness and meditative practices
– to ground yourself in nature and come back to your heart.
– to know you are part of nature and are not alone.
The caveat here is where the daily practice comes into work with your nervous system so that you can release any expectations about what you think your life should look like. It’s simple, not always easy to swim against the tide because your brain is a prediction machine that is continually generating expectations, decisions, judgments, and conclusions all insisting that your future be a certain way.
Be gentle with yourself and your sweet body and trust that you are not alone. We need each other because when we are triggered we cant see the truth of what is calling for our attention.