That Was Then. This Is Now.

One Conscious Breath: Issue 05

Feeling stuck isn't a character flaw. It's a nervous system repeating survival strategies you've long since outgrown. Let's update them now.

Eye-level view of a serene therapy room with comfortable seating and calming decor

Before we begin, I invite you to take one conscious breath.

Feel the cool air as it enters your nostrils. Follow it as deeply as it goes into your body. Now pause.

And then exhale, slowly, out of your mouth. Really elongate the release as much as you can. And as you exhale, feel your shoulders drop. Feel your cheeks soften. And feel your feet firmly on the floor.

In this exact moment, for this one conscious breath, you are safe. In your body, Right here. Right now.

Taking one conscious breath and orienting ourselves back into safety within, in the present moment, allows us to feel, really feel, what present moment safety feels like in our bodies. One conscious breath at a time. And from this place of safety, one breath at a time, allows us to engage with whatever comes next from a more resourced place. The more grounded you are as you read this, the more your nervous system will be anchored in the present now rather than the historic then. And the more open you will be to receive what your body is signaling to you.

So, one more conscious breath.

And when you’re ready ~ let’s begin.

Let’s begin by de-shaming this right now.

The irritability that arises when things don’t go our way. The shutdown that comes when someone raises their voice. The tightening in our chest when our phone lights up from that particular person. The pull to go quiet and disappear when we feel overwhelmed. Or the urge to grasp and reach beyond our capacity when someone else disappears. Even the hypervigilance that has us scanning a room the moment we walk in, immediately searching for who is safe and who is not.

None of these are character flaws. Or a measure of our worth.

These reactions are signals. They are real. They move through us with tremendous force sometimes. And we need to tune into them so we can discern if they might be sending threat responses that are outdated. Are they pulling us back to a younger version of ourselves that didn’t have as many resources as we do today?

These signals are our nervous system wiring. And it did exactly what it was designed to do. It kept us feeling safe and connected in a world where we didn’t yet have our own resources or capacity to do so. We depended, wholly, on a caregiver to help our nervous system return to safety and regulation, to remain open and flexible instead of guarded and stuck. That was then. And this is now. And the extraordinary, empowering news is this: as adults, we have all the capacity needed to return our nervous system to its inherent home of safety and flexibility.

In over twenty years of sitting with people in their most undefended moments, one thing has never stopped striking me as both heartbreaking and hopeful.

One way we continue to suffer is not because something is wrong with us. It is because our nervous system is still following old patterns. Patterns that were created when we were very little, created to help us feel safe in the world. And because this system operates largely below our conscious awareness, automatically, most of us don’t even know it’s happening.

We just know we feel stuck.

We know we keep reacting in ways we don’t particularly like, nor quite understand. That certain situations send us somewhere we don’t want to go. That we’ve read right the books, done the right work, understand ourselves intellectually. Yet still, in the moment, we react in a way that feels ancient. Something faster than thought. Something older than memory.

That something is the autonomic nervous system. And it is not a flaw.

It’s a sophisticated intelligence system. Operating beneath our conscious awareness, in service of our survival, from the moment we are born. And it has been doing this, repeatedly, ever since.

The question to ask: is the map it’s following outdated?

Our ANS follows familiarity, operating mostly below our level of awareness. Our work is to create a new familiarity pathway for it. One built with all of our present day resources and functioning.

Are these automatic responses still protecting us? Or might they be over-protective, outdated. Keeping us stuck and disconnected, not from an actual threat, but from ourselves, others and the world?

Feeling dysregulated has become so normalized that many of us believe this is just how and who we are. The constant running, bracing, hypervigilance, disappearing, the low hum of anxiety or depression. I promise you, none of this is who you are. Not at your core. Not in your heart. We are mammals. We are inherently wired to connect. Regulation, safety, connection and presence are our birthright. And we have more power to return to it than most of us have ever been taught or learned.

This isn’t a fatal flaw. And it isn’t a blaming of how we were raised. We all have the capacity and the resources to update these early learned patterns. And we can start now. With One Conscious Breath. Turned inward. Let’s begin.

Our ANS doesn’t only learn what to fear. It also learns what safety feels like. And sometimes ~ often ~ what felt like safety then may be the very pattern keeping us stuck now. Grasping for connection. Or shutting down around it. Staying small so as not to take up too much space. Helping from an empty place because being needed felt safer than simply being. Running fast so we never have to feel what is trembling beneath the motion.

These too are survival strategies. Brilliantly learned. Ready to be updated.

We’ve been living backwards and upside down and many of us don’t yet know how to flip it. We’ve been living our lives from a state of doing instead of a state of being. Our nervous system wiring has been running our lives, keeping us in constant motion or shutdown because these patterns worked to help us feel connected and safe when we were little. It is essential to make sure what is motivating us as adults comes from our being, our core self, our hearts. We want to be able to make decisions based on all of our present day resources and functioning, not outdated survival strategies unknowingly directing our lives.

The deepest work is not in fixing ourselves. And certainly not trying to fix others or the world from a place of survival. The deepest work is bringing our present-day self, with all our resources, awareness and capacity, back into contact with the system that has been running the old map. And gently, compassionately, begin to remind it: we grew up and have more resources now.

Here is what’s extraordinary: awareness begins the update.

Not more analysis. Not more intellectual understanding. But the actual act of noticing, in real time, that the body has entered a threat response.

And pausing to ask:

is this response necessary and helpful right now? Is there actually danger present? Or is my system responding to a memory, a memory feeling of a threat I have already survived?

In that pause, something shifts. The thinking brain comes back online. Choice becomes available. We are no longer entirely in the grip of the activation, we begin observing it. And in this space created, however small, something different becomes possible.

One Conscious Breath begins to widen the space.

This is not a metaphor. Physiologically, a slow intentional exhale activates the parasympathetic part of our nervous system and signals the body: you are safe. The threat is over. Every conscious breath that returns our body to safety is a rewiring. One moment at a time. One breath at a time. Toward a new familiar pathway, one built from the present, not the past.

The slower we go, the faster we get there.

A Practice for This Week

At any moment throughout your day ~ right now, if it feels right ~ pause. Bring your awareness into your body.

Notice your jaw. Your shoulders. Your chest. Your belly. Your hands.

Are you holding tension anywhere? Simply notice. Without judgment. Without trying to fix anything. Just bring what has been happening below the surface, in your body, into your conscious awareness.

Then ask the question that begins to change everything: Is this tension necessary and helpful right now?

Almost always ~ I promise you ~ the answer will be no. Not because your experience isn’t real. But because the threat the body is bracing against is almost always historical. An echo of something already survived. Not something happening now.

And when the answer is no: take one conscious breath. Elongate your exhale. And choose to release. Soften. Open. Drop your shoulders. Unclench your jaw. Feel your feet on the floor. The weight of your body in the chair. You are signaling your nervous system, in its own language: I am here. I am present. I am safe.

If you notice shutdown rather than activation: numbness, disconnection, going through the motions, not feeling much at all, the path back is similar but in the opposite direction. You need a little more energy, not less. A deep inhale activates the sympathetic part of our nervous system. A small movement of a finger, a toe or a slow roll of the shoulders. Anything that sends the signal: it is safe to move again. To be present and embodied.

Neither of these is a dramatic practice. Both take less than a minute. Both begin with one conscious breath and a single honest question.

That is the whole practice. And in many ways, it is the whole work.

Your nervous system is always listening. It learns by repetition. Every time you pause, notice, and return yourself to safety, you are rewriting the map. Teaching your body, one breath at a time, that you have more resources now than you ever did then.

Simply noticing. And then our choice and willingness to pause and bring awareness to what is happening within is the beginning of the update. Moving your nervous system from stuck to flexible. From surviving to present.

One conscious breath at a time.

This is now.

And that was then.

With love and One Conscious Breath,

Jody

P.S. ~ If you’re new here: I’m Jody Allen, a somatic psychotherapist in San Francisco and Berkeley. These letters are where neuroscience meets the heart ~ the foundation of a book in progress. If someone forwarded this to you and it resonated, you can subscribe at jodyallenlcsw.substack.com. It’s free. It always will be.