From Survival To Safety ~ Part II

One Conscious Breath: Issue 11

One Conscious Breath: Issue 11

The threat is over, you body just doesn't know it yet.

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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.

And then exhale. Slowly, fully, out of your mouth. Elongate the release as much as you can. And as you exhale, feel your shoulders drop. Feel your jaw soften. Feel your feet firmly on the floor. You just took one conscious breath. It is safe, in this moment, to release whatever you have been holding in your body. If it feels right, I invite you to take another. Now notice, as you bring your awareness to your breath, what is happening as you slow down and follow your breath back into your body.

What does it find along its way? Does it encounter tension? Or constriction? Maybe some subtle softening? If you find yourself back in your head, judging what you notice or asking why, gently return your awareness to what is happening within your body. To reconnect with what is already there.

Many people don't even notice when their body is braced or stuck in a threat or survival state. They simply think, 'this is just who I am or how I have always been'. In order to return to feeling open and safety within, we must first feel if our body is stuck bracing for a threat that doesn't exist in the present moment.

Remember, our bodies are meant to be open and flexible. Not fixed. Not guarded. Not in a perpetual state of threat or survival. Being aware of what is happening in our bodies, in any given moment, is the essential first step to returning to feeling safe within. And feeling safety within is the essential first step to feeling safe with others.

So, now, when you are ready, take one more conscious breath. And from this place of increased awareness and presence ~ let's begin.

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In Issue 10 — From Survival to Safety, we named the foundation: moving from surviving into thriving requires an embodied, felt-sense of safety within. Not just a semblance of safety. But a genuine sense of safety within.

Today, let's go a little deeper into how we bring that feeling of safety back into our bodies.

Intellectually understanding what safety means is not the same as feeling it. And many of us have been trying to think our way back into feeling safe in our bodies for a very long time.

I've said this before and I will keep repeating it, until you not only know it, but begin to feel it, too. The nervous system was patterned when we were very small. Before we had language. Before we had choice.

It protected our core Self, our hearts, by adapting us to what our caregivers needed us to be, while moving us away from who we authentically were.

That patterning wasn't a mistake. It was brilliant. The autonomic nervous system did precisely what it was designed to do: keep us safe, keep us attached, keep us alive.

And it did. We survived. But here is what the nervous system doesn't do automatically: update to the present, where we have more resources, choice and safety. We get to consciously move it from survival to safety. From fixed to flexible. From guarded to open.

The pattern that was wired then will continue to repeat now. Not because there is something wrong with us. But because the nervous system follows familiarity. And it will return, over and over again, to what it knows. Even when what it knows no longer serves us.

That was then.

And this is now.

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In Issue 09 — Remembering Who We Truly Are, a dear client offered us the wetsuit metaphor. Reminding so many of us that we are moving through our present-day lives still wearing a proverbial wetsuit that protected us when we were little. The protection of a wetsuit is absolutely essential when we are in the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean. But once we step out, instead of protecting us, it becomes a barrier, heavy and cumbersome.

Unnecessary.

Similarly, once any threat is imminently over in our lives, our nervous system is meant to be flexible, to move back into safety, back into presence. To put down the armor. To not only remember, but to feel, we are safe to soften in the present moment. To release the hypervigilance, the performing, the people-pleasing, the bracing, or the shutting down.

It's essential to realize what protected our core Self, our hearts, then, is keeping us disconnected from them now.

And here is where the update can be accelerated: not by looking back at these outdated survival strategies with judgment or shame. Not even by trying to figure out why they were installed. The most essential thing to do now is to feel that the threat is over. That we survived. That it is safe to release the protective layering.

And then offer genuine compassion and care to the younger part of ourself that has been stuck living underneath the armor. The armor worked brilliantly for us. It got us here. To this moment in time. It did its job. It protected us when we were too small and too vulnerable, to stay connected then.

But now? In order to connect back to our core Self, our tender heart, and feel safe within, we must release these outdated survival strategies.

And, the beauty is, you've already begun. By what you've been doing here as you read this newsletter. The first step is to become aware. Aware that your nervous system is simply repeating survival patterns. And to feel these patterns bracing for a threat that you've long since survived. The bracing that benefitted you then is encasing you now.

That's the first step and you can do this one conscious breath at a time.

Not because it's a small act, although it is. But because it is the most direct way back into our bodies in any precise moment. Our breath is always with us, doing its work, keeping us alive. And while it doesn't need us to focus on it, when we do, we consciously build its capacity to return us to a feeling of safety more quickly.

When we take one conscious breath with intention ~ feeling it, following it, elongating the exhale ~ we are not just calming down. We are doing something far more profound.

We are consciously creating a new familiarity. We are updating the nervous system, in real time, through direct experience. Reminding it that it is safe in this precise moment. Safe to return from survival to safety.

We are building the capacity for flexibility the nervous system never got to build when we were small. We are increasing its ability to move through activation and return back into safety when the real or perceived threat is over. To meet the present moment from our present-day, fully resourced core Self ~ rather than from the smaller version that was guarded and protected in service of our survival.

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We're not building or fixing a broken self. We are simply returning to the one that has always been there. Buried deeply under the protective layering ~ the wetsuit ~ that kept us safe then.

Thank it. Genuinely. Authentically. Compassionately.

And then slowly, gently, consciously, courageously, begin to unzip it.

Because what is waiting underneath, is not nothing. It is who you authentically are. What is waiting to be revealed is your core Self, your tender heart.

That was then.

This is now.

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A Practice for This Week

The next time you notice and feel yourself bracing ~ in a conversation, in traffic, in a moment of conflict or uncertainty ~ pause before you react. Even just for one conscious breath.

Every moment of pause will begin to increase your capacity to better assess the situation from your more fully resourced, present-day Self.

Feel the cool air enter your nostrils. Elongate your exhale. Drop your shoulders. Feel your feet on the ground.

When we are connected to our core Self and our heart, we have more choice, more freedom, and more resources to navigate life with safety and flexibility than we ever did as a child. We remember we have now what we never had then. And we deserve to feel into it. Moment by Moment. Breath by breath. Slow and steady.

The more we differentiate that was then from this is now, the more we are able to stay connected to our present-day Self. The more flexibility we will have to respond instead of react. The more safety we will feel in any given moment. Not just as a concept, but as a genuine, embodied, felt sense of presence and safety. And every breath we take into this new familiar, we update our nervous system back into its inherent state of flexibility.

This reclamation, this re-connection ~ to our core Self, our tender heart, and to the safety that has always lived within us ~ is what this work is about. It begins with us, first and foremost. And then ripples out to everyone in our lives. Because the world needs you here fully. And you deserve to thrive.

And you're already doing it.

One conscious breath at a time.

With love,

Jody