Presence

Sun shining behind clouds

I’ve been sitting here, in this liminal space, for a very long time. Watching and listening to the discourse of psychotherapy, different healing modalities, competing theories…and I’ve been silent. Actually, I haven’t been silent. I’ve been pontificating to my clients, my family and to my friends about how it’s all distraction. It’s mind made and it keeps us divided, arguing about differences and debunking different ways of getting to the same core truth of wholeness and oneness. Of healing. The truth of the matter is, we live in the grey. This life is not so black and white, as many of us would like it to be. What works for one of us may not work for another. Who is to say what is right and what is wrong? So many theorists and scholars live in their heads, finding pathways to help people heal. They've been working to figure it all out, diagnosing people with this or that. Updating the DSM. It’s easier to ‘understand’ someone if they fit nicely into this diagnosis, attachment style or personality disorder spelled out for us by checking off symptoms. And the reality is, we are all unique. There may be different attachment wounds, traumas that are personal, but the way we connect with people, what makes us uniquely human, is our hearts and our ability to feel and experience emotions. To be embodied. To be present.

So, I would like to invite us all to feel what it feels like to drop out of our head for one conscious breath and become embodied. Because that doctor sitting behind the screen typing in symptoms to diagnose you, tell you who you are and what is 'wrong' with you, AI can do that faster. And more efficiently. You can do that yourself. But have you ever sat with someone else in presence? Has someone attuned to you in a way you felt seen and heard without ever saying a word? Not attempting to figure you out intellectually. Not trying to understand your words, but sensing your patterns underneath it all? Has someone been so present within their own selves that simply by sitting with them you too feel present? Presence is not a theory to debunk. Presence is not debatable. It just simply is. An alignment - mind, body, heart and soul. 

The truth of the matter is, we are embodied. We are humans. We have hearts and souls. And emotions. That is such a gift. Don’t you want to embody it? Don’t you want to feel it all? Don’t you want to be immersed in it? Knowing that everything is ephemeral. And won't last forever. None of it. Don’t get me wrong – for a lot of us, at some point in time, it was not safe to be embodied. We may not have had a caregiver really be with us when we asked for our basic needs to be met. We may not have had a caregiver really be with us when we experienced our emotions – helping us feel safe and teaching our nervous system that emotions are just physiology and when met with care and attunement, they quickly move through us.  Nothing is meant to last forever. And yet, when we consciously or unconsciously resist our emotions, we keep feeling stuck in them, overwhelmed. If we were not co-regulated when emotions arose within us, our defenses (brilliantly and adaptively) protected us when we had no other resources or means to feel safe. The glitch is, we got stuck in the disconnection. Not only from others, but within our own selves. Disconnected from our bodies and the inherent wisdom our emotions are sharing with us.

We need a regulated other in order to teach us and our nervous system how to regulate back into feeling safe within our own selves when emotions arise. If we never received this, we don’t know how to do it. Yet. And now we know science has caught up with meditation. We know our thoughts are patterned around survival and keeping us feeling safe. And we know they began patterning very early on in our lives. So, again, I ask you: when have you survived enough to come back home to feeling safe within your own body? Even for one conscious breath. Might you now have more resources within your own self to update your thoughts around what is truly threatening (or not) in the present moment? As opposed to what was absolutely threatening to you in the past? To differentiate the present moment in time from past threats or future worries?

Feeling into the present moment is essential if you want to experience this life fully – mind, body, heart and soul. It is essential, and I’d say your birthright, to experience this life fully. What separates us from AI is our hearts. And our emotional depth and capacity to feel and be present – first and foremost within our own selves. And then, and only then, are we able to show up fully with others. And at this time of disillusionment, destruction and chaos, your connection to your core self is needed now more than ever. It is what allows you to navigate the uncertainty of the times from a place of compassion, connection and love, instead of fear. The fastest way to shift the paradigm from fear and disconnection is through presence and love. So, I invite you to take one conscious breath. To begin to feel safety within for just one conscious breath. One conscious breath may lead to two. And it is with these conscious breaths that we begin to rewire and update ourselves to feeling safe within in the present moment.