When we talk about somatic practices for regulation, it’s easy to fall into the language of “fixing” or “hacking” ourselves. As if we’re machines with a glitch that needs troubleshooting. As I’ve explored in Embodied Self Regulation: How the Vayus Help Us, our bodies have their own wisdom—one that doesn’t need fixing— it just needs listening. But you’re not a machine. You’re a living, breathing, feeling human. And your nervous system isn’t broken—it’s responding. Responding to everything you’ve lived through, everything you’ve learned about safety and danger, everything your body has stored along the way. So when we talk about somatic practices—grounding, orienting, resourcing—we’re Continue Reading
Yoga and Recovery: A Gateway to Compassionate Self-Care
Yoga encourages us to engage with loving kindness, listening interoceptively, recognizing and honoring our boundaries, and knowing it is safe to gently and progressively challenge our edges. We learn to see ourselves as deserving of compassion when facing challenges and difficulties—as human beings facing tender human experiences. We learn we can experience life without feeling powerless, needing to distract, engage in maladaptive coping to not feel our experiences. Continue Reading
Awareness: When things go wrong as they sometimes will
I have worked through my body’s needs, and I am tired, hungry, and depleted. I am about to enter the destructive phase, and just before that, I become aware I am in the pattern. We have spent so much time developing our awareness without stopping to ask what we are meant to do with it. Continue Reading