Lean in, breath in

What if the subtle niggle isn't something to get rid of, but something worth getting curious about?

There is that moment when something hits. A comment. A look. A conversation that suddenly takes a turn. An opportunity you have been asking for finally arrives and, instead of throwing your arms in the air with excitement, something inside you contracts and whispers, Oh shit. The body has entered the conversation.

Sometimes long before we've consciously worked out what the conversation is about. A tightening in the chest, a shift in breath, a knot in the belly, heat moving through the skin, an urge to explain yourself, defend, retreat, blame, fix, shut down or get the hell out of there. The movement can be enormous, or it can be so subtle that we barely notice it before the mind has swept in with its interpretation of events.

This is bad. They shouldn't have said that. I can't do this. Here we go again and off we go. I find this little meeting place fascinating. The place where life meets the instrument and the instrument responds.

I call what arises here dissonance. Not because it is inherently wrong, negative or something we need to clear from our system, but because something has moved out of its familiar hum. There is friction. A rub. Something in the field of our body-mind has been activated and is communicating. The question for me has become less How quickly can I make this feeling go away? and more:

What if I lean in?

Not recklessly. Not overriding the intelligence of fear, ignoring boundaries or forcing myself into experiences that don't feel right. Leaning in isn't another cleverly disguised way of bullying ourselves into growth. It is simply an invitation to become curious.

Before the Story Gets Its Pants On

Our human organism is wonderfully quick. Something happens and biology, memory, emotion, nervous-system response, conditioning and whatever else is humming through the instrument can be in motion before our conscious mind has even located the car keys. Then along comes interpretation and interpretation matters. The mind is part of this extraordinary apparatus too. It helps us make meaning, discern, understand, imagine, remember and navigate our world, but sometimes the mind is interpreting the present through material gathered somewhere else.

• An old relationship.

• An early experience.

• Something we learned about ourselves.

• A family pattern.

• A previous rejection.

• A belief we've rehearsed so often it no longer feels like a belief; it simply feels like reality.

This is where the invitation to be curious about the territory before the label. Before this is anxiety. Before this is rejection. Before you have made me feel this. Before the anger rises because...

What is actually happening in the skin? Tightness? Heat? Pressure? Tingling? Movement? A pull backwards? A rising force? A heaviness? Something expanding? Something wanting to get very, very small?

Can I be with that movement for a moment before I brand it? There is value in naming our emotions, of course. Language can illuminate and help us communicate what is happening within us. But there is also a delicious intelligence in allowing ourselves to feel before we explain. Sometimes the story is accurate.Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the sensation itself has more to tell us before the mind turns it into a three-act drama and this is where I breathe.

Not because breath is some magical eraser of uncomfortable human experience. I'm not particularly interested in using breath to make myself calm so I can get back to being a “good” regulated human. I breathe because breath brings me into relationship.

• Here.

• Skin.

• Sensation.

• Movement.

• What is actually happening?

Perhaps the breath changes something. Perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps the contraction becomes stronger for a moment. Perhaps tears arrive. Perhaps the body softens. Perhaps underneath what I thought was anger there is grief, and underneath the grief there is love, and underneath that there is something I don't have a bloody word for.

Good. We don't always need one.

Dissonance Has Its Own Intelligence

We've become rather fond of turning discomfort into something to overcome. Fear must be conquered. Blocks cleared. Negative beliefs replaced. Triggers healed. Resistance broken through, but what if dissonance is not necessarily the enemy of development? What if sometimes dissonance is development knocking at the door an old identity meets a new possibility and there is friction.

Desire meets protection. Love meets fear. Something wants to expand while another part of the organism has become exquisitely skilled at keeping life within familiar boundaries. Of course there is a rub. The body has history. The mind has history. Our emotional landscape has history. The nervous system has history and, through the energetic and spiritual lens through which we also could experience human life, there may be movements and resonances that don't fit neatly into any one explanatory box. We don't need to decide which dimension is the answer. We can be interested in their conversation. This is the multidimensional playground of being human.

Something can make complete sense intellectually and still bring the body to its knees. Something can shift in the body before the mind understands what has happened. A spiritual realisation can open an enormous field of perception and then Tuesday afternoon arrives and somebody says exactly the right thing to illuminate a reflex we thought we'd transcended three years ago. Welcome back to the skin.

This is where maturity marinates.

Understanding has to meet experience. Experience meets biology. Awareness meets conditioning. Relationship pokes at the bits we cannot see alone. The organism gathers new information, and sometimes—slowly, messily, beautifully—something reorganises.

The Tiny Gap Where Something New Can Happen

There is a delicious little moment, sometimes so bloody small we miss it, where something has landed, the body has responded and the mind is halfway through building its case for what just happened and somewhere in that mix, awareness can arrive.

Oh. Look at that. Something is moving in me. That is all. We don't need to immediately transform it.

The reaction may still come. We may still cry, speak, shake, leave, set a boundary, say no, say yes, ask for space, discover that the fear was extraordinarily intelligent or realise that an ancient reflex has just walked into a completely new situation wearing an old costume.

But now we are in relationship with the response rather than entirely being driven by it.

This is one of the places we can experience self-governance—not as self-control, but as developing such an intimate relationship with our own instrument that we begin to recognise what is moving through it and with recognition comes possibility. Not certainty but Possibility. Perhaps the old reflex still wins this round. That's okay too. Awareness has now met it. Something new has entered the field.

And It Doesn't Stop at Our Skin

This is where the inquiry becomes even more interesting, because nothing we express exists entirely in isolation.

If we meet dissonance differently, the expression we bring into relationship may also be different. Perhaps instead of immediately retaliating, we become curious. Perhaps instead of collapsing, we discover a boundary.

Perhaps instead of making another person responsible for everything moving through me, I can feel what belongs to me while still remaining clear about what belongs to them.

Perhaps a reflex that has travelled beautifully and efficiently through generations of our families meets awareness in the body and, this time, doesn't travel forward in quite the same form.

What happens then? A conversation changes. Someone else's body receives a different signal. A child witnesses another possibility. A relationship reorganises. A room has a different tone. This is where the subjective begins to touch the collective.

We are individual instruments, yes, but we are also continually entering one another's fields of experience. We influence and are influenced. Our states, choices, actions, language, touch, attention and reflexes become part of the environments other human beings inhabit.

Through a wider consciousness lens, Let’s remain curious about how far that influence travels. We don't need to pretend we know. The inquiry itself is enough to alter the quality of my participation.

Because if what I express contributes something to the field we share, even in the tiniest way, then getting curious about what moves through this skin becomes more than a private self-development exercise.

It becomes participation.

So, Lean In. Breathe In.

Maybe transformation doesn't always announce itself with fireworks and a life-changing revelation.Sometimes it is the subtle niggle. The breath you nearly didn't notice yourself holding. The flash of heat.The tightening jaw.The familiar story gathering momentum and that tiny flicker of awareness that catches it:

• Hello. There you are.

• Stay for a moment.

• Breathe.

• Feel before you fix.

• Listen before you label.

• Let the body have a word.

• Let the mind have one too.

• Let whatever energetic movement is present be part of the conversation and perhaps ask—not with an agenda to immediately change anything, but with genuine curiosity:

What is this showing me?

What is actually moving beneath the story?

Is this moment asking me to protect myself, express myself, soften, move, speak, wait, leave, stay—or simply feel?

And then perhaps the most interesting question of all:

What wants to move through me next?

Not what would the perfectly healed version of me do. Not what response earns me the highest consciousness badge. What becomes available here, in this actual body, in this actual moment, with the awareness I have now? Lean in.Breathe in. Get your skin in the game.

There may be far more intelligence moving through that subtle niggle than we first imagined.

Continue the exploration

Discover Worlds Within is an invitation to become curious about the extraordinary human sleeve — body, mind, emotions, nervous system, energy, spirit and consciousness — and the intelligence, conditioning and possibility moving through it.

Not simply to know more about yourself, but to experience yourself.

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