Category: The (almost kinda) Daily

In New Zealand, we’re venturing into the darker months of winter. I always expect it to happen more gradually- like somehow, despite the changing of the clocks, there’ll still be some lazy morning light, a period of adjustment before the impending blackness calls us out- but this hasn’t been the case.

At 7am, I find myself peering into blackness, and at the other end of the day, watching the clock to time the feeding of the horses with the last licks of the light.

Seasonal change is something that we’re biologically primed for but with the conveniences of living, something we paradoxically stamp out.

The other night, I crawled into bed with my little boy; he’d asked me to read a chapter of his book to him, all about the invention of electricity (I know, it was not the book I was expecting to be lulled off to sleep too with either!). We read about the various stages that both Edison and Tesla’s inventions went through as they tinkered with the light bulb. The race to establish whether AC or DC electricity was the best. And how, at the big reveal, the street lights all lit up.

In that moment, I found myself holding two different thoughts. One: that I was grateful for both electricity and light.

And yet: how that moment marked something so much bigger. The movement away from being in sync with the seasons towards the ability to stay up longer, to work harder, despite the month or the year or available light.

The lightbulb, was in every way, a capitalist’s delight.

We are speaking here of the obvious seasons but there are seasons within seasons amongst that too.

Seasons of caregiving.

Seasons of ill health.

Seasons where the demands on you are greater than normal.

And I wonder: how much room do we allow ourselves for adjustment? When do we let ourselves take it easy?

I have been going through an intensive season of caregiving. What it’s resulted in- often separately to my own desires- is less horse time overall, and when there is horse time, less of it within that window.

When I have moments to “get things done” I feel a certain pressure. I am aware of the finite offering in front of me and at times it can pull me into panic.

We are so hard on ourselves.

First comes the lightbulb. Second, this idea that we are supposed to grow, grow, grow and work, work, work.

With that in mind, I’m asking myself:

What is the least that I can do? What is the minimum that I get to call “enough”?

When should maintenance instead of growth be our main focus?

How can we let ourselves be more seasonal within what it is we have to do?

This, after all, is the way that our bodies are designed to live.

When is it time to simply maintain?

xx Jane

In my general wanderings through conversations about the nervous system, I often see a lot of confusion between freeze and collapse. These terms are frequently used interchangeably, but they’re not the same. The way they show up in the body is quite different.

It might not seem important to distinguish between the two, but it absolutely is. The way we gently support someone in coming back from one of these states—whether they’re operating primarily from freeze or collapse, or recognizing a recurring pattern of falling into one when the situation doesn’t warrant it—requires very different approaches.

Last week in Stable Hours (our live weekly Q&A in my membership, JoyRide), someone asked a question that really touched on this topic. So I pulled out a few minutes from that conversation to share with you here.

In a nutshell:

Freeze is a state of active fight-or-flight. This means there’s a high amount of energy available in the body, but it’s temporarily paused—ready to launch in either direction.

Collapse sits further down the sympathetic chain (the fight-or-flight system). It’s a shutdown state—a holding pattern where the body dampens its capacity to feel and respond in order to endure a situation it perceives as inescapable.

If we were to use an elastic band as a physical analogy:

Freeze is like an elastic band pulled taut—if you let it go, it’ll snap across the room.

Collapse is like an overstretched band that’s lost its tone—it no longer has its “twang.”

In other words: Freeze holds high tension and bracing. Collapse, on the other hand, is marked by low tone and a tendency to fold inward (think head down, rounded posture).

In my next email, I’ll share how we can begin to gently revitalize a body stuck in either state when it becomes a habitual and unhelpful way of being.

Have a wonderful rest of your day,

xx Jane

Something I know to be true:

Emotion exists separately to action.

Something I know is very common:

Emotion and a specific action (or set of actions) are often experienced together.

Let’s break this down some more.

One of the liberations of learning and teaching the work that I do now is that it helped me untangle my perception of when I was in sympathetic or fight flight from the reality of when I was in fight flight.

For example, something you hear in conversation all the time is “I was so fight flight!” or “I was really activated” (with the inference that this level of energy means that you are in the fight flight system). Mostly, this is based on subjective interpretation—in other words “I feel a certain way and I’m interpreting that feeling to mean that I am in sympathetic”.

(Some code here for those who need it: the sympathetic response is the term used your fight flight or survival nervous system response)

Where this sends us astray is in two main ways:

👉🏻 It leads us to believe that certain emotions are part of the fight flight response and some aren’t. For example, it’s common to assume that being angry or feeling high energy in the body is fight flight. Conversely, if I feel calm or relaxed, I might assume I’m parasympathetic.

🧐 We start to assume that emotions are actions exist together. For instance anger = outbursts or losing my temper.

The truth as I understand it

✨ You can experience the full range of emotion within the parasympathetic system. Emotion is an indication of a physiological change that registers in the body as sensation. There are no “groups” of emotions that are exclusively fight flight (or the opposite)

⭐️ No emotion is inherently coupled together with an action—but they can be. When they are coupled together, this is when we have created a sympathetic reflex response.

What that means in practice is that a specific emotional experience or sensation = a set of physical responses or actions that are predictable and repetitive.

So what do we do about it?

💁‍♀️ Understand that emotion and action do not live together.

🎉 Let go of certain emotions being good or bad, right or wrong. There is no such thing. Vitality means having access to the full spectrum of emotions. Adaptability means a brain and body that are responding with the emotion that best meets the moment.

👉🏻 Realise that if you are struggling with an emotion and action living together, you have identified a sympathetic reflex pattern. Explaining how to decouple that is a little more extensive than the scope of a few words in this context allows, but know that parsing them apart is completely possible and something I can help with (this is a big part of the work I do in JoyRide)

🪶 Learn to ask yourself a more beautiful question in the midst of energising emotion. Find that space between the physical experience and your response, then ask, what is the next best step from this place?

Again, sometimes this is possible and we can help ourselves, and sometimes, it can seem as though emotion and what follows are hard wired together—and that’s when you might need some help to pull them both apart.

Consider 💡

Do you allow for the full range of emotions? Do you have a story around emotions being right or wrong, good or bad?

Have a wonderful rest of your week,

xx Jane

Emotional regulation has become something of a catchphrase when it comes to nervous system talk, but “regulation” is not a term I like to use, simply because I think it gives us the wrong idea of what we’re aiming for.

Being a word nerd, I look up its root meaning just now and what flashed up was this:

“To regulate something means to control or govern it, typically by establishing rules or standards. It can also involve adjusting something to a desired level or standard, like regulating the temperature in a room using a thermostat. In essence, regulation is about bringing something under control, either by applying rules or by adjusting it to achieve a specific outcome.”

On the face of it, being able to control our emotions- to regulate them- seems wildly attractive and something that we should all be aiming towards. After all, if our emotional experience has a tendency to leave us feeling out of control, then isn’t bringing them under control the obvious next step?

Well, no. For the simple reason that it’s actually not possible (welcome to being human!).

Having a free ranging and expansive emotional experience is essential to a vital and expressive life—and certainly a life that is available for connection with another living being.

But what we’re seeking is adaptability not control. A state of being where our brain and body are responding to the reality of the moment, and meeting that in a way that connects us with our agency and voice.  Where we can advocate for ourselves, even in the midst of uncomfortability (yes, you are correct, that is a made up word and you are welcome).

If we rest in the place of true adaptability, we understand emotional “regulation” not to be controlling how we feel, but choosing how we respond. And choosing how we respond involves developing our capacity for holding our experience without it pulling us into a unhelpful place.

What does it mean to be pulled into an unhelpful place?

Well, thought patterns can pull us into sympathetic or fight flight cycles. So, for the sake of example, let’s say that you are in the midst of an emotional experience that is causing a lot of physical sensations.

On the face of it, sensation is the language of emotion. It’s essentially benign. But if you associate that physical experience with something alarming, you can create a fight flight experience, even if the context of the situation (the reality of the moment) doesn’t warrant it.

This space—between the physical experience of the emotion and the action that follows—is where choice lives.

The more we can hold the physicality of the our emotions the greater our choices become, and the more intentionally we can live and be in the world.

So let’s let go of regulation and consider what it means to be adaptable instead.

xx Jane

PS. If you’re looking for help with that whole business of capacity and not pulling yourself into unhelpful places, JoyRide is absolutely the place for you. The intro pathway, Meeting The Reality Of The Moment (A 28 Day Challenge), deals with exactly that!

Maybe your body doesn’t want what your exercise plan wants.

It’s interesting how we have intellectualized our movement needs, often in opposition to what it is our body is telling us. Movement, exercise, can so easily (and has in many instances) become an intellectual pursuit. We form identities around our activities- I am a runner, I’m a swimmer, I am a gym go-er- and become driven by aesthetic outcomes without allowing our movement choices to match our body’s needs on any given day.

I might have decided in advance that I’m going to run five times a week, but this body of mine might be communicating a different set of desires, a need for something other than those pre-decided ideas.

Something we might not hear because we’ve become so disconnected– or choose not to hear because of our attachment and addiction to the exercise cycles that help us feed into our illusions of control.

Adaptive, responsive, regulated nervous system desire and thrive on novelty, of the type experienced in movement.

A body who has been through the experience of fight flight, but who has been forced to sit all day, at a desk job or similar, will need a burst of high activity to burn off the physiological reality still coursing through their system.

A body in collapse or shut down needs support and movement that is gentle, consistent and functional.

We could be any of these on any given day. In the ideal world, movement matches the needs of the body, it’s not something pre-decided. It’s another way of honouring what is and moving from that place.

I woke up yesterday to a light that only exists in the creeping beginnings of summer.

Bright; shimmering; a whiteness giving way to blue. The sound everywhere: skylarks.

This is us, this seasonal change. The way that we, for a while, are winter people, becoming spring people, becoming summer people. An endless trail of becoming paired with an endless letting go, no matter how tightly we hold on.

I read a post yesterday that speaks to the difficulties of letting go. On being stuck in endless loops; the internal conversations of ‘why is this so hard?’

I talk of letting go a lot in my work. In reality, this body, this nervous system, is masterful at letting go. It is always striving, moving towards a place that allows it to be new, constantly seeking to create a version of itself that is a perfect match for the present moment.

This is what is means to have a nervous system that is adaptable; a constant newness, a constant effort to sense into right now and to respond appropriately to it.

If this is not the case; if we find ourselves instead on spiralling loops or playing out patterns again and again that aren’t serving us, then we have to consider two main arenas:

1. How we can support the body to release the stuck-ness and move beyond the reflex patterns it has fallen into
2. How we can better understand how the current state of being is serving us and what the invitation is we are being called towards.

In the case of the body, we need to support nervous system health through sensing and novel movement work. Sensing, to the brain, is the language of safety. Our sensory system provides the information it needs to be able to be regulated, adaptable and responsive.

When we activate our sensory system in a moment where we recognise we are looping round in a state of being that is more about the past than it is about right now, sensing is a way of communicating to the brain “come back to the present, and notice what is here.”

The more we do this, the more adept we become at not only recognising patterns and interrupting them, but putting ourselves back in the position of choice: how do we want to respond here?

From the point of view of our mind, it’s easy to get pulled into a self-defeating conversation in relation to the pattern. Instead, I’m interested in asking, what’s the invitation here? What am I being called towards, and what is getting in the way?

Considering the invitation not only directs your focus forward, but allows you to get more intimate with the resistance. In this way, we do not flee, and we do not rally our defences. We allow for a well-felt resistance and to potentially sit with the uncomfortablity of the invitation.

It’s about re-establishing agency and choice.

What does my body need here to allow for something different?

And,

what is the invitation?

Devotion.

I was thinking this morning what a beautiful word that is. How the actual sound of it captures a tenderness that speaks to the heart of what it means.

This last couple of weeks, I’ve been peeling away, shedding layers of things not worthy of devotion; on what nourishes, on what brings joy.

On being truthful with myself on what that is, and allowing myself to move towards it.

We are approaching the time of year where naturally the conversation turns to goals; closing in on our ambition, on what it is we want to do.

I wonder instead if a better question is, to what do we want to be devoted?

To what, if we knew there were no guarantees of success, if we weren’t guaranteed an outcome, would we give our heart to anyway?

I feel like these are better questions.

We need space inside us for all that which is deserving of devotion. To sit with it, allow it to infuse us. This is how we keep carrying a light, when everything around is less than bright.

As Mary Oliver says, joy is not made to be a crumb.

“I’m in a funk today, wondering what I really want”

I plucked these words out of a post in my JoyRide group and have been marinating on them the last little while. It’s something that we tell ourselves a lot, this sort of thing, but in my experience, it’s very rarely true.

If we are really honest with ourselves; if we remove the gallivanting perfection gremlins and the righteous overtures of the itty bitty sh*tty committee (you know, the little voices in your head that tell you what you can and can’t do), I think we absolutely *do* know what we want, it’s just that we think we can’t have it, that we shouldn’t want it, or we aren’t quite sure how to make it happen, which are entirely different questions.

But let’s suppose you are right and you absolute have no idea what you want, here are some firelighter thoughts to kick start your proverbial kindling…

1. Bets on your really, really tired. I know this is boring to talk about but honestly, if we want an injection to invoke a lack of curiosity, it’s exhaustion. And believe you me, most people that I have the honour of working with could use a good sleep. If the idea of having a month off just to rest is one of the sexiest things you can think of, you are ticking this box.

No tired person knows what they want because the only thing they want is for no one to bother them and to go to bed. Which means ‘sleep’ needs to be high up (erm, the first thing) on your list.

2. You’re not being entirely honest with yourself. Not knowing what you want is rare. If you drop down to the depths of your magical insides, I have a sneaky suspicion you really do know.

Is it that you *don’t know* or is that *thing* (gosh, we’re being cryptic here) is prefaced by “I can’t” or “I shouldn’t”? Because those, my friends, are you good mates (jokes. They aren’t your mates at all) talking and honestly? They are super boring.

So even if you don’t act on it yet, it’s a profound act of self-care to tell yourself the truth about what you want. You don’t have to share it- but at least be honest with yourself.

3. Follow the threads that spark conversations in your mind of “oh that’s cool!” or “I would love to do that!”. Those are your glimmers. It doesn’t mean that they are necessarily your life calling, but they alert you to your interests with an energy that flows from the inside out, rather than the outside in. This is the opposite of push energy- the one that we reserve for grinding and is ultimately exhausting.

This is the energy that is the beginning of what we understand as flow.

4. It may be that your stuck in indecision and/ or judging the outcomes of the actions you do take towards what you want (or have taken in the past) harshly. Both pull the brain into a sympathetic cycle and see us spin round on ourselves. Choose something and act on it. We need tangible experience to see what to do next.

Don’t judge yourself with good or bad, right or wrong. It makes no sense to your brain, who is just considering how far the action took them from their original intention. Keep going. Let yourself learn.

And if you still don’t know what you want, take a moment to get intimate with the resistance. What really is it I’m feeling here? Fear? Sadness? Frustration? Get specific.

There’s a sparkle in there somewhere, even if we can’t quite see it yet.

If you let yourself momentarily step back, the internet becomes a place where moment by moment, you can watch universes unfold. Without the moderating influence of physical presence, conversations between humans are simmered down to their concentrate, the purest form of whatever emotional experience happens to be present.

Whilst it’s easy to see how this gives rise to the worst of human nature, I like to think that it also creates the possibility for us the practice the best of it. While our lack of face to face-ness might cause us to feel free to unleash the less desirable parts of ourselves, is it possible this could instead serve as a pause?

That if we are mindful enough, and interested enough, we have the time to observe our reflexive reactions to what is being offered and take some time to reply from a more considered place.

What we choose to magnify lies with us.

Along with the potential for reactivity, the internet (should we allow it) also creates a platform for a heightened state of ‘othering’. Our most primal sense of belonging and safety hinges on our connection to ‘our group’, and so it’s tempting- it may even feel like the most natural thing to do- to join conversations that generalize and create further division in the communities that we’re a part, even under the guise of ethical conduct.

After all, if you ask one person on one side and a person on the other, both will believe themselves to be behaving ethically. How do we judge who is ‘right’?

Although an avid proponent of horsemanship of the type that holds true to the sentience and autonomy of the horse, I have found myself unfollowing pages where the coach or trainer in question has positioned themselves from the pulpit of certainty, delivered with a dressing of righteousness, despite the fact the place that we are both coming from may fundamentally align.

It makes me physically weary.

I’m learning to listen to the little ‘ding ding ding’ alarm inside my body that sits beyond language but alerts me to the fact that somethings off. I read the charismatic, I’m-advocating-for-the-horse words of some and then have conversation with students they have worked with only to find as a part of the coach-student relationship they are constantly berated.

“That’s bullying,” I might say, only to have them respond with “yes, probably, but he seems to really know what he is talking about”. As though the latter cancels the former out. As though true compassion can be selectively applied.

I am a supporter and proponent of activism and action. If you see injustice, speak up. If you understand a system is oppressive, we have a responsibility to do what we can to alleviate harm. Anger is an important activating agent in the same way a fever rises in the body to protect us from forces that seek to weaken vitality.

But amid our anger and concern, we have to make sure we are holding ourselves to the same standard we are expecting of others; to require of ourselves the same consistent fairmindedness and openness to change we are requesting of someone else.

To not elevate ourselves to the position of “enlightened” and the “others” as “somewhere down there”.

One of the most useful techniques I have learned to distinguish between the righteous and the motivating is the flip the words around and read it ‘from the other side’. If instead of listening to these words as a supporter I read them as someone to whom they are directed how does that leave me feeling?

Am I compelled towards opening or closing?

Do I feel like entering conversation or do I now feel quite defensive?

A good check-in to ensure that my intention is one of dialogue and of change, rather than affirming a state of being rooted in ego-inflation and performative ‘right-ness’.

I’ve been thinking an unreasonable amount this week about crying. About what it means to cry. What it reveals, what it allows.

One of my horses, Saffy, holds the enviable belief that she is completely free to express whatever she thinks. Of course, I can’t fully know that this is true- all our thoughts about our equine friends are only possibilities after all- but I watch her move with her herd, experience her as we play together in the arena and around the farm and I trust her to tell me what she thinks.

‘One of the easiest, hardest and best things about Saffy’, I recently remarked, ‘is that she wears her heart on her sleeve. I know exactly what she’s thinking about something the moment that she thinks it.’

Easiest because she shows me what she needs.

Hardest because sometimes I’m not exactly sure how to meet that need.

Best because our relationship is honest. When it’s ‘right’, I know it to be true, know this is a good place from which we can proceed.

In other words, Saffy is clear on what she likes and what she doesn’t and will show that in both extroverted and expressive ways.

If Saffy were a human, I imagine she would have most excellent boundaries (and occasionally overdo it); that she would sometimes feel anxious and confused (and let you know); that she would express an anger that she doesn’t seek to hold onto.

And I imagine that Saffy would be quick to cry.

Which seems like an odd thing to say but this is why.

Crying is often part of our physical expression of need. Fragmented truths appearing as tears, doing their best to find cohesive form. I’ve noticed that my willingness and free-ness to cry as an adult corresponds with my willingness and free-ness to be honest. To reveal something about myself, in that moment, that I require.

That the times when I feel unwilling to let myself cry when the urgency of tears is present corresponds with the need to present a version of myself that I believe is required in that moment; a version that is usually at odds with the deeper parts of myself, that results in a physical pressure.

As I, myself, have become more comfortable with crying, I am proportionately comfortable with the tears of others. In fact, I welcome them. A willingness to cry to me communicates the movement from a platform of truth.

And just like with Saffy, truthful conversations are a relief. The easiest, hardest and best part of a relationship.

Crying reveals need. To need, and to express those needs, is profoundly human.

To seek to meet them the essence of connection.

There’s a point in my day when I grab my sketchbook and my pens, and I disappear. I love to nature journal, to observe and channel thoughts beyond words, to learn to truly pay attention to what’s around me.

There’s a technique I learned from a man called John Muir Laws, who is somewhat of a pillar in the world of nature observation. It’s called a String Safari, and it goes like this:

You grab a piece of cord or string, about 2- 3 metres long. You take yourself outside and you place it on the ground, in a circle around you.

The area inside your string is the place that you observe. It’s a way of reducing overwhelm, of breaking the ice as far as knowing where to get started and of tuning in to your immediate surroundings. Then you sketch, you record, or you write, whatever takes your fancy.

Obviously, this technique is meant for those of us interested in sketching the outside, but I’ve drawn on this in a variety of different ways.

We can all, metaphorically speaking, take our piece of string and throw it around ourselves (or perhaps ourselves and our horses) in a big circle as a way of bringing ourselves back. Create for ourselves an imaginary and yet clearly defined line.

What can you see, touch and hear within your most immediate space?

What’s the next best half step you can take from this place?

An emotional string safari for the moments when we find ourselves paralyzed by the big picture, or unsure where to start or what to do next.

—–

Below is some sketches from my journal- Tīeke is not something I have seen on a string safari but the closest photo of my sketchbook I had to hand

There’s a track that winds up past the greenhouse and then cuts through a gathering of Kānuka trees to finally finish at the paddock where I keep the horses. It’s rocky and stony, and now a patchwork quilt of puddles, a result of spring rain that’s been testing the edges of my patience.

In this moment, the sun is shining, and for that I’m very grateful. I have a retreat coming up in the next few days (the first one that I’ve ever held at home) and my friend is here, which means I am taking the weather personally, and spending much of my time explaining that it’s “not usually like this”.

That rain. This wind. This level of changeability.

I am leading my baby pony Ada, and we are out in front. Having her next to me this far away from her home paddock is a luxury. I am conscious that her limits for stretching further away from her friends are not the same as her older brothers, and so to be here with her now means we have company. That someone else is with us, which is not usually the case.

I pause for a moment, looking back. I stroke Ada’s still-downy, fluffy neck. And I am struck.

Ever since I was young, I’ve had a habit of taking photos with my mind. I can’t tell you where it’s come from, I just know that if I tell myself to remember this key moment, it does so. An imprint is created.

In this way, many friends, human and non-human, some with me and some since passed are carried with me, etched in behind my eyelids and my mind.

I looked and saw my dearest friend walking with one of the horses of my heart behind us on the track. I saw them in slow motion. She looked happy and so did he.

I admired him in that way we do when we are struck by the essence of someone. His mane down around his shoulders, his gaze view finding. His body purposeful and well.

And my friend, who had travelled all this way, her big heart shining all around her, was now touching, holding the horse I had told her of many times, in the place- my place- that I had spoken of endless times as well.

We can love things for ourselves and alone and that undoubtedly holds a certain beauty.

But to hand over the lead rope of your horse is often the closest thing we have to handing over our heart.

And that creates a joy that is not doubled, but instead forms its own equation that I have neither the numbers nor the skill level to count.

How do you hold your own hand, and guide your body out of collapse?

It’s a difficult thing, to shift oneself from the murky confines of a body in shut down or collapse. Gravity feels heavier. Motivation feels illusive. Possibility feels more distant.

And yet despite this, the body strives and moves in the same way that every other body does; towards vitality, towards hopefulness, towards light.

This is the basic striving of every body, regardless of whether or not we feel it.

Regardless of whether our current state of being allows us to feel that this is true.

Every body is making movements, in whatever way is possible, towards wellness. We all want to look towards the sun and see ourselves reflected back.

So why, if we find ourselves filled with desire to embody a more active state of being, is it so hard to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and go?

Why, when we understand ourselves to be in a state of collapse is it so hard to ‘un-collapse”?

Let’s think of it this way:

Two priorities of the brain that is ‘stuck’ in a place of nervous system collapse (we could also call this conservation of energy mode) is to hibernate and to hoard.

We enter a place of collapse when the active modes of fight or flight are, for whatever reason, not an option, and our brain clicks us into ‘standby mode’, partly as a protection to shelter us from the difficulty we are facing in that moment, and partly as an effort to keep us around in this world for as long as possible with as little energy expenditure on our part as possible.

Remember, in a survival situation, collapse or shut down is a benevolent offering of the body to shelter us from the experience of hurt or harm. Our senses are turned way down so we are no longer feeling into the spaces around us, and we go, literally and metaphorically, into ‘our own little world’.

We are paying much more attention to the inside of us than the outside of us.

The challenge is, when this response becomes maladaptive (and what I mean by maladaptive is that it’s no longer an accurate response to what’s happening to us but instead is a past response that keeps making itself known in the present) it’s very challenging to pull ourselves out of, for the simple reason that the brain is telling the body:

Do not move.

Hold onto your resources it tells us, assuming that we aren’t able to fulfil our basic needs.

Don’t expend energy, it continues, assuming that it’s necessary for us to be stuck on standby.

‘Keep still, stay low, hunker down.’

A body that’s in shutdown chants these words as mantra all day long.

To come out of a place of shut down, we have to counter the requests of our body.

At first, it might appear that we are battling with ourselves, but this is not strictly true. What we are doing is using discernment. We are committing ourselves to our intellect, which in this case we need to lead the body.

Our intellect knows that to lead a body out of shutdown, we need to activate our senses. To do this, we need to move.

We know that to move too vigorously or to energetically will drive the system deeper into collapse and create an auto-immune response.

No— we need gentle, functional movement. And we need it regularly.

Our intellect knows that we aren’t going to feel like this. That it will be hard. So, we must be smart.

We need routine, a schedule.

We need ways of supporting ourselves back.

We need ways of attaching ourself to something bigger than this moment.

Know that coming out of collapse requires you be strategic.

Know that coming out of collapse will mean, in some moments, acting in opposition to what you feel.

Know that it is not an overnight gig, but in the same breath that it’s worth it and it’s possible.

As a coach with a nervous system specialism, this is one of the most challenging aspects of my work- working with someone in collapse. Asking a body that in this place to meet me half-way.

Telling a body that is in a place of inaction that you are going to have to train yourself to act.

Again, worth it, possible, doable (and I’m here if you have questions or need some help).

There are ways to both lead and be led out.

This weekend, I woke to rain. Big, sobbing drops of rain that spilled like lakes on landing. The path up to my office is an uprising of green, leaves licking your cheeks, flowers caressing your hair as you walk up. I arrive as spider web destroyer, the eight limbed developers having just clocked off from night shift, my walking unintentially destroying the foundations.

I remarked to my husband that it’s impossible to walk from house to office and through the native jungle without getting drenched.

‘I remember planting those trees a few years back’, he remarked, ‘hoping they would grow into a tunnel.’

Life prevails, it turns out. There is always a beyond.

These last few mornings when I have sat down to write, I’ve had trouble getting words out. I feel like I should be…. Something different. Something other than I am right now.

Perhaps more upbeat. Perhaps more inspiring. Perhaps more instructional.

Perhaps more, perhaps more, perhaps more.

I don’t have much horsey news of my own to report because my horsey crew have not been getting a lot of airtime. Tis not their fault, nor really is it mine.

They are loved and hugged and hayed, albeit slightly wet and muddy.

I have felt myself gain momentum only to have it lost again.

Life lately has been quite lifey. A run of illnesses. The demands of parenting and caregiving, which I have spoken of before. The reality of business, which like all businesses, have their seasons. Weather scuppering plans. It can be all quite boring to talk about, does not necessarily make for uplifting words or prose, and yet that doesn’t make it less true.

And yet this is what it means to have a life with horses.

Life with means the ups and downs, the periods where things all go to plan, and equally the times when they very much don’t.

It’s a delicate thing to hold a sense of possibility for yourself, hold a sense of the beyond whilst not letting yourself be consumed by ‘over there’. Whilst not letting yourself be consumed by the pressure of the things you aren’t currently and think you should be.

Being consumed by ‘over there’ is when comparison creeps in. Being consumed by ‘over there’ creates the illusion of ‘not enough-ness’ in this moment, right here.

I wonder if we have confused allowing ourselves to be swallowed, enveloped by the now with a darkness we should avoid, a place we fear to go that we never may return from?

Light seeking is necessary but should not rise from a compulsion. We have polarised light and dark into the same narrative the span of the reactive world is falling into. All good, all bad, no room for nuance.

Life, instead, is always a series of in-betweens. There is so much shading all around the edges.

I am noticing, as I adventure through this time, how so many of us are tip-toeing on the cusp. Of different life stages. Of down times and up times. Of world events around us creating an upheaval.

And that perhaps, in addition to reaching for the glimmers, we need spaces for the shadows too. Places of gentle fermentation to notice what needs to be explored, what needs to be allowed, what needs to be shed.

With the remembrance that there is always a beyond.

A contemplation on navigating murky spaces.

An adaptable nervous system is a nervous system that has capacity to hold the result of many experiences at the same time.

Capacity also allows for the ability to hold many truths, and to be in conversation with these truths rather than consumed by them.

Being consumed by a single truth leads to dogmatic opinion, and rigid and inflexible thinking.

A lack of capacity reflects in an inability to release your own position, in the knowledge that it is always available for you to return to, whilst allowing for another point of view to be held.

Capacity and nervous system adaptability is what allows for dialogue in every sense of the word. To dialogue with our own emotions. To dialogue with different parts of ourselves. To dialogue with each other without seeking to cancel out, override or overpower.

Capacity is being able to hold a sense of embodied dignity in the midst of challenge and difficulty and to offer that to each other also.

Pictured is a fluffy Baby Ada who carries a certain peacefulness inside her.

If you’ve ever worried about what other people think, struggled with negative feedback, or being on receiving end of opinions that feel a little wonky, here is an excellent practice for you.

Pick your favourite book. The book that you clutched close to your chest when you read a page that took your breath away.

A book that made you wonder how someone could write such incredible things, be so masterful with words

A book that made you think, ‘I think this book just changed my life.’

Then:

Go on GoodReads. Search for that same book. And look at the reviews.

Let your eyes float over things such as:

“Well, there’s a few hours of my life I’ll never get back”

or

“What is this author on?! It felt like she was going somewhere and then she lost me. Seems quite self-absorbed”

or

“What a load of drivel”

And you stand, with your book in hand, wondering if you had, indeed, read the same book because surely, SURELY, they can’t have read what you read.

It just can’t be.

But then you smile and hold the book even closer

and realise that some people are your people

and some people aren’t your people

and thank goodness that person took the time to write those words and share them, because in your universe, they landed like

the

first

blossom

in

spring.

They were heaven.

The delicious risk we take with using our voice.

That it’s not for everyone, but it is for someone.

And that’s really the whole point.

xx Jane

Bonus extra: Here’s a bird I drew today instead of being on social media. Whenever I’m drawn into random conversations on the socials, I sketch instead.

I can’t recommend it more.

When is it *not* right to listen to our body? When should we look to the intellect instead?

We are at the beginning of October, the wheel moving towards the end of the year, and in JoyRide, we are speaking of overwhelm. We are speaking of that amorphic fog that so easily consumes us, that removes us from recognizing what action we should take, or beyond that what actions are available to us at all.

We are speaking of caregiving, and time, and tiredness. Of stuckness and stickiness. Of desire to be with our horses, and a present that currently might keep us far away from that place.

We are speaking of real life. The one that is not easily spoken to. The one with the unsure questions, and the one with the not-straightforward answers.

The one that’s often kept hidden away.

And within that, we are speaking of the tensions that we feel, the understandings that we don’t follow through on.

That, perhaps, we *know* on some level ‘what to do’ and yet our body communicates to us something different.

We know how to look after ourselves. We know that movement is necessary. We know, we know, we know and yet our body does not conspire with us.

We know, we know, we know, but we don’t *do*.

What do we listen to? Our body, who tells us it’s tired, not to move, not today? Or our mind pulling us in a different direction? How to reconcile the different parts?

And the answer is, as all good answers go…. It depends.

We are experiencing a cultural shift, where the wisdom of the body is being elevated as a source of knowing, and this is of course true. But wisdom is not always what is being communicated.

Sometimes, what our body is expressing is patterns.

Sometimes, it’s expressing a nervous system stuck in shut down and collapse, where what ‘feels’ right in the moment is not the most healthful option overall.

We have to use discernment, a delicate and tender interplay between bodily communication and the insight of our intellect to decide the right way forward; a balance between honoring the moment and moving towards a bigger sense of possibility available to us.

A skill, like anything else, that is learned.

There are times when exhaustion is present, or circumstances around us are untenable. Where the body is communicating a very real reality, and it is not the inside of us, but the outside of us that needs to change.

There are times when the body’s dominant expression is one of collapse or conservation of energy mode, an expression that is no longer matching its present reality. In other words, the body is ‘stuck’ on a channel from the past. In these situations, we have to find a gentle way between enough activity, enough sensory input to allow the nervous system to change, without over-burdening a system that’s already treading water.

This is hard. This IS willpower. This is making choices for yourself that goes against what your body is expressing. Choosing to listen to a different part of yourself.

There are times when lethargy might be present that is the result of lack of activity. It presents the same way as tiredness, and yet we find movement increases energy instead of depleting it.

It all depends. On the person in question. On the specific set of circumstances.

An ongoing process of ever-increasing discernment.

It’s a tender, imperfect thing to write about beginnings when so many are facing new beginnings in ways that seem unfathomable. Where homes have been lost, or worse still- loved ones. Through wind and rain or war. Perhaps all of them together.

Beginning, and beginning and beginning again is something we collectively struggle with.

Especially when beginning again is not something we have chosen.

Especially when beginning again is being asked of a body already running on empty.

Where to begin, how to begin, what to begin with.

What does beginning even look like, we might just ask ourselves?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I told myself that this past weekend marked the return to a regular horsing schedule. This last month, I’ve struggled to find regular horsing time. The moment I went to pull on my boots, there was something else that was required.

A little person needing me in particular ways that are important right now, creating a domino effect of behind-ness on tasks that needed to get done, shading in the windows when I would normally be outside.

For me, writing and being with my horses help me make sense of myself and all my conspiring parts. They help me order the disorderly in my head, connect me back to my roots, allow spaces to reappear between cells.

Not riding and not writing- two things that often get consumed in the cracks of needs- produces a particular kind of tension on my insides. One of yearning and a certain tinge of heartbreak.

I’ve long since lost the desire to dismiss this as dramatic. I’ve long since recognised what I need and I’m happy to embrace it.

And yet, when the rhythm has been lost, there is a fog that can descend. One that convinces you that beginning involves a big-ness that requires something special for you to start.

A big wad of time. More space. The right weather. Everyone around you being happy.

But to begin does not require this.

Beginning is a pen and paper, and two minutes to write within the seams.

Beginning is not ‘I only have 20 minutes to be with my horse’. It’s ‘I have 20 minutes with my horse’.

And so, I begin again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In 2004, I was based in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami. I felt out of my depth, a young and privileged white girl in a sea of devastation I found hard to comprehend.

Unsure how to take care of the 30 or so children charged within my care, I bought paper and pencils and set them on the table.

A solution for circumstances that existed beyond words.

They drew for me. Bodies lodged up trees. Big angry waves. Boats, houses, cars, chopped in half.

I sat down, looked at the sky and said, I don’t know where to start.

I felt things looming, overwhelming.

You start by acknowledging where they’ve been, a voice inside me told me back.

And then you begin.

You begin with what’s possible and you make your way from there.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My husband placed an old glass milk bottle on the table and directed me inside.

I found this buried outside the stables, he told me, a natural terrarium. I think it’s from the 60’s.

I looked inside the bottle. A tiny tree fern grew inside. Roots flush against glass sides, bright green leaves fanning to its ceiling.

I marvelled.

Life finds a way, he smiled.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For those beginning and beginning and beginning again.

However life might find you.

Not all conditions of our lives, not all the things we are challenged by can be explained by ‘what happened to us’. In fact, there are many things that we experience that cannot be rationalized away. That have no logical framework. Many more that we will never understand.

This appears- magically, unsatisfyingly, perplexingly- to be a part of being human. Our person-shaped selves, attempting to find balance on a giant spinning rock, orbiting around a universe that neither starts nor ends.

All of it is wild and none of it makes sense.

A thought I find strangely comforting.

The moment that we connect with anything- horse, human, other-outside-of-ourselves- is brief.

In this way, the experience of connection is not an island that we land on, or a state that we reach where the work of connection is ‘done’, but a place of seeking and curiosity, where we transfer the focus outside of ourselves to better understand the needs, desires, and position of another.

If we understand connection from this place, it becomes an active process that is a much about the constant, tiny flow of disconnects as it is about the moment when the pieces fit together, and we recognize ourselves to be in harmony. When we recognize ourselves to be in flow.

In this way, the experience of connection is an active one, a verb, rather than a noun. As with balance- there is no such thing as balance, only balancing- there is no such thing as connected, only connecting. A series of consistent and persistent adjustments.

The moment you take it for granted it is lost.

If we consider connection in this way, we recognize that connection is as much about the space between parts as it is the parts themselves. That in order to connect, there must be an openness- of mind, of spirit, of body, of psyche- for the part seeking to connect to make their way too.

To be available for connection requires space. Landing pads free for those seeking to find you, open fields without clutter or debris that make it clear to the other that it’s possible to rest here.

When we seek to connect with our horses, we have to ask ourselves, how free are we for connection to find us?

Are we cluttering our mind with endless scrolling, clicking, participating in conversations that neither nourish nor benefit either side?

What allows for space to be created? What consumes it?

Perhaps the connection conversation starts far away from the arena. Perhaps it starts by choosing a book instead of a screen, a pencil and paper instead of a square that fills the spaces between cells leaving no room for anything else to find you.

Not all of the time, but some of the time at least.

If we are to create a start point where we are someone who is possible to connect with.

This morning, on Facebook Live, we had a discussion on anger; on the challenges that are commonly faced; on the shared experience that we all have of anger often living together with shame or guilt; on the common misconception that anger lives together with actions or expressions that are unwanted.

The original video goes for close to 20 minutes, so I picked out the pertinent points and edited them together here for you to watch if the conversation draws you.

What felt especially important to communicate is this:

No emotion exists together with an action.

They *can*- and this is what we are often challenged by; emotions and actions or expressions being coupled together that become reflexive- but there is no behavior, no set of actions intrinsic to any emotional state.

The art of being able to flow with emotional experience involves developing enough capacity to hold big energies + sensation within the edges of your skin combined with unpicking old patterns to position ourselves in the choice zone; where we can experience the emotion and act from that place in a way that maintains the dignity, integrity and compassion of everyone involved.

I’m so happy to chat about this- it’s a big part of what I do- so if you need support, reach out.

And if you are stuck in a cycle of things “just coming out” in ways you don’t want, know that:

1. You are human and it happens to all of us and

2. There are ways to pick it all apart. It’s not instant but it is most definitely figureoutable (I know from my own experience and the experience of those around me).

Love to your gentle selves, I hope this is helpful to someone who needs it 💛

This week, I have done little more with my horses than sit briefly with them while they have eaten their hay, and tended to them in ways that we would consider most basic.

I have not set foot in my arena, nor written words in my notebook that mark the start of a project I promised myself I would begin this week.

There are a host of flowers that have bloomed without my witnessing. Oddly shaped mushrooms that have completed a full life cycle without my noticing, until I glimpsed them just near the end.

There are things that have not got done that people are waiting on me for.

What I have done is been with my child as they navigate big feelings and ways of showing up in the world that sometimes exceeds what their body is able to manage.

I have allowed myself to flow with days broken up into fragments, snatching moments to get things done that allow my work, my family, my horses, my life to keep ticking, to keep going.

I’ve gathered with groups of women- so many glorious women- for the equinox; heard their stories, created reverence for the moment we are in, the coming of the new season (thank you, you are all a blessing).

I’ve grieved a little, let myself flow with what is, instead of what I’ve planned.

I’ve thought deeply on what is means to move with tenderness, what softness means as a practice. The ways we can hold each other and the ways in which we are held.

I’ve recognised my privilege to be able to put work down and pick my child up. The privilege of being needed and being able to meet that need.

I know I’m not alone in this. I’m so far from alone in this.

And yet.

And yet, I see little acknowledgement in the horse world, in wider conversations, that speaks to caregiving. That speaks to its reality.

And yet most of the women (with a handful of exceptions it is women I am in conversation with) that I work with, gather with, have caregiving roles that often extend them beyond what a human over the course of an average day should be asked to manage.

And yet they still show up. They are at the barn and the lessons and the clinics. They don’t ask first how to put down what they carry; instead their questions consider how it is they can hold all that they hold with more grace, with more love, with more ease.

And they are tired. So desperately tired.

I don’t know what this is, other than a post that says I see you.

It’s not going to be for everyone but those it is for will get it, will see themselves in it.

So many of us hold so much, silently, invisibly.

I hope you can meet yourself gently in the directions you are pulled.

I hope you are met gently in the spaces you show up.

And perhaps we need to create more of these spaces for each other

Work, play, ride your horse as you like,
in whatever style takes your fancy.
Too much pain has been caused
to keep believing
only one way is right.

With horses, there are no rules.

With only one condition:
that your horse’s life is better
for your presence
and your invitations.

We had an interesting question this week (well, they’re all interesting questions frankly!) in Stable Hours, our live Q&A in JoyRide. It was motivated by a passage from a book, where the author had listed fight, flight and appeasement as the sympathetic nervous system states. I was asked what my thoughts were on this, specifically where appeasement ‘existed’ within the nervous system understandings that I had.

Before we launch in, it’s important to say that context is (as always) everything. There are many people offering learning through the lens of nervous system understanding, but it can get confusing if you assume that the origin and focus of the information is coming from the same place. So, let’s start by me giving you a little background on the perspective that I am speaking from.

When I consider how the nervous system expresses through a human, I am considering it from the level of the body first. Much of my learning has oriented around how our posture, structure, and movement changes depending on the nervous system state we are in.

If I say ‘sympathetic nervous system’ I’m referring to the system the body activates when it perceives its survival to be in question.

For instance, the flight response has its own set of ‘structural indicators’; the way the body arranges itself to fulfil the function of maximal force and acceleration. This is true for all the survival nervous system states.

What I love about this is that it’s objective; it occurs regardless of what you feel or what your opinion is. It is part of our animal body function.

Considering the nervous system from an emotional perspective is infinitely more complicated and nuanced. The reason for this is emotions- their labels and experience- is subjective and individually dependent.

As part of my work, I recognise that there are certain behavioural tendencies that sit along-side particular sympathetic states, but tendencies are not certainties- they are ‘this is something we see a lot’ observations.

Survival patterns are a little different. They ways of being developed in childhood to get our needs me, and they can be entangled within sympathetic wiring.

But if I think of appeasement and labelling it as a sympathetic or fight flight expression, my answer is well, maybe.

And my questions back are:

– Is the person making the decision to appease through active choice?

– Or is this a pattern that plays out beyond conscious awareness, where the needs of another is consistently and persistently prioritised to detrimental effect?

The thing is (and this is just an example), I can choose to appease another as a means of ‘picking my battles’. I might recognise that the energy of speaking directly to and challenging the situation is not worth my time, and so I don’t.

Am I fight flight in this moment? Not at all.

Could I be? In a different situation, maybe.

If it was a pattern I just fell into, then perhaps yes.

Again, it relates back to agency and choice.

This is why, in part, I found so much sense and understanding in parsing apart the experience of survival and need as a physiological response (a physical, observable change in the body) as opposed to considering it through the lens of emotion and behaviour (much more subjective).

We’re infinitely fascinating, us humans.

At least ten summers ago, I had a lesson with someone whose name is one you’ll never hear and whose presence has not stamped the horse world in any way that shows up on social media or much less be rewarded financially.

I can’t tell you anything about that lesson. I can’t remember what we did or the specifics of what was told to me.

It’s like a clear space where I understood that something happened and yet what happened, I do not know.

The only thing I know is that lesson was transformative. And now, having spent a decade and a half teaching myself, I can tell you perhaps why.

There are teachers and coaches who attempt to bring you round to their way of thinking. The work is heady; it involves a lot of processing and thought.

And then, there are teaches and coaches whose work may not completely make sense in the moment, or perhaps you can’t recall what happened or what you worked on, or you felt yourself to be in the mid-zone between understanding and complete miscomprehension.

And then you leave, and you find that something’s changed.

This is the work that works *on* you. Below the level of conscious thought. Outside the realm of your awareness.

Your cells have changed, how you approach things have changed and you may not ever know why. You weren’t aware of the moment you crossed over.

This happens with our horses; what appears like a mess in the moment can be understanding working on and through them, only for clarity to appear, the answers to the questions known days or even weeks later.

Perhaps we refer to this as latent learning but I don’t think that’s quite right. The learning was always happening; it’s our awareness of it that is latent.

I wonder sometimes if, in our in-love-ness with questioning and analytical thought, that we don’t give enough credit to, enough celebration of, enough allowance for, the wisdom of the unconscious.

The reconfiguration of the energetic body that filters through to the physical.

Where we know that something happened, that we understood something to be true, but we can’t explain quite why.

Learning, after all, is more than a little bit magic.