Learning To Catch The Light: On Glimmers

A talk about a word you probably do not know: glimmer. Coined by clinician Deb Dana as the polyvagal counterpart to the trigger. A trigger is a tiny cue that flips your nervous system into threat. A glimmer is the opposite a tiny cue of safety, a half-second flicker that tells the system you are okay right now. And here is the thing: glimmers are everywhere. They are, if anything, more common than triggers. You have just been trained not to see them, because a nervous system tuned to catch danger filters out safety. Today, gently, we learn to catch them. Because attention shapes the brain, and every glimmer noticed turns the scanner, a hair’s width, toward home. Drawing on Deb Dana on glimmers, Stephen Porges on neuroception, Rick Hanson on neuroplasticity, and somatic practice.

Transcript

So welcome everyone. And thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. So let me start with a word. A small one. You almost certainly know it's opposite and you almost certainly don't know it. So the word is Glimmer. Glimmer. And now its opposite, Trigger. The one you know. Everyone knows that one. It's everywhere now. And for good reason. It named something real. A trigger is a cue, Often small, Sometimes tiny, That flips your nervous system into a state of threat. A tone of voice, A particular silence, A smell, Maybe a text that says we need to talk, That sound of a certain person's footsteps on the stairs. Something in the present moment that your body reads as danger and faster than thought braces, Defends and floods with the alarm. We have spent about a decade, Collectively, Learning to spot our triggers, Naming them, Tracking them, Working with them. And that's really good work. Real work. But, Maybe here's what almost nobody tells you. That if your nervous system can be tripped into threat by a tiny cue, Then it can also be tipped by an equally tiny cue in the opposite direction. Towards safety, Towards settle. Towards a small, Quiet flicker of. . . Oh, This is alright. And those queues have a name too. Actually a lovely one coined by a clinician named Deb Dana and she called them glimmers. A glimmer is a micro moment of safety. A tiny cue that, For just a second, Tells your nervous system that you're okay right now. The exact opposite of a trigger, Doing the exact opposite job. And here's the thing that got me when I first really sat with it. Glimmers are everywhere. They are, If anything, More common than triggers. They are happening around you and in you all day long. But you've just been trained not to see them. And today we are gently going to fix that because learning to catch them turns out to be one of the most quietly powerful things that you can do for a nervous system that's forgotten how to feed safe Let me tell you why you can't see them. Because it isn't a character flaw and it isn't your fault either. And there's a genuinely elegant bit of biology underneath it. So, Your nervous system has a job it does every second. Beneath all awareness and the scientist Stephen Forges named it Neuroception. Constant, Automatic scanning of your world and your body, Asking just one question. Are we safe? Or are we in danger? It's not something you do on purpose. It runs on its own faster than thought. Like anti-virus software that never closes. Now, Here's the important part. That scanner can be calibrated. And in most of us, It's been calibrated by our history. So, If you have lived through a lot of threat, And threat here does not mean something dramatic. It can just mean a childhood spent bracing, A long stretch of stress, A nervous system that had to stay on guard for years. Then your scanner gets tuned towards death. Danger. It gets very very good at spotting the threat. Faster, More sensitive, More thorough. Because the system that has been in danger learns that catching the threat early is survival. So it's actually very intelligent. Then there is a cost to this brilliant sensitivity also. And the cost is this. A scanner tuned to hunt for danger filters out safety. It has to. Because the tension is finite. So if your whole system is optimized to catch the one thing that might hurt you, You're looking for it all the time to feel safe, It will let a hundred small cues of okayness slip past unnoticed. Because from the scanner's point of view, Safety is not urgent. Safety won't kill you. Only danger will. So danger gets all the bandwidth. This is why you can walk through a genuinely lovely morning and register none of it. And then catch one slightly off facial expression and think about it for 16 hours. Your system is not broken. It's doing exactly what a threat-trained system is built to do. Catching the danger, Missing the light. Catching the danger, Missing the light. Which is a wonderful survival strategy and an absolutely miserable way to live if the war is actually over and nobody has told your nervous system yet. So the work, And this is real, This is not wishful thinking, Is recalibration. Gently teaching the scanner that it's allowed to notice safety too, Sometimes. And you do that not by arguing with it. Not by forcing positivity, Not by going on a retreat, But by repeatedly directing your attention to the cues of safety that are already here. Because here's the piece of neuroscience that makes all of this worth doing. Attention shapes the brain. What you repeatedly attend to, You strengthen. A nervous system that is regularly gently shown, Look, Safety, There it is, And there, And there, And there. It will slowly read you, It has to. The scanner recalibrates. So neuroception itself can shift over time towards safety. Not by pretending the danger isn't real, But by insisting the safety is real too, And it deserves noticing too. That's the whole science of it. I summarized it. Now let's actually do it. Because you can't recalibrate a nervous system with a lecture. You might have tried that already. You do it by catching glimmers. So let's go and catch some now. So hold this very lightly, This practice, Almost like a game. Because a grim, Effortful, I-must-find-safety-now approach is just the threat system running the search again. And that defeats the purpose. So, We are going glimmer hunting. Wherever you are. And the first thing to know is that glimmers are small. Microsafety. So if you're looking for a feeling, A big wash of blaze or you're expecting to see white light, That's not going to happen and you'll miss the glimmer entirely. Because the glimmer is not a feeling, It's a flicker. Half a second. Easy to miss if you're waiting for fireworks. So let's start with the simplest one there is, Right now. Take the smallest, Gentlest breath and let it out slowly. Just do that. And now do that again, The smallest, Gentlest breath, And then let it out slowly. And just notice. You can breathe. Air is available to you. Your body knows how to do this and it is doing it without your help. And that tiny noticing is a glimmer. The body being quietly competent. Nothing to fix. That's the whole thing. Did you feel how small it was? That's the scale we are working at. So let's find a few more. I'll guide you. But the point is that you'll be able to do this alone. Forever. Now wherever you are, Notice something you can see. And not something beautiful that you have to admire. Something, Something your eyes can rest on that is not unpleasant, Let's just say. Maybe the quality of light on the wall. Maybe there is a color in the room that you like. Shape of a cloud if you are outside. A plant, Maybe the curve of a coffee cup. Just let your eyes land on it. And let it be for one second. Pleasant. Not important, Just okay. And there another one. So you're doing it. Notice something you can hear that isn't a threat. Maybe a hum. A bird. A distant traffic. That means the world is going about its business without needing anything from you. And if there is silence where you are Notice the sounds are not there. The absence of alarm. Silence. When it's safe, Is itself a glimmer. Just notice that the sound or the silence or maybe my voice. So the nervous system reads quiet. And nothing coming as a small oil glare. Prevent. Now. . . Notice if there is one nearby. The presence of a living thing that's at ease. A pet asleep. A tree doing nothing but being a tree. Plants. Animals at rest. They broadcast safety. And a mammal nervous system picks it up. This is not woo-woo, This is co-regulation. We settle near settled things. And these are just some examples, Pointers that I've given you. Is just training yourself and your nervous system to see these very very small moments of micro moments of safety. It can be a sound which is not unpleasant. It can be a color, A shape, A thing in the room. It can be a pet. It can be anything. We settle near settled things. Now feel that. None of these things are big. And that's the whole point here. None of these things are big. You're not chasing joy. You are just catching. The small constant previously invisible evidence that in this actual moment Not in general, Not forever, Just now. You're okay. Now, Let's turn the same gentle awareness attention inwards, Because glimmers are not only out there in the world, Some of the best ones are in the body. And this is where a lot of people have never looked, Because if your inner landscape has felt mostly like tension and alarm, You might have learned at this stage to stop feeling it at all. Softly, Not hunting for what's wrong. We can all find what's wrong. That's the scanner's favorite game. Hunting for one small place that's neutral, Even faintly, Is what we are going to do. Maybe your hands are warm. Tune in. And that's a glimmer. Warmth in the body is one of the oldest safety signals there is. Maybe there is one part of you which is genuinely relaxed right now. Maybe your feet? Maybe your forehead. Maybe the back of your knees. Some quiet corner, The tension never reached. Find it. And rest your attention there for a second. Let the settled part be as real to you as the braced parts usually are. For some of you, Maybe it's the weight of your body being held. The simple fact of being supported. Gravity doing its steady, Reliable job. The ground not giving away. Your system reads supported, Held and not failing as safety at a level far below thought. So this noticing the inside of your own body without bracing has a name in my world. It's called introception. The sense of your own internal state. And it's one of the deepest skills in somatic work. Most people are strangers to their own insides. They can read a room, They can read a face, They can read everyone. And they go completely blank when you ask them what's happening in their own chest. And that's not criticism or judgment. We gently learn to feel our inner landscape, Slowly. And to notice the OK bits, Not only the alarm bits. And this is how you slowly become someone who can tell from the inside when they are safe. Which if you think about it is the whole thing. That's what a regulated nervous system actually is. Not one that never feels threat, But one that can also reliably feel safety and knows the difference. Let me be honest with you. Because I'd rather be useful than nice. This is not just think positive. I want to be really clear because on the surface it can sound like the same old wellness nonsense. Notice good things and count your blessings and good vibes. It is absolutely not that. And the difference is everything. Think positive asks you to override reality. Paste a nice thought over a nervous system that's screaming and then feel like a failure when it doesn't work. Well done. Glimmers ask nothing of that kind. We are not overriding anything. We are not denying the danger. We are not denying the pain. We are not denying your past. We are not denying the traumas. And we are not denying the hard thing you are living through right now. Because all of that is very real and completely allowed. We are insisting that safety is real too. Both things, The trigger and the glimmer, The threat and the okayness, They coexist in every moment and your scanner has just been showing you heavily edited version that leaves the safety out. We are not lying to the system. We are giving it the full picture. And the full picture happens to include a great deal more okayness than the thread's edit lets through. So if anyone accuses you of toxic positivity for looking at a nice bit of light on the wall, You can tell them with complete clinical confidence that you are recalibrating your neuroception through repeated intraceptive and extraceptive attention to the safety cues. And that will either impress them or they leave you alone. And they are both fine. And then there'll be days. Plenty of them. When you go looking for a glimmer, And the scanner is so turned up that you can't find one. That's not failure either. On those days. . . The glimmer might just be this. I noticed I couldn't find one and I was very gentle with myself about it. That really counts. Because that's the muscle working. And some days the only safety cue available is your own refusal to be cruel to yourself about a hard day. And that's plenty. There is something quietly beautiful underneath all of this. And if you want it and if you don't. The science stands on its own. So you can skip this part if you want to. For as long as there have been contemplatives, They've been pointing at more or less this. Presence, Gratitude and attention as a form of prayer. The instruction to notice the light on the water, The bread, The breath, The ordinary miracle you keep walking past. Every tradition has some version of pay attention. It's all right here. And what's rather wonderful is that the nervous system science has now, In its own dry language, Arrived at the same place mystics were sitting all along. What you attend to you become. Where attention goes, Safety can grow. So the contemplatives call this grace and Deb Dana calls it a glimmer and I don't think they've argued at all. So when you catch the light on the wall and let your system register the OK, You're doing something both utterly clinical and quietly sacred. You're returning a nervous system, Yes, And you're also doing the oldest spiritual practice there is, Being here, For the ordinary, Unremarkable, Luminous fact of your own life. So take whatever you like, Or both. Rest a while now. Not empty, Not striving, Just be here. With a small evidence all around you and within you that this moment is okay. You don't have to hold on to any glimmers. That's not how it works. You don't have to collect them either. Just let them land for half a second, Register and pass. That's the whole thing. Each tiny message to a tired scanner. You can stand down for a moment. Look, It's safe here. That's all. And each time you do it, You're building something. A nervous system that can find the light a little faster next time. And the time after that. There is so much more okayness around you than you were ever able to see and it was always there and thank yourself for learning to catch it. Now here is what I love about this. You will leave this recording and walk back into your actual life, Which still has its triggers, Its hard people, Its genuine difficulties. I can't take those away from you and I won't insult you by pretending to. But you're leaving with something you didn't have before. A pair of eyes for the other thing. The counter evidence. The glimmers that have been flickering past you unnoticed your whole life. And that you can now more and more catch. The steam of a cup. A dog's ridiculous joy at a ball. A stranger holding a door for you. The particular gold of late afternoon. Your own warm hands. A song from your childhood that you like. The first cool air after rain. They are not nothing. To a nervous system, Learning to feel safe again, These are everything. They are tiny, Constant, Freely given medicine that's been there the entire time. You've spent a long time through no fault of your own, Becoming an expert in danger. And you've gotten very good at catching the thing that might hurt you. That expertise kept you safe and you can keep it. Start now gently. On days that you can only. You get to train the other muscle too. To become slowly an expert in safety. Small OK moments. It won't happen all at once. The scanner has been tuned one way for a long time. Every glimmer that you catch. It's turning your dial towards home. And there we were. They were always there. So go on, Back into your day, Back into your night. Keep your eyes open, Not just for what might go wrong. The way you always have, But for the light. It's been trying to reach you the whole time. On that note, Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining. Namaste.