Sarah Peyton Talks About Transforming The Way We Relate To Ourselves

In this insightful conversation, Sarah Peyton shares both motivational and self-affirming lessons, and practical advice on how we can attune and improve the way we relate to ourselves. This talk is grounded in an understanding of the underlying brain functions.
Interviewer: Serge Prengel has been exploring creative ways to live with an embodied sense of meaning and purpose.

Transcript

So,

Sarah,

The audience of this podcast is people of the pause,

People who practice the pause in various ways,

Either meditation or nonviolent communication or focusing.

And so people who have a habit of practice of that kind of relationship with themselves.

So what is it that you would say to this audience?

Oh,

Thank you,

Serge.

It's really wonderful to be here,

First of all,

And it's wonderful to be in a group that's even got a focus of the pause in this world that is so pause-free most of the time.

So I'm very much appreciating even the title of the podcast that brings us together here.

The name of the book that I've written is called Your Resonant Self,

And it's an exploration,

A guided exploration of everything that we know about the way that the brain works in relationship with the self.

So the invitation that I'm bringing is twofold,

And one of the pieces of the invitation is to get to know our own brains.

There's something very sweet,

Especially for people who are taking pauses,

About knowing what the different voices are inside of our own beings,

What it is that we're listening to,

What we're listening for,

What happens when we have a meditation practice,

How it changes us.

And then secondly,

The other piece of the invitation is an invitation to accompany ourselves very deliberately and intentionally with the combination of precision and warmth that I like to use the word resonance for.

So when I'm thinking about the word resonance,

One of my favorite metaphors is the cello.

That when you have a cello that's being played and there's another cello that's sitting beside it,

The cello that's not being played is actually vibrating at the same tonal frequencies as the cello that's being played.

And the more we learn about the human body and the human brain,

The more we discover how exquisitely social we are,

How our bodies begin to attune to one another when we're safe,

When we have a sense that there's not going to be any unpredictable danger,

Physical danger coming at us,

And that if the people around us are to some degree both warm and capable of precise understanding.

And thirdly,

When we really have a sense that our voice matters,

There's this interesting thing that happens for human bodies where we pop into a state of being able to resonate with each other.

So I love that your audience is folks who have a mindfulness practice,

Folks who do practicing,

Folks who study nonviolent communication,

In part because all three of these practices are an invitation into the state of attunement.

And so,

Yeah,

I'm just wondering how you're doing with me.

So that's something very beautiful as you start talking about the underpinning of it,

Which is that instead of just thinking of listening in the way we're accustomed to,

But that reminder that there is an underlying way of the brain functioning and that paying attention to that might actually add another dimension to the experience.

And then in a way that transition of the mechanism is the analogy with the musical instruments and the way they resonate and not necessarily being the same and something about the music,

The vibrations,

Playing off of each other and that something happens and that being in an experience of noticing one's vibrations resonating with others' vibrations.

And you're inviting us to have that sense of the experience.

Yes,

The sense of the experience both interpersonally and intrapersonally,

Since two of the modalities that you mentioned are largely focused on internal experience.

How is it to be in relationship with the self?

And what creates a sense of self?

I think about the self often as a croissant.

And you have a connection with France,

Serge,

So many times when I speak in North America,

People do not understand the true,

Fabulous beauty of a croissant.

I love the idea of the self as a croissant,

You know,

That's very awesome.

Tell me more.

When you make a croissant,

You roll the dough out and you spread butter on the dough.

And then you fold the dough over and you roll it again and you spread more butter.

And each layer of butter creates that wonderful sort of differentiated layers of pastry that are a part of the flaky,

Rich,

Delicious croissant experience.

So I think about us as the dough,

That we have an experience,

That's the rolling out of the dough.

And then somebody else shares that experience in some way with us.

And that's the butter that's put on the dough.

And the reason I love this as an analogy is because when nobody shares experience with us,

We tend not to remember it.

It is the remembering together that helps us to create autobiographical memory.

And the gradual accumulation of remembered experiences,

Especially remembered delicious buttery experiences,

Creates a rich sense of self.

Whereas if there's nobody around to spread butter with us,

Then just like a croissant,

The dough just goes back into itself instead of creating those layers and layers of rich memory.

So the self in a way does not exist,

You know,

By itself,

But is fed by interaction.

Is fed by interaction.

And for some of us,

I think we even find that interaction in voices outside of our immediate family or our immediate community.

Sometimes we find those voices of accompaniment in books that we read.

We can be accompanied by Abraham Lincoln.

We can be accompanied by Jean-Paul Sartre.

We can be accompanied by Jane Austen.

Every time that we have the experience of having an experience and in some way it's reflected.

I've had this,

This has happened to me with Shostakovich music.

Sometimes I'm listening to Shostakovich and I go,

Oh my God,

This is what it feels like to think inside of my own brain.

Somehow his notes have captured what it is like to be me inside of my own experience.

So I believe in a way that the whole world of art and culture is a field of resonance.

So in a way,

To use the old cliché of the fall,

The tree falls and there's nobody to hear it,

Is the experience exists to the extent that it's resonated.

Yes.

Or it takes on more,

It starts to emerge,

It starts to become as it's resonated.

You're talking about the resonance with somebody else,

But it can also be the internal resonance.

Exactly.

How do we create that butter with ourselves?

And the practices of mindfulness and focusing and non-violent communication all provide different ways to put butter on our own dough in a way.

They all provide opportunities to turn toward the self with warmth and understanding.

Since the book has been published,

I've had some beautiful feedback and one piece of feedback that I received was from a Zen monk who had been practicing for 40 years and this person said that they have been white-knuckling it for 40 years.

They've been white-knuckling the experience of moving into the meditative state and that there's something so radically different about being invited in with gentleness and warmth.

That's very different from more austere approaches.

And so in that way,

What we're talking about is reorganizing the meaning of the experience,

That the practices we're talking about,

In a way,

We have different motivations for doing them and they can be more austere motivation,

They can be a sense of self-improvement,

They can be a sense of what is right.

But in a way,

As human beings,

The quality of the experience is the meaning we derive from it.

And what you're pointing out is that one way to organize our relationship to these practices is as a way to get the meaning of being more connected to ourselves and the more connected to ourselves implies a sense of warmth and a sense of wanting to understand and wanting to resonate.

Yes,

Yes,

And it can be such a dancing point for people,

The question of whether the self exists,

Whether it's just ego,

Whether the longing is almost for a kind of super personal transparency that there can be a longing to even transcend all of the experience of having dough and having butter on it.

There can be a different kind of longing,

But even if that is the longing,

There's a very interesting integrative thing that happens when warmth enters the picture.

And not just warmth,

But warmth and precision,

Precise self-understanding.

And quality of precision that you define with the word resonance as opposed to precision that would be intellectual precision.

So there's something with the instrument is that sense of resonating and it feels right.

That there's an emotional tone to experience and if we move towards ourself and say,

Of course,

Of course Sarah,

Of course you're having this experience,

Of course you're having this emotion and don't you love whatever the deep longing is that underlies the emotion because there are such moments.

I'm stopping you for a moment because I'm hearing just in the tone of your voice when you say,

Of course Sarah,

You're having that expression,

Of course Sarah,

It feels like very emblematic of the tone of voice,

Of the resonating.

And so it feels like you're demonstrating how to listen and respond to ourselves in a way that feels resonating.

Yes,

Yes,

Absolutely.

So before we started to go live with our interview,

Serge,

You had mentioned that you had a little bit of interest in the default mode network.

Yeah,

I think that there's something that's very interesting in the way you present the book is to define what it is that we're in relationship with when we're in relationship with ourselves.

And often,

Say self can be thought of as something that's very abstract and people think when talking about self it's a philosophical notion or we go into self or selves and parts and there's a nasty me and there's a part.

But there's also something else which is the underlying experience of what the brain does underneath and so maybe you want to talk a little bit about that.

Yes,

Just recently scientists have become more and more aware that what they used to consider the static of the human brain is actually a particular network of social tracking and mending and imagining and anticipating that they call the default mode network that I tend to call the default network.

Although they do not.

And in this network,

It's the movement of a current of brain energy which is basically electricity moving from various areas of the brain and the parts of the brain that hold the sense of self are located along the midline of the corpus callosum,

The midline of the two hemispheres coming together and what kind of joins them.

So in this,

Along this midline,

There are areas that give us a sense of who we are and they give us a sense that we exist.

So for those people in the audience who experience focusing,

This is the felt sense.

This is the felt sense of the body.

The felt sense of the body is a primary contributor to the sense of self and that's located in a particular point along the midline.

And then other parts that hold the sense of self include the memories that are autobiographical.

So the default node network connects the body sense of self with the autobiographical sense of self with the prefrontal cortex's capacity to anticipate and plan.

And then the default node network also includes the body and the brain that holds our emotional memory,

The amygdala.

So there's kind of a track that's run.

At every second that we are not externally focused,

Everybody's brain pops into this default network.

Now when this happens,

I like to think of like a tailor that is sitting and sewing the pieces of our life together because this is a,

The default network is what will suddenly pop in and remind you that you forgot to turn your taxes in for the last quarter or will suddenly begin to replay a distressing conversation or comment that you made some time ago or a way that you made a mistake in a social situation or a particular enjoyment of a moment with a child where there was sudden laughter and delight.

All of these experiences of what the brain does when it's quiet,

When it's non-directed,

Is a very interesting thing to begin to know and to touch a little bit.

Mindfulness actually activates a different network than the default network.

It actually,

Because it is intentional,

It has the capacity to turn off the default network.

So there are so many different ways to do mindfulness.

There are ways where you sit and you watch the default network and you name what's happening or there are ways where you're just deeply deepening your focus on one particular sensation,

The breath or some external vision piece.

So it really depends on what kind of mindfulness one is practicing,

What parts of the brain are strengthened.

And the more that we can do mindfulness practices that allow there to be a warmth for our own default network,

The more integrative our mindfulness practices will be.

So the experience of bringing warmth for self in as a part of any mindfulness experience can be very rich and interesting and change the essence of the practice to make it even more,

To make our practices serve us even more in the long term.

Because as warmth enters the picture,

We're activating the care circuits of the human brain which are the very circuits which contribute most to lifelong health and well-being and a sense of meaning and richness in our lives.

So I'll pause there for a moment and see how you are doing,

Sarah.

So we're talking about the sense that we have different modes in our brain,

Different circuits that corresponds to what we do.

And so when we're externally focused,

There are certain kinds of circuits that are going to come.

But when we're not,

Then comes this default mode network which is the way we are by default when we're internally focused.

And like all other parts of the brain,

The awareness we have of it or what it is,

Is it scanning,

Getting information from different parts of our body nervous system.

And that's what gives us our sense of self.

And as we pay attention to it in a mindfulness practice,

We're actually in a more externally turned approach because it's intentional,

But at the same time we're turning our attention or we can be turning our attention to what is happening internally.

And if we actually turn that intention in a warm,

Caring,

Positive way,

Then we have a different relationship with it which actually allows it to integrate more because it's done from that place of activating the more caring circuits of ourselves.

Yes.

And especially when we're beginning,

And this may not be something that's a point of difficulty for your audience,

But I often find that with the folks who come and listen to me,

One of the questions that comes up is the question,

Why is it so hard to do a mindfulness practice?

I've been trying for years to do mindfulness practice and it's like opening the door to hell when I stop and sit down and try to bring my attention to myself or to my breath or to a candle or to the movement of my fingers.

And it's very good to know,

Just in case there's anybody who listens to this podcast in the hopes of someday having a mindfulness practice but hasn't yet had one,

It's very good to know that trauma fragments the sense of self and it links the sense of self with the traumatic experience because trauma in and of itself is fraught with danger and pain and that makes it very memorable and we are the ones who are experiencing the trauma so it gets linked to the sense of self which means that it's almost like the default mode network itself gets fractured like a mirror that's been smashed and every edge of moving into a connection with the self of becoming quiet will take people back into trauma.

So if there's anybody out there who has had this experience of a door opening to hell as soon as they stop and try to breathe,

Please know that your experience makes sense and that the experience of beginning to heal the trauma makes mindfulness practices and focusing in non-violent communication all much easier,

Really lowers the difficulty level of moving toward having these kinds of incredibly beneficial practices.

So I always like to just let people know that if you're having that experience,

It totally makes sense.

And you know also there's a continuum that maybe in some way all of us to some degree or another experience this kind of difficulty and so that you know that difficulty what you're saying is to not take it as you know put more rigid discipline onto you but take it as a symptom that actually you know this is happening because there is this disorganization,

There is this chaos that's related to something that was not easy to digest and so you know a more loving and caring approach toward it is probably a better way to deal with it.

Yes,

Yes and that the essence of healing trauma is resonance.

There's some beautiful research from the Nepalese Civil War that demonstrates how important it is for us to be caught after difficult experiences and how much post-traumatic stress and this jagged experience of self is a result of loneliness.

In the Nepalese Civil War they conscripted boy soldiers and the boy soldiers went and they fought and they all had the same you know terrible wartime experiences of loss of their comrades and injury and seeing death and experiencing difficult deprivation and then they all went home to their villages and in the villages where the boys were received with warmth and welcome they had very low rates of PTSD and in the villages where the boys were scorned and excluded there were very high rates of PTSD which begins to show us that it's not the experience itself of the trauma that makes the trauma fragment our brains it's the experience of not being caught not being resonated with that makes our brains fracture in the aftermath of trauma.

So for those of us with fractured brains what we need to know is that we have not yet been accompanied with resonance in the experience of the trauma and that this is very doable.

And so where it's leading us is that sense that you know obviously to the extent that we may have even part of that then an orienting of the practice is really to pay more attention to the experience of resonance.

Yes and so you know we all or many of us are interested in some metrics of some form or another and metrics often take you know the form of how often you do it for how long but maybe another metric is to cultivate that sense of is this resonance or am I more or you know do you want to talk a little bit about the experience of resonance and how we can pay attention to it and notice it and encourage it.

Yes yes so one of the ways that I find lets me know most clearly whether or not I'm experiencing somebody understanding me with both warmth and precision is whether or not my body relaxes when I'm in that relational space and in relationship with myself to come not with the expectation that I will understand myself at first at a first guess.

It's very it's sort of a radical act to come to yourself the way you come to another that you are an infinite being and that the part of you that's bringing the resonant attention may not know the depths of the emotional experience that has been lived through that in fact you're very unlikely to know the full depth of your body's experience of whatever it is until you turn towards yourself with that warm inquiry.

So one of the ways that I work with this with myself is to find a body sensation that's alive and to turn toward that body sensation with the question if this body sensation had an emotional tone what would it be and then to kind of make a guess and if I make a guess that feels right for my body it will soften a little bit and sometimes it can be very surprising for example the research of Jack Panksepp shows that the sensations that are connected with fear and the sensations that are connected with love are identical from the inside.

So when people are experiencing anxiety they won't necessarily know whether it is fear or whether it is loneliness that is at the root of their anxious experience but if they turn toward the anxiety with this warm inquiry I wonder Sarah if you need acknowledgement of how lonely you have been and how does your body soften or relax or I wonder Sarah do you need acknowledgement for how frightened you have been and I feel two different relaxations in my body when I turn toward myself with those different inquiries about emotion.

The body is having experience all the time and it's sending that experience up through the brain stem and up into the limbic system and there are two amygdala one on each hemisphere and they have different zones for different emotions.

So the body's experience is coming up and it's coming into emotional zones in the brain and when we bring this inquiry is it sadness,

Is it loneliness,

Is it fear,

Are you angry,

Are you surprised,

Are you in shock,

Did a part of you in this experience even have a sense that you died.

When we bring these kinds of emotionally based inquiries to our self and to our body's experience we can feel different kinds of relaxation as different elements of the message that our body is sending us about what it has experienced is being sent up into the brain and the words that we use to describe that experience let our body know yes the message has been received yeah.

So very clearly when the message has been received there's that experience of the release,

The relaxing,

That energy coming down,

The tension melting so yeah very very clearly and what you demonstrated is in a way for there to be a resonance there has to be two people and so we're not just the person in the feeling and often the whole idea is you're in touch with your feelings,

I mean you're just in touch with your feelings but what you're pointing out is actually to be in touch with it there has to be that conversation with that other part of yourself that is going to not necessarily have access to the experience in fact it's healthy to start with having some doubts that you can really have access to it but you're the part that has that more curiosity and informed curiosity because it knows that oh this could be fear or it could be loneliness and it's going to be gently probing not as a way to interrogate but the gentle probe so that you have that sense of knowing more and helping the other part you know know itself more and say yeah yeah.

Exactly.

So I'll just take a moment and see if there's more here that seems important.

I think just to say that we can have different kinds of invitation to different ways that we can add warmth and warm inquiry to our practices one of the ways is to be in a warm relationship with the attention so in mindfulness practices we'll invite the attention to do something in particular and then when we invite the attention to go to a particular thing and it tries to go somewhere else there can often be a sense that we're not doing meditation right and if we begin to move into a warm relationship with our attention itself and acknowledge well of course you know here I'm inviting you attention to be on my breath but you're going to the pain in my lower back are you really do you really have a sense attention that the pain in the lower back is so much more important than the breath thank you for trying to alert me to the pain in my lower back would you be willing to come back to my breath is one way to bring warmth into the entity experience in relationship with your attention sometimes people have meditated for so long that they have a great ease in being in the meditative state and they almost kind of live in it if if that's the case then one of the things you can do is is bring a sense of warmth like add a layer of warmth to your meditative practice not just move into the meditative state but allow that capacity for focus intention and attention to bring almost like a glowing light of warmth all around your whole body that can move inward towards you and of course as we do in the meta practices just to be able to radiate outwards to the world as well so that you're finding yourself not just doing the meditation you've always done but adding this extra element of warm understanding for the self that surrounds us

Reviews

Thank you so much, one of the most resonating talks I have heard too, generous warm and insightful 😊🙏❤

Wow! Thank you, so much depth🙏🏽, love this. I will use this to revisit pain in my body and enquire with curiosity. ♥️

I listen to talks on insight timer everyday and this is absolutely one of the most informative and precise ones I've ever heard Thank you so much. I am interested in reading your book

very interesting exploration of science and mindfulness practice

Amazing insights very clearly explained. Thank you 😊

Superb, brilliant, and delivered with so much heart and spirit. I am so happy inside dad I am now in touch with this information.

Wow! Painful, but a path to integration, understanding, greater comfort - with acceptance.

Thank you so much for sharing these insights. This talk really resonated with me! There is so much that resonated that I will be listening to it again . Thank you 🙏

That was Amazing! Your language enabled me to understand so much of what you were saying. That gentle approach, the resonance you talked about resonated with me ☺️ when you spoke of memories and trauma and the body communication with oneself was an aha moment for me and the love care and attention after trauma is very important to me to know and share. The love and kindness to oneself and others is so important. Thank you for sharing 😊

wow sitting in mindfulness and asking what do you need (to yourself.)...that's it. it makes sense when the mind and body aren't too happy about sitting still - are you lonely are you sad are you angry etc. I cant wait to try it.

an amazingly deep and rich conversation of why and how we suffer and how mindfulness helps heal.

Wondrously insightful. Thank you for this.

Namaste

Wow! So much here. I was filled with insights and “aha” moments of understanding myself regarding resonance and trauma. I will be listening to this again and again for deeper understanding and application.

Very interesting and informative! Thank you!

New ideas to contemplate and apply to practice.

The guidance re listening to our bodies, noticing when they soften and what this means helped me make sense of something I knew, but had no words for. Thankyou 🙏🏻

Fantastic discussion about the mind, mindfulness and acknowledging our emotions. So helpful to me to hear at this time. Lots of info. I will have to listen again. Thank you for this gift. 💝

Thank you for your contribution to self healing; it feels like a missing link.

Thank you for this insightful talk. There's a lot to unpack here -- I I will be listening to this again.