From Survival To Connection With Our Basic Goodness

This guided somatic mindfulness practice supports your nervous system in settling out of hypervigilance and reconnecting with a sense of safety and basic goodness. Through breath, orienting to your environment, gentle movement, and reflective inquiry, you are invited to notice what helps your body feel supported right now.

The practice explores how survival responses can narrow our perception and how connection, warmth, and goodness become more accessible as your nervous system regulates. You are guided to sense the difference between activation and your deeper human capacity for care, connection, and steadiness. This is a practice of remembering what is already here beneath stress and fear and connecting with our own Being and inherent basic goodness.

Transcript

What is our actual condition of danger or safety?

So as we're thinking about safety,

It's important to notice that we're not in danger.

Our body right now,

In this moment,

Is not in danger.

In the world that we live in,

Violence can happen randomly.

It can happen to people that are just out doing their own life,

And all of a sudden something happens,

And it could be a car accident or something.

It could be other kinds of violence,

Which we're all pretty aware of.

And as we come into awareness of how am I doing with all of this that's going on,

Even though we can't assure our safety long-term,

And some of us are in more vulnerable positions than others,

Just our being here in the world is inherently vulnerable.

And so that creates this atmosphere in our nervous system that makes it pretty charged at times.

We become hypervigilant.

Even though we can't make the world safe completely,

We can't make each other safe to be with,

We can take these moments and half hours of practice where we really look into,

I could take a break from guarding myself and guarding my safety.

Practice connection and safety and being more accurate in our neuroception,

Our perception of right now,

Am I safe?

So we might look around and see,

And look around behind you as well and see,

Is there anything here that's going to leap out at you and hurt you?

Because that's what our nervous system might be telling us,

And in fact that's not true.

We're not very likely to be hurt right now in this moment.

If we were in that kind of physical danger right now,

We wouldn't be here doing a practice.

So let's take a few breaths.

Let's do a cyclic sighing breath for a moment.

So on the deep double inhale through the nose,

Do a long exhale like you're breathing out through a thin straw.

Let yourself kind of settle into this moment.

And as you're doing that,

You might also look around,

What are some cues of safety in your environment?

Well,

One of it is that we're here doing a practice.

Another is that we're not the only one here doing a practice of relaxation,

Of resilience and strength.

So what's happening in your body as you notice that?

Maybe move your body around a little as well.

What does it feel like right now in your body to be present in this way?

And there might be parts of your body that are frozen and parts of your body that are really agitated.

So sometimes the best thing to do in this moment is to do some shaking or to really move your body somehow,

Really get yourself.

I need to do something right now.

I'm jumping out of my skin.

So if you're in that kind of a situation,

Let yourself move.

Let yourself do what would be the most helpful for you.

So often we bring ourselves into this expectation of when I come to relax,

My body should soften right away.

My breath should become smooth and even and I should immediately have no thoughts in my mind.

And of course,

Our nervous system doesn't really work that way.

Sometimes we need to jump about a bit or shake or move or stretch or take some deeper breaths.

We could allow ourselves to support ourselves in whatever way is the most helpful.

So what is it that makes us feel safer in our life and in our world?

More specific is better when we're looking at the nervous system.

Nervous system tends to generalize a lot.

It's like,

Oh,

Somebody else in the world is not safe,

So I'm not either.

And then we go into a kind of a panic and we go into a yellow alert or red alert.

And that's not a sustainable way to live.

And often in our culture,

A lot of forces are trying to activate our nervous system to buy their product,

To help us feel better or watch their show on TV or whatever it is.

There's a lot of conditioning that we have that keeps alarming us.

A lot of the things we see on social media,

Unless we're very careful,

We can be really frightened.

And sometimes that looks like doom scrolling.

We just kind of go over and over these horrible things.

And that's one of the ways that the nervous system developed is to notice danger and notice these small cues of danger.

But in fact,

Until about the 1960s,

Which isn't that long ago,

I remember getting our first television when I was,

I think,

Seven years old.

And I'm 72 now,

So it's not that long ago.

But in the 60s,

A lot of people,

A lot of households had television.

And that was when we started to see video footage of things that were hard or difficult or violent.

And that was when our nervous systems,

Just in that little short period of time,

Compared to the development of our nervous system,

We don't have the capacity in our nervous system to recognize,

I'm seeing this danger,

But it's not happening to me and it's not happening right now.

It might've happened 50 years ago.

It might've happened in an imaginary scenario.

AI might've created something or it might've happened somewhere else.

Our nervous system developed to believe what we see and to respond immediately to what we see as though it's right here in our several hundred feet,

Right in our vicinity.

And that's how we developed.

So we need to shelter ourselves from some of what we see.

And we can use that quality of our brain to bring in more positive and to be more encouraging and more optimistic.

So let's move into that.

Keep coming back into your body.

This is a somatic inquiry.

Keep coming back into your body,

Noticing your breath.

And notice as we do these different practices,

What effect does that have?

So recognizing,

Okay,

Right now I'm looking around and I'm not seeing anything dangerous.

I could let my shoulders release.

I could let my gut relax.

I could take a breath.

So I wanted to explore a little bit around optimism and basic goodness.

Sometimes when we're in a period of something big has happened,

That's outrageously wrong,

That we feel really stirred up by that.

And we should.

I mean,

We don't want to be walking around.

Oh,

Everything's fine.

I don't care about anything.

That's not really being alive.

That's more like being in a freeze response probably.

But we also have the fight and flight responses in our body,

In our nervous system.

So we have these tendencies of protection.

And then we also have the things,

All of the different things that help us to feel connected and loved and help us come back into nervous system regulation.

One of the interesting things about some of the research from Dr.

Stephen Porges in the polyvagal system is that when we are in a survival response,

Fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

People pleasing,

We actually don't have access to a lot of what we would consider our human qualities like love and compassion,

Connection,

Caring about other people.

We are in a survival mode,

And that means we don't care about anybody else.

Perhaps we have our immediate family in that circle.

We get kind of cold or we get very fiery and hot,

And I don't care about them.

They need to die.

And so we get into these kind of extremes.

And when we come back into a more settled state,

We realize,

In fact,

We don't really feel like that at all.

We might feel like that in the moment.

It's an honest response to something that's happening.

But actually,

We know in our hearts that the way to solve that problem with that person individually and communally is not violence.

It's to come back into some kind of connection.

So how is it that you feel supported and connected in your world right now?

And let that come into your heart,

Into your mind.

So just as the nervous system and the brain can get very vivid in its imagination of all of these hard things,

The way it visualizes all these difficult things,

Let's use that quality.

What are some of the things,

The people,

The experiences that give you a warm heartedness,

That help you feel loved or supported?

Take a few breaths,

And let's really focus in on some of those for a little bit.

And some of them are very simple.

You know,

You're at the market and somebody smiles,

Or somebody lets you go ahead,

Or people are considerate about each other.

It's not everybody.

Sometimes people are barreling their way through and we get annoyed by that.

There's also a lot of people who are really considerate of each other.

So that's a small example.

We feel a little bit safer when we're considered in someone else's movements.

Someone lets us in in traffic instead of making us sit on the side.

And then of course,

There's all of the personal relationships.

When you see someone and their face lights up,

Or when you see them and your face lights up,

What does that feel like in your body?

Bring that visual or that remembering,

However that works in your mind,

Into your heart,

People who light your heart up.

Notice how that helps with your breath,

With relaxing your body.

Yes,

There are all kinds of hard things,

And there are these wonderful things too.

These experiences of,

I walk outside and I can smell the fresh air.

We can look up into the sky.

If you're somewhere with a window or if you're outside,

We notice the weather conditions.

It's a lot of things we don't notice,

Like gravity that holds us on the earth.

The earth is also a huge support to us.

And if you were to bring up memories perhaps of lying down on the earth or on a rock or laying on some water,

If you're swimming in a lake,

What are some of those connections that help you feel safe and like you belong?

Let's develop that in the next several minutes in our mind,

All the ways we feel safe and connected.

And if your mind goes into something more negative,

Just bring it back.

Right now,

We're focusing on people,

Experiences,

Connections that help us feel connected,

Warmhearted,

Loved.

And it's interesting to see the movement of the mind as we do this.

One of the things that often happens is that we put people who are suffering aside.

It's like,

Well,

You know,

They must have done something to deserve it,

Or I can't handle thinking about that.

So if we're noticing any of that kind of thinking or that kind of hard heartedness,

It's because a survival activation has happened.

We could recognize that,

Bring ourselves back into our good heartedness.

It's a natural response and it's not our full human response.

It often happens when we feel overwhelmed,

Like there's too much suffering,

We can't let it in.

We can allow ourselves to feel how we feel and to not follow those trains of thoughts or those tendencies either.

Come back into looking around,

Noticing your safety,

Maybe putting a hand on your heart,

Taking a few deep breaths.

Keep bringing in people,

Beings,

Experiences that are nourishing for you.

The way your cat purrs on your chest,

The way you feel at home,

Outdoors in a certain location.

One thing we might notice is that it takes a little time for our nervous system to come out of hypervigilance or out of freeze and just come into more of a exploration of this,

Even so the thoughts,

The images might be able to form in our mind and we can feel them in our body.

It's not an on-off switch,

It's more of an unwinding.

Taking some deeper breaths,

Softening any tension we might have in our body,

We might be moving around a little.

And then just for a moment,

Consider how do you feel about basic goodness?

So this is a complex question or exploration.

I believe,

So we could say it as a statement,

I believe that people are basically good.

I believe in basic goodness.

I believe I am basically good at my heart,

At my core.

And I believe others are as well.

Let's look and see what's going on,

What's the response to that.

Your body might tighten a little,

Well,

That's clearly not true.

Look at all this violence in the world,

Look at the greediness.

One thing I think that's helpful here is to look at what our nervous system responses,

The way that we and others behave when we're in a survival response.

And what is our humanity when we come out of survival and into connection?

Yoga meditation and many other philosophies teach us that at our core,

We are divine.

We are pure light and joy.

And that this is the true nature.

It's not something that ever leaves,

We don't have to try and develop it.

It's something,

Our true nature is always here.

And it is very often obscured,

A lot of it by survival responses.

And if we look at our own experience,

We might notice sometimes I really know myself to be pure and light and still.

And sometimes I'm completely caught up in other stuff,

Catastrophic thinking or ruminating or all of the different things that happen when we're in fight,

Flight,

Freeze.

So where does that stillness,

The joy,

The love,

Where does that go?

If that's part of us,

If it's our inherent nature,

Can we trust that it's here,

Maybe underneath all of the chaos and the intensity of our survival responses?

Notice your breath and your body.

And if you want,

Maybe drop the question for a moment,

Come into your heart.

If you have basic goodness,

Where is it?

Often we work with that as though it's in the heart center.

And we might work with the whole of our mind as more than the brain,

The whole of our mind field that has all the activity of the brain,

The nervous system responses.

We are more than our responses.

We're more than our thoughts.

To bring your awareness into your being.

Let's rest there for a moment.

And sometimes what happens when we're doing an exploration of something like basic goodness,

Or our own basic goodness,

We might have lots of thoughts about,

Well,

You know,

Your mind isn't that pure and you're jealous about this or you're whatever it is.

And that's happening on a certain layer.

And that's not all of who we are.

We go deeper,

Connect with our being.

What do we find?

And then how would this help?

What is this knowing our own true nature?

How does that help in terms of getting around in the world right now?

Our personal lives might be very easy right now or very challenging.

Certainly our communal and political lives are very challenging.

And how does it help us to be able to touch back in?

My true nature is basic goodness.

It's light.

It's still,

It's peacefulness.

And we carry that knowledge,

That felt sense into the world.

So keep exploring this.

I think right now,

Especially,

It's really important to be aware of what's happening in our mind,

Our brain,

Our nervous system,

And that that is not all of who we are.

And then how can we bring that strength and resilience and that depth into our daily life right now?

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Thanks Lynn