~ An adapted excerpt from my book "Elevating Origins to Love"
Have you ever noticed how your body seems to know things before your mind catches up?
I remember sitting in a café once, years ago, waiting for someone I hadn't seen in a long time. Everything looked perfectly fine — the sun was streaming through the window, my coffee was warm in my hands, the hum of conversation around me was gentle and ordinary. And yet, somewhere deep in my belly, something was tightening. A quiet constriction, almost imperceptible at first, like a fist slowly closing around something tender. My shoulders had crept up toward my ears without my noticing. My breath had become shallow, almost held.
Nothing had happened yet. But my body already knew.
This is the extraordinary intelligence of your nervous system — a vast, intricate web of communication that is constantly reading your environment, your memories, your relationships, and your inner landscape, all at once. It's working tirelessly on your behalf, even when you're completely unaware of it. And here's the thing that took me years to truly understand: learning to listen to this intelligence — really listen, with curiosity rather than judgment — is one of the most profound acts of self-compassion you will ever practice.
The Architecture of Your Inner World
When we are in the grips of a stress or defensive response, we truly feel alone. There is no sense of safety, no relaxation, no feeling of belonging to a community — except, perhaps, with those who share our exact experience in that exact moment. It's an alienating state, and we aren't meant to stay in it for very long. Essentially, it uses all our resources — our energy is entirely consumed by mounting a defense against whatever is threatening us so we can escape.
The three main reactions of the stress-activated nervous system are ones you've likely heard of: fight, flight, and freeze. But knowing their names and actually recognizing them in the living tissue of your own body are two very different things.
Fight is an aggressive, hot energy — a rising up. You feel as though people or situations are against you, and something within you must rise to meet them with force. Your jaw might clench. Your fists might tighten. There's a forward-leaning quality to it, an urgency that says, I will not be overtaken.
Flight is more like the prey animal suddenly bursting into motion to escape the lion bearing down on it. It's the desire to get out — to leave the room, the conversation, the relationship, the situation. Your legs might feel restless. Your eyes might dart toward exits. Everything in you says, I need to get away from here.
Freeze is perhaps the most misunderstood of the three. It's the deer caught in headlights — so overcome with overwhelm that you cannot speak, think, or move. It can look like numbness, dissociation, or a strange blankness that descends like fog. People sometimes mistake freeze for calm, but it's not calm at all. It's a kind of paralysis born from a nervous system that has decided the threat is too great to fight or flee from.
Once the threat is over, our optimal human blueprint — our natural wiring — is designed to return us to a state of relaxation, rejuvenation, reconnection, and restoration. In that state, you feel at ease with others, your body can repair and rest, and you naturally return to activities that interest or inspire you. Your creativity flows. Your heart opens. You remember who you are beyond the emergency.
But here's where it gets tricky — and this is where so many of us live without realizing it.
When the Thermostat Gets Stuck
Your nervous system is like a sensitive thermostat. It's constantly calibrating, constantly seeking to protect you. And this is a beautiful thing — it's the reason you pull your hand away from a hot stove before you've even consciously registered the heat. It's the reason you instinctively reach out to steady a child who's about to fall.
But this same protective mechanism can also cause you to experience significant difficulty with situations that don't actually pose a threat. A critical email from a colleague. A certain tone of voice from your partner. A news headline that echoes something painful from your past. Your thermostat reads these as danger — and suddenly you're in fight, flight, or freeze, your body flooded with the same chemistry it would produce if you were being chased by a predator.
The stress response doesn't distinguish between a tiger in the jungle and a difficult conversation with your mother. To your nervous system, threat is threat.
And when we don't understand this — when we don't realize that our body is responding to a perceived danger rather than an actual one — we can spend years, even decades, living in a state of chronic activation. Our shoulders permanently raised. Our digestion perpetually disrupted. Our sleep fractured. Our relationships strained by reactions that seem to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Learning more about your inner wiring and design, and tuning into your own experience of reality, can help you gain essential understanding that allows you to navigate your life with greater peace and confidence. Not by overriding your nervous system — that never works — but by developing a relationship with it. By becoming a compassionate witness to your own inner landscape.
The Practice: Tuning Into Your Nervous System
What I'm about to share with you is a practice I've guided many people through over the years, and it's one I return to myself again and again. It's deceptively simple — there's nothing to achieve, nothing to fix, nothing to get right. You're simply turning your attention inward and observing what's already happening.
Before you begin: Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed. Don't do this while driving or anywhere you need to be alert to the external world. Give yourself at least twenty minutes. You deserve that.
Step One: Arrive
Sit quietly, away from distractions. Let your body settle into whatever position feels most natural. Take a few breaths — not forced or dramatic, just easy breaths that remind your body you're here.
Step Two: Invite the Stressor
Think of a stressful situation you are currently dealing with in your life. You don't need to choose the most overwhelming thing — something moderately activating is perfect. Let it come to mind gently, as though you're opening a door just a crack.
Step Three: Turn Inward
Close your eyes and turn your attention inside, into your body. What do you notice? Where do you notice things? What kind of physical sensations do you feel? How do you experience them? Get specific.
Perhaps there's a tightness in your chest. A heaviness in your stomach. A tingling in your hands. A constriction in your throat. Whatever you find, simply name it to yourself. There's a tightness here. There's a heaviness there.
Step Four: Explore with Curiosity
Now explore your sensations further. Describe them to yourself in more detail. Their quality — is it sharp or dull? Their density — is it thick or thin? Do they stay static or change? Do they remain in one spot or radiate outward? Do they connect to other parts of your body, or remain separate?
Don't try to change anything. Simply tune in and observe whatever physical sensations you experience when you think of this stressful situation. You are being a gentle detective of your own inner world.
Step Five: Meet Your Emotions
Now tune into any emotions you may be feeling. Very likely, these are quite present to you — maybe even easier to identify than the physical sensations. As you name your emotions, ask yourself: What is the sensation of this particular emotion within my body?
Fear might live in your belly. Anger might burn in your chest. Sadness might pool behind your eyes. Each emotion has a physical signature, a way it writes itself into your tissue. Be an observant detective of whatever is happening within you.
Step Six: Observe the Cycle
Keep your eyes closed and simply remain focused on your inner experience. Notice whether you are experiencing any reaction not only to the situation, but perhaps to your own physical and emotional reaction itself. What is happening within your physical chemistry? Your neurology?
This is a profound moment in the practice — the moment you realize that you are not just reacting to the stressor, but often reacting to your own reaction. Layer upon layer. And each layer is worthy of your attention.
Step Seven: Allow Movement
You may notice a desire to move or shift a part of your body. Go ahead — let your body do anything it wants to do. Shift. Stretch. Shake. Vibrate. These are your nervous system's natural ways of completing the stress cycle, of discharging the energy that has been mobilized. Remain keenly present to every aspect of your body's movements, and follow any changes that occur as a result.
Step Eight: Return to the Present
Now see if you can let the image of the situation, or whatever has been causing you stress, fade away a bit. Remain very present to your inner experience as you remember that this isn't actually happening anywhere other than in your body and mind right now. Bring yourself back to the here and now — to sitting in your chair, to this moment where there is no need for you to take any action or solve any problems.
Continue to notice your physical sensations, your emotions, and any thoughts running through your mind. Don't buy into them, but don't resist them either. You simply want to be fully present to whatever is happening inside, watching without any resistance.
Notice how things may be shifting. Perhaps the sense of danger or anger or tightness or constriction begins to lessen a bit. Remember — you are simply sitting here. No one is threatening or disturbing you in actuality. It's all been an inner journey, and now you are letting it go.
Step Nine: Gently Close
Take a few deep breaths and let them out slowly... slowly. Open your eyes and see if you can find something soothing or enjoyable to look at. Notice any further internal loosening or relaxing that may be taking place.
Ask yourself: Have I fully let go of any of the stressful feelings I conjured up? How connected to other people and the world around me do I now feel?
What You May Have Discovered
As you thought of the stressful situation, you likely noticed tightening or constriction in your body — maybe your stomach, chest, shoulders, neck, or head. You may have experienced some unpleasant emotions — fear, anger, panic, frustration. And your mind was probably telling you in no uncertain terms all the things wrong with this situation.
This is your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. There is nothing wrong with you for experiencing any of this. Nothing at all.
But here is what I want you to sit with, gently: the energy you were emanating during that activated state — that contracted, defensive, vigilant energy — is the energy you carry into your relationships, your work, your parenting, your creative life, every time your thermostat gets triggered. It shapes how you feel about yourself. It colors how you perceive others. It determines, in ways both subtle and profound, the quality of your lived experience.
And the beautiful thing — the truly miraculous thing — is that simply by turning your attention toward it, simply by being present to it without trying to fix or change it, you begin to shift it. Not through force. Not through willpower. But through the gentle, revolutionary act of awareness itself.
An Invitation
I encourage you to return to this practice regularly — not as a task to complete, but as a conversation with yourself. Each time you do it, you'll notice something new. Each time, your nervous system will reveal another layer of its extraordinary intelligence. And each time, you'll be building new neural pathways — pathways of presence, of compassion, of the kind of deep self-knowing that no external circumstance can take from you.
Your body is not your enemy. It is your most faithful companion on this human journey. And when you learn to listen to it — truly listen — it will show you the way back to yourself.
With infinite love and support on your journey, Susan
