A question from my somatic training has been following me around lately.
Not because I had a great answer for it. But because I didn’t.
We were moving through a contact practice with a partner when the instructor asked: “How do you see beauty in the world?”
Simple enough.
Except I froze.
Not because I don’t see beauty. I do. But because I suddenly realized how much of my life had been organized around something else entirely.
Getting through. Managing. Handling. Solving. Enduring. Surviving.
For years, when I heard the word resilience, this was what I imagined. Someone who could withstand a lot. Someone who could keep going. Someone who could tolerate difficult circumstances. Someone who could carry heavy things without breaking.
And to be fair, there are seasons of life when that kind of resilience matters.
Life asks things of us. Loss happens. Bodies change. Relationships end. Plans unravel. We adapt. We survive.
Lately I’ve been wondering if that’s only half the story. Because surviving isn’t the same thing as living.
As many of you know from my last newsletter, I’m currently recovering from surgery. And while the medical timeline says one thing, I’ve been paying attention to what my body says.
The statistics say I could return to work after six weeks. And physically, that may be true.
But my work has never been only physical. Yes, there is the hands-on aspect. But there is also the listening. The tracking. The presence. The relationship.
The ability to sit with another human being and remain connected to what is happening in the room…that requires something from me. Not effort. Not performance. But presence. And presence is difficult to access when I haven’t fully returned to myself.
I’ve noticed this throughout my life. After travel, I need a recovery day. After a large social gathering, I need time to reconnect with myself. After teaching, facilitating, or holding space, I need quiet.
Because presence requires something real from me and I’ve stopped pretending otherwise.
Before I can stay connected to someone else, I need to know where I am. What I’m feeling. What belongs to me. What doesn’t.
One of the definitions of resilience we explored during training surprised me. Resilience wasn’t described as endurance. It wasn’t described as toughness. It wasn’t described as pushing through.
Resilience was described as our birthright to joy and happiness.
At first, I’ll be honest – that didn’t land for me. But the more I’ve sat with it, the more I think it might be true. Because what if resilience isn’t measured by what you can survive?
What if resilience is measured by your ability to stay connected to your aliveness? To beauty, wonder, pleasure, meaning, connection, and to the simple experience of being alive?
This is where the Increasing phase of the Rhythm of Engagement becomes so interesting.
Awakening is noticing. We begin to feel again. We start paying attention. We become aware of sensations, emotions, patterns, habits, and places we’ve been disconnected – Increasing asks something different.
Increasing asks: Can you stay with what you’ve discovered? Can you stay with more sensation? More energy? More feeling? More life?
Because here’s the catch. As our capacity grows, we don’t just feel more of the things we enjoy. We feel more of everything. More joy. More grief. More excitement. More fear. More pleasure. More uncertainty. More tenderness. More love.
The volume gets turned up across the board.
And if our system isn’t ready for that increase, we naturally find ways to turn the dial back down. We distract. We numb. We stay busy. We overwork. We overthink. We scroll. We disconnect.
We do this because some parts of us learned that distance felt safer than feeling. The challenge is that we can’t selectively numb.
We don’t get to mute grief while keeping wonder. We don’t get to shut down fear while staying fully available to joy. The same strategies that help us avoid discomfort often dampen our capacity for delight.
And suddenly life feels flat. Safe, perhaps. Manageable. Predictable. But not particularly alive.
I think that’s part of what I’m practicing in this season. Not bouncing back. Not proving how quickly I can recover. Not measuring my worth by how much I can tolerate.
But learning how to return to myself fully.
Learning how to honor the pace of my nervous system. Learning how to let life come back online – one conversation, one walk, one breath, one moment at a time.
Because resilience isn’t the absence of challenge. It’s the willingness to stay connected while life unfolds.
And sometimes that means resting. Sometimes it means receiving support. Sometimes it means doing less. Sometimes it means allowing joy to arrive, even before you’ve checked everything off your list.
A Somatic Reflection
Take a moment and ask yourself: Where in my life have I confused resilience with endurance?
What am I still proving? What am I still pushing through?
What would change if resilience wasn’t about surviving more? What would change if resilience was about allowing yourself to experience more of life?
Then notice: What helps you feel more alive?
Not more productive. Not more efficient. More alive.
Stay there for a moment.
Your system already knows the way. Sometimes it simply needs permission to follow it.
