In our culture, resilience usually means endurance – how much we can withstand, how quickly we can “bounce back,” or how strong we appear in the face of hardship.
But true resilience has a quieter sound. It lives in the body’s ability to reorganize toward life. It’s the soft exhale after effort, the gentle pulse that reminds us we’re still here.
What We’ve Been Taught
Most of us learned resilience through hardship. We were praised for surviving, for pushing through, for holding it all together.
But the body measures resilience differently. It doesn’t care about appearances or grit – it cares about relationship.
Can we stay in relationship with ourselves, even when things fall apart? Can we rest inside our experience instead of running from it?
Resilience as Our Birthright
Somatic teacher Richard Strozzi writes that resilience is our birthright. It’s the natural intelligence of our biology – the impulse that brings us back to aliveness after impact.
We don’t have to earn it. We only have to remember it.
Yet, constant busy-ness and chronic adaptation – what science calls allostatic load –
can bury that memory.
Our systems forget how to rest. We confuse recovery with stagnation, and mistake softness for weakness.
The Rhythm of Life
Resilience follows the rhythm of all living things: expansion and contraction, effort and rest, waking and sleeping.
When we honor that rhythm, our nervous systems begin to trust safety again. We stop bracing. We start breathing.
Rest isn’t the opposite of resilience – it is resilience.
Building Capacity Through Resilience Practice
Having a resilience practice is something we can return to again and again; it’s how we grow our capacity. Each time we meet life’s impact and allow ourselves to reorganize instead of collapse, the range of what we can hold expands.
But that range doesn’t just mean holding harder things. It also means being able to feel more good.
To truly feel joy, love, or ease, we have to be willing to feel the full spectrum that comes with being alive, including grief, disappointment, tenderness, awe.
Some folks hear “feel joy” and mistake it for “think positive thoughts.” Resilience isn’t about staying positive; it’s about staying present. It’s what lets us open fully to joy without shutting down when pain arises.
Our capacity grows not by avoiding feeling, but by meeting what’s here with awareness and compassion.
Joy as Medicine
I’ve noticed that, on occasion, people express fatigue at the healing journey. It’s viewed as hard, or dark, or a long slog through the pain. Feeling sadness may be part of your healing, but it’s not the only part – or even the most important piece.
Joy is one of the most powerful ways the body remembers itself. Not performative joy (like posting a “self-care day” selfie while secretly running on fumes), but the kind that rises naturally: the warmth of morning light, the laughter that loosens the chest, the sweetness of a slow cup of tea.
These moments aren’t distractions from healing; they are healing.
Joy tells the nervous system, “I’ve survived. I can open again.”
The Quiet Kind
The quiet kind of resilience doesn’t roar. It hums beneath the surface in exhalations, in pauses, in presence.
It’s not about how much we can endure, but how gently we can return.
To be resilient is to keep saying yes to life, again and again, in small and sacred ways.
Practice Invitation
This month, try a Resilience Practice: Each day, notice one small moment of joy or ease. Let it land in your body. Feel where it lives – your chest, your belly, your hands.
That’s your system remembering its rhythm. That’s your quiet kind of resilience.
