Real Skills Workshop - Community Event
Dancing with Uncertainty
Real Skills Workshop: Feel Emotionally Free
Hosts: Rick Wilkes (@Rick) and Cathy Vartuli (@Cathy)
Recorded Sun May 15 2022
We hope you’ll join us, and bring a guest!
Replay is below
6 Likes
Do you get stuck in your head?
I was conditioned to “know” that the answer was in my head, and if I wasn’t certain… I just needed to Think Harder and Longer.
I would get stuck in my head, in a loop of worry, overwhelm, and anxiety.
My body suffered. And not just because it got out of shape.
I stopped for too long having a working, moving relationship between my head, my heart, my gut, my pelvis, legs, arms, bones, and blood.
The result was disease: DIS-ease. Lack of flow. Lack of go. Stuckness.
We are beings designed to move. When we put all our energy into our brains, they overload. Then they crash into helplessness.
It’s honestly why talk-only therapy would never work for me. The physical movement and rhythm of tapping, yapping, and feeling combine to give deeper and more whole-body clarity – even when things are utter chaos.
For me right now, Uncertainty sounds really loud. So… it’s time to dance. Yes, literally (if you can) and definitely with the energy of what’s showing up.
But… but… butt! Yeah, I know resistance can come up here. Still does for me 30 years after a major transformation that forced me into my body to hear and trust and act on its wisdom.
We take in so much useful input through our eyes and ears and brain. But we forget or ignore that just like we do not try to digest our meal just in our heads, we cannot digest all that is happening in our lives, our family, our community, and the world just in our heads. We can try – but it won’t be nearly as satisfying as dancing with it.
So… Let’s Dance with the Uncertainty! Bring a thing or two you are uncertain about to the workshop Cathy and I are co-hosting. You will leave with some real skills.
We’ll tap and move energy with presence, attention, fresh and easy body postures, and more.
Let’s dance with all this uncertainty together – and laugh and smile with it, too!
Our Circle Membership - now available for
a one-time payment on a gliding scale.
Circle Members get all Real Skills Workshops (and much more)!
Rick & Cathy
Your Emotional Freedom Coaches
P.S. Adira says, “I am all the things dancing at once! Confident! Curious! Uncertain! Held! Cautious! Grounded! Loved… Join me!”
4 Likes
Craving Certainty - Even More Than Chocolate Cake!
Part of me craves certainty. The craving hits hardest when life and the world feel insufficiently predictable for my primitive brain to relax.
So it goes. Yet, if I stay stuck with the craving, or indulge it repeatedly, I’ll end up sick – like eating chocolate cake 5 meals a day.
Our desire for predictable helps humans evolve, settle in, cultivate. We LIKE it when there’s just the right mix of intrigue and security.
But what do we do when the uncertainty becomes “scared about the future.”
We (as humans) are designed to MOVE. Our ancestors moved literally. Food uncertainty? Work and cultivate a garden. Walk and hunt further from home. Even pick up what we can carry and move.
But that isn’t what our culture is, these days. I was taught to think harder, learn more, sit still in a chair until I “figure it out.” I was conditioned to believe, too, that living with uncertainty – even DANCING with uncertainty – meant you were not successful!
How silly.
How painful.
Thriving includes an embrace of uncertainty, all the way to the core reality that we are actually uncertain how long we will live! That’s a big deal.
It’s with humility that I share that as uncertain as things are, and have always felt in my nervous system, movement helps me so much.
Moving my emotional distresses through my energy pathways. Extending and shifting my posture. Literally exploring other territories, even if only 100 yards away from home.
It’s been well-shown that movement 3x+ a week is profoundly impactful for depression. Even those with chronic illnesses sense deep shifts in their capacity to endure and even savor life when they do gentle conscious movement like qi gong or spontaneous dance or walking in nature.
So how can we do this on a Zoom call?
Well, we can unfreeze our bracing against uncertainty. We can soften the resistance (even rebellion) to movement. We can take some baby steps! We can explore energy, and reconnect neck and butt and toes, even.
So… Let’s Dance with the Uncertainty! Bring a thing or two you are uncertain about to the workshop Cathy and I are co-hosting on Sunday. You will leave with some real skills.
We’ll tap and move energy with presence, attention, fresh and easy body postures, and more.
Let’s dance with all this uncertainty together – and laugh and smile with it, too!
P.S. Our Circle Membership - now available for
a one-time payment on a gliding scale.
Circle Members get all Real Skills Workshops (and much more)!
Rick & Cathy
Your Emotional Freedom Coaches
P.S. Adira says, “When the terrain is uncertain, I recommend moving with baby steps!! Remember?”
2 Likes
It was great to join live tonight. My first time! It was 10pm in U.K., so I stayed for about 30 minutes or so, but started to get tired. I just wanted to say thank you @Cathy and @RickThrivingNow. I will catch up with the replay. I absolutely loved tapping together in a group! Just that alone was very healing and supportive.
can’t wait to join another circle soon.
3 Likes
Wonderful, Barbs! So glad you could make it for part of it. I’ll be posting the replay below.
1 Like
Dancing with Uncertainty - Workshop Replay
We welcome your insights, ah-ha’s, and sharing. Please! Click [Reply]
Click for Computer Generated Transcript
Dancing with Uncertainty
[00:00:00] Dancing with uncertainty. Ah, What in the world does that mean? But we’re going to dance with it today. We have some ideas, we have some notions and we’ve got some assertion that, you know, our body when we’re feeling uncertain and we’re feeling, and the anxiety starts to build that our bodies stops moving.
[00:00:28] It actually there’s a mini freeze and can even go into a full blown freeze. And so the, this concept of dancing, which is essentially allowing your body to move is. Is going to be something that allows you to feel more of your calm, more of your confidence, more what’s real for you and even what certain now.
[00:00:55] So I’m reference driving now. I’m here with Cathy, Vartuli from thriving now and the intimacy dojo and with you all that are here live, and those of you that are going to be on the recording. Thank you for being with us. This is, I feel a really interesting and useful skill to have. Yes, I think it’s it’s I love the fact you’re diving in and looking at this because a lot of people are afraid of the topic of uncertainty.
[00:01:19] They run away from it and then they never get any concepts. They’re just kind of like avoiding and humans are really good. We’re really good at avoiding things that we think are dangerous or uncomfortable. We may not even be aware of how much we’re avoiding. I did that. I had a, a big. Shock to my system before COVID and then COVID hit.
[00:01:39] And I didn’t realize now I’m suddenly realizing how much I was avoiding anything that would remind me of that situation. And I didn’t even, it was subconscious. I wasn’t even thinking about it. Healthy humans, you know, humans that are not too traumatized. We generally crave a balance of trial of uncertainty and certainty.
[00:01:58] If everything is very regulated, we get very bored and we start acting badly. Um, and there’s some countries like I lived in Sweden for a year. I loved Sweden, but it was very, very safe. And they thought that was one of the reasons the suicide rates were so high is because everything was very, there.
[00:02:15] Wasn’t a lot of room to grow very big or very, you kind of like everything was very cushioned and it was a beautiful country. I love the people and it did feel like there wasn’t risk ever. There was an uncertainty and I do think we need a certain amount, but as Rick was saying, if we’re. Traumatized or, um, we were talking about this before the call, too.
[00:02:37] So I’m trying to remember how much he said, if we’re undernourished, we’ve just had a big stress. We haven’t had enough sleep or we don’t feel supported. Or if we’re traumatized, we have unhealed traumas. We are going to crave certainty more, just think about if you lived out in the wilderness and you had a cave that was pretty safe and you were feeling low resourced, you wouldn’t want to go hiking 20 miles to go find something new.
[00:03:02] You’re only going to stick to. What’s tried and true. So we kind of crave the known the secure. When we have lower resources, it’s really natural. There’s nothing wrong. And we can actually use as indicated light. If your friend’s like, let’s go do this fun thing. That’s, that’s new. And maybe even wanting to do it.
[00:03:20] And that day, or feeling like, oh, I don’t want to go. I sometimes will ask myself, are there resources I need, do I need to just say, I’ll go, but I need to get some food first or I’ll go, but I want to make sure that I know where the car is and I have the car keys and that you’ll agree to leave. If I need to leave I’ll I can leave in some certainty in my new experience.
[00:03:42] And that that indicator light can be really helpful. It’s a great way to kind of take care of ourselves when our subconscious maybe hiding the fact or filling in. You just, you, you, you reflected something there. I really want to amplify. Um, where are the keys? Ah, I’ve got the keys. Where’s where’s the phone.
[00:04:09] What are my agreements with the people that I’m going with? So today was, um, the first time we went back to ecstatic dance and it was outside and it was in a different place than we’ve ever gone before. And, you know, yesterday evening, even looking at the weather report, It was uncertain and this morning waking up and it was kind of foggy and like, eh, uncertain.
[00:04:37] So as these things go, I noticed that if I tried to make it make things that were not under anyone’s control, I’m certain my body would do something. It would stop. Now, what I could do is, is do some things to help create structure. So I believe that part of our, our, our desire for things that are certain has to do with things that are reliable, um, and have a quality of that, there’s a fallback position.
[00:05:21] So by talking to my family that, Hey, I don’t, I’m uncertain how I’m going to feel at the dance. And I would like to know that if I need to leave either to spend time by myself in the car or something else, or for us all to go, is that okay? And my partner said, well, yeah, I would like the same structure, the same agreement.
[00:05:48] So agreements are a kind of structure. And I was like, ah, and as soon as I had that, there was a physiological movement that came at, and this is part of the real skill part of it. There’s a lot of things that we as human animals do that isn’t conscious. We just sort of do them. But the problem with that is that when we stopped doing them, we start feeling distress.
[00:06:15] But we’re not exactly sure why. And so the first clue that I’d like to again, remind is that if you’re in a place where the level of uncertainty is high enough, and maybe you’re, you’re wanting to like anchor things that really are uncertainty, the weather is a perfect example. Um, your own energy, how you’ll sleep that night, how your body will feel, how you know, all the things that there’s, if you notice what your body does, the first thing that we use EFT tapping.
[00:06:52] If you’re unfamiliar with it, we’re not teaching it today, but we have a couple of resources@thrivingnow.com slash tapping that you can look at. Um, one of the things that we do with tapping is notice what’s happening in our body. So if uncertainty is the thing for you, like, oh, I want to be in control. I want things to be certain.
[00:07:15] If, if a part of you is crying out for that craving it, grasping, bore it like me. Um, then that’s an indicator like, oh, what in my body is, has stopped. No bang. Um, and that’s where. Um, we’re going to be exploring today in this workshop, little things that you can do, micro steps, baby steps, um, mindful things that return your body to a place where you’re instead of moving toward more and more freeze and anxiety you’re dancing loose or so you’ve got your breath.
[00:07:59] You got your mind, heart legs and all of that. And some of that can be just knowing where the keys are. Yes. And someone asks like, how do you know that person? How do you trust the person will leave when you want to leave? And I’ve had that issue. People, I didn’t know as well, or I have a couple of friends that not Rick, but other friends that are like, of course we’ll leave when you want to leave.
[00:08:20] And they disappear or they owe five more minutes, five more minutes. So, um, depending on my need in that day, and I think we can all like, kind of, how, how scary does this feel? How many safeguards do I feel like I need to put in? I I’ve been, I try to make sure that I have control. I keep the keys. I, I will give you a five minute warning.
[00:08:41] I, you know, and then I’m going to just leave and you can get, you can Uber back, if you need to, or you can call me later and see if I’m available to come get you. But I want to be in control of my own exit strategy. Now, when someone, when someone like Rick, I wouldn’t need to, I would say. You know, please just, you know, if you get distracted, please let me know where you’re going off to, because I know he’s going to be there for me if I need him.
[00:09:03] So we can weave in, depending on the person and the experience we’re going to save cards. And like Rick said, we can’t control the weather, but it can calm our survival brain a lot. If we have, oh, I don’t know what kind of food they’re going to have there. I’m going to pack some granola bars and some water I’m going to, what things can I do to ease my survival brain so that it can relax.
[00:09:23] And maybe I’m carrying a little bit more than I would like. And I also know that that will let me enjoy the experience. And then maybe next time I don’t need to have so much resources with. So I’m going to invite us. Kathy has just been talking about like, ah, you know, maybe I I’ve got unreliable people in my world that I make agreements with, or I have that experience in my past.
[00:09:46] What happens in your body? Are you feeling like, oh yeah, that, yeah. I, I can, I can do that. I can pack that. Or is there any kind of resistance? The chat is open if you’d like to share, but you don’t have to. Um, I’d like to do just some tapping on just the dynamics of uncertainty with others, whether,
[00:10:15] and if you’ve noticed that if you tune into an uncertainty, where does it, where does it hit you? Like, I have clients where their legs seem to go away. Like they don’t have legs anymore. Um, for me, I, my breathing absolutely changes. Like you could probably tell my voice is a little, um, shallow. Like I’m still talking, but it doesn’t have any, it doesn’t have any depth to it in shallow breathings.
[00:10:48] Very common. If we’re scared, we want to hyperoxygenate we breathe in the top part of our lungs quickly. So, and that’s a biofeedback loop to our group, our body. So if he can breathe down to our belly, make our belly move a little bit, that actually can calm us and it might help bring some of the residents back to Rick’s voice.
[00:11:06] I feel it in my gut, in shoulders, sometimes I go into anger. I feel sweaty. I’m feel shaky and a knot in my stomach. Yeah, your. You’ll have maybe some variation from situation to situation. And for a lot of people, there’s an 80% of the time when like, uh, uncertainty hits me here. Sometimes I want certainty.
[00:11:33] Then we’re going to do some tapping. We invite you to top long, um, cause it’s movement it’ll down. Uh, even though uncertainty hits me right there, even though uncertainty hits me right there
[00:11:50] and I am uncertain what to do with that, I’m uncertain what to do with it. It’s very uncomfortable. It’s very uncomfortable. And a part of me leaps to trying to make it certain and a part of me leaps to try to make it certain and I deeply and completely accept that part of me and I deeply and completely accept that part of me top of the head uncertainty it’s me.
[00:12:14] They’re certainly right there. Eyebrow uncertainty hits me right there and certainly hits me right there. It’s uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t like that feeling. I don’t like that feeling. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to get back in control. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to get back again. I’m pretty sure I need to be certain.
[00:12:38] I’m pretty sure I need to be certain. I need to be certain don’t. I, I need to be certain don’t part of me thinks I need to be certain part of me needs to face. I need to be certain, ah, That’s sweet. Part of me. That’s sweet. Part of me wants to be certain about everything, wants to be certain about it, including the weather, including the weather eyebrow, including people, including people, including my own digestive system and my own digestive system wants to be certain about everything.
[00:13:11] It wants to be certain about that that would relieve the tension, relieves the tension. I believe that that would relieve the tension. I think that would relieve the tension. Hold on. It hasn’t really worked out also. It hasn’t really worked out that well, it hasn’t really worked out that well. The truth is I’m looking for a different kind of skill.
[00:13:34] The truth is I’m looking for a different kind of skill. I’m wondering how resilience might play on here. I wonder how resilience might play in here.
[00:13:47] So after you’ve done some tapping, tapping as a movement, um, notice your body allow it. I’m making big movements here. You don’t have to make big movements, but see, as you scan, like, is your jaw locked or your eyes a little softer, maybe have a how’s your throat, neck you’re breathing. My breathing is better.
[00:14:14] Of course, that tapping. A lot for me, as you could tell, as you, as you feel into your body, as you go down your body, like I noticed some holding a holding in my belly. I don’t know what it means, but I’m noticing that it’s not really moving very much. And I’m noticing that there’s some pulling in on some kind of reaction to call it a retreat.
[00:14:45] Yeah. Would you like to do some tapping on the retreat feeling? Yeah. Um, and I’d like to be, even if it’s okay for folks, if this resonates, you can leave it in. You don’t have to. A lot of times we get this fear of uncertainty when we’re very little, I imagine most of us didn’t get quite the resources we needed when we were kids, our parents might’ve been overwhelmed or traumatized.
[00:15:06] So little children will see that they’re not getting what they need. They, they need certainty. They need to know their parents are there. They know that instinctually they’re hyena food if they’re not supported. So they’re getting the care and the certainty they need as small children, it can be very scary.
[00:15:23] So if you can weave in just a little compassion for that karate chop, even little part of me wants to hide and retreat, even though part of me wants to hide and retreat because they feel certain, I feel so uncertain about this. I feel so uncertain about this and it feels like it really matters. And it feels like it really matters for comfort to my younger self, for comfort, to my younger self, who was really trying to get needs met, really trying to get needs map top of the head, sometimes things were really uncertain.
[00:16:01] Sometimes things were really doesn’t capture it, grotesquely uncertain. I wasn’t sure that if there was enough of anything for me, I wasn’t sure if there was enough of anything for me, side of the, I accept criticism. There seem to be enough of that. Uh, there seem to be enough criticism or neglect under the eye, but I wanted love and reassurance and food.
[00:16:29] I wanted love and reassurance and food and choice under the nose. I didn’t get a lot of that. I didn’t get a lot of that and I let my younger self. And I let my younger self collarbone, I can provide a lot of those things. Now I can provide a lot of those things now. And then the hand that olden certainty feels awful.
[00:16:54] Uncertainty feels awful top of the head with mindful caring presence, um, with mindful caring presence. I can start healing it right now. I can start healing it right now. Um, just take a breath and just notice how you’re feeling.
[00:17:15] One of the things that I really love and, uh, someone I work with sometimes because it’s split screen is if I can separate old stuff from the current stuff, because a lot of times it’s all, we’re just in the pot of soup and everything’s bubbling and boiling, and it’s like all these emotions. And when I can re recognize, oh, Probably a lot of times, for me, it’s like 80 or 90% of it.
[00:17:36] It’s all old soup, old, you know, old stuff. And I can just like, oh, it’s not actually happening right now. And there is something happening right now. Maybe 10% 20. Sometimes it’s more, there could be something big happening right now. But when I can separate that, it gives me more control because the stuff that’s old is not happening right now.
[00:17:56] It’s just reminding me of that insecurity the stuff that’s happening. Now I can see, I can take action about, I can do more about it often, or I can find ways to comfort myself now. So just the split of that helps you. Just, the more we work at that, the more we can discern, oh, I think this is, this is not about now.
[00:18:16] This is not about what is happening now. And this, this is so I can, I can try to take care of myself in a different way.
[00:18:27] Like my belly started moving. And I invite us again to pause,
[00:18:36] check in with a scan and you can use your hand, like to like dancing with uncertainty can be as, as like this, you know, I’m kind of giving a soft squeeze. And I noticed when I do that, like my breathing stops for a moment.
[00:19:03] So my squeeze a little tighter stretch my jaw.
[00:19:14] Um, I don’t want to we’re up to, but I thought there was a, there’s some beautiful comments in the chat about people feeling trapped. If there’s no exit strategy they can make about being on a plane, the cabin doors are closed now. I don’t want to trigger anyone, but we’re also kind of trapped on this planet for most of us, unless you have several million dollars that you want to spend to try to go up to space X and I can make myself feel very claustrophobic about the fact I’m trapped on the planet.
[00:19:42] I’m like kick it off. What I can do is bring one of the things that we’re going to talk about a little more later is, but bringing things into the smaller things I can control. So what happens often is if people are laughing at me,
[00:20:01] Um, I, no, but I totally get the plain things. I can, I can get very upset about like, oh, I can’t, I can’t control what I do. Like, and now they’re making me wear a mask and I feel claustrophobic and I can’t breathe. What can I do right now? So anytime we’re starting, we tend to want to control further and further out.
[00:20:19] That’s especially for feeling insecure. If we get a little control, we want to expand it more and more and more. And so when I’m, when I try to do is when I’m in a feeling trapped in a plane or an office meeting where they blocked the door and I can’t get out, what can I control? And one of the things that, um, People recommend for traumas is making small movements that we can control.
[00:20:41] When we start getting really scared, we can go into collapsed, submit. We can go into freeze where we’re just like, we feel like we can’t move. And Rick’s been talking a lot about dancing with us, moving. If we’re really triggered, it may feel impossible and almost always someone can move their eyes. Like, even if it’s just a little, can you glance a little to the side?
[00:21:03] Can you blink? Almost always, unless we’re in a really deep collapsed submit kind of really traumatized. We can move a little bit, we can move our pinky. We can notice our breath coming in and out. And I have in the past, when I was younger, I would hyperventilate a lot. Um, and I was always really scared that it was going to die because I felt like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen.
[00:21:24] And I was really relieved to hear that, oh, what, when people hyperventilate, what happens is if they go too far, if they can’t stop it with a paper bag or whatever, the worst thing that happens is they pass out and fall over and they breathe normally again. So like, there’s not like there’s, there’s, our body has safety mechanisms in there.
[00:21:43] So like, if I can. Being on a plane or my meetings often, there’s too many people for the meeting room and we’re all like kind of crunched together and I can’t get to the door. What can I control right now? Can I take a sip of water? Can I move my finger? Can I notice there’s enough oxygen right here? And can I notice that if I really, really needed to, I can make a huge fuss, neither crawl over the table or under the table and get out, but right.
[00:22:08] You know, like in a plane that’s a little harder, but there is like, I can move a little bit. I can go to the restroom if I need to, I can put the tray up and down. If I, if we’re not in takeoff, like what do I have control over? Brings it back to that smaller. If we shrink it spatially and time-wise into like smaller things, we have more control.
[00:22:28] Often we have more certainty and that can help us get through tough times or times when we don’t feel like we can move or do as much.
[00:22:40] Oh, you know, when, um, one of our circle members posted, uh, a dance video and it was just amazing to watch it. These people moving with, you know, um, synchronicity and all of, uh, beauty of, of dancers who really moved that way. And what I’d like to reflect on as, as Kathy said, if, if you’re feeling like uncertainty is, is starting to pull you out of the now.
[00:23:20] People have brought up the airplane. I think, I think the airplane is one of the biggest challenges because if you are living in your primitive brain and the primitive brain has a lot of control, um, you’re probably one of the survivors from general, you know, you’re one of the reasons we’re here. Thank you very much.
[00:23:37] Your ancestors were really good at picking up and kind of reacting to possible threats and doing so like with a lot of energy. Um, uh,
[00:23:53] if, if we take it out of the context that we’re actually in a space capsule on top of a rocket or in an airplane, and we look at like how uncertainty pulls us out, we can see a story and all of a sudden. Our energy is literally moving into the future. We’re not embodied anymore. We’re fantasizing, projecting ourselves to some other thing.
[00:24:21] That’s not now. And I was a master. I still can do this. Like I, if I do my body starts to do things that you’d call like, whoa, what’s happening to you, Rick. And one of the reasons it’s called thriving now and not, let’s all get thriving, you know? Um, it’s about right here right now. So if I see something about a world event or a trend, a mega trend or something else, even ones I love.
[00:25:03] Have a shadow side to it to use that term. If I start going there, like
[00:25:13] I, I actually lose my ability to speak. And if I, and that was just a little taste of, of going in one direction there, like you see, it’s pretty dramatic for me because it’s dramatic for me. I need to stay in the now I need to, I want to notice when I start going in that direction. Um, and what happens in my body and that that’s where dancing with uncertainty is like, oh yeah, I’m uncertain about that.
[00:25:47] And right now I have hands. And if you just look at it, if you like this idea, look at your hands and then look at the poems and look at the back of the hands and oh, their risks.
[00:26:08] Oh, I got two elbows. I taught my daughter about her elbows. She likes pointing at elbows now. Um, yeah. I even have things that I don’t see very well. I could know. And ah, Now I’m, I’m more embodied. And this is, this is the idea of dancing with, is to bring yourself back to an embodied place where it’s not tapping as a ritual.
[00:26:42] That’s great. That can be enough for me. I also noticed that I can sort of dissociate and tap too, if it’s just me, but if I’m noticing and bringing myself back into this, like, if you, if you can, and it’s comfortable, like grab a shoulder and just, and give it a squeeze and notice it, maybe your jaw lines a little bit, you know, your shoulder muscles are attached to your.
[00:27:19] That’s not an, a song. Uh, and, um, this is one of the biggest challenges I’ve I had, um, with things that are just talking. Um, that’s why we like to do some tapping in here too. I think you’re talking about controlling the future. We tend to go further and further out and like, if I want to make sure this plant lives, it’s very important to me.
[00:27:47] I’m, I’m making up a story, but like my mom gave it to me or whatever. It’s really important right now. It looks pretty healthy and I can water it, but if I want to make sure it’s still there, I want to be certain of its health a week from now. I have to worry about, well, the movers are coming with a new washer and dryer.
[00:28:03] Okay. I better move it then. And what if I move it? And it doesn’t like the light and there’s like the further out, the more decision points come. What if I move houses? What if I moved to the east coast where it’s cold? Oh, wait, like we can start getting, we’re trying to deal with problems we don’t even have yet.
[00:28:19] We’d go further and further out. And a lot of humans. It’s really natural. When we feel insecure, we’ll do things like well manipulate or try to control either people or environment. Um, we do a lot of pretending. I’m very good at pretending and pre-planning trying to anticipate needs. And there are certain things that are really useful around that.
[00:28:40] Like I’m planning for my retirement, but I don’t have to worry about it constantly and feel like I have to hold onto it and steer it. And I do think that often when I feel very secure, insecure, I’m trying to control people. Not only. Choices they make, but like how they say things, um, I want to have a certain experience to feel safe and that doesn’t feel good because I can’t create that in other people.
[00:29:04] And so I start feeling more, the more I try actually, people rebel often, if you try to make them do certain things. So the more we try to control the last last, certainly maybe yeah. Try telling the deer to do certain things. It.
[00:29:25] Like to be controlled. Um, someone mentioned the difference between command and control, um, you know, command having your own agency. Um, the word command is sort of like, uh, like for me and that’s, and this is what we can notice about ourselves, that there are certain energy behind things and for other people, or like their orientation as like, oh, well, I can be in command of myself.
[00:29:53] I’m much more I can create. I can create certainty, um, not perfect certainty. Um, but as soon as I start trying to get out into that realm where I’m trying to control people, the weather, other people’s reaction, like that’s a, that’s a really powerful one is, you know, I, even people that love us, we do not know how they’re going to respond when they wait.
[00:30:25] When you send them an email and that’s where dancing with the uncertainty to me is like, oh, I’m noticing that I really, um, I’m, I’m really wanting it to go a certain way. And I’m, I’m, I’m wanting them not to be free to do it any other way. Oh, my God, this is so important to me that I need them to do and respond and be a certain way with this.
[00:30:58] Uh,
[00:31:02] you can feel yourself. Um, most people, many people, some people. More specific. We’d make it the harder it is to control that. Like if I go and I said, like lovely connection with people and I hope there’s good food that I can eat versus I want a very specific kind of food. And I want people to compliment me a certain way.
[00:31:25] I, my mother, I think w imagine certain scripts for people. This is my story about her, but she often seems disappointed with interactions and I’m, I think she’s decided how she wants it to go. And it doesn’t go exactly that way, but none of us know exactly what that is. So like there’s a constant she’s. I think she feels very out of control a lot because she’s imagining a certain, very specific thing.
[00:31:48] We’ll give her what she needs versus oh general. Like I’d like to be with people that are honest and open with me and experience what that is dancing in a smaller uncertainty versus. Rigidly control it. Yeah. So, um, if you don’t want it to be a certain way, then you’re going to feel very unsettled, um, uncertain about things.
[00:32:12] Let’s do some tapping on that, even though I don’t want it to be this way, even though I don’t want it to be, you definitely don’t want it to go that way. Definitely don’t want it to go that way. And it feels way too uncertain from my system. It feels way too uncertain to my system. What do I do with this energy?
[00:32:32] What do I do with this energy feel activated? I feel activated. I brought, I don’t want it to be this way. I don’t want it to be this way. It is this way. It is this way accepted or not accepted or not. Um, what if I kept moving with it? If I kept moving with it, turning or moving away from it, or being with myself and my feelings and pain with myself or my feelings and my feelings, I don’t want the next song to be that one.
[00:33:11] I don’t want the next step to be that one. Not the DJ, your everyday. I’ve not the DJ and everything. I want to be the DJ of everything. Uh
[00:33:27] it’s okay to pause. It’s okay. To pause. It’s okay. To take small movements. It’s okay to take small. Whippets okay. To reconnect with my spouse. It’s okay to reconnect with myself. What matters to me? What matters to me? My wellbeing matters to me, matters to me, and I’m meant to move with things. And I am meant to move with things I’m actually designed to move with things I’m actually designed to move with them more resilient.
[00:33:59] If I am moving with it and more resilience, if I’m moving with it, even standing still there’s movement, even standing still there’s movement, there’s supposed to be at least micro movements. They’re supposed to be at least my eyebrow. I’m human and I have frozen human and I have frozen. It’s very expensive.
[00:34:21] It’s very hard. I’m human and I frozen and human and I have frozen and it’s very expensive and it’s very expensive. I wonder, would it be like, if I danced more easily, I wonder what it would be like if I dance more easily, even if things surprise me, even if things surprise me, even if things repulse me,
[00:34:50] uh, so like that’s the right distance, right? Depth, you know, it’s like, oh, I don’t want it to be this way. It’s okay to take a step movement even. Um, there’s a lot that, that people who have to dance because like their nervous system, if they don’t dance, they’re really in rough shape. So like, if something I don’t like, I will, I will literally do maybe a small version of that.
[00:35:27] Uh, um, allowing your body to express it with sound and movement, but a sound as a kind is part of dance, um, in my world. Um, and that allows you to, um, your energy to keep moving. Um, when I’ve, I have a client who has, uh, a lid on the amount of joy that they can handle, because their energy doesn’t know where to go.
[00:36:03] And that’s sort of the, like, ah, it hits a point where it’s. They don’t know what to, how to move with it. And the same thing happens. Like if I’m really sinking, um, I noticed my daughter she’s 18 months old. If she has a disappointment, what is her natural thing to do? Like if she’s regulated, she sinks to the floor and she goes into child’s pose.
[00:36:32] And then she’ll just kind of like do some movement. And then there’s little moment of stillness and you can feel her whole body. It’s not freeze it’s reconfiguration. And so I want to reflect it. Like she’s teaching me. Yeah.
[00:36:54] And, and to be more in the dance of emotion and letting it express through something that maybe there’s contexts where you can’t do that. If I’m in that context where I really can’t, um, your boss’s office, maybe not the pastor’s office. Yeah. Some weird place where if you put yourself down in child’s pose in the middle of the grocery store.
[00:37:17] Oh. Call someone to take you away. Yeah. I mean, up on aisle seven, um, yeah, it, I will notice that my body, because it’s very signaling to me. Um, it, it w it still wants. To move with that. And that’s where, um, if I go to bed and I haven’t moved with some of the things that have happened during the day, um, my body will, will tend to flop around.
[00:37:50] I won’t necessarily sleep well. It’ll if I analyze it later, it’s like, oh, I went into that posture and, oh, that’s the, that’s the, um, the fetal position. Yeah. It could have put my hand under there and just kind of tucked in. Oh, I didn’t move with that feeling. So for many people, it’s very hard to move with uncertainty.
[00:38:15] When we were very little, if we were flooded with the feelings that came up around in certainty, we were probably, might’ve been feeling rejected, scared, overwhelmed. There’s all these feelings we’ve learned to not be with those feelings and move them through. We kind of like, we can’t just go into child’s pose and process through.
[00:38:32] And one thing I love to analogy, I love that works for me. Take what you like is it’s like going to the gym when we haven’t gotten to the gym in a while, we may not have the muscles for feeling those feelings, but we don’t have to dump ourselves into the. You know, 30 gallon bucket of it, we can take a thimbleful and just feel it for a moment.
[00:38:51] Take a break, notice that it, we were able to feel it. We were able to process it with our breath or move our tapping comfort from a friend so that we can build up the muscles, the muscles build markably easily. Once we start showing our system that we’re not going to die, if we feel them. And when we were little, we often didn’t have anyone to help us.
[00:39:12] Co-regulate we didn’t have anyone showing us how to deal with these emotions. So we didn’t build up the muscles for doing this. Um, so that feeling of uncertainty, someone wrote is the only thing that can be certain of uncertainty. And I don’t think that’s true. We are uncertain to many of things, but I’m pretty certain the sun is going to rise tomorrow.
[00:39:33] I’m pretty certain that, you know, my next breath is going to be there. If there’s too much uncertainty, Pavlov’s dogs, there were additional experiments. And one where they started shocking the dogs, every time they tried to eat. So the dogs couldn’t find a safe time. It was a little bit random, but they couldn’t find a safe time to eat.
[00:39:51] So the dog stopped eating and died. Um, so like we need a certain, we have to have a certain amount of uncertainty and humans are also amazingly resilient and finding patterns and finding certainty in really awful situations. So I think that, you know, like we can be certain of things besides uncertainty and we can also learn to process the uncertainty much better.
[00:40:15] So we can, it doesn’t have to be so hard on our system. I’m certain I disliked Pavlov intensely right there with you.
[00:40:26] Ah, Even though a part of me wants to be certain, even though a part of me wants to be certain. And a part of me also sees that as black and white and part of me sees it as black and white, what certainty is on the spectrum? What if certainty is on a spectrum, I can might be able to move with that. I might be able to move with that.
[00:40:52] I want it to be certain. I want it to be certain eyebrow. What a certainty is a spectrum. What if certainty is a spectrum side of the eye? What if I process that in that part of me? What if they process it in that part of me on the BI and some things are really out on the certainty level and some certainty scale things are really out on the certainty scale.
[00:41:18] Like my feeling toward Pablo, like my failure. Way out there on the certain certainty
[00:41:32] and I do appreciate certainty and they do appreciate certainty and I appreciate curiosity and they appreciate curiosity and I appreciate that things can change and I appreciate that things can change. And I appreciate, I have some influence over that too. And I appreciate that. I have some influence over that too.
[00:41:56] I let my body move. My body moves in the ways that it wants to and the ways that it wants to.
[00:42:12] And I’m just trying to reiterate that there’s a difference between a freeze and a still point. With each breath, there’s actually a still point where the inhale and exhale begins and where the exhale and the inhale begins. There are meditative practices and energy practices that have you just drop into that still point so that you’re just aware of it, allow it to lengthen and shorten so that it feels, um, like something that you’re aware of in the same way.
[00:42:55] Even if you’re doing the small dance where it’s not something that, you know, anyone would call a dance, it’s, it’s allowing your body to, maybe it wants to go side by side. I’m I’m doing more side-by-side for video than like my body wants to move like this side to side and then a little bit back at a diagonal.
[00:43:22] And then a breath re um, it’s been called like a recalibrating breath, um, regenerative breath, like,
[00:43:35] and sometimes after your body will shut her shake, move or do something, you can notice,
[00:43:46] uh, still point your heart’s still beating. There can even be breath, but it feels like there’s a rhythm, the craniosacral rhythm. Um, you can learn the skill of being able to feel for that they’re practitioners that help you with that. It’s it is something that in the freeze response. Like if I’m, if I’m doing body work with someone and walking them through it, even the craniosacral rhythm will, will breeze.
[00:44:22] And Paul. That’s a long still point when not, when you come out of that there’s movement and the movement can be like a millimeter, which you start feeling like all the tissues of the body have started to move again. And I’m inviting this as part of the real skill of dancing with uncertainty because uncertainty.
[00:44:50] For humans, as soon as we reach a threshold, which for some people it’s really close and for other people, you know, they feel pretty good. Like there’s certainty levels and eight or nine, you know, a week out they’re pretty raw and everything that they’re not certain about. Like whether, and you know, things like that, they’re pretty resilient.
[00:45:10] They’re like, oh, it’ll be cold. It’ll be rainy. It’ll be sunny. Um, now make it their wedding date. And, uh, like the, the lack of certainty about whether can, can, can hit them. And because this is a human thing, you can know. And even offer to people that you feel like, oh, they’re, they’re not moving with us. Or if they’re moving it’s dysregulated, like, I don’t know what to do.
[00:45:38] Like that’s notice the things that we think of like, ah, I don’t know what to do. Notice how stiff I am. There’s a reason for that. Um, their muscles that are supportive muscles in order to move your shoulder, um, their muscles that are activated to actually move the bone in the joint. And there’s all these supportive muscles.
[00:46:00] Well, guess what, if you’re uncertain all the muscles start to try to be supportive and even splinting and becoming, um, uh, that bracing and that’s again from. Biophysiological emotional dynamic here. Ah, shaking out your hands and then letting it change, not as a prescription, but as like, ah, and then stretching your jaw.
[00:46:34] If you want to play around with me, you know, letting yourself shake like shiver, that’s what comes up. These are things that, that reorient your nervous system so that uncertainty is not going to be quite as much of what your, your neurophysiology is tuned to in that moment. It’s like, oh yeah, I’m here.
[00:47:00] I’m working. I can move. Or being able to move feels more resilient than being. Big time. Like if you can move your pinky, your nervous system is like, okay, all right. Yeah, we can come out of this may take me 20 minutes, 30 minutes to get back to, you know, baseline. But if I can move my pinky, um, your nervous system gets the, the switch point.
[00:47:30] The primitive brain can get the switch point of. Oh, it’s okay. And you can then start bringing it back into what’s certain now. Well, I just use this pen. I’m like 9.9. Certain that if I write another word, certain dad, it worked and you know what? I got two others. And if you add like, and I’ve even got two others there, and I got some in the closet, like my level of certainty that I have something to write with.
[00:48:01] Pretty high. I’ve got a stack of cards. Um, for someone who’s doing a workshop, having some certainty that they’ve got something to write with. Ah, it’s regulating. And again, do I, am I a hundred percent certain that my zoom is going to stick with me? No. 9.5. I think we’re good. I think we’re good. Do you see how I start tapping?
[00:48:28] As soon as I started thinking about an uncertainty, like my body will, and that’s where you can practice this in little baby steps, you tune into something that doesn’t feel completely certain everything. Um, and you can then tap and go like it’s okay. Yeah. It feels like an eight. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know.
[00:48:55] Oh, I’d love to see the eclipse tonight. Um, feels like a three and I’m okay. Do you see how, like you start calibrating that, oh, I would really like this to happen, um, that I feel certain at like a one and it’s okay. Yeah. That’s you start teaching your being to shift from your primitive brain where it’s trying to find certain uncertainty, certainly uncertain to a spectrum.
[00:49:27] And that is a real sign of like resilience and thriving is that your whole body can feel into it. Like, yeah. It felt like maybe. Six yesterday that we were going to go to the dance and maybe this morning, it bright into an eight. As soon as I talked to my partner and saw where she was guest squat, it’s like a nine, nine and a half.
[00:49:52] I paid for the tickets, felt like a nine and a half. And what if we didn’t make it? That’s okay.
[00:50:05] So, um, we’d like to take seven minute breaks, um, in the workshop and we’re around that time. Is there a, can I just add one point before, as we’re sending them off? A lot of times, things that are very certain, we tune out, we don’t pay attention to anymore, so it can seem like things are more uncertain, but right now none of us are probably paying attention to our heartbeat.
[00:50:25] It’s doing its all on its own. Our liver’s cleaning our blood or kidneys doing its thing. Like our pancreas does whatever pancreas does. I’m not actually sure, but there’s a lot of things that are happening that we’re very certain of the electricity coming to our home. But the fact that we’re temperature controlled that we have zoom right now that it’s working.
[00:50:44] So we can seem like we’re in a world that’s very uncertain when we’re actually having a lot of things happening and we just kind of tune them out. So just as you go to break, just maybe notice a few things that have feel certain to you that you kind of forgot to appreciate like, oh, maybe things are more certain than I have.
[00:51:02] About just something to give some counterpoint to. So if you’re watching this on the recording, hi, welcome. And we invite you to take a quick break here to, um, take care of whatever you need. Let things integrate, see what comes up for you, and we’ll be back at welcome back.
[00:51:27] What are you noticing cafe as we tune into this together? Even reading the chat. I think that for a lot of us dancing with the uncertainty is not a concept we’ve been brought up with. I think a lot of us were taught that if we’re not certain, I mean, kind of our society says confidence means you’re, you’re supposed to be confident.
[00:51:50] You’re supposed to be, you make it happen. You make, and yeah, life is not like that. I’ve watched a lot of my more confident friends kind of life eventually catches them and they don’t know how to deal with it because they just kind of plowed through. And even if we can make a lot of things happen, I think we’re powerful means sometimes we’re making them happen at the expense of others choice or consent.
[00:52:12] Um, I know I did that a lot in the past and I feel bad about that and try, I’m trying to live a life that’s much more like, do you want to dance with me versus you are going to dance with me. Um, And I think as we get more experience, especially when our mindful like peop everyone here, like, I love the fact that you’re here.
[00:52:32] A lot of people go through their life trying to be more certain, someone mentioned addictions, like, oh, I’m going to go back to that one substance. I know I can get the response I need to, I couldn’t get it from my parents. I couldn’t get it from life. I’m going to get it from gambling or drinking or cocaine or chocolate or whatever it is shopping.
[00:52:50] I’m going to try that gives, and that will give me the dopamine I need to feel okay. But then I need more and more and more of it to get the same level. So I think when we can be with ourselves, that there’s going to be times when we feel pretty uncertain and times when we feel pretty certain in breath out breath kind of thing, like, oh, okay.
[00:53:10] This feels good. Okay. That feels kind of good too. Um, and realizing that some of the things that we want to be certain about right now that feels so important may not matter a year from now, My mother has, and I pick on her gently because she, she does things that are very easy for people to relate to anything.
[00:53:29] Whenever she finds something good. She’ll buy two. 'cause she’s afraid that it won’t be there later. So I am a hundred percent certain. She has two VHF S players in our house. How many of us ever need a VHS player? Um, and she said something she wanted to be secure and certain on that she wanted to. So if we’re very hungry food, we feel like we want to eat food forever.
[00:53:53] And then we eat some food and then we’re like, oh, I’m kind of done with food. I’m so tired. I want to sleep forever when really comfy bed. It’s great to have that, but after I’ve slept for a while, I might be ready to go do something else. So what we feel most focused on for wanting our certainty around may not be something that’s really important in the long run.
[00:54:12] When I go to a new event, people, I don’t know my exit strategy, having some snacks with me, telling Rick where I’m going. Like all those things seem really important. And yet if I’ve gone two or three times, I know some people, I know the container they hold, I might not need any of those things. So. Evenly, even what we’re uncertain about is uncertain.
[00:54:34] It may be uncertain right now, but not uncertain tomorrow or the next time we go. Or so I like that. Rick’s talking about being with the body, noticing what we’re feeling in our body, in that moment, and then giving it a little bit of movement, a little bit of expression in that, in that uncertainty. And I love the idea again, of building up the muscle.
[00:54:54] Can I tolerate this feeling for a moment? It’s not actually hurting me and I’m not talking about wallowing in it forever. I’m talking about experiencing that a little bit and teaching our body how to process it, how to like, oh, this is a feeling. It doesn’t feel great, but I’m not being harmed. Is there wisdom in this?
[00:55:12] Is there, is there an asking, how can. Mine this experience for, for, oh, I’m really craving a soft bed. Well, can, is there something I can do about that? That’s I sleep almost every night, so maybe I can get softer pillows from my bed and remind myself that I’m building someone talking about building trust with themselves.
[00:55:31] Remind myself, Hey, look, I got the pillows to give myself this comfort and letting myself enjoy them. So that even in the uncertainty of it, I couldn’t build in comfort and ease, and I can mind the experiences to find what would help me feel more fulfilled. And when joyous
[00:55:53] I’d like to do a tapping on. How we’re conditioned to, and thank you, um, person in the chat conditioned to equate certainty with safety, um, or, and also I keep getting this picture of being in school. And if I was certain of the answer to a question and I was right, it reinforced that, oh, if I’m certain I’m safe and I’m going to be rewarded and not punished, and there’s this court sort of wicked, um, conditioning that happens that the deconditioning of that is.
[00:56:34] Like part of freedom for me. Yeah. Even though I was conditioned, even though I was conditioned to be certain, to be certain a certain Matt and I would safe cause certain men I was safe and I wouldn’t be punished and I wouldn’t be punished and safety and not being punished or two sort of different things and safety and not being punished or two sort of different things.
[00:57:01] I was conditioned to be certain, I was conditioned to be certain eyebrow. You are weak. If you weren’t certain you are weak, if you weren’t certain. So there’s still people saying that there’s still people saying that under the eye, there are certain tests everywhere. There are certain tests everywhere.
[00:57:19] They’re so certain they’re so certain chin, it makes me feel very uncertain. It makes me feel very insecure. I don’t feel as certain as they do, because I don’t feel as certain as, and that does not feel safe. That does not feel so.
[00:57:41] I was so conditioned to be certain condition, to be certain it’s a certain test that really know what’s going on. It’s a certain descent really know what’s going on. Right. Right. A lot of times they’re just not seeing the whole picture. They’re just looking at the parts that are very clear to them and holding on really tight to that.
[00:58:04] Yeah. I’m sort of like, yeah. If you had met me at 16 years old, I was so certain I had really been conditioned that I didn’t pre-Google you could make a lot of assertions with confidence and certainty. Correct. But it’s harder to check on somebody and nobody carried the encyclopedia Britannica around with them.
[00:58:33] He might have it at home. They might ding you the next day. But, um, yeah, so there’s that well, and I think of people that are very, very certain often. Aren’t very curious. There are some people that can be curious as well, but generally they know. And so there’s no question about what else is there. Yeah. Um, certainty is protection for.
[00:58:57] Certainty is protection for a lot of people, they seem so certain. They seem so certain. I don’t look at it that way. I don’t look at it that way. My gut doesn’t feel it that way. It doesn’t feel it though. It doesn’t feel so certain. It doesn’t feel so. What if that’s better for me? What if that’s better for me?
[00:59:19] But they seem so safe in their certainty. They feel so safe in their certainty. My being does not work that way. I’m pretty certain I don’t work that way. I’m pretty sure I don’t. I see a lot more of a spectrum and it’s hard.
[00:59:45] Empathetic people, right? As soon as you’re certain and you state a certainty and you run up against another human being who there, their whole core does not see it that way. That’s not their lived reality. That’s not their intuition. All of a sudden your certainty is like, ah, what do I do with this? I run up against, I’m an empath.
[01:00:06] I have that I have that it’s alive in me and I run into some money. And they’re certain they’re, what’s clear to them. Let’s just call it clarity. Their clarity is different from my clarity. What do I do? I’m going to dance with the uncertainty. Cause I, I know that on any topic. Pick any topic. And if I, if I launch into more certainty that isn’t really personal, um, that the superpower.
[01:00:45] And I’ll call him back because there’s some times have, have real repercussions to be as sensitive. Um, they make it impossible for me to be a certain test that, um, uh, search their clarity over other people, because I know what clarity feels like. I can feel it in you. I can feel it in someone else. It’s not wishy-washy, it’s just like, oh, now there’s two people and we have different clarity.
[01:01:17] Well, now there’s three people. Dang. We have three clarity and no,
[01:01:29] we have this big group of people here and everything that I say, some people it lands like yeah. And other people like it. And there’s a lot of uncertainty now. I like that. Um, I liked it when, when something that feels clear to me is reflected back. I, I believe that dancing with uncertainty allows me to acknowledge that, oh, there’s a resonance.
[01:02:02] We’re actually maybe. Feeling the same backbeat. Oh, okay. Yeah. We’re jiving together. But what about that person over there? That’s going, which was me earlier today, out on the grass. Um, not in rhythm with us. Are they like off? Does that hit me like, oh, um, I’m now, so part of our work here of dancing with uncertainty is to allow more emotional freedom, allow more clarity, um, and know I’ve got boundaries around people asserting their art, dominating my own clarity, where their own it’s like, I’m going to dance over there.
[01:02:47] Um, and. For resiliency and, and, and thriving. That’s where it’s like, okay, oh, that’s landing, it’s taking something from me. I was starting to feel pretty certain and now, uh, and it’s okay. Do you see what I’m doing? It’s like, oh, I was feeling so clear. And then I talked to them and now I’m, I’m aware that there’s a clarity in me and a different clarity in them and okay.
[01:03:18] You’re, you’re dancing to a little bit of a different backbeat. Maybe the melody is different. The lyrics, your lyrics are different than mine. You’ve ever sang a song that you were sure that that word was that. And then you discover it. Wasn’t I sat at the top of my lungs. And that was not what that song was about.
[01:03:46] Well, I think that’s one of the things that you’re saying, Rick, it really strikes me as there’s a gift in uncertainty. I mean, one, I often find new things about myself when I go to events or things. I’m like, oh, I’m not certain I can. Is this going to be good for me? Is this going to be fun? And I try to stay.
[01:04:04] Like, I don’t just like when we’re stretching and we don’t want to damage something, but like I can be stretched and moderately uncomfortable, and I can decide if I want to repeat something, but when we’re we let go of some of that certainty. W the stuff we’re holding onto really tight. We often discover new possibilities and new information, new avenues of ourselves.
[01:04:27] And so I think that’s one of the saddest things about trauma is that people, they, they will often keep shrinking their comfort zone to stay smaller and smaller. So they don’t experience that in certainty because the edge of the comfort zone things happen that we don’t know about. And I also believe that magic happens outside our comfort zone.
[01:04:46] So if we can, as we’re healing trauma, we can also kind of build up our resiliency around, okay, this feels uncomfortable, but I’m actually safe, kind of, how can I baby step my way into that and learn to trust myself, learn that I’ll get myself out of something that’s not good. If something gets really bad.
[01:05:05] And I sometimes have worry thoughts where I’m going to do something new. I’ll like, my brain will like, what if this happens or this person’s rude, or they won’t listen to my boundaries. Been a little and I’m like where’s case. I take my key, I’m going to keep the keys and I’m going to leave and they can figure out how to get home.
[01:05:20] So like, I let my, I’m trying to build trust with myself in handling this uncertainty. Would you lead us on a tapping of the impact of trauma on my CRE on a craving for certainty? I’d like to just take that and notch it down a little bit more for me. Um, and I’m sure that I’m not alone and wanting some traumas have still have less impact when that craving for certainty karate champ.
[01:05:51] I have some open wounds left behind. I have some open woman’s left behind my body knows I shouldn’t be too adventuresome with open wounds. And my body does know that I shouldn’t be to adventure some with open wounds and I’d like to build trust. And I’d like to build trust with myself again and help myself find the edges of what I can do and help my self find the edges that I have things that I can do these open wounds while I also heal these open wounds top of that, some of these wounds are from very long ago.
[01:06:30] Oh yeah. Some of these wounds are from very long ago. I can have compassion.
[01:06:39] I can have compassion side of the eye. It does take a lot of energy to heal these old wounds. And it does take a lot of energy to heal these old wounds under the eye. I can modify what I do to a certain extent. I can modify what I do to a big extent under the nose to let my body heal these old wounds to let my body heal these old ones, 10 to let my mind and my heart heal from the.
[01:07:08] Let my mind and my heart heal from the trauma collarbone. And I might be able to have baby adventures right now. And I am having baby adventures right now under there. I want a zoom call tapping with these people. I want to zoom call tapping with these people. Probably that if you’d asked me a few years ago, I would’ve said no way.
[01:07:30] Well, uh, there’s lots of things that I would have said no way to eyebrow. What if it’s okay to explore a little bit? It’s okay to explore a little bit side of the, I can pay attention to my body.
[01:07:49] I can pay attention to my body under the eye. I can have clear exit strategies. I’m going to can have clear exit strategies under the nose. I can have recovery time with friends. I can have recovery time with friends 10, and I might be able to explore more than I think. Are there might be able to explore more than I think collarbone.
[01:08:12] What if I can heal and have baby adventures, baby adventures under the arm and having a lot of compassion for those old traumas, a lot of compassion for those old traumas, the headway like heal and build trust with myself. Well, I heal and have trust in myself. Again, just take a deep breath. And I think a lot of trauma is trauma occurs when we face something, we think we don’t have the resources to deal with.
[01:08:43] So there is a break in the trust in that we can handle the world that comes to us. So there’s an often a feeling like I can’t trust myself to handle what’s out there. So that’s, I think that’s the ripping that experiences that we experience with trauma, not trusting other people, certainly that’s part of it as well.
[01:09:00] But I think one of the most core wound, the part of it is that we break trust with ourselves and there’s nothing wrong when we’re T3 5 47, whenever we were doing our best and there can be repaired. We can repair that old wound. Um, to bring it back to dancing with uncertainty, let’s say that you’re thinking about doing something.
[01:09:24] Um, again, how are we conditioned to think it through to plot plan analyze? So there’s movement, there’s dance, but it’s all neurons, right? Or maybe some micro-expressions in your face. If, if we want to dance with uncertainty, you could say, you know, I’m outta here and just dance your way out of the room. No, you’re not at the point.
[01:09:57] But what did you do? You exercise your system to say, you know, I’m out of here to make a decision and kind of move with it. And you, you see this and spontaneous dance, like someone will decide, like, you know, I’m not going to dance on rhythm. I’m going to dance a counterpoint and they just start doing it.
[01:10:18] And then you get used to it. Um, you can, you can grab the keys and say, these are my keys. They go to my car and I’m taking my car. And I have an app on my phone where I can call. I can call a variety of, uh, resources, the, to give me support, to get me home, to get me out of there. Um, the steps the baby adventures can be like, you’re starting to feel nervous about.
[01:10:54] So when, well, this was the first dance I had been to a big group, a hundred people like, oh, I haven’t been in a group of a hundred people for two years. Just not, um, not out of fear, but out of real conscious choice of what’s right for me. Um, and as I arrived, I saw some people I knew and because, um, we were doing this workshop and, and this has been really conscious for me.
[01:11:22] What I did was I kind of made a soft gesture of acknowledgement. And then I went within again and I noticed that I was, I was more still my body, the uncertainty of like, do I go over and say hi while it’s a nonverbal space? Do I give hugs? I don’t know how, where they are. Like, was I certain that he wanted a hug from me?
[01:11:53] Point five. So the first thing I did was I pause. So pause. Notice what was happening in my body. Oh, the uncertainty uncomfortable. This is someone I love. Hugged them lot, really beautiful being. And the uncertainty was really like my level of certainty was very, very low. And so rather than push it, I breathed, I tuned into the earth.
[01:12:22] I tuned into the music. I wasn’t moving with the music. I just was allowing my body to move. And then as I looked over, he had taken a few steps in my direction was also kind of tuning into what was right. And we, we saw, and then, you know, my, my daughter came over and I picked her up and there was a nut, some more movement.
[01:12:49] And we eventually ended up hugging and, you know, he even danced with, uh, Dera a bit. So you see like dancing with uncertainty. Another person. I did that with. Um, and, uh, that was it. It was just an acknowledgement. Um, they went off into their own world. Um, I think we had one another short acknowledgement.
[01:13:15] This is someone that was a friend that I used to go to parties with and things like that, but that was, that was it. The uncertainty was also. Profound uncertainty, but by dancing with it, letting it unfold.
[01:13:33] And I also, I believe in pre paving, like there’s a difference between, um, planning and kind of strategizing, which I can’t stop my brain from doing. But prepaying is like, okay, I’m going to see people that I haven’t seen in two years, I’m going to have response reaction. Some people are don’t even know I have a new baby, um, not so much a baby anymore.
[01:13:58] Um, there’s going to be all those energies and the other day. I just let my body stretch and move while I tuned into those things. And what that did is it allowed the things that were not that I was, um, resilient around, tend to move through as soon as you’re moving your body and you’re tuned to something like, oh, I may see that person.
[01:14:24] I may see that person that’d be probably is going to be awkward. Um, and it was. So, but if I’m moving my body through it, I noticed my own resiliency. The one thing that I paused with, and I couldn’t start moving again until I had a strategy was what if I really need to leave 20 minutes into this? I have not been around a hundred people.
[01:14:52] I, you know, I it’s outside. I have no idea what’s going to be going on. It could be too hot for me. All the other, you see like uncertainties lore and I needed to prepaid with my partner, the agreement. Hey, to be honest with you, I haven’t done this. You’ve been around a lot more people recently in the last year than I have.
[01:15:18] I don’t know how my nervous system is going to react. Are you okay? If we leave after 15 minutes and we had, you know, two strategies, one, I would go and, um, come back. She would text me when they were done and I would come back and pick them up or that we would all go together and that she would be the one to make the decision about, um, where the kids were and how everything was.
[01:15:43] But I could make the decision. Fully empowered to, to just go. And I didn’t even have to, I could pick up my stuff and if she came back and my stuff was gone and I said, I would text her when I was in the car. Did I need that? No, but my body, because I paused and tried to move with it, it was like, Hmm, no.
[01:16:09] Now that feels a little vulnerable to share that with all the work I do emotionally, I’m still someone that might have to leave a dance that I paid for with my family and surrounded by good people with really great boundaries. Like this is a really safe space, like for me to say that, and I’m sharing it because the only reason I’ve been able to go and do these ecstatic dances and contact improv and everything else is that I have those agreements with myself that there’s.
[01:16:42] The dancing with uncertainty goes with allowing myself to be where I am and to move with it. If I’m in a place where it’s like not right for me, I can move with it. Um, you know, I went to, I went out to parties and just walked out after five minutes. Cause everyone was just in a different space and I never, would’ve gone to another party.
[01:17:07] If I, I can I’m picturing the party. I never, would’ve gone to another party with that group of people ever if I had forced myself to stay. And the good news is, is because I gave myself the out, I was able to go next time earlier, before the energy changed dancing. So I hope that, that this is helpful to you.
[01:17:35] An honoring, like, Hey, I’ve got a nervous system. Hey, I’m uncertain about people right now. Hey, how uncertain, how my neurophysiology emotions are going to pick up what they’re going to pick up on. Who’s going to be there. What’s the energy going to be? And if I give myself permission to pause, tune in, make a, make a movement.
[01:17:58] Um, to dance with the uncertainty until I’m like, okay. Um, I it’s been one of the most life-changing things in my life to, to move with it. That way. I love that you let yourself be with what was true rather than what you thought should be. And I often do the same thing. I’m like, I should be okay being here.
[01:18:22] I’m not okay. What do I want to do? Um, because we often paint shirts on ourselves. We decide where we’re supposed to be, and that doesn’t let us be in the moment. And I think that uncertainty of like, how will I be, how am I right now? That’s a real gift we can give ourselves. Um, if someone said fierce, this fierce boundary setting or something like that, I thought, lovely.
[01:18:43] I love that. Like, okay. Yes, I can be. I can honor what my body and my system needs in the moment. Not trying to force myself through not trying to make myself be what I was certain. I would be in this situation. There is a gift we can give ourselves when we do that. And I think we can also model that for other people, because so many people are trying to live up with what they should do holding on.
[01:19:04] And when we say, you know, this is not meeting my needs right now. Um, I went to a dinner with a bunch of friends the other day, the first restaurant was closed. We went to a second one that I’m a bigger person. The picnic benches are really close. Yeah. It was like not going to be good for my body. And I just said, this won’t work for me and I’m going to, I’m just going to go and get dinner someplace else.
[01:19:25] And I, you know, had the shame like, oh, I should be able to fit. I was the one who initiated the dinner. They all had a lovely time and I didn’t make a big deal of it, but I just told them like, you know, this is not going to work for me. And I’m going to take care of myself. And I was really proud, like that re rebuild trust with myself that I’m not going to try to sit there and be incredibly uncomfortable.
[01:19:45] Um, I’m going to honor what my body needs, what my system needs. So if you can give that to yourself and then dance with the feelings that come up around it, be with them as much as you can, they start processing through. Um, and I think that we often, I often pointing fingers back at me. I think this bad feeling will last forever.
[01:20:05] I feel uncertain. I feel disappointed. I feel whatever I’m like, oh, this is forever. We can’t, our systems don’t sustain that. It’s only when we push them down like beach balls that they’re constantly, they’re peeing our subpoenas. If we can just process them, feel them, they pass. And then we have another feeling.
[01:20:22] It might be happy. It might be, it might, you can just be with whatever’s arising in the moment, like a contact improv. Thank you all for being here. Um, this continues, we have a, the thriving now circle. There’s a one-time membership on a gliding scale, um, as well as monthly options, um, you can go to thriving now.com/circle of our open calls.
[01:20:45] We engage directly with people, um, it’s not recorded. So that opens up, uh, a different kind of space for, for folks. Um, the, um, you know, I, I want to acknowledge that. I know, I know many of you and some of your stories, um, we’ve seen in the chat and we were trained to stay. We’re we’re taught that being respectful, man, if you were paired up with a dance partner that you didn’t want to be with that there wasn’t an option.
[01:21:26] Um, the dance dances is with your nervous system, with your mind, with the heart, that what matters to you starting there with that clarity, emotional freedom. You know, I, I want to be with dancing with people that. To be dancing with me, they dance differently. Great. You know, um, there’s a freedom that comes from checking in.
[01:22:01] Um, and I want to acknowledge that already. You are a vibrational leader in this area because of the many thousands of people in the thriving now community, which already, because they think about emotions as something that we can have some agency over, like our energy and safety, respect, freedom, matter to dance with uncertainty, um, what you’ve just practiced and what your, what you’ve been practicing puts you in a, in a, in an opportunity to allow your vibration, to influence and invite other.
[01:22:51] Um, if I’ve noticed that everyone’s become very stiff because everyone’s uncertain about what to say or where to go with a conversation, I, I might just start a gentle rocking ground myself, do the things that I know and, and even acknowledging, yeah, it’s hard to, it’s hard to be certain what to do here or what to say to that.
[01:23:18] Um, you know, and you’ll notice that people are like, oh, thank goodness somebody spoke to it, or somebody is moving to it. Um, it’s not a requirement. And if, if you’re doing this for yourself, notice in the, we spaces that when that, as soon as you. Start the movement yourself. Other people’s primitive brain through their resonance will often start changing.
[01:23:50] Um, it will feel less like a trauma is happening and that healing can start and we can be moving with this and resilient with it together. Happy. Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate the damn.
[01:24:09] Our next workshop, anchoring positive, positive, anchoring the positive, and that’ll be toward the end of the month. And yeah, it’ll be out there on thriving now.center where we can engage around this, our community center. Um, it’s free for you to participate. We welcome your wisdom, your insights, how you apply this, what you notice, all the good things sharing.
[01:24:34] And thank you so much for everyone in the comments and who’s tapped along and, and been here today. Bye. For now.
We covered…
- How uncertainty can start triggering our freeze response
- We’re designed to move as part of coping with uncertainty – physically move, emotionally move energy
- Have structural options that feel more certain when there’s real questions about your resilience
- Uncertainty can be felt as binary “certain… or NOT!” – yet it is actually a spectrum. Use that! How certain does this feel 0-10?
- Build resilience through tapping and baby adventures and microsteps. Tune into the body’s “uncertainty alert” responses and help bring movement to them.
- We can try to control situations, but that is a stressful and usually unhealthy dynamic. Bring personal agency and clarity instead.
- Pause. Notice. Breathe. Move something. Tap if you can.
- Keep dancing with uncertainty! Notice how as you bring such moving and grounded energy that it positively influences others, too.
Resources Mentioned
Great to have you on this journey with us!
4 Likes
Thank you for this workshop. Definitely as always, spoke to me with all of its insights. What I actually didn’t realise until Cathy said it, was that trauma also refers to the breakage of trust with myself on my ability to handle the world outside. I just kinda thought that trauma simply refers to the emotionally challenging moments that led to many overwhelming triggers that are now unprocessed. But yeah, it definitely snowballs into the lack of self-trust to face the world and how incapable I felt I really was at handling anything uncertain at all.
And since we’re at dancing, would like to share my “kind” of dance 
4 Likes
Oh yeah! Thanks for sharing your ah-ha and music!
3 Likes
I thought the same thing! So helpful. Was an incredibly helpful program. Thank you, @Cathy and @RickThrivingNow. I’m dealing with so much uncertainty at the moment. This gave me so many helpful insights on how to navigate, breathe, acknowledge, and not expect too much of myself. Allow myself to be uncertain. Thank you.
@Jun_Rong love this video. Tell me more about it? So good!
4 Likes
Thanks @Dru ! It was a school concert where we played some rock songs and I was just lost in the music! 
2 Likes
“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s path” – Joseph Campbell.
When nothing is certain, everything is possible. Enjoy the journey.
3 Likes
… 'tuning into the body’s uncertainty alert responses resonated a lot.
After listening again slowly… chewing on each offered concept …m sure i’ll be in a better place - (healthier place) to dance with uncertainty that’s on its way into my current life situation…may even enjoy it. Its going to ground me into kind of, risk taking without anxiety. I really really needed this.
…waiting to handle it and experience this positive influence…to its minimum at least my part of dance and share it here then 
3 Likes
I notice this (almost) every day. My mind wants systems that work, that reduce uncertainty and provide “predictability.” Uhhh, yeah, there are limits to that.
When i dance with uncertainty there’s an awareness that I can “position” myself consciously to take advantage of potentials and possibilities. Like noticing where the waves are rising and breaking… and positioning oneself there. Not guaranteed to catch a wave, much less “The Wave” – yet much more likely than standing on the shore, eh?
3 Likes
“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.” - Epictetus
2 Likes
