Being a Safe Place to Land
The Practice of Co-regulation
A few years ago, after a day of teaching a group of yoga teacher trainees and learning about the practice of compassion, I had some time to move the laboratory of learning into real life practice. My then 15-year-old daughter had been through several hard things during this period and her own mental state was pretty consistently overwhelmed. On this evening after the teacher trainees and I had been practicing the support of compassion, I picked up my daughter from her friend’s home, a home where, and a family with whom, some of my daughter’s trauma was linked. She had spent the night before I picked her up in this home with a small group of girls. She wanted to stay a second night. I said no.
What happened after my no went from typical to surprising faster than I could ever have imagined. As we climbed into the car, my daughter met my no with all of the teenage anger I expected: you don’t understand, I’m the only one who can’t stay, why can’t I?! My usual response likely would have been to explain why, perhaps even to express my own exhausted irritation with her response and meet frustration with frustration. But instead I sat very quietly next to her in the driver seat. Compassion does not need to explain or enter with frustration, I heard, as I remembered my earlier time in practice.
Instead of any of the usual’s, I sat quietly, noted my own emotions and tension starting to arise, then from deep in my heart, I relaxed, and inwardly spoke to her heart: this is really hard for you; you’ve been having a really hard time; these friends are important to you; it’s really hard to be 15 and feel like you have no control. This is hard. I continued to breathe long and slow breaths from my heart.
In the space of exactly 4 minutes, the whole situation shifted. My daughter stopped ranting at me and grew quiet. Then suddenly she looked at me with a small smile. I touched her hand. I love you mama, she said. I love you, too, I responded, then she turned to look out the window, quiet again. My heart caught in my throat and I felt myself start to tear up. Instead, I softened again and drove us home, continuing to breathe from my heart, offering us both compassion into the space around us.
I don’t tell this story to “toot my own horn.” I forget to use the practices I’ve learned at least as many times as I remember. But this night that I remembered, everything was different. So I offer you this truth: true, from-the-heart compassion really can change everything.
This is the experience of co-regulation, the supportive, dynamic, and interactive process by which one person’s emotional state is supported by another person’s regulated nervous system. This happens through one person’s awareness of their own emotions and their offering of compassion into a space. Imagine one person offering another a safe place to land by being near with a presence of compassion and equanimity—even if that compassion and equanimity isn’t expressed in outward words.
I’ve begun teaching the yoga training again and this was one of the topics of our first weekend. The importance of each adult in the room learning to understand and recognize their own emotions and practice moving into a regulated state is some of the important work we do.
Many posts ago, I mentioned the practice of the “tight fist.” Yoga is a “taste and see,” experiential practice. So consider trying this:
With one hand, make a tight fist. As you keep that hand in a fist, use the other hand to try to pry the fist open. Don’t let go of the fist, but really try to force it open with your other hand. After a minute or so of this, start noticing your muscles and breath. Release the fist and notice your breath. Notice your facial muscles and muscles around your torso and shoulders. Notice your mind. How does everything feel?
Now, make a fist again. Keep the fist bound just as you did the first time, but this time, allow your other hand to rest comfortably and at ease with the palm open. Lay the fist into the open palm and allow it to rest there. As you hold the fist closed still, resting in the open palm, start to notice again. Notice your breath again and each of your muscles. How does everything feel?
During our first weekend of yoga training, practicing the “tight fist,” the energy of the room was palpably different during each of these practices. First, I saw squinted eyes, furrowed brows, down-turned mouths. I could feel the tension around me. Then, as their fists rested in their own open palms, I heard an audible sigh. Everyone’s face was soft, their eyes closed, and appeared to be at ease. “It’s impossible not to relax the fist,” one person offered.
It’s impossible not to relax the fist. I’ve felt this when my own thoughts are closing in and I move back toward a loving awareness. I’ve felt it when another person’s nervous system is disregulated. A more spacious way of existing. A way of love. It is a kindness not only to myself but to the whole space around me.
The way of compassion, of love, of spaciousness: in the language I understand, I’d call this a homecoming to resting in the heart of God. It was the acts of compassion and love that were transmitted to me by others that I’d now call an invitation to experience the presence that had always been with me, but that I couldn’t feel and didn’t know I could trust. Not when I was living with an overwhelmed nervous system. Not when I’m living hijacked and overwhelmed now. Not when I’m listening to so many words of separation and shame—from myself and from others.
How do you recognize this sense of peace, friends, the peace that passes understanding and allows you to become a soft landing place?
I wonder if you might try this as the week unfolds. If you are quiet now, at ease, can you offer yourself a moment of gentleness? How does it feel when you bring your attention to your eyes and relax the corners of your eyes into a soft smile, perhaps the corners of your mouth as well? You might imagine that you’re gazing upon something particularly special to you in order to soften your face into gentleness, your mind into a loving state.
For me, it’s looking out over the ocean, the smiling faces of my children, observing kindness offered by another, feeling God’s presence as I start my morning in contemplative stillness.
What if, friends, we learned to understand and recognize our own emotions to be able to practice this presence when someone we love needs a safe and soft place to land? Perhaps we could learn to be the open palm of softness for the tight fist of another’s presence to rest within.
I don’t think this is easy, but I do think it’s essential. I heard someone say recently that our present times seem very much like we are living in the Tower of Babel story, everyone screaming in their own language of separation and division. What if someone, anyone, sat down and managed their own overwhelm enough to recognize the hurt and confusion within this divided language? I can’t help but wonder if we might just learn to listen to the sounds of our hearts, where this isn’t much difference at all. I wonder if we might learn to hear the sound of love both within and without.
Faith, by Robert Bly I want to write about faith, about the way the moon rises over cold snow, night after night, faithful even as it fades from fullness, slowly becoming that last curving and impossible sliver of light before the final darkness. But I have no faith myself I refuse it even the smallest entry. Let this then, my small poem, like a new moon, slender and barely open, be the first prayer that opens me to faith.