Resource – and feel your life change

These days my focus has been on keeping myself resourced. Checking in with my body – regularly – for what I truly need.

Resourcing – in nervous system terms – helps our bodies move

out of survival

> into a state where there's more safety, connection and choice.

Resourcing helps us stay with activation – without getting overwhelmed or leaving the body.

Activation that can look like:

• becoming defensive, aggressive, blaming, judging

• wanting to run away, leave the situation

• feeling stuck, paralysed (often called freeze – energy is here but cannot move)

• 2nd- & 3rd-guessing, thoughts are looping

• fawning aka people pleasing

Important to say: We don't want to do away with this activation. Activation is not bad, at all! It helps keep us safe. Regulation – a result of effective resourcing – is not equal to "calm". Being regulated can mean that we are activated – and that activation is needed to change something, to keep us safe, to express our needs, to leave the situation... With resourcing we make sure though that we don't leave the body aka get overwhelmed in the process.

It also reduces the chance that we react from past experiences rather than respond to what’s actually happening now (we can update outdated survival-/protective mechanisms).

Resourcing builds Capacity

In other terms: Resourcing builds so-called nervous system capacity. The capacity to feel the feels. To stay with sensation. To stay with intensity – without shutting down or getting lost in it. In fact, resourcing helps us feel more alive. (If it's interesting to you 🤓: Capacity is closely related to what’s known as the Window of Tolerance.)

So how to resource?

Resourcing means taking a moment to check in: "What makes me feel supported? What helps me feel safe"? (see mini-practice at the ending of this text)

Resourcing can be internal – like noticing your breath or a place in the body which feels "good".*

Or external – like orienting to your environment, touching a green leaf, speaking to a friend, or listening to birds 🦤...

For me personally,

resourcing can look like:

• movement – even a tiny dose (e.g. when feeling blocked, stuck, overthinking)

• jumping into mother ocean and feeling held by her 360° around you

• eating what my body desires (not what my mind thinks I "should")

• wearing clothes that feel good ON my skin and make me feel good IN my skin

• any contact with nature

• saying No to all things that do not feel like a fu** YES in my body

• pausing the moment – to breathe, sigh, orient myself in my environment

• dancing or singing as I like – in my room, on the street, anywhere

• chatting with girlfriends about life & love

• a session with a somatic therapist/coach

• bringing things up aka expressing myself instead of carrying it around with me for days and weeks

• leaving the phone at home

• ...and whatever falls into the category of musing myself, pouring into myself...

What is resourcing you, dear?

Which resources work, depends on the state your nervous system is in.

It can change from moment to moment. As in: If you are frozen – can neither act nor relax – you probably need something entirely different to when you are feeling angry, ragey. It also depends on what your system tends to default to — more activation, or more ease.

Resourcefulness – your nervous system's capacity to connect to a resource – is not something we either have or don't have. It's something that can be cultivated, with love and devotion, as always. (And with some support from a trained practitioner, this process can be accelerated ;).

Short- and long-term effects are awaitinggg

Being in a resourced state is something that has immediate effects. For me, for example, as a result of feeling more resourced: I communicate clearer, I spiral up- rather than downward, decisions come more easily, sleep becomes deeper, I have more energy during the day. And most importantly: It feels better inside.

And, with greater resourcefulness, big shifts can happen in all areas of life... (say romance, work, finances, friendships – you name it.)

Funny enough, just before I started writing this blogpost, I opened my inbox. And what is there? A newsletter from Nathalia Plass (a certified VITA-Sex Love Relationship Coach like me), stating:

...what comes up in your body as you read this?

And to get a sense of what a resource is for you, I invite you to:

Pause for a moment.

Look around your space.

Is there something your eyes enjoy resting on?

Notice your body as you do.

Maybe: allow yourself to exhale fully… with a sigh (full-voicedly, generously!).

And simply notice: does anything soften, even 1%?

Take a moment to journal and observe what else in your days makes you feel this way.

Feel free to reach out with questions or reflections. It always makes me happy to hear from you.

<3, Rahel *a felt-sense vocabulary which helps you describe "good" in a more nuanced way – which in turn actually can help you sense more – you find in my Somatic Mini-Guide