Intrinsic (2026)

22/06/2022

It's easy to be defensive during an argument. Acknowledging another's point of view in the heat of the moment is not in most people's nature. It's a skill.

There's an instinct when we're confronted to defend ourselves. In emotional conflict the nervous
system goes into a stress response (freeze/flee/fight) and we can lose access to whole-brain/body resources.

Acknowledging the other in this state can feel like agreeing, which implies defeat. In reality taking a moment to make sure what's being said is understood means nothing about our own take on the situation. It puts a powerful space / / before reacting. In that space is the opportunity to read, regulate and respond with clarity.

In the Skill of Stress reading state (acknowledging) is 1/3 of the course. Reading state extends beyond our own physiology to include the environment and other people. We can't control others, or even the environment, but we can put that needed pause between our conditioned defenses to assess and align a more optimal response that can create the understanding required to get real needs met on both sides.

Often by practicing this I find there is instant co-regulation. The 'other' feels more seen, less defensive, and more prepared to listen in turn.

Hope this helps someone today!

plus

18/06/2022

READ STATE
Ruminating on past/future vs.
BEing present.

One contracts our experience, the other expands it.

True?

Last week felt contracting for me as I puzzled and planned without enough presence. Even in pain I’ve found if I can just be present and
B R E A T H E
my options, resources, tolerance, and imagination expand.

hope this helps someone today ~ all we need is here, now.

🆘

=1experience

25/05/2022

There is no playing it safe in nature. Our modern lifestyle disease epidemic is a result of our obsession with comfort and convenience. Avoiding pain and stress creates more of it in the long run. Knowing the edges of your tolerance can help you work skillfully to widen capacity without causing extreme highs and lows in the process.

The upper edge represents arousal capacity. If you avoid working with high heart rates and breath gearing, you’ll narrow tolerance to both physical AND mental stress. (Less CO2 Tolerance, MORE CO2 sensitivity)

The lower edge represents how deep your well is. If you avoid recovery (conditioning deep healing) you’re more likely to crash and burn into depletion zones from minimal work.

If you know how to READ your edges, you’ll be able to work with them skillfully. By confronting the edges of stress and real replenishment, you expand your experience.

This is what we live to share!

Skill of Stress Online Course 🆘
to learn more

=1experience

17/05/2022

It's part of our wiring to become 'wired and tired' when our systems are too overwhelmed to recover well. BiPhasic means you feel jittery and anxious while also feeling sluggish and depleted.

When you READ this state, it means your Window of Stress Tolerance is very narrow. This could be from an acute blast of stress, or more likely, you've been running HOT for too long without recovering well. When you're in this state the things you used to do to pick yourself up might send you over the edge to more anxiety, then make you crash hard.

To widen tolerance try dissipating energy and reducing noise at the same time. What this looks like:

Instead of working out, doing an intense hot yoga class or jogging, take a WALK outside with some smooth nasal breaths and a wide relaxed visual field. Walking is a primal movement that reconnects breath with movement, dissipates non-specific tension, and rewires the brain with visual field open to be more parasympathetic. Grounding and energizing at once!

Want a small shift? take a short walk. A medium shift? go for 10-20 minutes. A BIG shift? Take an hour ~ we were designed to walk for hours each day, not to sit and then burst into high intensity for an hour before sitting again.

This also looks like:

Reducing NOISE. The body yearns to reconnect. Adding more information with a podcast or audible book while you walk just takes up more depleted bandwidth than you have in this state. Try just BEING and SENSING instead of THINKING and DOING. This will help the mind process the noise you've already accumulated.

Don't be surprised if a Big Idea pops in, or a powerful insight lands.

BONUS self-support: Drop into Yoga Nidra at night instead of movies and screens.

When a method 'works' for you, don't get stuck there. Your body might want to turn that walk into a jog in a few days when the line of tolerance starts widening again. Keep listening/reading, THEN regulating to reinforce patterns of self-trust and center.

Hope this helps someone today!

=1experience

12/05/2022

It’s normal to get overwhelmed and anxious in modern life. We are mentally overstimulated and physically disconnected by and large. So our answer is usually to “get it all done” or disconnect further with numbing tools in the name of “calming down”

Often anxiety needs to GO somewhere. Meditating in this state, for example, can feel impossible. Breath-focus here can also backfire. So we comfort and numb on our favorite quick fixes, or keep racing on the wheel in the name of “productivity” or “efficiency “. These bandaids narrow tolerance to the very stressors we think are the problem.

Next time you READ this state, try to DISSIPATE energy to reconnect to the body first. This means:

Get up and jump up and down a few times, pace and air punch, go out for a brisk walk, salute the sun a few rounds, or shake each limb until you feel like settling.

THEN do that breathing thing. Get to the nose, slow it down, lengthen exhales. Soften gaze. Position body to ground and balance. Prepare the body through moving and breathing to be still enough to reconnect and down regulate.

Be gentle with self in these states. They aren’t who we are, just a sign of stress asking us to reconnect.

Have fun with it and drop a comment if you have a favorite energy dissipation strategy!

🆘 online course in bio

07/05/2022

Trauma in your tissues ~ all the way down to GENE expression.

It makes sense that Adverse Childhood Experiencces (ACE) would cause a ripple of mood 'disorders' in adult life. Clinical anxiety and depression are linked to trauma in decades of research and categorized as psychological issues. Current research on ACE find biomarkers (measurable physical changes) that reveal a direct connection between adverse experiences in childhood and inflammation, brain development, and gene expression. Why is this good news?

Using the biomarkers connected to ACE, "scientists hope to be able to pinpoint which kids are at greatest risk of long-term health effects — and provide a metric for studying the effects of treatments such as specialized therapies." (in the study linked in bio)

By tracking epigenetics in relationship to ACE and ongoing public health, we can eventually validate treatment options that directly affect physiology and gene expression to meet health problems at the root instead of at the fruit. The fruit, in this case, are the psychological manifestations (anxiety, depression, mood "disorders") of a physical system operating with less bandwidth. Adults who score high on the ACE test need tools that directly tune into the physiology and epigenetics of responding to stress.

When we consciously direct our state through interventions like voluntary breathing or cold exposure, we also directly affect gene expression for long term health benefits. (research links in bio)

Genetic material is like a code that informs how our system operates. To tolerate adverse conditions well, we need to stay on top of updating that code. With Adverse Childhood Experiences, and I'd say trauma at any age, it's all the more important to apply strategies that give agency over what's being entered into that code. This research might open doorways for more of the population to take ownership not just of breathing and the body, but of that genetic material. Wow.

03/05/2022

It’s normal to want to STOP especially in modern life. We often ignore that as an option.

But when you CAN’T keep going, do you let yourself really stop? I had to this week, here’s what it reminded me:

If we get out of the head and into the body, we have no other choice.

This means:

Stop scrolling, bingeing, spiraling, “shoulding”. Do nothing and let yourself BE with how you feel for a moment or more.

Once you’ve acknowledged the State,
do less than you think you “should” but DO something to move energy. This will bring you back to tolerance and regulation WITHOUT pushing you over the edge. Forcing intensity is praised in our culture but can backfire in this tricky state; it can narrow overall rested readiness and further depletion.

Walk the dog, stretch with good tunes,
do some task oriented movement with breath awareness…life will start moving through you again if you take time to stop, be with what is, and move without force. Sleep deeply and rise to a new day.

We get depressed if we’ve been pushing too hard without presence for too long. It’s not who we are, it’s informative when you allow it to be. If it works for you to keep pushing notice any costs to performance there: depletion comes for anyone not reading/regulating state.

Hope this can help someone today.

27/04/2022

EXPOSURE to SELF to adapt autonomously to stress ::
Aspen N = 1 Exposure Experience is a wrap!

Thank you to everyone who came out to our Roaring Fork Valley for such a profound, engaging event. We plunged in 36* wild and scenic rivers, made fires, felt ice and sauna, and dove deep with pool work. We experienced Deep Work to SH//FT from reactivity to authenticity. It was INCREDIBLE.

Thank you for sharing your amazing spot!

Thank you for saving the day and nourishing us all with incredible real food!

And to BMack for creating and co-guiding this together. It’s always powerful to see you in your element painting experiences with Reality for people.

=1ExposureExperiemce

15/04/2022

Any method (yoga/jiu jitsu/resistance training/running/breathwork...) that is not a true practice can become a coping/numbing tool.

A true practice transcends the method. If you are practicing engaging with your breath and nervous system well during it, you won't need the method anymore to find stability.

We all know people (myself included) who have found a method, tied themselves to it religiously, and then gotten into a rut with it where it either becomes an addiction (I HAVE to go ______insert method of choice) or we rely on it to feel good in a way that without it we would be lost.

Sometimes during the experience we are checking out instead of checking in. Escaping instead of being present with our real needs. This can lead to injury and maladaptive cycles if unchecked.

Most of us have had injuries, gyms close, teachers move, increased work or family demands, etc which have stripped us of some method we became reliant on at some point. How did you deal?

Breath is singularly amazing in that way ~ if you apply breath skillfully as a practice in your training methodology, you can use it to understand yourself in daily life. You can practice it anywhere, anytime, and develop a way to reconnect instead of repeat old patterns of habit.

That is adapting well to stress ~ what I'm always looking to learn more about!

Happy practicing! Share your favorite methods to practice if you like ~ and how you can tell when you're in escape mode with it, versus adapt-mode.

03/04/2022

In our N = 1 Group and 1:1 Mentorship, we are studying how to FEEL instead of THINK our way through life.

If you’re over-thinking a process in your life, try feeling into how you want it to unfold. Layer sensation with conscious breath practices and you become an Alchemist ~ shifting your lived experience to create from a state of connection rather than mere mental strategies.

Possibilities hidden in the maze of the mind emerge from the chemistry of connection that don’t require stress and strategy to discover. We are all given the tools to play with these forces.

Thank you for sharing the practice and musings with me!

charles

🆘

=1Exposure

24/03/2022

One is simply a connected, present, aware, alive, basic FORCE

The other is a reflection of this force filtered through past conditioning, ego, and predictive fears.

Anyone can practice the former, it is a birthright. Being conscious in a medical sense after all means you are Here. Now.

Next time you catch yourself making meaning of perception, projecting your filtered reflections on your experience, wing self-conscious / / disrupt it.

Breathe
Be with what is
Look for the source of the reflection

It’s always Here. Now.

Interestingly we often “self-regulate” by dropping self-consciousness to just be with what is…this is all stuff I’m working with in my own unfolding process anyway!

=1

14/03/2022

Breath is a PRACTICE first and foremost. If you are PRESCRIBING breath, you could be harming people if you aren’t giving them adequate training in how to:

Read/Regulate/Reinforce
healthy patterns in
State/Mechanics/Physiology

We breathe how we feel.

As interest and research grows (finally!) in the medicinal power of voluntary breath, well - meaning physicians, counselors, teachers, personal trainers, parents etc. are doling out breath protocols without always understanding that breath, because of its power, can be unintentionally harmful if Practiced and applied incorrectly.

Take time to understand the Principles for yourself and share training opportunities with those you aim to support. We’ve done the work for you in our Art of Breath and Skill of Stress full length courses SHIFT]

Link in bio to learn more 🤍

SHIFT]

charles

Intrinsic

22/06/2022

18/06/2022

25/05/2022

17/05/2022

12/05/2022

07/05/2022

03/05/2022

27/04/2022

15/04/2022

03/04/2022

24/03/2022

14/03/2022

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