At first, he hid.

Crouching into child’s pose like a little bean, his head tucked beneath one arm of the forest-green dentist’s chair, his bottom at the other.

But once that didn’t seem to work, my son balled both his tiny, dimpled hands into fists and put them over his mouth.

And he wouldn’t budge.

The dentist left. Her assistant, too. They meant to give us some space.

{If you’re just jumping in, you can read the first part of this story in my last email here.}

I could feel myself spike in response. My breath shortened. My shoulders lifted. My voice got tight and pointed. And then came the big sighs.

And of course they did. Because our nervous systems don’t operate alone. They mirror.

I absolutely hate these kinds of binds as a momma:
between my tiny fellow’s boundaries, needs, and all the rules of the world that are not made for tiny fellows.

I just wanted that appointment not to be another waste of my day (my time, my energy, my mental capacity).

So while he tensed, I started to panic. And then the room tightened around us both.

When I dysregulate, he dysregulates. When he dysregulates, I brace. And if no one in the system is regulated, the whole system escalates.

Like in family systems.

Like in classrooms and schools.

Like in nations.

Dysregulation spreads.

And when our nervous system feels unsafe, we can’t evolve. We regress.

I don’t know how you’re feeling about the state of our country right now, but on-the-daily I’m noticing a similar tightening. A familiar bracing.

A sharper edge to everything, from the frozen berry bag in my fridge to fascism in my finances.

I know I’m not alone in holding the same quiet questions here, like:

Am I doing enough?
What can one person actually do?
Why am I so exhausted?
Is this what collapse looks like?
How do I stay engaged without burning myself out?

But regression isn’t real proof of collapse.

It’s proof that we’re feeling unstable.

Just like toddlers regress when they feel overwhelmed. Like families regress when they’re under stress. Just like institutions regress when they feel threatened. And like nations regress (sometimes back to the 1950s… sometimes back to 1938) when they’re destabilized, and call it “greatness.”

Systems can be unjust. They can be failing.
Our bodies reacting to that DOES NOT MEAN we’re failing too.

We’re deciphering how to survive this moment.
But survival mode is not creative mode. It’s not collaborative mode or systems-changing mode.

So instead we brace. Hyperarousal creates a sense of moral hypervigilance until we collapse in exhaustion. Like my hubs trying to shovel the driveway in the middle of the snowstorm instead of waiting for it to pass.

Transformation doesn’t begin in moral hypervigilance.

It begins in regulation.

And regulation starts locally — inside you and me.

Inside your body.
Repairing with your child, your inner child, your partner.
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Inside your relationships.
Strengthening one relationship.
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Inside the smallest systems you touch.
Building one resilient system in your home or business.

That’s where redesign becomes possible.

What would redesign have looked like in that dentist’s office?

For one it might have looked like pausing first.
Remembering that none of us has feelings to be difficult. Our feelings are communication. So I would have stopped to honor that. To listen to his. To protect him first.

It might have looked like deciding that connection mattered more than compliance or efficiency that day.

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The biggest systems “regressing” right now are just mirroring all the many little nervous systems inside them.

So if we want different systems, we’re gonna have to build them differently, my dear.
Starting right here with ourselves.

And without forgetting the truths of the natural world we’re made of:

• We’ve got to fully feel the regression before we can shift into something new.
• Winter looks like death just before Spring.
• Eclipses obscure in darkness before they reveal.

In a Hakomi session, what we call “riding the rapids” is the child-like regressive state just before integration. It’s the moment when someone feels younger than they are. When their voice gets smaller. When their shoulders rise or they start to hide their face with their hands as the same old story tightens in their throat.
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Right before core material reorganizes. Right before we cross the barrier and something shifts. The insight lands. Action becomes possible. Nourishment is received. Or we finally let it the fuck go and rest.

We get reorganized.

Not through force.

Nor by bracing harder.

But when the system has enough safety to shift.
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Like in that dentist’s chair.

If I had dropped my shoulders, softened my voice, and let his safety lead instead of my urgency, we might not have walked out in tears and apologies.

The redesign would have started right there.

Next week, I’m opening a short-term container for those of you ready to regulate first and redesign from there.

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​※ Koa

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