Primitive Brain
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Stop Repeating the Same Patterns
A repeating pattern can feel like a personal failure: I knew better. I promised myself. Why am I here again? Rick Wilkes and Cathy Vartuli approach the pattern differently in this workshop. Repetition often means that a well-practiced protective loop is running faster than conscious choice. Shame adds more threat to that loop. Curiosity helps…
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When Collective Shock Overwhelms Your Personal Nervous System
A public event can produce private shock. An election, attack, court decision, disaster, or sudden cultural change may leave the body crying, frozen, furious, vigilant, or unable to do ordinary tasks. The event matters. So does the way modern media makes it feel as though every frightening person, statement, and possibility surrounds us continuously. Regulation…
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Balance Stress Before Choosing What to Do
Stress can contain real information. Money, safety, health, relationships, fire, and cultural instability are not solved by telling ourselves not to worry. Yet we tend not to make our clearest choices while flooded. The first movement is often not solving the whole situation. It is helping the primitive brain come back into enough balance that…
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When Your Fears Get in the Way of Making a Difference
The desire to make a difference can activate a tug-of-war. We want our work, care, art, leadership, or presence to matter. At the same time, making a difference exposes us to uncertainty. What if it fails? What if we are not ready? What if someone else could do it better? What if people expect a…
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When Your Fears Get in the Way of Making a Difference
The desire to make a difference can activate a tug-of-war. We want our work, care, creativity, leadership, or presence to matter. At the same time, contribution exposes us to uncertainty. The protective mind supplies convincing objections: someone else will do it better, we are not ready, our body or life must be fixed first, or…
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Emerge Without Doing It All Alone
Emerging means bringing more of our gifts, truth, creativity, leadership, or love into the world. It can happen in business, relationship, art, community, or the simple decision to stop hiding. People often make emerging harder in three ways: they wait to feel completely ready, try to do everything alone, and lose contact with why the…
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The Top Three Mistakes People Make When They’re Emerging Into the World
Emerging means bringing more of your gifts, truth, creativity, leadership, or love into the world. It can happen in business, relationship, art, community, or the decision to stop hiding. Rick Wilkes and Cathy Vartuli identify three mistakes that make emerging harder: demanding polished certainty before beginning, trying to do it alone, and losing contact with…