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Invitation
This workshop had to be rescheduled repeatedly: a serious horseback-riding injury, an ice storm, then another weather threat. Life introduced the subject before the workshop began.
The primitive brain craves certainty because prediction supports survival. Trauma can intensify that craving until uncertainty feels like being small, overwhelmed, and unprepared. We avoid it, over-plan it, or force old commitments after they stop being a yes.
Improvising is the skill of responding in the now to what is actually here—not drifting like a leaf, but participating powerfully without pretending we control the choreography.
Preparation matters. So do presence, flexibility, consent, play, and the ability to pivot. We can be sufficiently prepared without being haunted.
Uncertainty Is Part of the Present
If we cannot tolerate uncertainty, we cannot fully inhabit now. We live inside the scenario we are trying to guarantee rather than the life that is occurring.
Aversion can feel like two north magnets pushing apart. Avoidance then prevents the experiences that would build capacity. The system never learns: This feeling is uncomfortable, and I can still be here.
Begin with one uncertainty, not the entire future. Choose something your system can meet: whether it rains, when you will nap, what dinner will be, whether a minor treatment helps. Working below a five builds the same muscles needed when uncertainty becomes consequential.
Tapping: One Uncertainty I Can Meet
Side of the Hand: Even though this uncertainty feels like too much and part of me wants to hide while another part pushes and plans frantically, I acknowledge that uncertainty is here and want to meet one piece with more of myself.
Top of the Head: This uncertainty feels so big.
Eyebrow: My body associates not knowing with danger.
Side of the Eye: I want to repel the feeling completely.
Under the Eye: Avoiding it has not built much capacity.
Under the Nose: I can choose one uncertainty, not all of them.
Chin: I can feel where it lives in my body.
Collarbone: It does not feel great.
Under the Arm: And I am here with it for this moment.
Top of the Head: I do not need the perfect tapping words.
Eyebrow: This is a chance to improvise gently.
Side of the Eye: I know some things and not others.
Under the Eye: I can name what is certain now.
Under the Nose: I can take one sufficiently prepared step.
Chin: Then sense what the step changes.
Collarbone: Uncertainty may contain options.
Under the Arm: I am building capacity in a workable dose.
Take a breath. Name one current fact, one uncertainty, and one available response.
Prepared, Not Haunted
Our ancestors who collected food, fuel, and shelter survived. The primitive brain will not—and should not—stop caring about preparation.
The distinction is energetic. Diligence looks at likely scenarios, secures useful resources, and retains capacity for the day. Haunted preparation throws everything into the cart because another person’s panic activated our own history.
Ask:
- What scenarios are actually likely?
- What preparation helps across several possibilities?
- What is enough for this stage?
- Am I buying, planning, or controlling to reduce a feeling rather than meet a need?
- What energy must remain available for whatever I did not predict?
Plans are hopeful intentions, not contracts with reality.
Tapping: Recalibrating the Prediction Machine
Side of the Hand: Even though I am good at predicting and planning and do not want to lose that strength, my brain tries to prepare for a hundred bad possibilities, and the effort pulls me away from the people and life actually here.
Top of the Head: Planning helped people survive.
Eyebrow: I am not asking my brain to abandon it.
Side of the Eye: My calibration came from an earlier world.
Under the Eye: When I was small, bad things felt more likely.
Under the Nose: I had fewer skills, choices, and resources.
Chin: I live in a different situation now.
Collarbone: I invite my prediction machine to update.
Under the Arm: Plan for what is proportionate and plausible.
Top of the Head: I can prepare for three or four likely things.
Eyebrow: I can use resources that work across outcomes.
Side of the Eye: I do not need to solve the alien invasion today.
Under the Eye: I want energy left for my actual life.
Under the Nose: I want capacity for what surprises me.
Chin: Sufficiently prepared can be responsible.
Collarbone: Diligent, not haunted.
Under the Arm: Present enough to improvise when reality changes.
Take a breath. Remove one extremely unlikely scenario from today’s planning burden.
The Fear of the Feeling Drives the Scramble
Often we are not only afraid of the outcome. We are afraid of how uncertainty feels in the body. If we can learn I dislike this feeling and can stay with it, urgency decreases enough for clearer preparation.
Use small daily uncertainties as practice. The nap may happen or not. The shower is wanted but not scheduled. The family will eat, though the menu is unknown. Humor tells the primitive brain this is not life or death.
Freeform tapping is itself improvisation. The goal is not the correct script. It is responsive contact with what is alive now.
Tapping: Today Is Not Fully Choreographed
Side of the Hand: Even though it is uncertain what we are doing today and part of me finds that uncomfortable, I guess it is time to improvise, and this amount of uncertainty might even hold some play.
Top of the Head: I do not like uncertainty.
Eyebrow: I am certain I woke up—that already happened.
Side of the Eye: I am uncertain when I will rest.
Under the Eye: I am uncertain what everyone will eat.
Under the Nose: I want a shower, but it is not on the schedule.
Chin: It will probably happen.
Collarbone: If it does not, people on Zoom cannot smell me.
Under the Arm: Hey primitive brain, this level is okay.
Top of the Head: I can let the next hour reveal itself.
Eyebrow: I have ingredients, skills, and choices.
Side of the Eye: I can respond rather than pre-live every detail.
Under the Eye: One small yes, then another sensing.
Under the Nose: A pause can be one of my options.
Chin: A changed plan is not automatically failure.
Collarbone: I am here for the actual day.
Under the Arm: Practicing uncertainty with a little play.
Take a breath. Let one low-stakes part of today remain undecided for now.
Uncertainty Brings Options
When every outcome is fixed in advance, we miss what appears through contact. Someone shares a comment that changes the workshop. Children build a fort during the break. A body changes its yes. Technology fails. A surprising route opens.
I count on uncertainty, and I count on the fact that uncertainties bring options.
This is not optimism that every option is delightful. Serious injury also calls for improvisation. Grounding in gravity, hearing the information, and letting the yes reorganize toward care can reveal resilience already built through smaller practice.
Contact Improvisation as a Model for Life
In contact improvisational dance, the first partners are gravity and the floor. People move without a preset choreography. They may share a center of gravity, run parallel, meet, separate, become still, or roll away.
The practice depends on awareness and consent:
- do not grab or load weight onto someone without a clear invitation;
- stay responsible for protecting your own body;
- remain responsive to shared contact;
- let attraction and repulsion provide information;
- telescope between the whole room and the precise point of contact;
- allow another person’s yes to change.
If a partner leaves while we are sharing weight, we may need to find the floor. They are not required to abandon their body to preserve our choreography. The same is true in relationships and plans.
Tapping: When the Plan or Person Changes Their Yes
Side of the Hand: Even though I counted on this plan or person and their yes changed, my body reads that uncertainty as unreliability, and I want to find the difference between betrayal and a real-time pivot.
Top of the Head: This was supposed to happen.
Eyebrow: I invested in the choreography.
Side of the Eye: Their change leaves me with an impact.
Under the Eye: I may feel disappointed, annoyed, or scared.
Under the Nose: I can honor the impact without forcing a false yes.
Chin: Reliability is not perfect predictability.
Collarbone: Pretending a no is still yes is not trustworthy.
Under the Arm: I want relationships that can tell the truth.
Top of the Head: What support or adaptation do I need now?
Eyebrow: Can we reschedule, redesign, refund, or release?
Side of the Eye: I can communicate the consequences clearly.
Under the Eye: I can create agreements for repeated changes.
Under the Nose: I want to stay reliably in my own yes too.
Chin: Pivoting can be an act of integrity.
Collarbone: I can find gravity and the floor.
Under the Arm: Then choose my next movement from what is here.
Take a breath. Distinguish the changed reality from the character verdict your mind added.
Reliability Without Rigidity
We can count on patterns, skills, values, and agreements without demanding certainty. Someone may be reliably willing to share weight most of the time—and honestly unavailable today. A client who reschedules repeatedly may need a same-day scheduling arrangement. Responsiveness creates structures that fit reality.
The most foundational reliability is learning to remain there for ourselves. We can be disappointed, change course, protect a need, and still trust that we will listen again.
Practices for Living This Skill
Pick One Uncertainty
Write it on a note. Keep the mind from pinballing into the entire uncertain universe.
Rate Life-or-Death Intensity
Practice below five when possible. Big uncertainties deserve proportionate support and preparation.
Recalibrate the Scenario List
Identify likely, possible, and extremely unlikely outcomes. Prepare primarily for likely events and cross-scenario needs.
Name What Is Actually Here
Return from the imagined future to body, gravity, resources, people, and choices present now.
Improvise One Low-Stakes Moment
Cook from available ingredients, take a different walking route, or let a conversation develop without scripting the result.
Build Consent Into Plans
Create ways for yes to change: notice, refunds, rescheduling, exit points, and honest renegotiation.
Appreciate the Pivot
When you adapt without collapsing or controlling, let the nervous system register the success.
Bringing It Into Your Life
Improvisation is not the absence of preparation. It is preparation that leaves enough life force, presence, and freedom to meet what no plan could guarantee.
Uncertainty can remain uncomfortable. It can also become space for options, magic, honest yeses, and movements we could not have choreographed. We ground in what matters, prepare sufficiently, and meet the next contact.
Gravity is working. Reality is here. What is my next yes?
Continue the Conversation
Questions, reflections, and real-life examples are welcome. Continue the conversation about Improvising and Uncertainty in the Thriving Now Center.