When we feel safe, we engage the neural feedback loops that optimize the homeostatic processes promoting our health, growth, and restoration, whereas when we don’t feel safe, our metabolic resources and the neural regulation of our bodily systems are being diverted toward attacking, defending, protecting, or conserving what’s left in an effort to s

How we feel is our conscious brain telling us how our autonomic nervous system is regulating our internal organs and bodily systems to either support or interrupt homeostasis.

More than a subjective experience, how we feel reflects our physiological state.

Theoretically, when the Play Zone is interrupted, acutely or chronically, a reliable pathway back into a physiological state supporting the Play Zone could be through skillfully and deliberately cultivating internal experiences of safety, connection, and belonging, independently, in any sequence or combination, or through a dynamic, interactive soc

These bodily feelings of safety, connection, and belonging are interconnected, while at the same time they may also be independent and dependent experiences, emerging in isolation or in combination with one another.

last, we are seeking, and longing for, a felt sense of safety, connection, and belonging. When we find it, feel it, and absorb it, we aren’t done; rather, we’ve just begun. This biological quest is a lifelong cycle of needing to feel safe and at ease in our body, connected to ourselves, others, and the world, and a felt knowing that we belong here,

Instead, we can see things for what they are and differentiate behaviors, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs from intentions, character flaws, lack of discipline, or mental weakness.

When we appreciate the neural mechanisms beneath our conscious control that govern our bodily reactions to features of safety, danger, and life threat, we have an opportunity to step out of our stories of shame, blame, guilt, and criticism, for ourselves and for others.

In essence, we don’t try to stop our bodily reactions from occurring. We don’t try to ignore, repress, or numb what’s going on inside our bodies. Instead, we meet ourselves where we are, and we relate to what’s happening on the inside in ways that help to realign our physiology to support our intentions, values, goals, the expression of our skills,