Healing in Connection

To heal ourselves and to heal the planet we must return to the physiology of co-regulation and the blueprint of Motherbaby.

We are physiologically wired for connection. From the moment of conception, our survival intricately depends on our connection with other humans and with the Earth. Despite a deep modern conditioning that we should be able to survive on our own, we are innately designed for connection. This connection not only holds our capacity to thrive, it also holds our greatest potential for healing.

This blueprint for connection is so beautifully revealed in the motherbaby dyad. Motherbaby is two beings in one. It is of course easy to see how mother and baby are one throughout gestation. But even after birth, an intimate connection remains - not only energetically but also physiologically. Heart rate, respiration, body temperature, nervous system and brain waves all synchronize between mother and baby. Even once baby has emerged into the world, it is primarily the mother’s system - the mothers body - that is designed to nourish the baby’s life through the physiology of co-regulation.

This is why it is vitally important to keep our babies close - for them to be close enough to feel our heart rate, to hear our breath. They need to be on our body, on our breast, always held in warm and loving arms. This is our innate design. Without a grounded loving adult body to co-regulate with, babies experience physiological stress as their heart rate, respiration and nervous system struggle to remain balanced. A baby left to cry it out doesn’t reach a point of self-regulation, they reach a point of internal shut down, prioritizing their vital resources for survival. Babies understand safety through the feeling of being connected, protected, responded to and nourished.

Deb Dana, nervous system and trauma expert specializing in applied Polyvagal Theory, explains this so clearly:

"We enter the world with the need to co-regulate in order to survive. And it's through enough experiences of safety in co-regulation, that we learn to self-regulate. Without those early experiences of safety in co-regulation our self-regulation is a survival response. We might look successful, but our internal experience is one of sympathetically driven fear."

Initially when I read this, on the surface I felt some fear. Am I providing enough support for my children? Do they feel safe and nourished? Is my nervous system capable of supporting theirs? As I went deeper, I touched into a great sadness for the younger parts of me who didn’t always receive the consistent co-regulation that I needed. And as I felt even deeper than that, a flooding and piercing grief for our collective consumed me. Grief for so many who didn’t receive the presence and support that we are biologically designed for—the support our systems were expecting. Chronic stress isn’t simply the result of a stressful event, for many of us this imprint is laid down in infancy, when there were ruptures in connection.

The need for co-regulation is not merely important with babies, it is relevant throughout childhood and into the teen years. Children’s nervous systems cannot self regulate until 9-12 years old, and even as they grow older their capacity to self regulate depends so much on the quantity and quality of co-regulation that they received. Like so many things, nervous system regulation is something we learn through lived experience. We learn to self regulate through being held and guided to first feel it in others, and from that place of connection we then begin to cultivate in it ourselves. To ask a child to calm down is actually not physiologically possible for them. The only way for our babies and children to get into a state of calm, is through the calm of a present, loving adult. Like so many things in parenting - if there is something you want to see in your child, first look at that quality in yourself.

Co-regulation in Trauma Healing

Most people don’t have the capacity to hold another person in loving presence because their own wounding becomes too triggered. Without intentional work to bring our deeply conditioned pain, shame and programming out into the light, we’ll continue to operate from a place of subconscious safety mechanisms. And without the willingness to explore our own shadow and wounding, how could we ever expect to show up in full presence of another when their darkest parts emerge?

An imprint that I walked away from my childhood with was the belief that I was too much, that my emotions and my experience were too big to deserve presence. For me this imprint feels like the entire earth might give out from beneath my body, leaving me in free fall with nobody there to catch me because nobody even knows I’m falling. To keep myself safe from that feeling and as a reaction to the absence of a co-regulating presence, I layered on a belief that I wasn’t deserving of support. So I’ve moved through my life never deeply trusting that someone could be there through it all. In all areas of my life I held on tightly to control - a reaction to feeling so out of control - making up the story that it’s not safe to express all of my feelings, or to be all of myself.

To heal traumas and ruptures from early childhood, it is so important to find or create a container for co-regulation. Within the Somatic Experiencing community we often describe the role of the practitioner as the one in the room with a regulated and resilient nervous system who the client can co-regulate with in order to successfully discharge trauma. In other words, to heal we return to the blueprint of motherbaby.

I’ve been learning what it feels like to be held. And with that learning is a softening, and opening up to trust. I still feel myself contract when fear is present, which I expect will always be with me. But how I approach and welcome the fear is shifting. Touching into a core wound never stops being vulnerable, but we can become less reactive and more open to the gifts that the vulnerability brings.

Held by the Earth

A pivotal experience in my own healing journey happened when I went deep into the wilderness and descended into the depths of my own psyche. With a group of other participants and a few guides, we embarked on an underworld journey into the shadow parts of ourselves. The experience included 5 nights in the Colorado backcountry, a 3-day water fast, and 2 solo days in wild nature.

In the days before we set out into the backcountry, I felt myself already cracking open. I was willing - for the first time in my life - to acknowledge and feel the hurt that I experienced as a child. To our group I revealed the parts of my childhood that I was most deeply ashamed of, the wounds that felt so big I couldn’t feel the bottom, and the stories I’d made up to keep myself small. I shared parts that had been fiercely protected, stuffed away, wrapped in shame. I was held, witnessed, and loved—nobody walked off, nobody judged, nobody saw me as too much. In the same way a child needs a steady adult to hold a fierce loving witness as they tantrum and scream, my group held me.

We headed into the backcountry and I continued to unfold into the depths. I began to piece together the layers of my own core wound—seeing more and more parts of the story. We began our water fast, and with a new felt sense of being held, our group dispersed on solos. Alone in the wilderness, Nature become my witness.

In the same way that human nervous systems co-regulate with one another, our nervous system can also co-regulate with the Earth, mirroring the divine design of Motherbaby. As I settled into the wildness, I felt my body begin to attune with the body of the earth—this massive body of alive intelligence that is our planet. My brain waves slowed down, my heart beat became more coherent, and my entire system settled into safety. I entered a flow with the deep feminine current that is the source of all Life. And although I was “alone”, I felt more held and connected than ever before.

Our bodies thrive in connection with the body of the Earth. To co-regulate with the Earth supports our biological rhythms and also invites us out of or minds creating a deeper experience of embodiment. We are designed for a rich somatic attunement and connection with our first Mother, a reciprocal relationship where the aliveness of the Earth is intimately interwoven with our own aliveness. Not only do we receive immense physiological support in plugging back in and co-regulating with the Earth, but through this we also feed and support the body of Earth. We nourish her through our loving presence. All life forms are fed—to blossom and bloom—with loving presence.

From this place of co-regulation with the divine Mother, I welcomed the little girl in me who never felt enough, and who made up a big story about her worth in the world. She was lovingly acknowledged for all she did in an effort to protect, and ultimately she was laid to rest. Who emerged on the other side? A woman so deeply capable of love, support and presence. A mother with a vast capacity to hold all of the parts. When we are held in loving witness—by our mothers and fathers, by our community, by the Earth—we can tend to our deepest wounds, ultimately allowing our greatest gifts to emerge. And when we’ve been held through our darkness, we build the capacity to hold others in theirs.

Repairing the Rupture

This rupture of Motherbaby translates on a much bigger scale and is reflected in the ongoing destruction of our planet. We’ve gotten so off-course from the loving reciprocity that underlies all of Life. Our greatest hope of repair requires a return to our innate design. We need one another to thrive, and we need one another to heal.

There is so much intensity in the world right now, and I’ve felt a grief coursing through me for the pain of all mothers. I’ve also felt a great sadness in recognizing how many people seem willing to get swept into the trauma vortex of the darkness in the world, but a lack of willingness to look at the darkness within themselves. If you see something in the world that you don’t like, look within yourself to see how the thing you judge lives within you.

When we heal our own wounds, they transform. And through the journey we build our capacity to hold others in their healing. As I see it, this is our greatest work on the planet right now.

There is a new way of relating to each other that wants to bloom, and the cultivation of our own healing allows us to better relate and extend our humanity and understanding to others. We can’t do anything about how the world is without tending to how we are. It is through our own inner work that we can be most of service in the world. If we want to raise children that are regulated, healthy, resilient and thriving, we must become that. And all of the things we wish for the world, we must become that too.