News and Tools for Happiness, Love, and Wisdom

The CURES Model

A Practical Framework for Excellence and Wellbeing

© 2026 Ahmed Hakami

As you’re reading these words, the conscious act of seeing these letters—the immediate sensing and decoding of symbols—is impossible to separate from the unconscious familiarity that gives them meaning. You aren’t just reading; you’re remembering on a massive, invisible scale. Beneath every single moment of understanding, deep layers of a personal history, an understanding of language, and even your current physical and emotional states are all shaping how this experience unfolds.

These constant, back-and-forth oscillations between what you’re seeing right now and what you already know (in the background) constitute a phenomenon that can be described as an associative-assessment mechanism that is natural, innate, and evolutionary—a mechanism, process, and dynamic. This is not merely a human-specific feature; it is a universally observable mechanism. It is how systems—from a single cell to stars and global economies—maintain structure, adapt to change, and evolve sustainably.

This associative-assessment dynamic is a form of continuous actual reading that never separates from its content. It’s a fundamental process where every single piece of information is simultaneously a system of three things at once: it’s an entity (a structure we can observe), a process (an active flow of energy and information), and a domain (a field that holds other components). It’s not a step-by-step, linear activity; rather, it’s a simultaneous, holistic event, as it can be reflected in the simple act of reading.

Thus, we can view pretty much everything as a system, shaped and reshaped by this continuous, reciprocal interplay—a continuous spinning of assessment (evaluating “what’s happening?”) and association (checking “what does this mean based on contextual references?”). Every assessment depends on the associations that frame it, and every association is, in itself, a form of assessment, acting at least as a validation.

Critically, this also means that every system is memory in nature. It is a dynamic constellation of elements in a constant state of exchange, guided by endless feedforward and feedback loops. The system’s history is always stored moment to moment within its structure, and its future potential is continuously evaluated based on its developmental trajectory.

Within human experience, awareness emerges from the dynamic oscillation between conscious (foreground) and unconscious (background) processes, continually resampling the associative– assessment mechanism. These dynamics operate across three fundamental informational domains: rational, emotional, and somatic (bodily, sensory, and imaginal processes). Together, these five interdependent factors—Conscious, Unconscious, Rational, Emotional, and Somatic—form the foundation of the CURES model.

The Associative-Assessment Mechanism in All Systems

Everything—from the way electrons attune to an orbit within an atom to the intricate neural networks attuning within a brain—appears to function as a memory system with associativeassessment processes.

We can observe this continuous, reciprocal action across all domains of existence. In Ecology, for example, a forest functions as a giant, self-regulating memory system. Its associations are stored in memory, instincts, and soil composition, while a sharp drought triggers the assessment (measuring water scarcity and stress). The forest’s response—which species survive and pass on resilience—is governed entirely by integrating the assessment of the present with the memory of the past. That drought then becomes a new layer of stored memory, strengthening the system’s coherence.

We see this pattern in Chemistry and Physics at the most basic level. An atom’s electron configuration is its structural association, dictating potential reactions. When the atom encounters a new molecule, it performs an energetic assessment (measuring valence and energy levels). The resulting “decision” to bond or not is based on maximizing stability (coherence) by referencing those stored rules. The principles of energy conservation and temporal dynamics provide the structural rules, ensuring history is never lost.

Even in Social and Organizational Systems, the dynamic defines outcomes. A company’s stored memory (association) lies in its protocols, values, and unwritten rules. When facing a crisis, the group performs an assessment (measuring profit loss, morale, and other relevant variables). The resulting action is a direct function of its associative memory: a well-established, structured company that considers a diversity of factors will assess information more comprehensively and act more coherently than a rigid, hierarchical one. Both act to preserve their system, but their actions are worlds apart.

The Dynamic Architecture of Human Awareness

So, how does this universal physics show up in us? The CURES model defines our awareness as a living, integrated system of those five interdependent factors: conscious, unconscious, rational, emotional, and somatic. These are not discrete, separate boxes in a brain or a body. They’re not “modules.” We don’t “stop” being emotional to “start” being rational. Each factor is a process, a component, and a multidimensional field that actually contains aspects of all the others.

Both conscious and unconscious processes have an associative–assessment nature, functioning in continuous loops. At any given moment, a person may be consciously aware of the assessment (naming) of something while remaining unaware of the underlying unconscious associations (prior knowledge). When an unconscious association rises into conscious awareness, the assessment itself may temporarily recede into the unconscious, creating a dynamic, ongoing cycle.

The unconscious process shares this same associative–assessment character, since anything that emerges from it has already been implicitly evaluated as an appropriate selection within its unconsciously associated context.

To illustrate conscious–unconscious interactions, consider the mutual interdependence of assessment and association: assessment inherently involves association to provide context, while association requires assessment to validate it. These loops appear across rational, emotional, and somatic displays, rendering awareness holographic—each part reflecting the whole, these modes serving momentarily as different “lenses” of a unified system.

Conscious: The Active Spotlight of Immediate Assessment

Your consciousness is the spotlight of your awareness. Its primary job is immediate assessment—the moment-to-moment sense of what’s going on, both inside and out. This is where your explicit decisions, your careful plans, and your “narrated” experiences emerge. It takes the fast, implicit flow of information and transforms it into explicit, solid, actionable understanding.

Crucially, the conscious mind operates in constant partnership with the unconscious, relying on it to preselect, filter, and contextualize whatever the spotlight is about to illuminate. This relationship is the essence of intentional living: you may choose where to aim the spotlight, but the vast warehouse of context that gives the illuminated object its meaning is always supplied implicitly by the unconscious.

Unconscious: The Vast Background of Latent Association

If consciousness is the laser pointer, the unconscious is the entire warehouse. It’s the vast and massive background of all your implicit processes: your deep memories, your core values, your habits, your gut feelings, your preferences, and all your learned associative patterns. It is your system’s deep memory and its automated, high-speed filter.

Right now, your unconscious is processing billions of inputs per second—the feeling of your chair, the ambient sound in the room, your background emotional state—and delivering a clean, contextrich, filtered reality to your conscious mind. Every single conscious act is fundamentally scaffolded by these latent patterns. They shape your initial perceptions, your automatic behaviors (like driving a car or riding a bike), and your preemptive “gut” evaluations.

But it’s a two-way street. Your conscious attention—your spotlight—can modify those unconscious patterns. Through new learning, conscious reflection “what-if?”, and intentional practice, you are constantly updating the “files” in the warehouse. This vital, recursive feedback loop drives your long-term growth and adaptation.

Rational: Structure and Ethical Orientation

The rational domain is your inner architect. Its job is to provide coherence, logic, and ethical structure. It organizes the chaotic flow of experience into models, rules, “if-then” statements, and causal narratives. It’s the part of you that takes raw information and structures it into usable, predictable knowledge.

But here’s the catch that’s easy to forget: the rational domain never works alone; it cannot operate in isolation. To make a “good” ethical judgment, the rational architect requires emotional empathy to understand consequences and somatic verification to ground its reasoning about the world. It seems as part of the rational domain’s role is to integrate with somatic signals to generate emotions that are deliberate, structured, and consistent.

The rational domain, with its conscious–unconscious (associative–assessment) oscillations, ensures that the internal representation of reality remains coherent and navigable. It serves as a necessary steadying counterweight to purely instinctual behavior. When this domain is cultivated and disciplined through appropriate knowledge and skills training, it can facilitate the evolution of the entire system.

Emotional: The Motivational Engine of Value and Priority

If the rational domain is the architect, the emotional domain is the power plant. It’s the motivational engine for your entire system, and it’s the high-speed bridge that emerged to connect your rational evaluations to your somatic, embodied reality.

Emotion is, fundamentally, your system’s internal measurement of value and priority expressed outwardly. It’s the “so-what?” It translates pure, cold perception, “that’s a bear,” into dynamic, urgent motivation, “RUN!” Emotion is constantly measuring the alignment (or misalignment) between your core values and your current experience. This generates feelings of attraction, aversion, confidence, or hesitation that steer your behavior.

This is the vital current that connects your thoughts to your body and your ethics to your lived experience. Your mind can focus on only a limited set of information at a time, and the emotional domain acts as your brain’s “urgency” highlighter. It prioritizes your attention and energizes your actions, often guiding your choices even before your rational mind completes its analysis.

A sudden wave of excitement or anticipation can prompt you to seize an opportunity or make a bold decision, drawing on subtle, unconscious associative-assessment from past successes — helping you act with confidence and insight. The superior power of emotion comes from its momentary, explicit representation of conscious, unconscious, rational, and somatic processes in action.

Somatic: Grounding in Embodied Reality

Finally, your somatic processing anchors your entire awareness in your lived, physical body and the surrounding world. It’s your “boots on the ground.” This includes all the familiar external senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. But it also encompasses internal sensations and representations, which are the most transparent reflections of your rational judgments and emotional valuations — revealing both their coherence and their contradictions in the moment.

Your somatic signals translate symbolic meaning (a rational thought, such as “I am safe”) and motivational feelings (an emotional state, such as calm) into lived, embodied experience. They provide experiential grounding—supporting coherence, presence, and authentic integration across domains. The body, therefore, is not merely a passive recipient of information; it operates as a primary driver of communication within the broader dynamic system.

Unification and Governance

More generally, a system is reflected in its parts. Each component is inherently multidimensional, functioning at once as structure, process, and context. A tree ring is not merely wood but the trace of a season’s growth and a record of environmental conditions. Likewise, recognizing a familiar face emerges from a rapid interplay of perception and memory. In both cases, what appears to be a discrete element is actually the convergence of history and ongoing dynamics.

In the human system, rational, emotional, and somatic aspects are not separate “things” but different perspectives on a single, unified, continuous process of awareness, always co-arising and intermingling. Cultivating the ability to analyze internal and external situations with this perspective forms the foundation of effective problem-solving, as well as self and system consistency.

The dynamic flow arises from a continuous stream of internal and external signals, shaped by the ongoing interplay of associative–assessment processes. It determines which informational perspectives (R, E, or S) enter awareness at any given moment while simultaneously activating deeper layers of unconscious modalities and associations. Together, these processes constitute a unified framework for understanding complex states—from false memory and dreaming to suggestibility, flow, and the mechanisms of creativity.

Interconnections: The Flow of Coherence

Systemic excellence—often called peak performance, wisdom, or flow—emerges when incoming data, stored information, and the ratio between association and assessment processes are perfectly aligned.

When someone decides to exercise, the rational mind thinks, “I should work out—it’s good for my health.” This is a clear goal, but on its own it has no driving force. It needs emotional energy— motivation, valuing health, or anticipation of feeling better afterward—and it also needs the body to act by getting up, putting on shoes, and moving. Wouldn’t it be nice if this were an automated capacity?

A person can feel this alignment when everything comes together, like cooking a favorite meal. The rational mind knows the recipe, the emotional mind anticipates the enjoyment of eating or sharing it, and the body engages through smell, touch, and sound. Conscious attention stays in the moment, while unconscious associative skills handle actions like chopping and stirring.

In that moment, all the factors, along with top-down and bottom-up signals, are aligned. The result is an effortless state of productivity. This recursive coordination is the essence of systemic intelligence. Even recalling a friend’s name works this way: the unconscious mind filters possibilities through association, narrows the context, and offers fragments, until the conscious mind registers the final, stable “click” when the name emerges.

Multifactorial-Multidimensional Flavor

To truly taste a flavor—to deeply experience the present moment—find a safe and comfortable place to practice a simple form of meditation rooted in thousands of years of human wisdom.

Consciously observe your breathing, allowing your mind and body to act as receivers of these universal signals. Let your unconscious processes act freely; notice the natural motions of your trunk—up and down, front and back, in and out, or all at once. Place a gentle smile on your face, and let every external or internal stimulus soften your mind and body. Enjoy this state for as long as you can, then later reflect and refine your practice.

As well, this practice can be divided into three segments. Begin and end with the observation and relaxation segment described above. In the middle, focus on the flow of breath and bodily sensations, while consciously introducing desired improvements in the three centers outlined below.

In the centers of the head, heart, and abdomen, there are neural networks recognized by ancient wisdom and contemporary science, which we can approach as rational, emotional, and somatic stations.

In the head station, direct attention toward practical, achievable solutions.
In the heart station, cultivate awareness of supportive values and uplifting feelings.
In the abdomen station, welcome empowering sensations as they transform the matrix.

The underlying concepts are embedded in countless techniques cultivated over thousands of years of human intelligence. Remember, this is just a sketch. All components are interconnected, working simultaneously in endless combinations. The goal is to develop your skill as an active participant in your mindset and lifestyle. While the deepest state of meditation might be the purest observation, neutralizing surface associative-assessment and witnessing the innate mechanism in its purest form, it can also be the beginning of wholistic excellence.

Experience in Equation

With the considerations above, experience—including systemic excellence—can be represented by a simple, expandable equation.

Where:

• E (Effectiveness): The outcome of information processing, ranging from basic experience to systemic excellence.
• A (Assessment): The linear processing of real-time inputs (data intake, filtering, judgment, and immediate evaluation).
• R (Association): The exponential power of stored reference (pattern recognition, conceptual linking, and mental models).

This equation suggests that while Assessment (A) provides the The CURES model envisions the next generationnecessary reality check, outcomes are exponentially amplified by Association (R). The squaring of R reflects how deep reservoirs of knowledge enable feats like rapid reading; however, this power risks becoming a source of bias unless Assessment (A), supported by a local integrity factor, verifies referential connotations. To make the equation practically useful, integrity and time would need to be added as variables, along with relevant coefficients — for example: E = k . A(t) . R2.

Within this framework, even phenomena like “Suspension of Disbelief” or “Bypassing the Critical Faculty” might be understood — and perhaps even measured — as selective shifts in the balance between assessment and association.

The Insight of Systematic Integrity

At any given moment, on any topic, no one can recall all relevant data, facts, or studies, nor solve every related equation or problem. Every word and thought surfaces a momentary belief—an interpretive act—so, in a very real sense, like gravity, we live on relativity and “a prayer.”

Conscious decisions, like a familiar scent that gradually fades, can go unexamined over time and become shaped by implicit patterns. Meanwhile, unconscious processes contextualize information almost instantaneously, influencing outcomes before conscious awareness registers. These judgments tend to yield two types of results. Limiting outcomes—the curse—arise when decisions are driven by outdated, irrelevant, or biased associations. Transformative insights—the cures— emerge when decisions are grounded in honest, updated reflection.

This is why honesty is not merely a moral virtue, but an essential condition for systemic integrity, while contradictions act like an immune system turning on itself. Honesty allows for a clean and accurate examination of feedforward and feedback, and supports the integration of new information, enabling continuous evolution and expanded awareness.

Developmental Applications for Human and Organizational Systems

The underlying model of systemic processing and informational domains offers a robust, prescriptive framework capable of unlocking potential across human, organizational, and technology-enabled systems. In addition, it integrates seamlessly with and complements other proven developmental approaches, including those augmented by intelligent technologies.

Within healthcare, the pharmaceutical industry provides a well-established model, clearly articulating data, number needed to treat, potential benefits and side effects, placebo effects, and risk communication, while encouraging open discussion and constructive correction. If such models also provide a list of potentially impactful variables that were not included, then they will represent one of the highest-quality thinking and decision-making frameworks. If it extends to natural nutrition, it will revolutionize the health of all living beings. Healthcare providers and researchers, in general, can build upon and extend these established practices. The work presented here offers a holistic and structured framework to support that advancement.

This also applies across disciplines—including education, leadership, business, performance, and virtually all domains of human activity—where systems benefit from the ongoing examination of potential gaps through the lens of associative-assessment processes and informational domains.

Fortunately, in recent years, significant initiatives such as Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), among others, have underscored the extent to which essential human and environmental concerns were marginalized in major decision-making processes. These efforts serve as important reminders of the necessity of inclusive association of ethical standards and environmental considerations alongside accurate metrics for assessment.

A Blueprint for Adaptive Artificial Intelligence

The CURES model envisions the next generation of AI—moving beyond ‘smart or adaptive tools’ to constructive, collaborative partners, much like neurons and silicon chips working in harmony.

Current AI excels at rational computation, however, it lacks the recognition of unconscious (latent associative) and emotional (motivational) influences, which represent inherent limits of mathematical and logical systems and run parallel to their principles of incompleteness and inconsistency.

Consider an AI that monitors blood pressure readings. If the measurements are taken while the person is speaking—an action known medically to distort results—the AI will still include them in its average, producing a misleading output. Its flaw lies in the absence of contextual filtering, giving equal weight to both reliable and unreliable data. This is similar to the favoritism seen in the value-weighted prioritization of living systems. Similarly, when asked to refine its own writing, a large language model may simply reinforce its stylistic habits, “preferring” stored patterns rather than evaluating context or intent.

An inspired AI would overcome these limitations. It would integrate reasoning with generative processes, combining rational computation with associative, creative processing. It would weight outputs by contextual salience, simulating emotional priority to discern what matters most.

Perspectives on Human Experience

For inspiring diverse insights and perspectives on human experience, the following represents an incomplete list of thinkers and schools: Yoga (Yogācāra), Qigong, Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Avicenna, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Baruch Spinoza, William James, Phenomenology, SelfConsistency, Multiple Intelligences, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience, among others.

Conclusion: A Blueprint for Growth and Transformation

As a final thought, human experience, both intellectually and behaviorally, is driven by four interconnected fundamental powers: the unknown, the observable, conceptualization, and business—the process through which any other power can be transformed into value. With the right tools, and with this understanding, people can navigate life with freedom and make the most of wherever it leads.

The CURES model offers a practical blueprint for growth and transformation at every scale—from individual development to organizational and systemic intelligence. It can also be adopted as a lifestyle for wellbeing and purposeful living.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ahmed holds an Executive MBA and certifications in administration, HR, L&D, management, and business skills, with over 25 years of corporate experience. As a human development consultant, he has trained in mental skills, hypnotherapy, NLP, Qigong, and other transformational modalities.

Since retiring from corporate life in 2017, Ahmed has worked selectively as a freelancer, supporting personal, professional, business, and technology development. He creates models, frameworks, and tools grounded in pragmatic consistency, a principle he considers essential for wellbeing, success, and creativity.
CURES.M@icloud.com

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When Good Intentions Create Distance

Reflections on Parenting, Presence, and Connection

© Keffier Savary & Derrick Hill

Excerpted from Pastors Kids Are The Worst by Keffier Savary & Derrick Hill

There is a quiet heartbreak in homes where parents give everything to their calling—then wonder why their children feel distant.

They sacrifice. They provide. They teach values. They believe that structure, discipline, and moral clarity will prepare their children for life.

And still, something feels off.

The child pulls away. Communication breaks down. Resentment grows. Parents feel confused and hurt. Children feel unseen and unknown.

This is not about bad parenting. It’s about missing connection, even when love is present.

The pattern appears in ministry homes, in medical families, in startups and nonprofits and executive suites—anywhere a calling demands everything and asks parents to believe their children will understand. The specifics differ, but the wound is the same: good intentions without emotional presence.

Children don’t experience love mainly through what parents do for them. They experience love through how parents are with them.

They feel loved when they feel:

• Seen
• Heard
• Emotionally safe
• Important

When these things are missing, children often don’t protest. They adapt. They become “good kids.” They follow rules. They don’t complain. They learn not to ask for much.

But inside, they may feel lonely, confused, or disconnected—without having words for it. Further, the subconscious mind doesn’t reason, it just accepts. Over time, that quiet distance hardens. This is a volcano waiting to erupt.

 

PRESENCE IS NOT THE SAME AS PROXIMITY

One of the biggest misunderstandings in parenting is believing that being around your child is the same as being present with your child.

You can live in the same house and still feel far apart. You can sit at the same table, attend the same events, and share the same routines—yet never really connect.

Children don’t just need parents who are there. They need parents who are emotionally available. When it comes to raising children, emotional absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder.

This means:

• Listening without rushing to fix
• Noticing emotional changes
• Being curious instead of critical
• Responding, not just reacting

When parents are exhausted, distracted, stressed, or emotionally overwhelmed, children pick up on it immediately. Kids are incredibly perceptive.

They notice:

• Who gets your energy
• Who gets your attention
• Who gets your patience
• Who gets what’s left

When a child repeatedly feels like other things matter more—work, mission, phones, stress, responsibilities—they start forming a belief: “I’m not important.” “I don’t matter.”

That belief doesn’t come from one big moment. It forms through small, repeated experiences. Missed conversations. Dismissed feelings. Quick lectures instead of real dialogue. None of it is malicious. But it still leaves a mark.

WHEN PURPOSE REPLACES CONNECTION

In many committed homes, values are deeply important—and often sincerely lived.
But sometimes, without meaning to, purpose becomes a substitute for emotional connection instead of a bridge to it.

Parents may respond to pain with:

• Principles instead of listening
• Mission instead of conversation
• Lessons instead of empathy

Values are offered—but emotional closeness is missing.

Children don’t reject what parents stand for because it’s harmful. They reject it when it feels:

• Controlling
• Performative
• Disconnected from real life
• Used to silence emotions instead of understanding them

When purpose is used to manage behavior rather than care for the heart, children stop feeling safe bringing their struggles forward. They must feel that you care before you can reach them. What children learn best isn’t what they’re told—it’s what they feel. If they feel emotionally safe with their parents, values often feel safe too. If they don’t, those same values can feel like pressure instead of love.

 

THE PARENT’S BLIND SPOT

One of the hardest things for parents to accept is this: Children experience us as we are, not as we intend to be.

Parents may say:

• “I was always there.”
• “I worked hard for my family.”
• “I gave them everything.”
• All of that may be true.

And still, a child’s emotional experience might be very different. This doesn’t mean parents failed. It means intent and impact aren’t the same thing.

Many parents were never taught how to:

• Talk about emotions
• Sit with discomfort
• Repair relationships
• Be vulnerable

Some parents are also not yet healed from their own childhood traumas. They learned survival, not connection. Discipline, not emotional safety. Strength, not softness. Without realizing it, they pass those patterns down. Reflection isn’t about blame. It’s about clarity.

 

WHY CHILDREN DRIFT INSTEAD OF SPEAK

Children rarely say, “I feel emotionally disconnected from you.”
Instead, they show it through behavior:

• Pulling away
• Acting out
• Becoming silent
• Overachieving
• Taking risks

By the time parents notice something is wrong, the child may already feel too far gone to explain. Children don’t stop needing their parents as they grow older. They stop asking when it feels unsafe—or pointless—to ask.

This Is Not a Condemnation

This reflection isn’t meant to shame parents.

Many are exhausted.
Many are overwhelmed.
Many are doing far more than anyone sees.
But love without presence is incomplete.

Parenting isn’t mainly about control, performance, or doing everything right. There is no perfect parent. It’s about relationship. And relationships can be repaired.

 

A Path Forward

Children don’t need perfect parents. They need present ones.

Parents willing to say:

• “I might have missed something.”
• “Help me understand your experience.”
• “Your feelings make sense.”

Those words tell a child’s nervous system: You matter. You’re safe here.

This possibility—of repair, of closeness restored—isn’t just wishful thinking. It’s grounded in how the brain actually works.

The brain keeps changing throughout life. A child who felt unsafe early on can learn to feel safe later. A teenager who shut down emotionally can learn to open up again. Scientists call this neuroplasticity. New experiences form new connections. When parents respond differently, children notice. Even grown children notice. Over time, new patterns of safety can replace old patterns of distance.

 

How Repair Changes Memories

When something difficult happens between parent and child, that memory gets stored with emotion attached. But when that same memory gets talked through—really talked through, with listening and understanding—something shifts. The memory doesn’t erase, but it softens. It competes with new, better experiences.

This is why a genuine apology matters so much. Not “I’m sorry you feel bad” but “I see what I did, and I’m sorry  I messed up.” That kind of repair becomes a new reference point: Maybe I can be heard. Maybe this relationship can be different. Maybe my parents are human too.

 

The Zone Where Kids Function Best

Think of emotional states like a temperature range. There’s a zone where kids think clearly, learn well, and connect easily. Too hot—anxious, angry, agitated—and they can’t think straight. Too cold—shut down, numb, withdrawn—and they can’t engage.

Most “behavior problems” happen outside this zone. A child yelling or slamming doors isn’t choosing to be difficult. Their nervous system is overheated. A child who stares blankly and says “whatever” isn’t being defiant. They’ve gone cold.

The fix isn’t reasoning with them or punishing them. It’s helping their body settle first. And the fastest way? A calm adult body nearby. This is co-regulation—one person’s calm helps another person find calm. It’s biological, not philosophical.

Signs a child is overheated: rapid breathing, can’t sit still, loud voice, tears that come fast. Signs a child is too cold: flat face, “I don’t care,” going quiet, seeming far away.

 

Breaking Old Patterns

Many parents repeat what was done to them—not because they want to, but because it’s familiar. The body remembers “how relationships work” even when the mind wants something different.

Changing this takes one simple, hard thing: a pause. Just a breath. A moment between what happened and what you do next.

In that pause, you can notice: My chest is tight. I want to yell. This feels urgent. And then choose: What does this moment actually need?

This pause is the core of every mindfulness practice. It’s not complicated. But it takes practice.

 

Simple Practices for Parents

These aren’t extra things to do. They’re ways of being that make everything else easier.

Feel your feet. When activated, notice your feet on the floor. Weight. Pressure. This brings attention to the present moment and signals safety to the brain.

Name body sensations. Instead of “I’m furious,” try “Heat in my face. Tight jaw. Fast heartbeat.” Naming calms the alarm system.

Notice one steady thing. A sound. A breath. A color in the room. Deliberately finding something steady builds the capacity to settle.

 

Why Your Calm Matters

When a child is upset and a parent stays present—really present, not fixing, not lecturing, just there—something powerful happens. The child’s body learns: This feeling is manageable. I don’t have to handle it alone.

Over time, this experience gets internalized. The child develops their own capacity to handle hard feelings—not by suppressing them, but because they’ve experienced handling them with support.

For teachers, therapists, doctors—anyone in a helping role—this same principle applies. Your own settled presence becomes part of what helps. You can’t fake this. But you can practice it.

The work is internal. The effect is relational. And the opportunity is always in the next breath.

 

Presence, Safety, and Repair

Children are not just learning how to behave.
They are learning how to feel safe, how to trust, and how to connect.

Long before a child understands words, rules, or beliefs, their body is learning something very basic:

“Am I safe with the people who care for me?”

That sense of safety becomes the foundation for everything else—emotions, behavior, relationships, even faith.

How Emotional Safety Shapes a Child

When children feel emotionally safe with their parents, their bodies stay calmer. Their thoughts are clearer. They’re more open to learning, listening, and growing. When they don’t feel safe, their bodies stay on alert.

This doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like:

• Overreacting to small things
• Shutting down emotionally
• Always trying to be “good”
• Getting angry quickly
• Needing constant reassurance

These aren’t signs of a bad child. They’re signs of a child who doesn’t feel settled inside, doesn’t feel loved.

Children learn safety through consistent emotional responses. They need to know:

• When I’m upset, my parent notices and my emotions matter
• When I mess up, I won’t lose love
• When I’m overwhelmed, someone helps me calm down

If a parent is unpredictable—sometimes warm, sometimes distant; sometimes patient, sometimes unavailable—children adjust by staying guarded. They learn not to expect too much.

 

CONNECTION COMES BEFORE CORRECTION

Many parents try to solve emotional problems by teaching harder. They explain. They correct. They quote values. But children don’t absorb lessons when they’re emotionally overwhelmed. They want you to be their parent, not their project manager.

If a child is anxious, angry, or shut down, they’re not being stubborn—they’re dysregulated. And stressed people don’t learn well. Before children can hear instructions, their bodies need to feel safe. That’s why yelling, lecturing, beating, punishing, or quoting principles often backfires. It may correct behavior temporarily, but it doesn’t build trust.

Connection comes before correction.

 

REPAIR MATTERS MORE THAN PERFECTION

Every parent messes up. Every relationship has moments of frustration, misunderstanding, and distance. The difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships isn’t whether mistakes happen. It’s whether repair happens after.

Repair means going back and saying:

• “I was too harsh earlier.”
• “I didn’t listen well.”
• “That must have felt lonely.”

Learn how to apologize.

These moments are powerful. They teach children:

• Conflict doesn’t end relationships
• Feelings matter
• People can take responsibility

Without repair, children learn something else:

• Problems don’t get addressed
• Emotions aren’t welcome
• Distance is safer than honesty

Repair doesn’t weaken authority. It builds trust.

 

WHY CHILDREN PULL AWAY IN ADOLESCENCE

Many parents are shocked when close children suddenly become distant as teenagers. But this shift usually didn’t start in the teen years. There is a famous saying: Dripping water hollows out stone. There is erosion over time.

It often started earlier—when emotional bids were missed, minimized, or rejected. By adolescence, children are deciding: “Is it safe to bring my real self here?” If the answer has been “no” too many times, they stop trying. Teenagers don’t need less connection. They need a different kind.

They want:

• Respect
• Choice
• Being heard without judgment

If parents only show up to correct behavior, teens learn to hide.

SMALL CHANGES THAT REBUILD CONNECTION

Rebuilding connection doesn’t require therapy language or long conversations. It starts with small, consistent shifts.

1. Slow Down When Your Child Is Upset. When emotions rise, lower your voice. Slow your pace. Get closer physically if it feels welcome.

Calm doesn’t come from control—it comes from co-regulation.

2. Listen More Than You Talk. Try responding with curiosity instead of correction.

Instead of: “You shouldn’t feel that way”

Try: “Tell me more about that”

Validate their feelings and experiences.

3. Name What You See. Children feel seen when parents notice them.

“You look disappointed.” “That seemed really hard.”

You don’t have to be right. Just trying matters.

4. Apologize When You Miss It. A simple apology can heal a rupture.

“I was distracted earlier. That wasn’t fair to you.”

“I’m sorry. I want to understand.”

This models humility and safety.

5. Create Non-Performance Time. Spend time together without teaching, correcting, or evaluating.

No lessons. No evaluations. Just being.

 

WHY THIS IS ESPECIALLY HARD FOR BUSY PARENTS

Parents who care deeply often carry the heaviest loads. Work. Mission. Finances. Community needs. When parents are always “on,” they come home emotionally empty.
Children feel the absence. Not because parents don’t love them—but because there’s nothing left to give. That’s why self-care isn’t selfish. A regulated parent is a safer parent. Even a few minutes of quiet, breathing, or slowing down before engaging with children can make a difference.

 

PRESENCE IN A DISTRACTED WORLD

Modern life makes presence harder than ever. Phones. Notifications. Endless demands. Children compete with all of it. Presence doesn’t require hours of time. It requires quality of attention.

Even short moments—when fully present—can be deeply regulating:

• Eye contact
• A calm tone
• A shared laugh
• Sitting quietly together

Children know when attention is divided. They also know when it’s genuine.

REFRAMING SUCCESS IN PARENTING

Success in parenting isn’t measured by:

• How obedient your children are
• How accomplished they become
• How good they look to others

Real success looks like:

• Children who feel safe being themselves
• Children who trust you with their inner world
• Children who know they’re loved, even when they fail

Those outcomes aren’t visible on the surface. But they last. You are raising adults. Adult life isn’t very forgiving. Society wants to see law-abiding, productive citizens. Your job is to create that in your child. But you don’t get there through control alone. You get there through connection.

 

FOR PARENTS WHO FEEL REGRET

Some parents read reflections like this and feel grief.

• “I wish I had known earlier.”
• “I see what I missed.”

That pain matters. Regret doesn’t mean you failed. It means you care. And care creates new possibility. It’s never too late to listen differently. To apologize sincerely. To reach out again. Even small shifts can soften long-standing patterns.

 

CLOSING INVITATION

Whether you are:

• A parent
• A caregiver
• A teacher
• A mentor
• Someone trying to break old patterns
• Or healing from a childhood like this

This is an invitation to choose presence. Not once. Not perfectly. But repeatedly. Because the integrity of any calling—professional, creative, spiritual, or otherwise—is inseparable from the health of the relationships closest to us.

And for many families, healing begins with something simple: Being there.

Good intentions matter.
Sacrifice matters.
Values matter.

But presence is what makes love felt.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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The Flame of Alignment

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ann Parkinson works as a pain and fatigue specialist physiotherapist and integrative somatic therapist. Her work is grounded in trauma-informed practice, compassion, somatic awareness, nervous system understanding, and embodied presence. Her approach is further shaped by lived experience (her own and others), wisdom traditions, and a sense of connection with the wider web of life.

She shares her work through one-to-one sessions, workshops, writing, and online offerings, creating spaces for people to settle, reconnect, and remember their own innate inner wisdom and connection to the wider whole. Her practice integrates clinical insight with contemplative approaches that invite gentle listening to, for example, the rhythms of breath, sensation, connectedness, and the flow of life — supporting compassionate presence, healing and a more attuned way of being in the world.

Ann is the author of Living Wholeness, a poetry collection exploring embodiment, attunement, and compassionate awareness through the body and the living world, and Dancing Through Life: A Guide to Living Well, a practical wellbeing guide. You can listen to her read her poems on her YouTube channel.

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The Practice of Listening to the Wound

Integrating Positive Neuroplasticity in Times of Immigration Precarity

© 2026 Shumaila Hemani, PhD

After I read a chapter from my recently published memoir, Writing in the Wound: Acculturation, Trauma, and Music, at a community event in Calgary, I received several hugs from the audience. But as I sat down, an African woman came up to me, pressed her hands around my shoulders, and hugged me from behind. “How did you survive immigration precarity for seventeen years? How did you manage it through?” she whispered.

I felt the tremor of shared exhaustion move through both of us. “The universe carried me through,” I said. She held me tighter, asked again, and I repeated the same.

It was the first time I had spoken publicly about the realities I have lived in Canada—seventeen years of uncertainty, instability, and unresolved status—while still following my calling as an artist and ethnomusicologist. My memoir became the space where those wounds could finally speak. I still carry them, because my immigration precarity is far from over. After two and a half years of waiting, when my file finally reached eligibility assessment, Canada extended processing times to ten-plus years—a kind of indefinite deferral.

And yet, I find myself standing not in collapse, but in quiet observation, making the next necessary decisions from a steadier place inside.
How did I get here?
How do we stay intact while living inside chronic instability?
How do we heal when the wounds are still hurting?

For me, the answer lies in the healing resources I found through my certified training as a Positive Neuroplasticity teacher with Dr. Rick Hanson, as well as in my own method of listening to the wound, inspired by the writings of Hildegard Westerkamp and Pauline Oliveros.

The Trauma of Immigration Precarity

When we talk about trauma, we often imagine catastrophic events. But trauma is also what happens inside the body when life becomes chronically unsafe — financially, socially, emotionally, politically, or physically.

For years, my nervous system lived in a state of threat. Not because of one past event, but because of an ongoing environment of instability — housing precarity, immigration anxiety, institutional gatekeeping, chronic stress, isolation, and the weight of systemic inequities.

I discovered Dr. Hanson’s programs during the pandemic, when I was in Karachi, and I was locked out of Canada for two years despite holding a post-graduate work permit. More than a decade of living in Canada as an international student and working as a graduate worker on campus had still not made me eligible for permanent residency.

I carried a quiet shame during those years, watching others benefit from systems that seemed to keep me at a distance. What helped me survive that time was recognizing that my power lay in finding opportunities and spaces where permanent residency was not required—and becoming creative enough to build a life within those openings.

My nervous system did not return to baseline. It lived in what trauma theorists call survival physiology — fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. I went through a peri-menopause during COVID.

And it was in the most difficult days that I began to listen to my body and found myself asking: How can I take care of you in ways that you stay protected from systemic harm?

I knew the “threat” was real and still unfolding, and that I had to draw on both my inner and outer resources to practice listening to the wound. I had the internet. I had sunlight streaming through my balcony each morning and lingering at sunset. I began using these simple, accessible resources to help me absorb beneficial experiences—sitting with the dawn and dusk light while listening to Fairouz, letting those moments touch me before life threw another gust of diesel fumes in my face.

This is where Positive Neuroplasticity Training (PNT) altered the terrain for me. Not because it erased the systemic challenges — but because it supported my nervous system in finding micro-moments of safety and stability inside them.

What is Neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity is our brain’s ability to form new connections and reshape old patterns. It means we are not trapped forever inside the wiring created by trauma, precarity, or chronic stress. The key is learning how to turn fleeting positive states into lasting traits, as Dr. Rick Hanson teaches. This is how we gradually override the brain’s built-in negativity bias—which evolved to keep us alive but often keeps us trapped in fear, vigilance, and self-doubt—and gently link old patterns to new, beneficial experiences. In this way, the old wound can meet a new moment of nourishment, allowing the nervous system to rewire itself toward safety.

PNT enhanced my capacity to cope with prolonged immigration precarity, while also opening a pathway for me to pursue my passion for the arts. What PNT offered me was not optimism, but a way to gently counterbalance this bias by helping beneficial experiences actually register in the body.

Through practices such as “taking in the good,” I learned how to stay with small moments of safety, relief, connection, or accomplishment long enough for them to move from fleeting states into lasting traits. This process did not deny the reality of systemic violence; it worked alongside it. By repeatedly letting moments of steadiness, self-support, and creative fulfillment land — even briefly — my nervous system began to build internal reference points for safety. Over time, these micro-moments accumulated, allowing new neural pathways to form that supported resilience, self-trust, and dignity. In this way, neuroplasticity became less about fixing the wound and more about expanding my capacity to live with it, without being consumed by it.

Throughout 2025, music and writing became practical ways for me to give myself beneficial experiences over many months, turning a prolonged period of pain into a period of growth. Using the HEAL framework, I brought to awareness moments with my graduate mentor, Professor Regula B. Qureshi, when I had experienced safety, connection, and worthiness, and then returned to those moments through writing and meaning-making. Through storytelling, I re-entered these experiences more fully, allowing their impact to register in the here and now in ways that restored my sense of safety and connection.

Through creative flow, I continued to enrich these experiences and let them land in my body long enough to absorb them. Over time, these small acts of attention helped transform fleeting states of worthiness—moments of success, accomplishment, or quiet victory—into more lasting traits of resilience, self-trust, and inner safety, particularly during times when life felt as though it was falling apart and systemic barriers made me feel as though I was failing.

A significant aspect of Dr. Rick Hanson’s HEAL framework is to enrich and absorb beneficial experiences. For me, this process unfolded most naturally in nature, because being outdoors helped transform my wounds into sources of wisdom. This is where the linking happened—where positive and negative could meet without overwhelming me, and where the wound could soften enough to be understood rather than feared.

HEAL is not about forcing positivity; it is about letting micro-moments of safety, connection, pleasure, or accomplishment land in the body long enough to register. It is the opposite of numbing out. It is a deliberate way of training the nervous system to recognize safety, so that, over time, what once felt fleeting becomes embodied, reliable, and real.

The Practice of Listening to the Wound

The practice of listening to the wound—the method I have developed—is a kind of neuroplasticity. It is not abstract neuroscience; it is a form of inner compassion-work. It is how I have supported myself in moving from survival mode to an inner sense of “I can,” “I belong,” “I matter,” and “I am safe enough.” It is how I have metabolized adversity into resilience. It is how I have tended my inner garden, letting my wounds become teachers and sources of care, clarity, and wisdom.

The idea here is not to change the wound or reshape it, but to hold space for it. To sit with it. To let it be what it is. In Karachi, I created that space from my balcony; in Calgary, I create that space by going to the river.

Most days, this begins very simply. I go to the river, and I allow my gaze to stretch far and around — to the water, the trees, the branches, the bridges — and my ears to listen to the sound of water flowing alongside every other sound the environment is holding: cars rushing past, buses sighing at the stop, the low hum of a train crossing, footsteps on gravel, children laughing on their way to school, fragments of conversations carried by the wind, all of it arriving at once. I don’t try to separate the pleasant from the unpleasant. I let everything be part of the field.

This act of widening — of letting the whole soundscape in — is what helps me hold space for my own wound. It softens the narrow tunnel my mind enters when I am overwhelmed.
I stand there for a moment, letting the sound of water reach me before anything else does. The movement of the river gives my body something steady to lean into. From there, my listening widens on its own — not because I am trying, but because the world begins to arrive.

This is where Pauline Oliveros influences my listening. Her insistence on listening globally and focally — to all and to the specific — helps me open my attention softly, without force. With time, the sound of the river begins to make room for smaller things: the shuffle of fallen leaves gathering around the edges of the path, the sudden dart of a squirrel across a branch, a woodpecker tapping patiently on a trunk somewhere behind me, a bird calling from a place I cannot locate but can still feel inside the sound.

As these details arrive, my attention shifts in a gentle way. The world becomes less of a blur and more of a presence. And something inside me starts to expand, as if the nervous system remembers that it does not have to hold everything in one tight fist. It can open, even a little. It can stretch toward something other than vigilance.

These sounds draw me out of the tightness of my thoughts and into another kind of listening. A listening from the older parts of my brain — the parts that orient, that sense, that know how to come back to the body. When I listen like this, my sympathetic nervous system slowly steps back, and something quieter starts to take over. My breath changes. My shoulders drop. My vision softens.

But before that settling happens, there is always a dread that I must confront. When I have been carrying too much, the first thing I feel — even by the river — is boredom. A kind of inner resistance. A restlessness that says: nothing is happening, why are you here, let’s go.
It has taken me years to understand that this boredom is not a flaw in me. It is a sign.
It tells me that my nervous system has been switched on for too long.

It is the exhaustion of the sympathetic system, saying, almost with exasperation:
no more. No more drama. Everything is okay now. It is time for me to switch off.
So I stay. Not forcing anything. Just staying long enough for the boredom to loosen its grip. And eventually, it does.

And while I am at the river, I occasionally check in with myself by listening to my heartbeat and feeling the weight of all that I have been carrying. Usually, when the wound is very active, I do not enjoy anything around me. I feel sad, and a part of me wants to go back — back home, back inside, back to where I don’t have to face the world or myself.

But if I can keep myself there for twenty minutes or more, I begin to sense a shift. A slight lightening. A soft loosening of the heaviness pressed against my chest. Some of the weight lifts, just enough for me to notice the beauty of the water flowing all over again. I begin to see a kind of awe in the sunlight as it touches the leaves of the trees, turning them into small flickers of gold. I begin experiencing wonder at the natural beauty around me, a wonder that had been there all along but felt unreachable when the wound was too loud.

It is in this shift — from sorrow to the first glimpse of awe — that I realize my nervous system has made a small turn toward safety. Not a full return, not a transformation, but a soft, steady opening that meets the wound without denying it.

And in that space — in the shift from boredom to the first hint of settling — something in the brain begins to change. Not because the wound is healing, but because I am no longer fighting it. I am listening to it. I am allowing it to be present without letting it take over the entire landscape of my mind.

This is what “listening to the wound” means to me.
Not resolution.
Not transcendence.
A quiet, steady practice of being with what hurts, while also letting the world — the river, the leaves, the birds — remind me that there is more here than pain.

A Three-Part Practice of Listening to the Wound

Over time, I have come to understand that listening to the wound has its own shape, almost like a symphony. It unfolds in three movements — each one a different way of creating space for my nervous system to settle. I move between them slowly, without forcing anything.

1. Listening to the heartbeat (Listening inward)
I begin with the most intimate sound: my heartbeat.
At the river, before I take in anything around me, I check in with myself by placing attention on the pulse inside my chest. I notice whether it is racing, heavy, tight, or trembling. I feel the weight of what I have been carrying. If the wound is activated, I do not enjoy anything around me — the sadness is louder than the world. This is my first anchor: a quiet acknowledgment of where I truly am.

Listening inward is my way of saying to myself:
I am here. I hear you. I am taking care of you. You are safe.

2. Listening to the global environment (Listening out)
Once I have acknowledged my inner landscape, I allow my attention to widen. I listen globally — to everything the environment offers at once. The river is flowing. Cars rushing past. Buses sighing. Trains humming in the distance. Footsteps, conversations, children laughing, leaves rustling. All of it arriving together, without hierarchy.

The gentle invitation to listen to the whole field — the near and the far, the steady and the sudden — takes me out of the narrow tunnel of distress and places me in a spiritual relationship with the natural world.

Listening out is my reminder:
I am being held by the wisdom of the rivers and all the natural world.
The animals around me are spirit animals that bring me messages from another world.

This takes my nervous system from a place of threat to not just safety but wonder, awe, and enchantment. I activate my inner child — the part of me that can still be surprised by light on water, by a bird taking flight, by the simple beauty of being here.

3. Listening focally (Listening toward)
Listening toward is the movement that activates inner wisdom safety:
What else is here? What else can I feel? What else can I allow?

These are boredom questions, meaning: they arise when nothing is happening, when the wound is loud, but the world is quiet. When the nervous system is shifting from activation into settling, when you’re not yet in awe, you’re in that in-between place.

After some time — often twenty minutes or more — something shifts. Some of the heaviness loosens. I can sense a little more breath. This is when my listening naturally becomes more focused.

I begin to notice the smaller details…the wind on restless days—moving, swelling, then thinning into stillness.
And on quiet days, when crows and magpies loosen their hold on the air, a distant swarm of chickadees emerges—their calls gathering into a soft, surging chorus, rising into a brief crescendo before dissolving again into silence, like the air remembering itself.
And once I begin to experience silence,
I know I am fully present.

Conclusion

The practice of listening to the wound is, in many ways, a form of the HEAL approach— turning awareness into embodiment, and fleeting moments of self-recognition into lasting traits of dignity, self-compassion, and resilience..For a long time, I wasn’t celebrating my wins. I wasn’t acknowledging how much work it took to simply survive what I was surviving. I moved through life as though my progress didn’t count. But when I began applying HEAL and the daily practice of listening to the wound, it became a daily reminder that I started developing a more positive relationship with myself and my life circumstances. I began releasing internalized shame, and became more courageous in naming systemic pressures for what they are. I began understanding my trauma not as personal failures but as systemic wounds carried in my nervous system.

The practice of listening to the wound has allowed me to enrich these insights, absorb them, and link them with the deeper layers of my story. It turns awareness into embodiment. It turns fleeting moments of self-recognition into lasting traits of dignity, self-compassion, and resilience. In this sense, listening to the wound is not passive—it is a neuroplastic practice. It rewires how I relate to myself, and it transforms the wound itself into the very material from which healing grows.

Healing, for me, is no longer the absence of pain; it’s the practice of listening—deeply and patiently—to what the wound is trying to teach.

While Dr. Hanson mentions that Positive Neuroplasticity is not for healing trauma—and the emphasis on retraining your brain can, at times, retraumatize people whose systemic wounds are gaslighted—I found a level of healing that came not from overriding the wound but from listening to it. The practices I learned through his courses have allowed me to hold my suffering differently, to witness the places that hurt without collapsing into them.

I began to see that “taking in the good” wasn’t about denying pain but about expanding capacity—to let moments of safety, belonging, and beauty coexist alongside what remained unresolved. As an immigrant artist navigating exclusion and uncertainty, these micro-moments of calm became survival tools. They didn’t erase the structures that wound, but they offered a nervous system-level refuge—a softening, a breath, an internal place that no bureaucracy could take away.

In that time, Hanson’s teachings — especially his work on positive neuroplasticity — became a way to breathe again. It was not only about self-regulation but also about tending the garden of my heart—a way to nurture presence amid precarity. It was not about fixing the wound but learning from its wisdom and finding purpose in where life has thrown me and what the moment is asking of me in terms of creative expression.

There have been points in my journey when “taking in the good”—walking to the river or spending time in nature—brought quiet joy; it also became painful when the wind was too strong or the sun too bright. My eyes became overly sensitive and watered, my skin flared with eczema, and the world that once soothed me suddenly became overstimulating. During those times, I reached out to the distress line and used the calming and grounding techniques I had learned through Dr. Hanson’s programs to help myself move through trauma responses.

I wrote my memoir in five intense months, during what felt like the most anxious period of my life. Writing became an anchor—a way to shape meaning inside a time of profound uncertainty. I didn’t know who would want to hear my story. What I did know was that a counsellor on a suicide-prevention crisis line had listened to me deeply and urged me to share it, to name the systems that harm, and to challenge the ones that silence.

I thank her most deeply. Without her assurance, without that one human reminder that my experiences mattered, I may not have made it through. She helped me see that our systems have fractured humanity at its core, and that healing must begin both within ourselves and in the communities we build.

PNT helped me take the next step—to listen to my wounds with patience, to understand what they were asking of me, and to discover the learning held inside this particular chapter of my life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Shumaila Hemani is a certified Positive Neuroplasticity Teacher and the author of Writing in the Wound: Acculturation, Trauma, and Music. She is a singer-storyteller, ethnomusicologist, and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores migration, trauma, listening, and healing through embodied and creative practices.

An honouree on Women in Music Canada’s Honor Roll (2023) and a runner-up in Alberta Blue Cross’s Faces of Wellness, Dr. Hemani’s writing on immigrant mental health, suicide prevention, burnout, trauma, and eco-anxiety has appeared in OC87 Recovery Diaries, To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) (2026), Dr. David Susman’s Hope & Resiliency Blog (2020), Mental Health Today, Wellbeing Magazine (2025), and other publications. Her song Anticipating was featured in a cross-Canada tour for suicide prevention awareness and hope (2020). She is also an IHRAM (International Human Rights Arts Movement) honouree (2026), recognized for her contributions at the intersection of arts, human rights, and social justice.

Dr. Hemani is the founder of The Deep Listening Path, where she has facilitated workshops on burnout and wellbeing for changemakers with organizations including Alberta Ecotrust and the Canadian Poverty Institute. She lives in Calgary, where she continues to write, make music, and facilitate monthly rest community circles.

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Skillful Means: Breath Awareness Meditation

Your Skillful Means, sponsored by the Wellspring Institute, is designed to be a comprehensive resource for people interested in personal growth, overcoming inner obstacles, being helpful to others, and expanding consciousness. It includes instructions in everything from common psychological tools for dealing with negative self talk, to physical exercises for opening the body and clearing the mind, to meditation techniques for clarifying inner experience and connecting to deeper aspects of awareness, and much more.

Breath Awareness Meditation

PURPOSE/EFFECTS
Stress is an extremely unhealthy condition. It causes the body to release the chemical cortisol, which has been shown to reduce brain and organ function, among many other dangerous effects. Modern society inadvertently encourages a state of almost continuous stress in people.

This is a meditation that encourages physical and mental relaxation, which can greatly reduce the effects of stress on the body and mind.

METHOD
Summary

Sit still and pay close attention to your breathing process.

Long Version

• Take a reposed, seated posture. Your back should be straight and your body as relaxed as possible.
• Close your eyes, and bring your attention to your breathing process. Simply notice you are breathing. Do not attempt to change your breath in any way. Breath simply and normally.
• Try to notice both the in breath and the out breath; the inhale and the exhale. “Notice” means to actually feel the breathing in your body with your body. It is not necessary to visualize your breathing or to think about it in any way except to notice it with your somatic awareness.
• Each time your attention wanders from the act of breathing, return it to noticing the breath. Do this gently and without judgment.
• Remember to really feel into the act of breathing.
• If you want to go more deeply into this, concentrate on each area of breathing in turn. Here is an example sequence:
  • 1. Notice how the air feels moving through your nostrils on both the in breath and the out breath.
  • 2. Notice how the air feels moving through your mouth and throat. You may feel a sort of slightly raspy or ragged feeling as the air moves through your throat. This is normal and also something to feel into.
  • 3. Notice how the air feels as it fills and empties your chest cavity. Feel how your rib cage rises slowly with each in breath, and gently deflates with each out breath.
  • 4. Notice how your back expands and contracts with each breath. Actually feel it shifting and changing as you breath.
  • 5. Notice how the belly expands outward with each in breath and pulls inward with each in breath. Allow your attention to fully enter the body sensation of the belly moving with each breath.
  • 6. Now allow your attention to cover your entire body at once as you breath in and out. Closely notice all the sensations of the body as it breathes.
• Repeat this sequence over and over, giving each step your full attention as you do it.
• Suggested time is at least 10 minutes. Thirty minutes is better, if you are capable of it.

HISTORY
Breath awareness is probably the oldest meditation technique, and is certainly the most universally known. It can be found, for example, in the Anapanasati Sutta, a scripture which summarizes the Buddhas teaching on breath awareness mediation. Anapanasati means “breath awareness meditation” in Pali. The Buddha had learned the basic technique from his own teachers, which means that it existed at least as far back as 500 BCE, although it was probably already ancient at the time.

Here is a page with an extensive history of breath awareness meditation, particularly in Buddhism.

CAUTIONS
If you have any difficulties breathing, you should work with a qualified instructor.

NOTES
1. If you find yourself distracted by a lot of mental chatter, you can use verbal labeling as an aid to concentration.
2. For example, on the in breath, mentally say to yourself, “Breathing in.” On the out breath, say, “Breathing out.”
3. Another possibility is to mentally count each breath.

Thich Nhat Hanh teaching his version of breathing meditation.

SEE ALSO

What Is Meditation?
Meditation Posture

EXTERNAL LINKS
If you would like to read breath meditation instructions from a Buddhist monk, you can find one version here.