News and Tools for Happiness, Love, and Wisdom

A Culture That Makes Us Sick

— And What a Healthier One Would Look Like

© 2026 Jeremy Lent

An amended excerpt from Chapter 18 of Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All © 2026 Jeremy Lent

Something is making us sick — and it isn’t a virus.

Rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and suicide have risen steadily across the industrialized world for decades, even as material wealth has grown. Life expectancy has declined in some demographic groups in the United States. Adolescent mental health has fallen off a cliff. Adults report having fewer close friends than at any point since researchers began tracking the statistic. In 2021, 12 percent of American adults reported having no close friends at all — up from just 3 percent in 1990.

As a healthcare professional, educator, or mindfulness practitioner, you probably see this suffering up close every day. And you may sense, as many of your clients do, that something systemic is at work — that the problem isnt simply individual pathology but something woven into the very fabric of how we live.

Brain science and the research on human flourishing increasingly confirm that intuition. The dominant culture of our time is, in measurable and specific ways, at war with our evolved nature. Understanding how — and what a healthier cultural framework would look like — turns out to be not just philosophically interesting but clinically and practically essential.

We Evolved for Something Different

Every human being arrives in the world carrying millions of years of evolutionary heritage: a complex set of instincts, needs, and drives shaped for the conditions in which our ancestors lived — small nomadic bands of foragers, moving through landscapes they knew intimately, embedded in webs of relationship and mutual care.

Many of our deepest psychological needs — for companionship, for moral belonging, for a sense of collective identity that transcends the individual self — evolved precisely because they maximized our chances of survival and flourishing in that context. We are, at the biological level, profoundly social creatures. We’re not isolated units of optimization, but beings whose nervous systems were shaped by and for connection.

Some of the mismatch between that evolutionary heritage and modern life is simply an unintended byproduct of a technologically advanced, globally connected world. Most people now live in isolated nuclear families without extended kin networks. Instead of measuring ourselves against the few dozen people we know personally, we are bombarded by media images of idealized celebrities — an impossible standard that leaves many people feeling perpetually inadequate.

But much of the mismatch is not accidental. As physician Gabor Maté documents in The Myth of Normal, contemporary culture has actively weaponized the gap between our evolved needs and our actual lives. Our desire for sugar, fat, and salt — evolved for a world of scarcity — has been exploited by corporations designing algorithms to target what food scientists call the  “bliss point”: the precise combination of flavors engineered to be irresistible, regardless of nutritional value. Our healthy instinct to be respected by our peers has been transformed into a perpetual chase for status symbols — clothing, gadgets, automobiles — a “hedonic treadmill” from which most people can never quite step off.

The result, as Maté writes, is that “what passes for normal in our society is neither healthy nor natural& To meet modern society’s criteria for normality is, in many ways, to conform to requirements that are profoundly abnormal in regard to our Nature-given needs — which is to say, unhealthy and harmful.”

Two Kinds of Values — and What They Do to Us

A useful body of research for understanding this dynamic comes from psychologist Tim Kasser, who has spent decades studying the relationship between values and wellbeing across diverse cultures, age groups, and income levels.

Kasser identifies two broad clusters of values and goals that people hold worldwide. One cluster — which he calls extrinsic or self-enhancement values — prioritizes money, possessions, and status. The other — intrinsic or self-transcendent values — prizes helping family and friends, personal growth and self-acceptance, caring about the broader world, and community belonging.

Almost everyone holds both clusters to some degree. But one is usually dominant in a person. And the research findings here are striking.

People in whom extrinsic values are dominant report lower wellbeing, more anxiety, more depression, and less satisfaction with their lives — regardless of how much money or status they have actually accumulated. They are also more likely to diminish the wellbeing of others: acting more manipulatively and competitively, experiencing less compassion, engaging in fewer prosocial activities such as helping or sharing. Extrinsic values have even been shown to correlate with higher levels of stress hormones and increased expression of inflammatory genes — with measurable downstream effects on physical health.

People in whom intrinsic values are dominant show the opposite profile: greater wellbeing and self-actualization, stronger social connections, and more prosocial behavior.

From an evolutionary standpoint, this is not surprising. Intrinsic values are aligned with our evolutionary heritage — with the cooperative, relational, meaning-seeking creatures we actually are. What is troubling is the other half of the picture: the globally prevailing culture is designed to reward and amplify extrinsic values. Consumer culture, social media, and the logic of the market all push people toward money, status, and self-promotion — precisely the orientation that the research shows undermines human flourishing.

A Reflection for Practitioners

Think about the people you work with — or yourself, on a difficult day.

When anxiety or depression is loudest, which value cluster tends to be most active? The worry about how you look to others. The sense that you’re not achieving enough. The comparison with someone who seems to be doing better.

Now think of the moments of genuine aliveness and satisfaction in your own life. What were you doing? Who were you with? What did it ask of you?

The gap between those two experiences is a window into what Kasser’s research describes.

Competition and Its Costs

One of the most persistent beliefs underlying modern culture is that competition is the engine of human progress — that it motivates excellence, drives innovation, and ultimately benefits everyone.

Education researcher Alfie Kohn spent years reviewing the empirical literature on this claim — more than 120 studies — and found the opposite to be consistently true. Competition, defined as a structure in which one person or group must fail so that another can succeed, tends to be counterproductive across virtually every domain.

Why? As a hypersocial species, humans evolved to rely primarily on cooperation, not competition, to survive and thrive. Beyond generating anxiety that impairs performance, competition prevents people from exchanging ideas or sharing skills — the very capacities that underlie our evolutionary success. It also distracts people from whatever their primary task actually is, redirecting attention from excellence toward the simpler goal of beating an opponent.

There is something important to notice here for those who work in education or organizational settings: many of the performance problems — the disengagement, the anxiety, the inability to take creative risks — that we attribute to individual deficits may be, at least in part, structural outputs of competitive environments. The context shapes the capacity

Cultural historian Riane Eisler has spent her career examining these dynamics at a civilizational scale. She distinguishes between what she calls domination systems — characterized by rigid hierarchies, the ranking of some groups over others, and the normalization of violence and control — and partnership systems, characterized by relations based on respect, reciprocity, and accountability. She finds that domination systems consistently generate the kinds of suffering — inequality, chronic stress, suppression of human potential — that the wellbeing research attributes to extrinsic values. Partnership systems generate the opposite.

The Multilayered Costs of Inequality

One of the most consistent findings in the social science of wellbeing is that inequality is toxic — not just to those at the bottom, but to everyone living within an unequal society.

Biologist Robert Sapolsky’s research offers a key insight: what damages health is not so much being poor in absolute terms as feeling poor — the chronic experience of low status, of having one’s life controlled by others, of being unable to shape one’s own circumstances. Long-term studies of civil servants — people with equivalent access to healthcare — have shown that low job status correlates with significantly higher risk of heart disease, lung disease, depression, and suicide. The mechanism runs through the stress system: chronic low-status stress generates sustained inflammation throughout the body, accelerating aging and impairing brain function.

More equal societies show better outcomes across virtually every indicator of social wellbeing: mental health, physical health, educational achievement, social mobility, and levels of interpersonal trust. People in Sweden are more than six times as likely to trust their neighbors as people in highly unequal societies. That trust — the felt sense of being embedded in a community of mutual regard — is itself a health resource, a buffer against the adversity that all lives contain.

For practitioners, these findings carry a direct implication. Many of the symptoms presenting in your consulting room, classroom, or coaching session are not occurring in a vacuum. They are being generated, at least in part, by the structural conditions of inequality and its psychological consequences — the chronic stress of status competition, the erosion of social trust, the sense of contingency and precarity that so many people carry. Treating the individual without acknowledging that context is like treating respiratory disease while ignoring the air quality.

How Culture Gets Into Children — and Stays There

The mismatch between our evolved needs and modern culture doesn’t begin in adulthood. It begins at birth — and in many cases, before birth.

Evolutionary psychologist Darcia Narvaez has developed the concept of the “evolved nest” — the suite of developmental conditions that evolution designed to meet the psychological, social, and biological needs of the human infant. Every species has one: a developmental environment honed over evolutionary time to produce healthy adults of that species.

For humans, the evolved nest includes near-constant physical contact with caregivers in the earliest months, responsive feeding and soothing, extensive affection, free play with mixed-age groups of peers, and immersion in a community of caring adults. In forager societies, child-rearing is genuinely communal: infants are held and tended by multiple caregivers throughout the day, and corporal punishment is not merely discouraged but considered abhorrent. A Jesuit missionary in 1633 described Algonquin adults who were horrified to witness a French child about to be struck for wrongdoing — one threw his robe over the child and bared his own back to receive the blow instead.

Most elements of this evolved nest are absent or severely attenuated in modern industrialized societies. Infants are frequently placed in separate sleeping spaces, given scheduled rather than responsive feeding, and limited in physical contact. Structured, adult-directed activity replaces free play. In affluent developed countries, roughly two-thirds of adults report having experienced at least one adverse childhood experience — a figure with well-documented downstream effects on physiological and psychological development.

And the broader culture actively exploits this developmental vulnerability. Advertisers have identified children as a lucrative and particularly susceptible market. Studies estimate that the average American child sees 40,000 television advertisements per year — a number that has grown enormously with social media.

Until around age eight, most children are simply unable to recognize the persuasive intent behind advertising. As they enter adolescence, social anxiety creates further opportunities for predatory marketing. “You open up emotional vulnerabilities,” one advertising executive acknowledged, “and it’s very easy to do with kids because they’re the most emotionally vulnerable.”

The conventional educational system has, in many ways, compounded this conditioning. Built originally on the Prussian model, mainstream schooling trains children to suppress natural curiosity, accept imposed tasks without question, compete with peers for grades, and orient their aspirations around external reward. The rise of neoliberalism has deepened this tendency, transforming education from a public good into a market opportunity and displacing liberal arts ideals — critical thinking, ethical reasoning, civic engagement — in favor of preparation for the growth economy.

What Education Could Be

The good news is that we can envision — and in many places are already building — something very different.

Rather than suppressing children’s creativity and conditioning them toward consumerism and status competition, education can be reimagined as cultivating the discernment, emotional maturity, and wisdom required for each student to fulfill their unique potential and contribute to the health of their community and the living world.

Pioneering educational traditions, developed over more than a century, show us what this can look like. The Waldorf method emphasizes holistic development and gives teachers genuine autonomy, prioritizing qualitative engagement over standardized testing. Montessori schools focus on self-directed, experiential learning with mixed-age groups, respecting each child’s developmental pace and intrinsic motivation. Both traditions now operate thousands of schools across dozens of countries.

Daniel Goleman — who popularized the concept of emotional intelligence — has developed mindfulness and empathy programs beginning with four-year-olds, including practices of gratitude and collaborative problem-solving. Nordic countries have led the way in embedding these approaches systemwide: some Scandinavian schools include mandatory empathy classes in which children share emotional difficulties and practice nonjudgmental support — what the Spanish term convivencia captures beautifully: the art of living together in benevolent coexistence.

Perhaps most radically, some educational movements have placed self-direction at the center. In the Reggio Emilia philosophy, children are understood as “authors of their own learning” — the teacher’s role shifts from transmitter of information to mentor and catalyst for the child’s innate curiosity. Democratic schools — like Sudbury Valley in Massachusetts and the Agora School in the Netherlands — grant students genuine educational freedom and democratic governance, including the right to participate in decisions about school management. Research consistently shows that graduates of these schools demonstrate stronger intrinsic motivation, better learning skills, and greater psychological wellbeing than their peers from conventional schools.

Ecological literacy — understanding core ecological principles and the human relationship to living systems — is nearly absent from most contemporary curricula and would become central in a healthier educational vision. Nature-based learning cultivates a sense of embeddedness and reverence for life. Even for inner-city schools without easy access to natural landscapes, simple interventions — a fish tank in the classroom, a butterfly hatchery on the campus — can open windows of wonder.

Practice: Noticing the Evolved Nest

This brief reflection is useful both personally and as a way to think about what clients may be missing.

Bring to mind a moment — in childhood or recently — when you felt genuinely at ease, seen, and belonging.
What were the conditions? Who else was present? What kind of attention were you receiving or offering?

Now notice: how often do the people you work with have reliable access to those conditions? How often do you?

The research on the evolved nest suggests that what we call wellbeing is often, at its core, the experience of having our deepest relational needs met. And that much of what we call pathology is the predictable consequence of their persistent absence.

An Expanded Sense of Belonging

There is one more dimension of cultural health that the research — and the contemplative traditions — point toward, and that our current culture almost entirely neglects: the sense of belonging not just to a community of people, but to the broader community of life.

Indigenous cultures worldwide have maintained this understanding for millennia: that humans are not separate from the living world but embedded within it, and that the health of people and the health of the land are inseparable. What is striking is that this ancient wisdom is increasingly supported by contemporary science.

Research on what psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt call “awe” — the experience of encountering something vast and beautiful that exceeds our ordinary frameworks — finds that it produces measurable shifts in both physiology and behavior. In moments of genuine awe, selfreferential processing quiets. The sense of being a bounded, separate self temporarily dissolves, and people feel connected to something larger. Awe is associated with reduced inflammatory markers, increased prosocial orientation, and enhanced sense of meaning. And one of the most reliable triggers of awe is simply time in nature.

Many of the world’s religious and spiritual traditions are, in their own ways, recovering and deepening this ecological consciousness. Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ framed ecological care as a core moral and spiritual duty, writing that “a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” Leading Buddhist teachers, from the Dalai Lama to Thích Nhất Hạnh, have emphasized the deep interconnectedness of all life — what Hạnh calls “interbeing” — and taught practices that invite practitioners “to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying.”

The Parliament of the World’s Religions — representing traditions as diverse as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — has spoken in one voice about this convergence, closing its 2015 Declaration on Climate Change with these words: “The future we embrace will be a new ecological civilization and a world of peace, justice, and sustainability, with the flourishing of the diversity of life. We will build this future as one human family within the greater Earth community.”

For mindfulness practitioners and those in contemplative traditions, this expanded sense of belonging is not foreign territory. It is, in many ways, exactly what deep practice points toward: the recognition that the self is not a bounded, isolated thing, but a temporary expression of a vast web of interdependence. What is new is the convergence of that ancient wisdom with the vocabulary of ecology, neuroscience, and the study of human flourishing — and with the urgent social and planetary conditions that make the question of how we live together more pressing than ever.

What All of This Means for Your Practice — and for the Future The picture that emerges from this research is both sobering and clarifying. It is sobering because it reveals that much of what presents as individual pathology is, at its root, a cultural problem: the predictable output of a system organized in ways that systematically violate our evolved needs, amplify extrinsic values at the expense of intrinsic ones, and sever the relational and ecological connections that the human nervous system requires to thrive.

It is clarifying because it points unmistakably toward what a healthier cultural framework would look like. It would be deeply relational — organized around the cultivation of meaningful bonds between people, across generations, and with the living world. It would measure wellbeing rather than GDP, recognizing that the things that actually produce human flourishing — trust, meaning, connection, autonomy, ecological belonging — are not automatically generated by economic growth. It would take children’s evolved needs seriously, embedding their development in genuine community rather than optimizing them for the market. And it would offer people what the research consistently identifies as the deepest source of meaning: participation in something larger than oneself, oriented toward the good of the whole.

None of this means abandoning the individual work that brings most people to this field. It means holding a larger frame around it. Understanding that the person sitting across from you is embedded in a culture that is, in measurable ways, working against their flourishing — and that supporting their healing often involves helping them reconnect with values, relationships, and sources of meaning that the dominant culture systematically erodes.

For those who want to explore these ideas in depth — including the historical roots of our current cultural pathologies and the emerging movements working to build genuinely life-affirming alternatives — my new book Ecocivilization: Making a World That Works for All examines each of these dimensions and the real-world models of change already underway in communities around the world. But the core insight doesn’t require a book to act on. It is already available in the research you may already know, and in your own experience of what makes human life feel alive.

Most people, surveys consistently find, already sense that something is wrong with how we’re living. Large majorities across nations and cultures report wanting to move toward a way of life more centered on values, community, and care for the natural world. They are often surprised to discover how widely their views are shared — because the dominant culture works hard to make this consensus invisible. One thing we can offer, in our practices and communities, is to make that hidden consensus visible: to help people recognize that their deepest intuitions about what makes life worth living are not naive or idealistic, but are precisely what the science of human flourishing describes.

Practice: Toward Intrinsic Values

This simple inquiry can be offered to clients, used in group settings, or explored in your own reflective practice.

Take a few minutes and write in response to these prompts:

What activities make me feel most fully alive — not most productive or impressive, but most alive?

Who do I feel most genuinely myself with? What makes those relationships feel that way?

If I were not afraid of wasting time or looking foolish, what would I give more of my energy to?

What cause or concern — larger than my own life — genuinely calls to me?

Kasser’s research suggests that helping people clarify and strengthen their intrinsic values is among the most powerful things we can do for their wellbeing — and for the communities they belong to.

The future is not something that happens to us. It is something we co-create, every day, in the choices we make about what to value, how to relate to one another, and what kind of life we’re willing to call normal.

Every practitioner who embodies relational, compassionate, meaning-centered values in their work is enacting a counter-culture — demonstrating, in the concrete reality of daily practice, that a different way of being together is possible and life-giving. That matters more than it might seem. The neuroscience tells us that values spread through social networks, that the quality of relational fields shapes individual and collective development over time. Each of us, over the course of a career, is a cultural agent — planting seeds whose flowering we may not always live to see.

As the poet and activist Václav Havel described it, genuine hope is not optimism about outcomes. It is “a deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times — an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”

The research on human flourishing points clearly toward what we are built for: connection, meaning, contribution, and the sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves. The challenge — and the invitation — is to keep building the conditions in which those things are possible, one relationship, one practice, one community at a time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeremy Lent is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. His new book Ecocivilization: Making a World that Works for All lays out the potential for a fundamentally different world system—an ecocivilization based on lifeaffirming principles rather than principles of extraction, exploitation, and wealth accumulation. He is founder of the Deep Transformation Network and co-founder of the Ecocivilization Coalition. His previous two books were The Web of Meaning and The Patterning Instinct.

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Fostering Connection Through Nervous System Safety

How understanding the body’s signals helps us regulate, connect, and teach

© 2026 Alyssa Blask Campbell

We often tell children to “calm down” or “use their words.” We ask them to share, listen, focus, and cooperate. But beneath all of those requests is an often overlooked reality: none of that can happen until the nervous system feels safe.

This same reality applies to adults. Whether we’re teaching, counseling, or parenting, our ability to respond with compassion and curiosity depends on what’s happening inside our own bodies. The more we understand our nervous systems, the better we can support others, because regulation isn’t just something we teach; it’s something we impart.

The Body Comes First

When a child melts down because a transition is hard or a group project feels overwhelming, our minds often go straight to behavior: What caused this? How do I fix it? But behavior is only the surface. Underneath is a body that’s working hard to manage stimulation, emotion, and social expectation. Long before the brain has words for what’s happening, the nervous system has already decided whether the world feels safe or dangerous. That subconscious nervous system decision determines everything: whether the child can hear our words, think flexibly, or access empathy.

The same is true for us. When a classroom gets noisy or a meeting runs long, we may feel our jaw tighten, breath shorten, or shoulders rise. Those physical cues tell us our own nervous system has shifted into protection. If we miss that moment, we’re likely to react, snapping, withdrawing, or rushing through the interaction, without realizing our amygdala, not our prefrontal cortex, is in the driver’s seat. Real mindfulness begins with noticing our own state. The body often tells us we’re stressed before our mind catches up.

The Sensory Systems: The Pathway to Regulation

Every moment of the day, our nine sensory systems are gathering data about the world and our internal state, deciding whether we feel safe or overwhelmed. Most of us learned about the five senses, but there are four additional senses and all nine of them have a tremendous impact on our regulation and capacity to connect, learn, and cope.

Visual (sight)

The visual system takes in light, color, and movement.

• A visual seeker might be drawn to bright lights, vivid colors, or fast-paced video games
  because they bring the stimulation their nervous system craves.
• A visual-sensitive person might squint under fluorescent lights, feel agitated in cluttered spaces, or need to turn off overhead lights to concentrate.

Auditory (sound)

The auditory system processes the sounds around us and helps us filter what to focus on.

• A seeker may turn up the volume on music to feel alert and engaged or choose to have background music on.
• A sensitive person may cover their ears during loud transitions, struggle to focus in noisy classrooms, hum or make sound to feel in control of the noise, or feel physically tense in loud, crowded spaces.

Olfactory (smell)

The olfactory system connects closely to memory and emotion.

• A seeker might love scented markers, candles, or certain foods with strong smells.
• A sensitive person might feel unwell or get a headache from perfumes, cleaning products, or certain foods, and may even avoid places with strong scents altogether.

Gustatory (taste)

The gustatory system processes taste and texture.

• A seeker might crave crunchy, spicy, or sour foods that “wake up” their mouth.
• A sensitive person may prefer bland foods, reject mixed textures like casseroles, or gag on certain consistencies.

Tactile (touch)

The tactile system processes touch through the skin, hair, and nerve endings.

• A seeker might love hugs, light touch massage, or fidget toys, and seek contact throughout the day.
• A sensitive person might find tags unbearable, avoid messy play, or recoil from unexpected touch, interpreting it as discomfort rather than connection.

Vestibular (balance and movement)

The vestibular system lives in the inner ear and helps us feel stable and oriented in space.

• A seeker might often swing, spin, lay on their stomach to engage in an activity, or dip upside down because moving the plane of their head helps their body feel centered and awake.
• A sensitive person might avoid swings, long car rides, or sudden changes in head position, preferring stillness to avoid motion sickness or dizziness.

Proprioceptive (body awareness)

Proprioception comes from muscles and joints, telling us where our body is in space.

• A seeker might push, crash, stomp, or love deep hugs, these forms of heavy input calm their nervous system.
• A sensitive person might move delicately, avoid rough play, or tire quickly during physical activities because too much input feels overwhelming.

Interoceptive (Internal Signals)

Interoception is how we sense what’s happening inside the body; hunger, thirst, temperature, heart rate, or emotional arousal.

• Low awareness: A person with low interoceptive awareness may not notice internal cues until they’re intense, like realizing they’re starving only once they feel shaky or irritable, or missing early signs of stress until they’re overwhelmed.
• High awareness: Someone with high interoceptive awareness notices subtle shifts in their body quickly, like a slight change in heart rate, a flutter in their stomach, or early emotional activation, sometimes so acutely that it can feel distracting or uncomfortable.

Neuroceptive (Safety Scanning)

Neuroception is the body’s unconscious way of reading the environment for cues of safety or threat: our “spidey sense” that shapes every interaction. Someone with high neuroceptive awareness may pick up on every small cue, tone shifts, body language, or changes in energy.

The 9 Senses and Regulation

When one or more systems are overwhelmed by bright lights, strong smells, itchy clothing, or too much movement, the nervous system may shift into protection before we even realize why. The same holds true when systems are understimulated: a child who’s constantly moving might not be “defiant” but trying to get the proprioceptive or vestibular input they need to feel regulated. Our sensory systems shape the way we experience the world, and no two profiles are exactly alike. Some of us feel calmed by soft music and dim lights, while others need movement or texture to focus. That’s why identifying our unique sensory patterns, and those of the children we care for, is so powerful. Tools like the Regulation Questionnaire help uncover which systems are most supportive and which tend to trigger overwhelm, offering practical insight into how to create environments and interactions that truly feel safe for every nervous system in the room.
When we understand our sensory profiles, everyday moments start to make more sense. A teacher might realize a student’s “inattention” isn’t defiance but auditory overload from a humming projector. A parent might learn that their child’s bedtime resistance is linked to tactile sensitivity with pajamas or sheets. And an adult might notice that their own irritability after a long meeting is a sign of visual or interoceptive fatigue, not impatience. With this awareness, we can adjust; dimming lights, offering movement breaks, turning down volume, or adding calming deep pressure. Sensory understanding doesn’t just change behavior; it changes how we see the human beneath it. When our sensory systems feel safe, connection becomes possible, because a regulated body is what allows a curious, compassionate mind to emerge.

Regulation as the Foundation of Connection

In my work with educators, I often describe regulation as the foundation of connection. We can’t connect with a child, or anyone, when our nervous system is signaling danger. Connection doesn’t begin with language or logic; it begins with the body. When our own nervous system feels safe, we can tune in, listen, and respond with empathy. When it doesn’t, we react from protection rather than presence.

When we enter an environment dysregulated, our tone sharpens, our patience shrinks, and our ability to read cues diminishes. Children, whose nervous systems are still developing, are highly attuned to these subtle shifts. They read our body language, voice tone, and facial expressions long before they can understand our words. This is the nervous system’s version of call and response. When our rhythm is steady, children feel it. Their breathing slows, their shoulders drop, and their eyes soften. When we’re tense, rushed, or distracted, their bodies often respond in kind, heart rate rising, movement increasing, tone escalating. This is what mirror neurons and coregulation look like in real time: two nervous systems in conversation, communicating safety or threat without a single word spoken.

A calm adult nervous system can help an overwhelmed child’s system find its footing again. When both are in survival mode, though, dysregulation can spiral quickly. Taking a breath or moving the body isn’t about appearing calm, it’s a way to reset the brain. Each pause, exhale, or mindful shift helps the adult regain access to the part of the brain responsible for empathy and curiosity. When adults model regulation, they’re not just showing children what calm looks like, they’re showing them what safety feels like. That felt sense of safety becomes the foundation for trust, learning, and repair.

Disconnection or Sensory Mismatch?

Sometimes what looks like conflict or disconnection is actually a sensory mismatch; two nervous systems with different needs trying to share the same space. One person may crave movement, sound, or bright light to stay regulated, while another needs quiet, stillness, or dim lighting to feel safe. In a classroom, this might look like one child bouncing in their seat while another covers their ears. At home, it could be a parent who unwinds with music and a child who feels overwhelmed by the noise. These moments aren’t about “right” or “wrong” regulation styles; they’re about understanding that every nervous system speaks a slightly different sensory language. When we notice the mismatch and adjust, by offering headphones, dimming lights, or creating separate zones for play and rest, we shift from frustration to empathy, making room for everyone’s body to find its rhythm.When we start noticing these mismatches, we can recognize that what feels regulating for one person might feel overwhelming for another.

Your Connection Blueprint

Think of it this way: every human has their own connection blueprint, a pattern for how safety, love, and belonging feel in their body. It’s shaped by early experiences, relationships, and, as mentioned above, by their individual sensory preferences. Some of us feel connected through words and conversation. Others feel it through presence, quiet time side by side, a shared laugh, or a gentle touch on the shoulder. Our job, whether we’re parents, educators, or partners, is to become compassionate detectives, curious about what helps each person’s nervous system feel safe enough to connect.

There’s no single formula for connection that works for everyone. Just as every nervous system processes the world differently, each person experiences love and safety differently too. One child might light up when you sit and build with them, while another feels most grounded through physical affection or calm proximity. Rather than relying on categories or assumptions, we can take cues from their everyday behaviors, the way they lean in when we listen, pull away when overwhelmed, or come alive in shared laughter. When we notice and respond to these cues, we’re not just meeting emotional needs; we’re communicating safety at a biological level.

Understanding connection through the lens of the nervous system means letting go of the idea that there’s one “right” way to show up. Some children need more physical closeness, others need space and predictability. Some adults regulate through conversation, others through movement or stillness. When we stay flexible and curious, we make room for both. Connection becomes less about getting it right and more about staying present, reading cues, adjusting, and trying again. What’s powerful about this approach is that it grows with us. As children develop and adults evolve, our blueprints shift. A child who once needed extra reassurance might later crave independence. A teen who avoids eye contact might actually be protecting their nervous system from overstimulation. When we remain adaptable, we show that connection isn’t static, it’s a living, breathing process that changes as we do.

At its core, this work teaches something deeper than any strategy or script could: that every person is worthy of love and belonging exactly as they are. When we meet each nervous system where it is, we’re not just supporting regulation, we’re reinforcing the message that safety can be found in relationship. And that’s what allows connection to take root.

Rupture and Repair: The Science of Resilience

Every relationship involves moments of disconnection. A teacher raises their voice. A parent walks away in frustration. A clinician feels impatient with a client. These moments can feel like failures, but they’re actually invitations, moments when the nervous system has moved into protection and is asking for safety to be restored.

The nervous system learns safety not from the absence of rupture but from the presence of repair. When we circle back “I got frustrated earlier, and I wish I had paused before responding” we help children’s brains re-map what safety feels like. We show that connection isn’t broken by emotion; it’s strengthened by coming back together. The child’s body learns that even after big feelings or mistakes, calm and closeness are possible again.

Repair literally rewires the brain toward resilience. It teaches both adult and child that emotions can be felt, expressed, and moved through without harm. Each time we repair, we strengthen neural pathways that say, “I can make a mistake and still be safe. I can lose connection and find my way back.”

Mindfulness as a Relational Practice

In this sense, mindfulness isn’t just a quiet sitting practice, it’s a relational one. It’s choosing awareness over avoidance, curiosity over control. Because safety, regulation, and connection aren’t skills we master alone, they happen in relationship with one another.

When we begin to see the world through the lens of the nervous system, everything about connection starts to make more sense. We understand that behavior is communication, that sensory differences are not defiance, and that relationships are built not through control but through safety. This perspective shifts how we show up in every space we enter; classrooms, homes, workplaces, and communities.

Every moment of shared laughter, every pause before reacting, every repair after disconnection becomes a chance to teach the body that safety is possible. When we slow down enough to notice our own cues and respond to the needs of those around us, we create conditions where regulation, connection, and learning can take off.

This work asks us to move from performance to presence. The goal isn’t to stay regulated all the time, but to find our way back to nervous system safety, together. Because when our nervous systems feel safe, our capacity for compassion expands, our curiosity returns, and connection becomes possible.

Putting This Into Practice

In moments of stress or disconnection, begin by noticing what helps your nervous system feel safer. Some adults regulate best with less stimulation and quiet. Others need movement, deep pressure, or sensory input. Others feel most grounded through conversation and shared attention. These patterns are shaped by your sensory systems and form an important part of your connection blueprint. Knowing how to meet your own needs matters, because children rely on the regulation of the adults around them before they can access their own.

Once your body feels more settled, you can offer regulation to the child in front of you. This might look like slowing your pace, reducing noise or visual input, offering movement or deep pressure, or using fewer, steadier words. Rather than focusing on stopping the behavior, pay attention to the child’s cues. Are their shoulders softening? Is their breathing changing? Are they moving closer or pulling away? Let their nervous system guide your next move. If identifying what your child’s nervous system needs feels challenging we have a free tool to help you. You can find it here.

Co-regulation is not about doing everything “right.” It is about creating enough safety, through sensory support and intentional connection, for both nervous systems to return to balance. When the body feels safe, connection becomes possible, and learning, repair, and regulation can follow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alyssa Blask Campbell, M.Ed., is a bestselling author, founder and CEO of Seed & Sew, and a nationally recognized expert in emotional development. Her mission is to change the way adults experience children’s emotions so we can respond with intention and raise emotionally intelligent humans.

She is the author of Big Kids, Bigger Feelings, an essential guide to supporting children’s social and emotional development through the elementary school years, and Tiny Humans, Big Emotions, which empowers parents, teachers, and caregivers to help little ones navigate big feelings while laying the groundwork for a lifetime of emotional intelligence.

Alyssa earned her master’s in early childhood education and has dedicated her career to helping adults and children navigate life’s challenges through resilience, nervous system regulation, and emotion processing. She co-created the Collaborative Emotion Processing (CEP) Method and the FACTS acronym, practical tools that support emotional intelligence and help adults respond to overwhelm with clarity and connection.

Through Seed & Sew, Alyssa works with families, educators, schools, and early childhood programs, developing research-backed tools and platforms that support educators, caregivers, and systems serving children. She hosts the Voices of Your Village podcast, speaks internationally, and lives in Vermont with her husband and two children.

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From the Tree

© 2026 Tom Bowlin

I may not
Have fallen

Far from
The tree
But I’ve managed
To crawl

Further
Awa

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Bowlin writes about what life is like for us, what’s been done to us, what we do to each other, and what we just think sometimes. Tom lost his son at an early age and many of his poems are about loss and the hard times we all experience. His poems don’t always reflect his personal beliefs, instead he views them as short stories about “us.” His two poetry books are Us and Love and Loss.

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The Impact of Trauma

Integrating Positive Neuroplasticity in Times of Immigration Precarity

2026 Stephan Bodian

Adapted from Infinite Awakening © 2026 by Stephan Bodian. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com

As a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher, my understanding of the relationship between trauma and awakening derives not only from my therapy clients and students but from the effect that my own early trauma had on my awakening process. Some of the abuse I experienced only came to light after my first major awakening over thirty years ago as I pieced together somatic memories and the reports of others. And some of the earliest and most severe trauma emerged only recently, in the past five to ten years, as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has become a more commonly used framework for explaining a variety of forms of psychological suffering.

The awakening itself seemed to initiate a process of bringing to the surface shadow parts of my psyche that had only been faintly acknowledged before, as if the influx of the light of awakened awareness drew these parts out of the darkness in search of acknowledgment and release. Over the years, deep inner exploration, supported by the openness and welcoming receptivity of awakened awareness, has helped me to recognize, relate with, and ultimately come to accept and love parts of the psyche that had been rejected in the past and about which I had felt revulsion and shame. Ironically, this very shame and self-blame were feelings that were instilled by the trauma, and it took many years to be able to see and accept them for what they are rather than as the truth of who I am.

I want to convey the message that trauma and its effect on our spiritual unfolding is not something we should feel ashamed of—and certainly not something that makes awakening impossible. It’s an inextricable part of our karmic bundle over which we have absolutely no control. The best first step in releasing its grip over our lives is to realize how impersonal it is, let go of self-blame and self-judgment, be willing to welcome and allow all the many emotions and parts, and extend the utmost compassion to ourselves, as we would to someone we love—indeed, because we regard ourselves as someone we love. These are not easy tasks, of course, especially given the sense of worthlessness that so often accompanies complex trauma, but they’re worth keeping in mind and heart as we work with trauma on the pathless path.

Working with Trauma on the Path of Awakening

Because of my own experiences growing up, I specialized in trauma in my work as a therapist and had the good fortune to study with the originator of one of the most effective trauma release techniques, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Over the years I helped many people who had struggled their entire adult lives with their PTSD, and the accompanying anxiety and depression, to begin to chip away at the burden they carried. In some cases, they were able to step across a threshold into a new level of freedom and joy. Notice that I didn’t say they released their trauma entirely; in my experience most of us who were traumatized early continue to carry some of the scars— the reactivity, the proclivity toward anxiety or depression, the physical ailments—throughout our lives. But once we discover our natural state of awakened awareness, we spend more and more time in openness and ease of being and less and less in suffering and identification.
Post-traumatic stress centers on an imaginary, separate self that’s based in the body-mind and feels endangered long after the traumatic event is over. Trauma intensifies and fixates this identification and makes seeing through the illusion of the self especially difficult. At the same time, of course, the most potent antidote and source of healing for the trauma is precisely the recognition that the separate self that’s apparently threatened doesn’t exist and has never existed, and that the past is over and only exists as a story in the present. The ongoing process of healing trauma post-awakening involves deepening and embodying this recognition. Ironically, however, this recognition may trigger fear in those who have felt in the past that their lives were at stake, because “no self ” may be confused in the nervous system with the annihilation of self. Such are the complexities of PTSD.

Integrate, Assimilate, and Apply Nondual Realization as the Ultimate Medicine for Trauma

Here’s an example from my own experience of how this integration and healing may occur. I had awakened to the nondual nature of reality and deeply recognized that inside and outside, self and other, subject and object, are just expressions of the boundless and seamless nondual field. Yet there were still moments when the traumatized child in my psyche would contract in fear of the imagined dangers outside myself. Then one day when this child part was available and more open than usual, it was able to receive the message deep in the core of my being that there is no outside to be afraid of—just this single, undivided being that I am. Suddenly the child relaxed as never before and the burden of fear lifted.
This visceral recognition can’t be orchestrated by the conscious mind that easily grasps such truths; it needs to dawn in its own mysterious and inimitable way so that it registers deeply and transforms the reactivity in the body and nervous system, where it’s been imprinted. This process may need to happen repeatedly, as the awakened understanding penetrates deeper and deeper into the shadows of the lower chakras and more primitive parts of the brain. It can’t be rushed and requires unlimited patience and compassion for the vulnerable, frightened, traumatized parts of ourselves. These are some of the infinite, endless awakenings I refer to in the title of this book. If you haven’t awakened yet and don’t have any nondual realization to integrate and assimilate, you can still enlist skillful means and methods like the following for working with trauma on the awakening journey:

Connect with Self-Love and Self-Compassion

People who have experienced complex trauma tend to harbor the belief that they’re inadequate or worthless and undeserving of love and support. This belief makes connecting with their inherent self-love especially challenging, but also especially necessary. They may need to repeatedly renew this connection as an ongoing antidote to the trauma and the dark forces of self-attack that were unleashed and continue to operate beneath the surface—or, in neuroscience terms, to quell the constant reactivation of the primitive limbic and reptilian parts of the brain.

For this purpose, I recommend traditional practices like metta (loving-kindness) and tonglen (taking and sending) from the Buddhist tradition, examples of which are readily available in books or on the internet. Once you’re able to offer this love and compassion to yourself, you can internalize it as an ongoing part or function of your psyche that mirrors the natural love of consciousness or awareness for its expressions in form and continues to welcome your experience just as it is. Remember, you are this love, you don’t have to manufacture it from scratch or seek it outside yourself. You have difficulty accessing it only because of your trauma, as well as our ordinary human tendency to be hard on ourselves.

Listen to, Reassure, and Love the Traumatized Parts

Once you’ve established this welcoming and loving function or part of the psyche, you can engage in the ongoing practice of welcoming the traumatized parts and the painful emotions and memories they carry into conscious awareness with love and compassion. Awakening in its early stages may be dry and impersonal and lack the heart dimension that the traumatized parts need. Insight into the limitless, groundless nature of reality may not reassure those primitive places that seek a more visceral, heartfelt, earth-bound sense of security and support. They want to hear words like “I love you. I’m here for you. You’re safe now” rather than “the separate self is an illusion” or “reality is empty of substantiality.” In fact, they may experience the emphasis on groundlessness or emptiness as frightening, repugnant, and unwanted until they’ve established an ongoing felt-sense of safety and love.

Remember, Recognize, Return, and Rest in Awareness on a Regular Basis

Once you’ve realized your natural state of inherent wakefulness, the best way to integrate it into your life is to keep returning to it throughout the day and rest there, in a practice I call the four Rs: remember, recognize, return, and rest. For those who have been traumatized, this resting can become a refuge from the reactive emotions and intrusive memories that keep arising even after awakening has occurred. Essentially, the practice is to keep returning to who you really are when you forget and begin to identify with the traumatized parts. Remember that this reactivity is not a reflection of who you really are, stop and recognize your natural state, come home and rest there, and keep returning when you get caught up again.

Hang Out in the Light

As an antidote to the darkness that the trauma has imprinted in the psyche, those of us who have been traumatized can keep returning to bask in the limitless love and light that awakening often reveals at the heart of existence. Some traditions recommend visualizing this love and light in your own heart and radiating it out through the body and beyond in every direction. In the same spirit, you might want to avoid negativity and focus instead on more positive possibilities in every aspect of your life—for example, by emphasizing harmony in your personal relationships and gravitating to uplifting media content rather than the stories of violence and devastation that fill newspapers, TV, and movies.

Do Whatever You Can to Minimize Ongoing Stress and Avoid Further Trauma and Limbic System Reactivation.

Though ongoing meditation may not be necessary to wake up or stay awake, it’s uniquely effective in calming the nervous system, easing anxiety, and releasing negative or depressive thought patterns. Again, these are progressive practices that can be very helpful in working with and even healing trauma both pre- and post-awakening. People with trauma are often accustomed—and sometimes even addicted—to living with ongoing stress and may feel restless and unfulfilled if they don’t get their daily dose of adrenaline. It may take years to get used to a more relaxed way of life.

Find Refuge in Sangha

Seek out others on the awakening journey who have experienced significant trauma and feel free to speak openly about it and its impact on your awakening process. Sharing your experience with like-minded people tends to release the burden of carrying it on your own and creates a supportive sense of community. Some people who come from addictive families find twelve-step groups helpful, even if they don’t have addiction issues themselves.

Accept That the Trauma May Never Be Fully Resolved and Love Yourself Anyway

Here again, self-compassion is crucial. Despite our aspiration to achieve abiding enlightenment and freedom from suffering, we’re imperfect creatures who can make only limited changes to the karmic bundle we were handed. In any case, we’re not in charge and have no control over what gets transformed and released. In “Verses on the Faith Mind” the Third Patriarch Seng Ts’an teaches that to be enlightened is not to be perfect, but to be without anxiety about imperfection. Or to paraphrase the longtime Zen practitioner Leonard Cohen, there’s a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in.

Work with a Professional Trauma Therapist

Finally, don’t hesitate to work with an experienced trauma therapist or healer because you think it’s somehow unspiritual. Awakening and healing are parallel tracks that run side by side and inform and empower each other. Since trauma is often so deeply ingrained in the body and nervous system, it’s best to find a therapist who incorporates one or more somatic techniques, such as EMDR, brainspotting, or somatic experiencing, and has extensive experience applying them with a range of different clients and kinds of trauma. Some familiarity with the benefits of meditation and spiritual awakening would also be helpful, if not essential.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephan Bodian is the founder of the School for Awakening and author of several books, including Meditation for Dummies (which has sold over half a million copies), Wake Up Now, and Beyond Mindfulness. A psychotherapist by training as well as a seasoned spiritual teacher, Bodian integrates nondual wisdom with Western psychology, pioneering a unique style that combines self-inquiry and nondual insight with practical applications to address the individual needs of his students.

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Skillful Means: Tonglen

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.

Tonglen

PURPOSE/EFFECTS

Fundamentally, tonglen is a practice for dissolving the armor around the heart. It opens a person up to love, allowing the natural love within us to flow.

By wishing that good things happen, and bad things don’t happen, for ourselves and for others, we can slowly contact our compassion and forgiveness.

If you are feeling stuck, cold, alienated, loveless, or alone, tonglen can be a very powerful practice for reawakening yourself to love and connection with others.

METHOD

Summary

On each in-breath, visualize negativity disappearing into a white light in your heart. On each outbreath visualize the white light radiating love and compassion outward.

Long Version

1. Settle into a comfortable meditation posture
2. Breathe deeply and come to a centered, grounded awareness.
3. Visualize a sphere of brilliant, pure, clean white light in the center of your chest. This is the light of perfection, joy, healing, love, and compassion.
4. Now bring to mind all the troubles in your life. Any illness, discomfort, problem, difficulty, worry, negative emotional state, and so forth. Picture these as a dark cloud.
5. With each in-breath, imagine you are breathing this dark cloud into the white light, where the dark cloud is completely and totally extinguished without a trace
6. With each out-breath, imagine all darkness being dispelled, and the joy and relief you feel. Imagine the infinite light of your heart flooding every cell of your body, filling you completely with happiness, love, and fulfillment.
7. Continue this process for as long as you wish.
8. If you want to go further with the practice of tonglen, you can repeat these steps for other people, animals, the earth, etc. Imagine taking all the negativity into the light in your heart, where it is dissolved. Then imagine your heart radiating love and happiness to that person/animal/etc.
9. When you are ready to finish the practice, expand your awareness to include the entire world. Again, on the in-breath, draw all the negativity into your heart, where it is extinguished forever. On each out-breath, radiate love and compassion to all beings.
10. Finally, release all images and desires, and simply rest in awareness for a few moments.

HISTORY
Tonglen is a practice of Tibetan Buddhism. The term tonglen means “giving and receiving” in the Tibetan language.

NOTES
Some people worry that taking the negativity into themselves could be somehow harmful. This is not the case. The power of the practice is to remove depression, anxiety, and alienation. There is no danger of, say, contracting an illness.

SEE ALSO
What Is Meditation?
Meditation Posture
Lovingkindness

EXTERNAL LINKS
Pema Chödrön: Tonglen Meditation
The Heart Practice of Tonglen