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Light In The Dark: The Body Remembers · Unlocking The Paradigm Portal

• 0:00
  Hey, it's Sarah. I am glad that you're back.
• 0:04
  And as always, think of my voice as a light in the dark tonight.
• 0:09
  And I'm not here to fix anything or explain anything.
• 0:11
  I'm just here to sit with you. So I want to be with you
• 0:15
  tonight. And something that doesn't have
• 0:17
  a clean name, something your body knows better than your
• 0:20
  words do. The bracing, the monitoring, the
• 0:24
  way you walk into a room and something in you is already
• 0:27
  working, already reading, already tracking, already making
• 0:31
  sure you're not caught off guard.
• 0:34
  I see that, and I see how long you've been doing it, and
• 0:37
  tonight I just want to sit next to you in it for a few minutes.
• 0:43
  So there's a kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix.
• 0:46
  Not the tired from a long day, but the tired that's still there
• 0:50
  in the morning that lives underneath everything.
• 0:54
  The tired that comes from being for a very long time, slightly
• 0:58
  on, slightly ready, slightly braced for what might need
• 1:02
  managing. And you probably don't even
• 1:06
  notice it. Most of the time it just feels
• 1:08
  like you. The tension in your jaw, your
• 1:11
  shoulders, carrying something they can't put down.
• 1:14
  The part of you that was still working last night while you
• 1:17
  were trying to sleep, Scanning, keeping watch, running the
• 1:20
  perimeter even when there's nothing there.
• 1:23
  And from the outside, this doesn't look like carrying
• 1:26
  something heavy. From the outside, it looks like
• 1:29
  being capable and reliable and the one who notices everything.
• 1:34
  But you know the cost of it. From the inside, you know you
• 1:40
  may have been mistaking vigilance for strength for so
• 1:43
  long that you forgot what it feels like to just not be
• 1:47
  braced. The alarm your body is running,
• 1:51
  the one that learned its job early in conditions you didn't
• 1:55
  choose, was never a flaw. It was a response.
• 1:59
  A smart, faithful, completely reasonable response to the world
• 2:04
  you were in. It just got stuck on.
• 2:08
  And a stuck alarm is not a broken person.
• 2:10
  It's a body that never got enough consistent safety to
• 2:14
  learn that it was allowed to come down.
• 2:17
  And that's not your failure. That's something that happened
• 2:20
  to you long before you had any say in it.
• 2:23
  The way your body runs is not evidence of something that's
• 2:27
  wrong with you. It's evidence of something it
• 2:30
  was asked to carry before it was ever given a choice.
• 2:33
  And your body has been on your side this whole time.
• 2:37
  Even when it feels like the enemy, even when you're fighting
• 2:40
  against it. It was always only trying to
• 2:43
  keep you safe. So I want to give you something
• 2:47
  tonight. Not advice, not a practice.
• 2:49
  Just permission. Permission to not be braced
• 2:54
  right now, just for these few minutes, just here in the dark,
• 2:58
  where nothing is being asked of you.
• 3:01
  No room to read, no temperature to take, no one to hold yourself
• 3:06
  together for. And if you can just notice where
• 3:10
  you're holding your jaw, your shoulders, your belly, that
• 3:14
  never quite softens all the way. And you don't have to fix it.
• 3:18
  You don't have to do anything with it.
• 3:20
  Just let it be seen, even if only by you.
• 3:25
  And if it's available, just slightly, just a fraction, let
• 3:29
  it soften. Not because everything is safe,
• 3:32
  but because right now, in this specific moment, you are not in
• 3:36
  danger. The alarm will be there if you
• 3:40
  need it. It isn't going anywhere, but it
• 3:42
  doesn't have to be on right now. Right now, you can rest.
• 3:50
  I don't know what this week held for you.
• 3:52
  I don't know what kind of stress you're carrying, what kind of
• 3:56
  tension is soaked into your body.
• 4:00
  I don't know what thoughts are running through your head right
• 4:02
  now, and I don't know what you're carrying.
• 4:06
  But I do know something. I know that you're still here
• 4:10
  and you're still feeling things, and you're still willing to sit
• 4:15
  in the quiet and let something land, and that after everything
• 4:21
  your body has been asked to hold is not a small thing.
• 4:27
  You keep showing up for yourself, and that's a really
• 4:31
  big deal. And I am so, so proud of you for
• 4:35
  that. So whatever your body needs,
• 4:39
  what it has always needed is to learn slowly and through
• 4:43
  experience that safe is actually possible and that there are
• 4:48
  moments when the alarm doesn't have to run.
• 4:53
  And right now, for this little bit of time, we're sitting here
• 4:57
  together. This is one of those moments.
• 5:01
  So I'm going to leave the Lantern right here next to you,
• 5:06
  and I'm going to let it shine for as long as you need so that
• 5:10
  you feel a little bit less alone and the night isn't quite so
• 5:13
  dark and you don't have to work tonight.
• 5:17
  All you have to do is rest.