decision making

This month’s tool…of the month…is a down and dirty way of engaging your nervous system if over- or under-activated, and helping it come back into balance. The breath is a remarkable tool for getting into parts of our nervous systems that our thinking mind can’t access (sounding like the adults in the Peanuts cartoons, i.e., making just nonsense noises). So here’s a simple pattern of breathing, with a link to a short demo, for you to experiment with and see what it does for your own system.

In this second edition of the “tool of the month,” I’m addressing the need to reorient to our bodies and surroundings when we are caught off guard, surprised, by the behavior of one of our fellow humans. Being startled does particular things to our attention and connection to, and groundedness in, our selves, so it’s important to reconnect and reorient as soon as we can, in order to have a clearer sense of how to deal with the situation.

Here is the first of the “Tool of the Month” articles, which I intend to send out mid-month, between longer articles. The inaugural tool is “Decision making like an optometrist,” a formalization of something you probably do anyway, but perhaps without noticing you’re doing it. And for this inaugural TofM, we have an article by myself and also by guest writer, Janice B., to give two takes on the same tool. I hope it’s helpful to you all.