I’ve been doing this 10-minute practice of mindful movement every day for a couple of weeks now. Fourteen days of setting a timer, meeting my body in simple movement, and starting the day with presence instead of just launching straight into doing.
It doesn’t sound like a big thing on paper. Ten minutes. But something has started to change in how I move through the rest of my day. I’m finding that I’m actually noticing my body at times I used to ignore it completely. Moments that would have just blended into the background are starting to feel a little more alive, a little more available to me.
One of those moments happened on the drive to the coast.
It’s about a five-and-a-half-hour drive. (I still count travel in hours—Wisconsin roots.) At some point into the drive, after I’d been on the road awhile, I started to pick up on how much I was shifting around in my seat. I’d lean a bit to one side, then the other. I would slowly slide forward, then push myself back again. None of this was dramatic, but once I saw it, it was clear that my body was trying to get my attention.
Then I noticed my hands.
One hand was clenching the steering wheel on and off. I’d grip, then loosen, then grip again. My fingers felt a little tight. My breath had changed too—more shallow, with little pauses where it felt like I was holding it without meaning to. All of this was happening while, on the surface, I was just driving like normal.
Before these 10-minute sessions, I don’t think I would have caught any of that. I would have kept going, maybe turned up the radio, told myself I’d stop “later,” and pushed through. My body would have been having an experience and I wouldn’t have really been in on it.
This time, I noticed.
I didn’t launch into fixing mode. I didn’t tell myself, “Relax your shoulders, slow your breath, sit up straight.” Instead, I did what I’ve been practicing every morning: I became aware of what was already happening.
I noticed my seat under me. I noticed the shape of my back against the chair. I noticed my hands on the wheel—how they wanted to clench—and just acknowledged that. I didn’t force them to soften; I just stayed with the fact that my hands were telling a story my mind hadn’t caught up to yet.
Somewhere in that noticing, a simple thought arose: “Maybe it’s time for a break.”
That was the important moment. Not the break itself, but the part where I realized my body was speaking up and I actually heard it. I realized I had a choice. I didn’t have to prove anything to myself by driving straight through. I didn’t have to override what I was feeling.
A little further down the road, there was a turnoff with bathrooms and a place to stop. I pulled over, got out of the car, stretched my legs, moved a bit, and let my system reset before getting back on the road.
It was a small pause in the grand scheme of things. But it felt significant because I could also feel how easily I could have missed it. I almost talked myself out of it—almost told myself, “You’re fine, just keep going.” That old pattern is still there. The difference now is that practice is giving me enough presence to see the pattern while it’s happening, not just after the fact.
The shift wasn’t really about the rest stop or even about feeling the ground under my feet, although that helped. The deeper shift was this: I was more in my body in that moment. I could see what was happening inside me, and from that seeing, I could choose.
That’s what these 10 minutes of mindful movement each day are starting to do in my life. They’re helping me remember that I actually have a body, that it has information for me, and that when I notice that information, more options open up. Instead of going on autopilot, I can pause. I can decide. I can respond.
Presence, for me, is becoming less about doing something “right” and more about being able to say, even in the middle of a long drive: “I notice what’s happening in me right now. And I get to choose what I do next.”
Presence deepens not by doing, but by noticing what’s already here.
Wishing you wellness,
Keri Sawyer
PS – you’re welcome to join me in my journey if 90 days of presence, Facebook live every morning through Jan 30 at 5:30am PT:
A three-part exploration in somatic healing and presence
There are seasons when healing doesn’t come from thinking differently, but from feeling differently — from allowing the body to guide us back toward safety, steadiness, and connection.
This three-part series explores how movement, awareness, and presence can transform the way we experience ourselves from the inside out. Each piece builds upon the last, tracing a gentle arc through Hope, Faith, and Trust — not as abstract ideas, but as embodied experiences that live in muscle, memory, and motion.
Part 1:Embodied Hope – Finding Possibility in the Body
Part 2:Embodied Faith – Staying in the Middle Space
Part 3:Embodied Trust – Living From Inner Steadiness
Together, they form a movement-based journey through resilience — one that honors the body’s wisdom as a teacher, not a problem to solve.
Part 1: Embodied Hope – Finding Possibility in the Body
Part 1 of our “Embodied Pathways” series — exploring how Hope, Faith, and Trust unfold through conscious movement and presence.
When life feels like too much, hope can seem like a word for other people — too far away, too bright, too ideal. Our minds grasp for reasons, for meaning, for something to fix the ache. But the body knows another way. It knows movement, texture, rhythm. It knows that even when we can’t think our way toward hope, we can sometimes feel our way there.
The Body’s Way of Remembering
Hope doesn’t have to mean happiness or certainty. It can begin as the smallest spark — the possibility that how we feel, both emotionally and physically, might shift. That possibility lives in the body.
A hand that unclenches. A spine that lengthens after hours of collapse. A single moment when you realize you can move differently than before.
These small shifts tell your nervous system, something is changing. And that message alone begins to open a door. It’s not about fixing the chaos — it’s about remembering you have some power within it.
The Science of Hope in Motion
When we move, the body and brain communicate constantly. Movement activates neural pathways that restore integration — connecting feeling, thinking, and sensing parts of the brain. This re-connection is how agency returns. The body learns: I can do something. I can affect how I feel.
Trauma and prolonged stress often take that sense of agency away. Movement, especially gentle and conscious movement, rebuilds it. Hope, then, becomes less an emotion and more a physiological state — the embodied memory that change is possible.
When Hope Feels Out of Reach
For many, the word hope can carry pressure. When life has been defined by endurance or loss, hope might sound unrealistic or even unsafe. That’s understandable. Embodied hope asks for nothing more than a willingness to notice — to sense one small difference between how you felt a moment ago and how you feel now.
That difference — however subtle — is the doorway. It doesn’t erase pain, but it adds movement to it. It says, there is still a way forward, and it begins here.
A Practice: Finding Hope Through Subtle Movement
Take a quiet moment. Notice any part of your body that wants to move — even slightly. Maybe your fingers shift, or your shoulders tilt, or your gaze softens. Let that impulse unfold naturally, without judging or forcing it.
As you move, notice what changes. Does your sense of balance, warmth, or awareness shift — even a little? That small difference is the beginning of hope: the lived experience that things can change, however modestly.
For a long time, I imagined balance as something solid—like standing still on steady ground, unmoving. But life has shown me it’s much more like the ocean. It moves, it shifts, it fluctuates—sometimes gently like ripples on the shore, and sometimes violently, like a storm pulling the tide. Balance isn’t stagnant. It flows.
When the Ground Shifts Beneath Us
There are seasons when balance feels almost impossible. When my son Chase was hospitalized, everything else fell away. My days and nights revolved around his care. Of course, there was no space for hobbies or routines—how could there be? In that moment, balance wasn’t about “doing it all.” It was about showing up for what mattered most: love, presence, and simply making it through.
I’ve also experienced times when my body forced me to stop. Breaking a bone or being so exhausted that I could hardly get through the day demanded a recalibration. Suddenly, what seemed urgent yesterday no longer mattered. Rest, healing, and saying no to almost everything became my balance.
These moments remind me: balance isn’t about equal distribution of attention or effort. It’s about right relationship with what is most needed now.
Chasing Balance
Here’s where we can get tripped up with balance. There’s a lot of messaging out there about discipline—coaches, influencers, and wellness gurus who promote rigid routines, exact time blocks, and strict accountability systems. And yes, discipline can be powerful. Structure gives shape to our days and can hold us steady when motivation falters.
But when we treat balance like a rigid formula, we start measuring ourselves against an impossible standard. We think balance means the gym five times a week, eight hours of sleep, meditation every morning, all while giving 100% to work, family, and friendships. And when life demands a shift—when we get sick, when a crisis happens, when exhaustion sets in—we look at ourselves and think: “I’ve failed.”
Unhealthy balance often shows up as all-or-nothing thinking (“If I don’t do it perfectly, I’ve blown it”), moralizing rest (“If I slow down, I’m lazy”), or comparing ourselves to someone else’s highlight reel. Naming those patterns helps us loosen their grip and choose a gentler path.
That’s the unhealthy side of balance: when the very idea of it starts to weigh us down, instead of helping us find steadiness.
A Flexible Kind of Discipline
What if we thought about balance differently? Not as perfection, but as permission to pivot. Not as a rigid checklist, but as a living rhythm.
Discipline absolutely has its place. It can keep us grounded and help us follow through on commitments that matter. But discipline without flexibility quickly turns brittle. True balance is discipline with room to breathe. It’s the ability to adjust when life shifts—without shame, without self-punishment.
Discipline can be the anchor, flexibility the tide, and our values the North Star that guides us. When those three move together, balance feels more like navigation than judgment.
The Rhythm of Change
When Chase was in the hospital, I wasn’t “failing” at balance. I was living balance—just in a form that looked different. My focus was singular, my priorities shifted, and that was exactly right for that season.
Balance isn’t something we master once and for all. It’s something we return to again and again. Some days it looks like discipline—getting up early, following the plan. Other days it looks like letting go—resting, recalibrating, being gentle with ourselves.
The key is not perfection, but responsiveness. Balance is about listening to the season we’re in and adjusting accordingly. In chronic stress or illness, balance may look like pacing—small efforts, real rests, then reassessing—like watching the tide rather than forcing a timetable.
And it’s worth remembering: we don’t hold balance alone. Community is part of it too. Asking for help, receiving care, or letting someone else carry the load for a while—these are not signs of imbalance, but of shared humanity.
A More Gentle Question
So maybe instead of asking, “Am I living a balanced life?” we can ask, “What needs attention right now? What can soften? What can wait?”
That feels kinder. More real. More human.
Because in truth, balance isn’t a static goal—it’s a living conversation between our bodies, our hearts, our minds, and the life unfolding around us.
The Image I Hold
I’ve stopped imagining balance as a scale that must be perfectly even. Instead, I see it as a set of tides—sometimes rushing in, sometimes pulling back, always moving, always changing. The ocean is never “out of balance”—it simply flows with its own rhythm.
I’ve walked every single morning for well over a year — and that one simple act transformed me.
Not just physically. But emotionally. Energetically. Spiritually.
Something in me softened. Realigned. Came home to itself.
Maybe it was the salty ocean air that whispered me awake. Or the steady rhythm of the waves that matched my breath.
Maybe it was simply the ritual — the quiet, mindful movement of walking with awareness, day after day. Each step became a meditation. A returning. A remembering.
Some mornings, I walked alone — fully present to the world around me. Noticing the way the light moved through the trees or how the ocean moved the sand.
Feeling the earth beneath my feet. Breathing in deeply. Listening — not just to the sounds of the ocean, but to the stirrings within.
And on other days, I walked with my husband, my children, or dear friends. There is something sacred about walking with — About being in motion together, side by side, without needing to speak.
A kind of presence that words can’t reach. A connection born not from conversation, but from shared experience.
That’s mindfulness, too. The simple act of doing something with full attention. Mindfulness isn’t always sitting still on a cushion. Sometimes, it’s the feeling of cool air on your skin. The sound of your child’s footsteps beside yours. The knowing that this moment — this exact one — is where life is happening.
And those moments… they add up. They shape who we are. They change how we relate to ourselves and to the people we love. Because: Our choices matter. Our presence matters. How we show up in our bodies and our lives — it all matters.
I found happiness not in a breakthrough, but in the quiet repetition of mindful practice. In choosing to be with myself and others, fully. In learning to listen — to nature, to my breath, to the rhythm of life itself.
Having a clear sense of self — even if it’s something as simple as a daily walk — can change everything.
So: Know yourself. Find your still point — even in motion. Practice presence like it’s sacred. Because it is. And when you find that inner balance — that mindful rhythm — Protect it. Return to it. Honor it. Not because you should. But because it’s how we stay whole in a noisy world. It’s how we reconnect — to ourselves, and to each other.
Even though you’re doing the work of recovery, do you still feel restlessness or unease inside? When we leave the body out of the picture, parts of recovery can feel incomplete.
Your body carries the weight of stress, pain, and memories from difficult experiences. For many of us, addiction became a way to cope with this weight. And even after stepping into recovery, your body may still feel unsettled—tight in your chest, restless in your legs, or on edge in your gut, as if safety is out of reach.
This can make it hard to feel calm or connected. Rooted in Recovery brings together trauma-sensitive yoga and the journey of recovery—intertwining them as a way of creating safety, balance, and connection. It offers a pathway back into stability—a way to feel grounded again in both your body and your life.
Balance, Stability, and Flexibility
Think of a tree. Its roots reach deep into the ground, giving it balance and stability even when strong winds blow. In recovery, you also need roots—steady practices that help you stay grounded through cravings, emotions, and life’s storms.
But trees also bend with the wind. Without flexibility, they would break. In the same way, recovery asks not only for steadiness but also adaptability—meeting change without fear.
Balance in the moment. Noticing what steadies you right now, helping ease intensity in your body.
Stability over time. Maintaining stability practices that feel useful to you so your foundation stays strong when life feels shaky.
Flexibility in change. Meeting the strong winds of life with resilience and adaptability, instead of bracing against them.
From Fear to Presence
In recovery, knowing yourself can feel complicated. Your past may carry shame or regret. Your future might stir anxiety or fear of relapse. Both can pull you out of the present, leaving you disconnected from your own body.
Rooted in Recovery shifts this pattern. Its gentle, mindful movements open the present moment—right here, right now.
Meeting your body in this way creates a chance to experience what is real. Developing a felt sense of yourself—noticing how your body feels in this moment—can bring forward a powerful recognition: you are not your past, and you are not your future. You are here, now.
This awareness supports recovery because it:
Softens fear of who you’ve been or who you might become.
Builds steadiness in the present.
Provides experiences of safety in your body that you can return to again and again.
Weathering the Storms
Imagine standing before a storm. In the past, storms may have overwhelmed you, leaving your body frozen or bracing against what might come.
Through Rooted in Recovery, you can begin developing inner resources—skills and practices that shift how your body responds to stress. Instead of numbing or pushing away, you might pause, notice the storm rising, and respond differently. It could feel like steadying your breath, softening your shoulders, or anchoring through your feet—small choices that keep you present.
This shift supports recovery at its core:
Balance. Meeting intensity in your body with steadiness.
A steady sense of self. Discovering that you can navigate what comes.
Resilience. Facing change with both steadiness and flexibility.
Stability Through Connection
Addiction often thrives in isolation, while recovery grows stronger in community. Rooted in Recovery supports not only grounding in your own body but also a sense of connection with others.
Like trees in a forest whose roots intertwine, practicing in community can remind you that you don’t have to walk recovery alone. Being with others can help your body feel supported, steady, and connected.
Pathways Back to Self
All of these practices—balance, presence, resilience, and connection—come from intertwining trauma-sensitive yoga with the lived experience of recovery. Together, they create gentle pathways back to yourself, helping your body become a safer and steadier place to be.
Noticing
Noticing is the beginning of grounding—like first seeing a tree rooted in the earth. It is the awareness: “I am here. I have a body.”
In addiction, many of us disconnected from our bodies—sometimes even rejecting them. Simply noticing that you have a body, and that it’s here with you, can be a breakthrough. Like roots reaching into the soil, noticing nourishes your connection and lays the foundation for stability.
Meeting
Meeting is like the first tender roots reaching deeper into the soil. It begins with curiosity—becoming interested in a deeper connection with your body.
Meeting creates space for safety—where being in your body can begin to feel more approachable and manageable. Here, you may notice choices—moments of sensing what feels steady, nourishing, or easeful.
Like a young tree settling into the ground, meeting yourself in this way can be the beginning of stability and grounded growth.
Connecting
Connecting is like the trunk of the tree strengthening—linking roots to branches. It reflects forming relationship with yourself, turning toward your body with compassion instead of avoidance.
Here, noticing choices begins to deepen into starting to make choices based on the felt sense of your body. These choices may be small, but they represent trust building within you—trust that you can find steadiness again and again.
Connecting can feel like shaking hands with yourself—a gesture of acknowledgement and respect. Like the trunk of a tree supporting its branches, connecting provides the steady core from which healing can grow.
Rooting
Rooting is like the deep, steady roots of a mature tree. It reflects your body as an anchor—strong enough to hold steady and flexible enough to move with the winds of life.
Rooting may bring the realization that change is possible. Like a tree swaying with the wind, you might notice that the way your body feels can shift. With trust built inside, you can face change—and even create it.
Rooting transforms “I can get through change” into “I can create positive change.”
An Invitation to Grow Roots
Recovery is like planting a tree—you need care, nourishment, and steady ground to grow. Rooted in Recovery helps create that ground through these Pathways Back to Self:
Noticing – beginning to recognize presence in your body.
Meeting – becoming curious, finding safety, and noticing choices.
Connecting – starting to make choices guided by the felt sense of your body.
Rooting – discovering your body as an anchor, steady and flexible enough to meet the winds of life.
These pathways support movement from hope to trust. They open the possibility of facing cravings and struggles not with fear or avoidance, but with grounded presence.
Through Rooted in Recovery, your healing may become more than surviving day to day. It may grow into a rooted, balanced life—steady enough to weather storms, flexible enough to adapt with change, and strong enough to keep growing toward the light.
Wishing you steadiness and connection, Keri Sawyer
P.S. If you feel ready to explore these pathways in community, Rooted in Recovery classes are available at openviewyoga.com, a Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Virtual Studio. This is an invitation to step into gentle practices that support stability, balance, and reconnection.
Life experiences can leave lasting imprints on our bodies and minds. Stress, loss, or trauma can sometimes make us feel unsettled or disconnected—not only from others, but from ourselves. At times, our bodies may not feel predictable or steady, and that can make it difficult to trust our own signals or feel grounded in daily life.
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga offers a gentle, compassionate practice that isn’t about perfect poses or pushing through discomfort. Instead, it’s about noticing what’s happening inside and making choices based on a felt sense of the body. Each movement is an invitation to come back to yourself in a way that feels steady and empowering.
Cultivating Safety Within
When we carry stress or trauma, our bodies can sometimes feel unfamiliar or hard to predict. A racing heartbeat, sudden tension, or a sense of numbness may seem to come out of nowhere. These experiences can make it difficult to feel safe in our own skin.
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga introduces gentle and consistent practices that support a more reliable relationship with ourselves. Each movement is offered as an invitation. You choose what to explore, what to leave out, and when to pause. Over time, these body based choices create something powerful: a steady, more predictable sense of self. Instead of bracing for what might come next, we begin to notice that we can meet our experiences with curiosity and choice. That sense of steadiness becomes the ground for healing.
From Powerless to Possibility: The Role of Agency
Agency is more than just the ability to make choices—it’s the recognition that our choices matter. In Trauma-Sensitive Yoga, we learn that the way we move, breathe, and notice our bodies can actually change how we feel in the moment. A single decision to pause, stretch, or take a breath can create a shift in our bodies, helping us move toward presence.
Over time, these small moments of choice remind us of something even bigger: we are not stuck. We can influence how our bodies feel, and in doing so, we begin to influence the trajectory of our lives. Agency gives us the capacity to move from surviving toward thriving—one intentional choice at a time.
When we discover agency—the ability to shift how we feel and the course of our lives—we create the foundation for stronger, more authentic connections with others. Healing begins inside and ripples outward, carried forward on the currents of connection.
Strengthening Relationships Through Inner Steadiness
As we begin to build a greater sense of safety and agency within ourselves, it often shifts how we relate to others. When we feel steadier on the inside, we can show up in our relationships with more presence and ease.
We might notice moments where we can pause and respond more thoughtfully instead of reacting right away. We may find it feels a little easier to share honestly, because we’re more connected to our own voice. Over time, we can begin to create boundaries that respect both our own needs and the needs of those around us.
The healing we cultivate inside doesn’t stay inside—it ripples outward, helping us build relationships that feel safer, stronger, and more authentic.
Practicing Together: The Power of Non-Verbal Connection
Another unique part of trauma sensitive yoga is the experience of practicing alongside a facilitator. It’s not a teacher–student dynamic where one person instructs and the other follows. Instead, both the facilitator and participants are practicing together—each noticing sensations in their own body in the same shared space.
This creates a non-verbal connection that can feel deeply healing. To move and breathe alongside someone who is modeling healthy presence, respect, and choice—without judgment or pressure—offers a new experience of relationship. It’s a way of being with another person that is safe, grounded, and mutual.
Over time, this experience can carry into future relationships. Practicing non-verbal presence with someone trustworthy helps us learn that connection doesn’t have to mean control or fear. It can mean mutual respect, safety, and authenticity. This new template of relationship can become a foundation for building healthier, more supportive connections beyond the yoga space.
Currents of Connection
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga is more than movement—it’s a practice of rebuilding our relationship with ourselves and, through that, creating deeper connections with others. By cultivating safety, predictability, and agency, we nurture qualities like trust, openness, and compassion that allow relationships to grow in healthier, more supportive ways.
Healing begins within, but it doesn’t stop there. Like water flowing outward, each time we practice presence, each time we choose what feels right for us, each time we meet ourselves with kindness—it extends into our relationships and communities.
As yoga teachers and facilitators, it’s easy to believe that we are responsible for giving our students an experience—a moment of calm, a sense of peace, a meaningful release. This belief often comes from a sincere place of wanting to help. But what if we paused and asked: Am I creating space for an experience, or am I trying to give one?
There is a profound difference between the two.
Giving someone an experience can unintentionally become a kind of imposition—a subtle message that we know what should be happening for them. Allowing someone to have an experience, on the other hand, honors their internal wisdom. It shifts the role of the teacher from director to compassionate companion.
Many of us have been trained—explicitly or implicitly—to give an experience. We’ve been taught to lead from the front, to cue with certainty, and to keep the room flowing. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but it’s important to name it. When we stay in that mode too long, we can unintentionally bypass a deeper opportunity: the chance to help others access their own, real-time experience of self-awareness and choice.
And often, we teach from what we’ve been taught. We repeat language, patterns, and cues because they were given to us—sometimes without pausing to ask whether they are truly aligned with our own felt sense of teaching. This isn’t a failure; it’s a starting point. But over time, the invitation is to turn inward. To ask: Am I guiding from my own embodied knowing, or from someone else’s map? Am I creating space for others to connect with their own journey of breath and movement—or am I unknowingly scripting it for them?
When we as facilitators practice introspection, we begin to notice when our guidance is rooted in someone else’s facilitation versus when it emerges from a relational, responsive moment. We stop trying to control or perform, and instead begin to co-create space that is alive and real.
Creating Conditions for Introspection, Not Outcomes
Yoga, at its heart, is an introspective practice. When we try to create a specific experience for others, we risk overlaying our own needs or assumptions onto their process. We might be subtly responding to our own desire to feel useful, meaningful, or liked—and that’s human. But it’s not what creates the deepest healing space.
In many Western yoga spaces, the emphasis has shifted toward following the teacher, floating away on music, and turning off rather than tuning in. That’s not necessarily wrong—it can be restful and enjoyable. But when practiced exclusively, it may disconnect us from the very source of yoga: a living relationship with body, breath, and awareness.
Learning to explore movement as meditation—choosing from the inside out rather than performing—can be a profound experience. And it’s one that only you can have. In that truth, no experience is wrong. Meeting yourself where you are in the moment is the most honest and healing practice there is. And if following along with a class feels right in a given moment, then that is your truth in that moment—and it’s absolutely valid.
Instead of putting something onto our students, we can ask:
Am I giving or guiding based on what I think they need?
Am I allowing space for something organic to arise?
Can I trust the process enough not to control it?
The Role of the Facilitator: Trust, Not Control
The facilitator’s role isn’t to create a perfect experience. It’s to create a safer container where experiences can emerge, shift, and be explored without judgment. It’s to offer tools, not prescriptions; presence, not pressure.
When we drop the need to control outcomes, we make space for something more profound: the reawakening of internal trust. And that trust—in one’s own body, sensations, and timing—is the foundation of lasting, embodied healing.
In the end, being non-directive isn’t about doing less. It’s about doing differently. It’s about honoring our students’ ability to feel, to know, and to heal in their own time.
How We Show Up: Our Energy, Tone, and Intention
Being a facilitator in a non-directive space also means looking at how we show up energetically. Are we arriving with an agenda, even unconsciously? Are we hoping to do something to the room? Or are we willing to be in the experience with our students?
Your tone of voice, pace, and presence communicate just as much as your words. A tone that doesn’t rush, a grounded presence that doesn’t seek to fix or guide too quickly—these cues help co-regulate the space. They say: “You’re safer here. I’m not here to shape your experience, only to support it.”
It’s okay—beautiful, even—to have your own experience while facilitating. You’re not outside the container; you’re part of it. The more relational the space feels, the more students tend to feel that they can be in their own truth.
How to Support an Experience
Supporting others in having an experience means shifting our role from instructor to space-holder—one who opens the door, but doesn’t dictate the path. It means trusting that each person’s process is meaningful, even when it’s quiet, non-linear, or looks different than what we might expect.
Inviting body awareness This begins with gentle language that draws attention inward. For example, saying “You might notice where your body makes contact with the ground” invites someone into a felt experience without judgment or demand. It reconnects them to the here and now and builds the foundation for embodied presence.
Welcoming all experiences This involves affirming that all experiences are valid, not just the calm or centered ones. Saying something like “You’re welcome however it is that you are showing up today” helps remove the pressure to feel a certain way. It tells students: you don’t need to be fixed or improved—you just get to be.
Creating room for self-directed movement True support includes options. Instead of one way, we can say, “You could stay in this shape, come out, or move into something else if you would like.” This honors autonomy and nervous system safety. Choice creates space for curiosity, self-trust, and real-time inner listening.
Allowing the moment to be what it is Perhaps the hardest and most vital piece. Trusting that the experience someone is having is valid—even if it doesn’t look the way you imagined—is the heart of non-directive work. This practice means releasing your own agenda and standing in the belief that each person’s body knows the way, even if it unfolds differently than your own.
This way of teaching is less about choreography and more about collaboration. It says: “I trust you to know what you need—and I’m here with you”
Opening vs. Directing
One of the most practical and impactful ways to embrace a non-directive approach is through the language we use. Instead of short, directive commands like “inhale,” “exhale,” “stand tall,” we can begin to speak in full sentences that offer invitation and possibility:
“You might notice the sensation of your breath as it moves in and out or perhaps you notice a sensation in your mid back.”
“You’re welcome to explore standing and extending through your spine or you might notice your feel against the ground.”
“You might stay here or adjust in any way that that works for your body in this moment.”
This language leaves room for the person to stay in choice, to listen to their body, and to respond in a way that feels safe and attuned. It is not passive; it is spacious.
Exploration becomes meaningful when it comes from within. When students feel a posture or movement arising from their own body’s cues—not because we told them to—they’re more likely to connect to that experience as real, as theirs. This kind of internal ownership supports deeper embodiment and trust.
Invite the Shift: Discovery, Not Direction
When the teacher is grounded, centered, and genuinely having their own experience within the practice, it quietly gives others permission to do the same. This inner steadiness isn’t about performance—it’s about presence. When students feel the authenticity of a teacher who is attuned to their own body and breath, it models a way of being that feels safe, honest, and possible. In this way, the teacher’s inner state becomes part of the healing environment, not through control, but through shared humanity and embodied leadership.
Non-directive yoga classes are more than just a teaching style—they represent a fundamental shift in both philosophy and power dynamic. Rather than the facilitator holding all the power, they intentionally create a space where students are empowered to reclaim it for themselves. In this kind of class, the teacher doesn’t offer answers or outcomes—they offer presence.
This shift invites each practitioner to listen inwardly, respond authentically, and trust their own process. It encourages students to be their own guide within the practice, supported—not shaped—by the facilitator. In this shared space, the teacher and the student meet as humans: both exploring, both learning, both growing.
Creating non-directive spaces in yoga is not just a shift in language or style—it’s a shift in philosophy. It’s a commitment to honoring the autonomy, wisdom, and inner timing of each individual. It reminds us that our job is not to deliver transformation, but to make space for it to unfold. In this space, healing becomes more than a possibility—it becomes a personal, empowered, and embodied truth. And that’s what yoga, at its most authentic, is all about.
Wishing You Wellness,
Keri Sawyer
PS – My next blog will explore attunement—how we connect with ourselves and with others in grounded, embodied ways. It’s about more than just presence—it’s about meaningful connection. We’ll look at what it means to truly listen inward and feel seen in relationship. Stay tuned—this is a conversation that invites reflection, curiosity, and care.
In many wellness and therapeutic spaces, we’re often told what to feel, how to move, or what healing should look like. But for many people—especially those recovering from trauma or nervous system dysregulation—this kind of direction can feel overwhelming, even re-traumatizing.
That’s where the non-directive approach to somatic therapy comes in. It’s slower. Deeply respectful. And it begins with a simple belief: Your body already knows.
What Does “Non-Directive” Mean?
In traditional or more directive therapy, the practitioner might lead the process by suggesting specific techniques, postures, breathing patterns, or emotional releases. While this can be helpful in certain contexts, it can also unintentionally override the your sense of agency (that you can change the way your body feels) or safety—especially if you feel you “should” go along, even when it doesn’t feel right.
A non-directive somatic approach flips that script. Instead of guiding or pushing, the practitioner creates space for your experience.
This means:
You’re not told how to feel something.
You’re not rushed to “release” or “fix” anything.
You’re never pressured to go deeper than what feels right.
You are always asked, never told. Your body is the guide.
Why Non-Coercion Is Essential in Somatic Work
For many people, trauma involves a loss of choice: being told what to do, being touched without consent, or being stuck in situations that felt unsafe. These experiences don’t just live in memory—they live in the body. The nervous system remembers what it feels like to have no say.
So when therapy—even somatic therapy—is overly directive or structured, it can unintentionally recreate that same dynamic. It might feel subtle, but it can still land as pressure or even threat.
Non-coercive work means:
You can pause, shift, or say no at any time
Nothing is expected or required of you
Your boundaries are honored as they arise
This isn’t about avoiding challenge—it’s about creating the conditions where you can be met with support. When choice and voice are present, the body can begin to feel what safety really is—not as a concept, but as a lived experience.
What If I Just Want to Be Told What to Do?
This is a completely valid feeling. In fact, it’s an incredibly important one. Wanting to be told what to do is often an intelligent survival strategy—especially for those who have lived through trauma, codependency, or environments where autonomy wasn’t safe.
In these situations, giving away choice can feel like:
Relief from internal pressure
A way to avoid judgment or failure
A way to stay safe in relationships or systems that punished dissent
While this strategy may have protected you in the past, it can also keep you from reconnecting with your own wisdom. This approach gently rebuilds your muscle of choice-making — without force.
It helps you move from external authority to internal guidance, without judgment or pressure. Over time, your body learns: It’s safe to choose. It’s safe to listen to myself. I can trust what I feel.
This is what makes this so powerful: It doesn’t push you to be “independent” or figure it all out. It helps you rediscover that your choices matter—and always have.
What Changes – When You Stop Trying to Change
With this approach the focus is less on fixing a symptom or reaching a specific outcome—and more on simply being with what’s here, just as it is, in a supportive and relational way. There’s no pushing, no pressure to get somewhere else. The body isn’t treated like a problem to solve, but like a part of us that longs to be heard.
Because healing doesn’t come from force. It doesn’t come from trying harder, or from overriding what we feel. Healing comes from listening. From allowing. From the present moment. When we stop trying to fix and instead offer deep permission to just be, something begins to shift. And the body starts to unwind—not on demand, but in its own time, in its own way.
This gentle approach invites trust. Trust that you don’t have to force change for change to happen. It’s in this spaciousness—in the absence of pressure, in the presence of connection—that real healing begins to take root.
You’re Not Being Led—You’re Being Accompanied
Something powerful happens when the practitioner walks beside you- not an expert who takes the lead.
You can begin to feel a sense of trust in yourself. You can notice what’s happening in your body and realize you have options. You can begin to understand that what you feel matters, and you get to decide what’s right for you in each moment.
Over time, this builds a steady kind of confidence. You can also experience what it’s like to feel safe in relationship—not just because someone says it’s safe, but because it actually feels that way. You are met with patience and respect. There’s room for you to be exactly as you are, without pressure or expectation.
This is the foundation for embodied healing. Healing that begins from within. Healing that doesn’t rely on someone else having the answers, but grows as you listen to their own body and follows what feels supportive.
And it all begins when the client is given space to take the lead.
Healing in Relationship
This work isn’t something that you do alone. It’s something that unfolds between two people—together. When the practitioner is also attuned to their own body—pausing, noticing, breathing—they’re quietly saying: “I’m here with you. I’m listening to my own body too.”
This shared presence creates a different kind of safety. It’s not about one person fixing another. It’s about two nervous systems learning how to be with what’s real—side by side, moment by moment. When the practitioner stays connected to their own somatic experience, it opens the door for you to do the same. Without words, it communicates: “You don’t have to do this alone.”
In this kind of relationship, healing becomes less of a task and more of a natural unfolding. A gentle return to connection—within, and between.
Something to Carry With You
A non-directive somatic approach isn’t about doing less. It’s about doing what’s most aligned with how healing really happens: through relationship, choice, and presence.
It’s not about a practitioner “healing” you. It’s about you returning to your own body, your own timing, and your own truth—with someone by your side who truly honors that.
Your body already knows. Sometimes, it just needs the space to speak.
Wishing you wellness,
Keri Sawyer
PS – The next blog will be about how to bring non-directive approaches specifically into yoga spaces and what that looks like – Stay tuned!
In a world that often demands more than our nervous systems were ever designed to manage, learning how to balance our internal state is not just helpful—it’s transformational. When our nervous systems are in balance, we experience life with more clarity, resilience, and connection. We feel safe in our bodies, steady in our relationships, and capable of responding rather than reacting.
But nervous system balance isn’t just about managing stress. It’s about creating healing. And that healing doesn’t always happen in the storm—it often happens in the quiet moments we create on purpose.
Not Just Self-Regulation—This is Healing Work
Too often, nervous system work is viewed as something we do only when we’re overwhelmed—a set of tools to de-escalate panic or calm ourselves under pressure. While those strategies are essential and life-saving in many moments, they are just the beginning.
Most nervous system techniques help us hold pain: to stay with difficult sensations or emotions without collapsing or exploding. But the deeper potential lies beyond holding. When we begin to work with our nervous system intentionally—in the present moment—we open the door to true repair and reconnection.
Healing doesn’t happen just by regulating during distress—it happens when we work with the nervous system in a state of safety and openness.
This is when the nervous system can learn, reorganize, and rewire. It’s how we move from survival into a more authentic, empowered way of being.
One of the most important insights from trauma research is this: trauma is not stored in the past—it’s stored in the now of the body. The nervous system does not register time in the way the thinking brain does. If something was too overwhelming to process safely, the body holds onto it and continues to signal danger—even if the threat is long gone.
Trauma Is Timeless. The Body Holds the Key.
This is why talk therapy or logic alone isn’t enough. Trauma creates a disconnection between body and brain, disrupting the circuits that help us feel, interpret, and respond to experience with clarity. Healing requires us to reestablish that connection—not through rehashing the past, but by building safety in the present moment.
The Brain-Body Connection and the Power of Safety
Neuroscience shows us that the brain and nervous system are deeply responsive to experience. Through neuroplasticity, we can create new patterns—but only when the nervous system feels safe enough to learn.
Trying to regulate or “heal” while in a high-stress state often reinforces survival pathways. In contrast, when we gently engage the nervous system in calm, resourced moments—through breath, movement, or co-regulation—we begin to reshape how the brain and body relate to threat, identity, and emotion.
This is more than self-regulation. This is repair.
Why Non-Coercive, Non-Directive Practices Matter
True healing cannot be imposed—it must emerge from within. This is why non-coercive, non-directive body-based therapies are so powerful. Rather than guiding someone into an experience, we hold space for their own experience to arise. In this model, the facilitator is not the authority on what healing looks like—the participant is.
When we allow individuals to move at their own pace, with full autonomy over their body and their process, we foster a sense of agency and trust that is foundational for nervous system healing. There is no agenda, no narrative required. Simply noticing what arises in the body—without judgment, interpretation, or story—is enough to begin restoring the brain-body connection.
This approach cultivates empowerment in the here and now. It honors that the keys to healing live within the individual, not in someone else’s insights or instructions. The body knows what it needs. When given space, support, and safety, it begins to lead the way.
Living in Alignment with Your Nervous System
Living in alignment with your nervous system is not about striving for control or perfection—it’s about building a relationship with yourself that is rooted in safety, attunement, and trust.
It means:
Rebuilding the connection from body to brain, nurturing a sense of inner communication and wholeness
Engaging in mindfulness that honors your embodied experience, strengthening patterns of presence and coherence
Staying within your window of tolerance—Noticing when you feel supported, stable, and grounded, without needing to push beyond what feels manageable
Making space for your body’s wisdom to guide you, Allowing yourself to be exactly where you are
Choosing practices that prioritize safety, curiosity, and presence, not just performance or outcome
Allowing your healing to unfold in the present, not just in response to the past
When we live in alignment with our nervous systems, we move from effort to ease—from surviving to truly belonging in our own skin.
The Invitation
Balancing your nervous system is not about getting it “right.” It’s about coming home to your body, again and again—perhaps with curiosity, compassion, and care.
When you stop trying to fix the past and start building safety in the now, something powerful begins to happen: You stop just holding the pain—and start healing.
Wishing You Wellness,
Keri Sawyer
P.S.
If you would like to learn more about Nervous System Balance, Check out a workshop with Keri in Sept 2025 Here
Next Blog: There’s a deep wisdom within every person—one that can’t be given, only uncovered. Non-directive healing invites practioners to step back, to trust that the answers don’t come from us, but from within the client. It’s not our insight that transforms—it’s their discovery. When we stop directing and start honoring their pace, their story, their knowing—real, lasting healing can finally begin.I t’s not about leading the way. It’s about walking beside someone as they find their own. Learn more about non directive healing with my next post!
Stepping into Wellness 