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Hello and welcome.

The Liminal Space is a space to explore the transitionary, uncertain and often contradictory aspects of life through psychology, esoterica, modern science and philosophy.

The word Liminal relates to an in-between stage, or a threshold, where we are no longer what we were, but have yet to become. This space is full of potential, but is often uncomfortable.

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Image from Joogapradapika, a text dating from 1737 AD. Image courtest of British Library Add 24099

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Over the past number of years across social media platforms

we have seen a lot of content and courses speaking about regulating our nervous system. I for one used to share a lot about this.

Connecting with our nervous systems is a crucial part of living a healthy life where we are present, can open to our desires, experience life in all its representations, good, bad and ugly. And yes, there are many regulating practices that will support us to do this.

A significant focus in the online world has been on practices such as meditation, yoga and breathwork to support us in harnessing our nervous system health. There are lots of reasons for this: from 5,000 years’ worth of first-hand experience from Eastern traditions, to maybe two decades of western scientific research at most.

Another more modern and less savory reason that these practices have become so popular is that for some, mainly the more privileged among us with large marketing budgets and a less-than-minimum regard for referencing the roots of these practices or an in-depth understanding, they can be excellent ways to make money and market well.

The current dominance of these practices within the wellness industry has for the most part been driven by business interests, with very little regard for the impact on the people who are engaging in them, many of whom are vulnerable, impressionable, and very disconnected from themselves (been there).

While regulating practices are mostly offered in group settings, the sense can often be that to feel better, all you need to do is engage in these practices on your own at home and…. you’ll be grand. Life will fourish. Hmmmm. Usually there’s no follow up following group practices because that requires time, money and experience of holding the after-effects these practices can have on people who have never done them before, which most practitioners don’t won’t do nor have the expertise to do so.

The gaslighting situation here is that encouraging people to engage in these practices without a container or community means that we are left to pick up the pieces alone because it puts the sole responsibility on us, as individuals, to always manage our health.

And if that doesn’t go as planned, the underlying sense can be that you just didn’t meditate/yoga/breathe hard enough, which can lead to those unhelpful coping mechanisms we try to manage through these practices in the first place.

This individualistic framework of mental health was also something I did not ascribe to so much in the clinical psychology model of mental health which was where I was headed career-wise many moons ago.

Why is the burden to be well always on the individual?

While empowerment, self-awareness and autonomy are important in order to navigate uncertainty in life, there are other crucial, and let’s face it plearurable ways to connect with our nervous systems than taking the full burden of responsibility on ourselves, making sure we are doing everything just right.

To be clear though, I would firmly advocate for having your own practice and taking a certain level of responsibility for what you are experiencing, getting to know yourself, your body, your drives on a deeper level and avoid distracting yourself and using others. We do need our own personal self-relationship in order to move out into the world in a balanced way.

From my experience however, if we engage in these somewhat solo practices (outside of classes) to support our health but don’t have a space or group we feel we belong to, we can continue to feel disconnected and alone, a key driver for physical and mental health dis-ease. And if you’re a Jungian fan, soul dis-ease.

Image: Star Gazer, Agnes Pelton, 1929

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You might be wondering why I seem so passionate about this. Or maybe not.

But.

Living with a silent chronic condition from pre-teen, not receiving proper medical care until 31, feeling like your body might give up the gig at any minute, you spend a lot of time alone trying to regulate yourself, conserve your energy and find some alternative to living. And I will firmly tell you -doing it by yourself will not yield the outcomes you require.

So when do practices where you are the main driver work?

When they allow you to move beyond yourself so that you can connect with others, and further complete nervous system connection from more than a space of just yourself.

You can’t breathwork yourself out of lonliness, but some basic practice can support you to move out into the world.

As we are social beings wired for connection, our nervous systems require a sense of belonging, being seen, validated and a valued member of a group whose values align with ours. This is as good for our nervous system and overall health as practices such as yoga and meditation.

Maybe even more so.

Research from social psychology has consistently demonstrated that social support is a significant buffer for stress (see Cohen & Wills 1985 article, which has nearly 30,000 citations and forms the basis for thousands of social support & stress studies since). Dr. Vivek Murthy, US Surgeon General has described loneliness as a global health concern, with research demonstrating that loneliness can be as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day (see Holt-Lunstad, Robles, & Sbarra, 2017).

Being complex beings we need a combination of social connection and body-based, mind-based, nature-based, soul-based practices in order to be truly content within. And all in your own time and at whatever pace you require as you unfold and develop.

Not what the algorithm tells you.

What’s the end goal? There is none.

But to weave through life without too many intense lows and highs, but more like a series of bumps with a lovely baseline in between.

Go and connect.

Your lifespan literally depends on it.

If you think you’d like to work together, you can book in through the link below for a 30 min discovery chat about 1:1 Integrative Work. This work has developed from years of my own practices and trainings, weaving together traditional and modern practices. Together we will explore what might be niggling underneath the surface through bodywork, your nervous system, myth, psychology, creativity and story-telling. This is open to both women and men.

Book here

*If you like what you find here, please feel free to support by subscribing, passing to friends, sharing on socials, commenting, liking or whatever works for you. I love to hear your feedback too.*

The nervous system is a complex system that spans your physical, emotional, cognitive, psychological, social, spiritual self.

Today, unfortunately, we are overwhelmed with ways to ‘hack’ our nervous systems, as if we’re getting one up on ourselves, like a distorted body-version of American capitalism; ‘win at all costs, cheat yourself!’

And with the endless bite-sized pieces of information on social media about complex body systems it’s hard to know what to know, and often left with the endless feeling of never having done enough.

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I don’t know about you, but I have done enough self-persecution by trying to hack myself in various ways, especially growing up in the extreme body and personality policing era of the 90s and Celtic Tiger. Losing weight, but not too much, maximum hamstring flexibility and bendy spine but don’t be obvious about it, good breathing patterns, excellent namaste at the end of yoga class, nice but not too nice, socially acceptable but not too socially acceptable, have an opinion but not too strongly, be driven but be humble about it, because that’s not very lady-like.

It’s exhausting.

What does this have to do with our nervous system health you might be wondering? Well, a lot.

We attune to our environment and the dominant narratives that exist within them in order to survive and maintain status among the community we live in. Living in the West, as a whole we are largely disconnected from our own personal inner compass and can fall very easily for quick fixes or fitting in with the status quo so we don’t fall out, even if it’s not ultimately good for us.

But this social sacrifice has a cost, and yes it’s on your nervous system.

The reasons you may be struggling might have nothing to do with you, and everthing to do with the social structures and cultures you live in.

No amount of hacking will help you to thrive in systems that inherently are not built to support you. Hacking might actually serve to distract you from investigating the deeper roots of what might be knocking on your psychological door.

But like, what is it really, this nervous system that does nothing but cause us trouble? There are many lenses through which we can view the nervous system, and all help to formulate a comprehensive understanding of its relevance for you and your life.

First and foremost is your relationship to your nervous system.

We don’t want to hack it Jack Nickolson style; we want to build our relationship with it and eventually realise; we are our nervous systems.

So, the language that we use to view it will dictate how we relate to it.

See it as something separate, almost mechanical and purely physical and you my dear can sped the rest of your days hacking away. The wellness bros will strongly convince you that this is the way.

See that up above, that is your nervous system. Amazing ya?

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Our nervous system is our complex yet in some ways simple tuning fork: perceiving, adapting, responding, reacting, creating, modulating, aligning from our sensory environments and mixing all that up with our past experiences to result in how we feel, think, behave and exist.

This includes our physical body and its functions, our physical environment, our emotional and psychological environment, our relational environment, unconscious environment and spiritual environment.

Disconnection from this system or attempts to cheat it by, for example, plunging into pools of cold water regularly* often sustains the cycle of running from the niggles or inner knowing that something isn’t right and we are avoiding it, seeking the next hit.

Yes, we are all addicted to something, some of us are just fortunate enough to have better poisons than others.

So how do we begin to bridge the gap from disconnected and addicted (yes, you) to aware and connected, able to experience and express pleasure in this life?

We tend to our roots. We ask ourselves: what is this behaviour/emotion/thought that I know sabotages me trying to tell me?

But before that becomes natural for us, we must tend to the body. See what’s going on there. Build a visceral connection with all of its layers.

We do need to regulate, but not in the way we’re being shown form a purely neuroscience and 6 second Tiktok or Instagram reel perspective. Often these tend to put you into a state of stress, as opposed to connection.

Instead of regulate, maybe we need to cultivate.

Slow and gentle. Do a bit of gentle rummaging around.

The slower, more mentally challenging body-based practices generally will support your connection to your nervous system and what might lie beneath. From that starting point, over time we can slowly build up to stronger practices.

Eventually we can get to the point where we can begin to learn to hold what Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist discussed in his work: the tension of opposites. Because we will always face this - accepting it is the beauty, and ahem, the regulation.

We’ll always have prices to pay for the choices we make, getting comfortable with that and with what truly gives you energy in this life is your sweet spot.

If you’d like to know more about your nervous system from a multi-layered perspective that spans the physical, emotional, psychological, cognitive, energetic and soul level, and ways to intentionally access and build a relationship with your nervous system, which is really yourself, I’ll be hosting an online nervous system workshop in the near future (dunno when, I’ll see when it suits. so not into marketing strategies these days, so not good for our nervous systems).

To stay in the loop you can sign up to my mailing list. You won’t hear from me too often :)

If you’d like to work together now, you can book in through the link below for a 30 min discovery chat about 1:1 Integrative Work. This work has developed from years of my own practices and trainings, weaving together traditional and modern practices. Together we will explore what might be niggling underneath the surface through bodywork, your nervous system, myth, psychology, creativity and story-telling. This is open to both women and men.

Book here

*if you have high anxiety or are in a state of chronic fight or flight, please avoid cold water therapy or intense breathing practices. It is too overwhelming for your system, which is already under pressure when you are hyper-aroused due to stress. Gentle more subtle practices are suitable, but will seem boring, until you reach a state where you have capacity for more extreme practices like cold water therapy and strong breathwork*

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