Our Practices
Foundational practices for embodying and expressing The Experience of We
Pause and Reflect Together
A quick start guide
Between what happens and how we respond, there’s a space.
In that space lies our freedom. The chance to choose rather than react. The chance for wisdom to arise where reactivity would have spoken first. But the space doesn't create itself. When emotions are high and the nervous system is activated, our patterns fire without conscious permission. We react before we've decided to.
The pause is the intervention. Not suppression. Not avoidance. The deliberate interruption of the automatic sequence. The moment where we stop the momentum long enough to choose.
It's simple to describe and challenging to do. It requires going against the momentum of an activated nervous system. But those few seconds change everything about what follows. Because what we say from reactivity and what we say from choice are almost never the same thing.
One practice to try
Think of a person in your life who’s open to experimentation, and invite them into trying something new with you.
The ten-second pause
The next time a charged moment arises, before you respond, pause. Ten seconds.
Feel the impulse to react. The words that want to come out. The defense that wants to fire. Notice the impulse without following it.
Breath. One conscious breath. Feel it in the body.
Name what’s happening inside. Silently or out loud: "I'm activated right now." "I need a moment." This buys you the seconds your prefrontal cortex needs to come online.
Then respond. Not react. Respond. From the part of you that can see the bigger picture, not just the triggered part.
If ten seconds isn’t enough, ask for more. I need a few minutes before I can respond well." This isn't avoidance. It's respect for the conversation.
Ten seconds. One breath. That's the whole practice. And those ten seconds may be the difference between a fight and a conversation.
The full guide, Pause and Reflect Together, has several practices for building the capacity to pause:
Developing shared pause agreements
Working with the body during activation
Reflecting before responding
Building this capacity in low-stakes moments so it's available when the stakes are high
And more
It also explores what the pause does for our nervous system and why this simple practice is one of the most powerful relational tools we have.
Between what happens and how we respond, there’s a space. Let’s practice finding it together.
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