[00:00:00] Close your eyes for a second or soften your gaze. If you're driving. 10 years from now, you walk into a room full of people who matter most to you, and there's something different about the way you move through that room. Something that isn't quite confidence and it isn't quite calm. It's deeper than both of those things, and your system isn't braced.
It isn't scanning for danger. It's home.
What would it feel like to live inside that version of yourself? That's what we're building today.
/Welcome to Raw Regulation on the Regulated Life. I'm Erica, and this is your daily somatic tool for nervous system healing and trauma recovery.
This week we're in the Visionary finale, and we are shifting from survival into legacy, from Stop the Spiral and to build the sanctuary. Today's episode is a practice that might feel [00:01:00] different from our usual tools. We're not rescuing you from a spiral.
We're planting you in a vision./
Because here's what the neuroscience shows us.
The nervous system cannot tell the difference between a vividly imagined future experience and a real one. Dr. Daniel Siegel's work on mental time travel. The brain's capacity to project into future states, demonstrates that when we embody a future regulation state with enough sensory detail, we begin to prime the neural pathways for that experience. We are not just dreaming, we're rehearsing.
I wanna tell you something I've noticed in my own life and in the lives of the people I work with. When we're deep in healing work, when we're excavating patterns and learning our triggers and doing all the right things. It's very easy to get so focused on what we're moving away from that we lose sight of what we're moving [00:02:00] toward.
We know what we don't want. Do we know what we do want?
Not in an abstract. I want peace kind of way, in a felt sensory, nervous system, registered way. What does peace smell like? What does safety sound like? What does a regulated Friday evening actually feel like in your body? That specificity matters because the nervous system doesn't respond to concepts. It responds to sensation.
Alright, we're gonna do a somatic vision practice. This is seven to eight minutes, so if you're driving, you can do the modified version. Just follow along mentally and save the body based piece for later.
Find a comfortable position if you can let your feet be flat on the floor.
[00:03:00] Take one slow breath in through your nose
and release through your mouth.
Let your jaws soften. Let your shoulders drop.
Now I want you to bring your awareness to a place in your life, a relationship, a space, a moment of connection where your nervous system has ever felt, genuinely safe. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be recent. Just the moment when something in you relax enough to be present.
What did that feel like in your body? Notice the [00:04:00] sensations, warmth, expansion in your chest a, a softness in your belly, an absence, and that low hum of bracing.
Let yourself linger in the body memory of that feeling for just a moment. I
good. Now holding that sensation in your body, that quality of felt safety, I want you to project it forward. 10 years.
You have been doing this work. The patterns have shifted, the armor has softened, the repair happens faster. You've [00:05:00] built something. In your relationships, in your community within yourself, that your nervous system recognizes as home.
What does a Tuesday look like in that life? Not a vacation Tuesday, a regular Tuesday? How do you wake up? What does your body feel like in the morning? What's the quality of the space you wake up in?
Who are you in relationship with? Friends, family, community, yourself? What's the quality of those connections?[00:06:00]
What does it feel like to move through your day in a body that isn't chronically braced?
Notice what comes up. Notice the sensations that accompany that vision. Maybe there's a warmth. Maybe there's a loosening somewhere. Maybe there's a gentle grief because part of you recognizes that this is what you've always wanted and didn't know how to ask for.
All of that is information.
Now bring it back to here to now.
Take a breath
and let yourself feel [00:07:00] the thread between this version of you and that one. The thread is not a gap you have to leap across. It's a path you are already walking.
Gently begin to bring your awareness back into the room. Feel the weight of your body in the seat. Take one more breath,
and when you're ready, open your eyes.
Let's talk about when to use this practice. Use this when you need a reminder of why the work is worth it. When the excavation feels heavy and you lost sight of the [00:08:00] destination. When you're in a season of deep healing and you need your nervous system to register that there is a toward in this journey.
Not just an away from. You can also use it as a morning anchor. A two minute version where you simply call up the felt sense of the future regulated self before you start your day. The vision doesn't have to be clear or detailed. The feeling is what matters, just the feeling.
this work is real, the vision is real, and the path is shorter than your nervous system's Fear would have you believe. If you want a somatic tool to help you in the acute moments when the spiral is happening now, grab my free spiral, reset audio at [00:09:00] mind-fusion.com/audio, and I'll see you tomorrow.
