One of my favorite phrases is “Never waste a trigger.” When this phrase—never waste a trigger—rings with excitement and compassion in the belly, then a new level of deep understanding has begun to settle, and we are ready to see the world with fresh eyes. We begin to organically open to explore what our minds once declared “too much,” “too scary,” or “too awful.” We are ready to bask in the safety, compassion, and grace that have always been here waiting for us. And in this basking, those once-feared sensations, emotions, and stories begin making their way back home.
I’ve described the way this often shows up is through a marked increase in sensitivity—sensitivity to physical sensations, sensitivity to emotions, and even sensitivity to the triggers that may seem to be coming in with more determination than ever.
And this makes sense! It’s all GOOD NEWS.
As the body begins to sense its own innate safety, its defense mechanisms begin to loosen their hold. The armed guards that were once needed to hold our nervous systems in check begin to set down their armor. The layers of protection between you and these human experiences are no longer so thick. As a result, you FEEL these things much more directly. It’s not that the sensations or emotions or even the triggers are actually bigger or louder or more intense. It’s that your system is now ready to feel these things more directly, with greater awareness. That bowl of light within you that we talked about last week is ready to welcome home all of the sensations and emotions that were once misunderstood.
This is the phase of awakening that, to me, is the RICHEST and most rewarding of all. It is the phase I call reintegration.
Reintegration is what happens after safety has begun to take root. Often, it can seem messy, wobbly, symptomatic, emotional, and tender. Old sensations, patterns, and fears may reappear, not because something is wrong, but because your internal world is ready to reintegrate all those experiences that were once innocently misunderstood. You’re READY to grow the capacity to have the felt-sense KNOWING that all internal experiences are safe.
Reintegration is not a setback. It is a homecoming. All of the seemingly more intense physical sensations and emotions are not proof of a setback—they are evidence of SAFTEY growing in the system.
There is often a big misunderstanding that healing should look like less sensation, fewer symptoms, and more mental equanimity.
But, what if the opposite is true? What if true healing—the healing that takes you right through a period of reintegration—looks wild, vibrant, and free from restraint? I kind of picture reintegration looking like a four-year-old’s finger-painting—delightfully free and untouched by a sense of what should or shouldn’t be.
Nothing in that painting asks, how do I get rid of this? It only says, yes, you belong too.
That is what we here are beginning to simply open ourselves to—a simple, “yes, you belong too.”
In this wildly, wonderfully messy phase of reintegration, we begin to wake up from the lifelong hypnosis that some internal experiences are acceptable and others are not.
For many of us, the deepest suffering wasn’t the emotions or sensations themselves —
it was the misunderstanding of what they were. It was the belief that they meant something about us; that they were somehow personal.
When those old misperceptions are cleared up, even sadness, grief, fear, shame can be felt as alive. Sometimes even… enjoyable. Understanding changes everything. And it begins with a simple opening to FEEL without buying into the labels and stories.
One of the most important aspects of this phase of reintegration is compassion. We meet ourselves with such incredible kindness, exactly where were are. This is never about pushing, forcing, white-knuckling, or striving. Ever.
It’s about being open to trusting what our adorable minds cannot possibly comprehend. It’s about getting a feel in the body for what is always holding us—holding Life. It’s allowing attention to fall naturally away from the hypnosis of the mind and rest in the wisdom of the body.
We become the teachers—the gurus—the sages—the mystics—for our own little systems. We begin to know deeply that we are our own safety. It does not ever rest outside of us.
This quiet knowing matters. It holds a steady space for us as we begin to dip a toe in the water to feel more human experiences without the label or story that our mind has told about it for decades.
This is never about trying to be calm or equanimous. It is simply about being intentional and open.
For example, What if this sensation, symptom, or story is not AT ALL what my mind has been reporting as truth for a lifetime?
What if we could begin teaching our body that sensations that were previously believed to be dangerous—are actually safe?
What if just the simple act of NOTCING without labeling is an amazing first step? When something like disappointment arrives, we don’t give it a story or an explanation.
We simply let it be named.
Disappointment is here.
And in that simplicity, it can finally be reintegrated. It is home now. Welcome home, disappointment. Now, you are free to be what you always were: Life, aliveness, energy, Love.
I thought we could look together at a question that one of our Office Hours friends sent me this week as a way to explore reintegration:
I am worried that my son is lonesome. But truly I really don’t know… He studies math on the highest level and is very smart. He is 20 years old and has never had a girlfriend. He still lives at home. He doesn’t go out. He has 4-5 good friends but they mostly talk online. They meet up every other months and drink some beer together. That’s it. My big concern is how will he manage life on his own when he no longer lives at home? Will he ever get a girlfriend? I think it is my mind that has this story about where you have to be in life when you are 20 years old. I wish I could let that story go AND just TRUST life.
Although the content of this story may differ from the challenges in your own life, the structure of the story is the same.
So we never begin with the details. The details were selected by a very active, very hypnotic mind.
Instead, we begin with:
What does this story trigger within you?
Close your eyes and FEEL this story...
Now notice how the mind uses its favorite tricks to distract from feeling:
1. Trick One:
Pretending that resolution is required for peace.
It insists that you cannot be okay right now without answers.
(Feeding the Gremlin after midnight!)
2. Trick Two:
Presenting cultural “shoulds” as objective truth.
The idea that twenty-year-olds should live in a certain way is not truth—it is conditioning.
3. Trick Three:
This is my favorite trick of all: Pretending that this is about your son.
It looks as though this entire little story of suffering is about your son. And that is simply NOT TRUE. This story of your son and his future is simply the most efficient way right now for Life to bring to the surface all kinds of beliefs and identities that are READY to be seen truthfully, FELT in the body, and reintegrated back into the wholeness of who you are. This story is about your own awakening—not about a twenty-year-old son. The people we love the MOST in the world will always serve as Life’s most reliable and most efficient instruments for bringing into awareness what we are READY to heal.
The Return
May you trust the things that rise within you.
May you feel how intensity can be a bright flare of aliveness,
a sign that your inner world is stretching wide enough
to welcome what once had to hide.
May doubt arrive like a small bird at your window,
reminding you to listen.
May fear come as a passing storm
whose rumble you can feel without fleeing.
May sensation reveal itself
as life tapping gently at the door of your awareness:
I’d love to be met; I’d love to be known.
May you sense the steady ground beneath all of it—
the quiet, timeless presence
that has always been wide enough for every return.
May the fragments come home without needing to explain themselves.
May the old stories loosen their grip
as you meet them with tenderness instead of urgency.
May the child-you, the fierce-you, the weary-you,
the doubting-you,
all find a soft place to land.
May you whisper inwardly:
Even this, too, belongs.
And as you step into the days ahead, may you remember:
You are not behind.
You are not broken.
You are being gathered.
Your wholeness is revealing itself
by knitting the very things you once feared back into the tapestry of Life.
This is the miracle of reintegration;
the joy of welcoming everyone home.