Rhythm, Not Reset

We often talk about the nervous system as something that needs to be reset. As if we are machines that glitch, overload, crash - and then need to be switched off and back on again. But our bodies don’t regulate through reset. They regulate through rhythm.

Regulation is cyclical, not linear

Our nervous systems are designed to move (not just physically, but emotionally and energetically) through expansion and contraction. Through rising and falling. Through activation and settling.

Just like everything else in nature.

Look around you:

• The tide comes in, the tide goes out

• Breath inhales, breath exhales

• Sap rises, leaves fall

• Light returns, light recedes

Our physiology follows the same laws. We are not meant to stay calm all the time. Nor are we meant to stay activated, productive, or alert. Health lives in the movement between.

Often misunderstood, rest is not the absence of movement Rest is often framed as stillness. Silence. Stopping. And sometimes, yes, that is exactly what’s needed. But rest can also look like allowing the nervous system to move through what it’s holding.

Emotion wants motion.
Energy wants expression.

Sometimes regulation happens through:

• shaking

• dancing

• wriggling

• sounding

• even raging

(Hello, last night’s Shake the Dust.)

This isn’t dysregulation - it’s completion.

When the body is allowed to move through sensation, feeling and response, it doesn’t have to stay stuck there. Expansion and contraction belong together

A culture obsessed with productivity often encourages constant expansion:

More output.
More growth.
More momentum.

But without contraction - without pause, settling, integration - expansion becomes exhausting.

The nervous system needs ebb and flow.

Expression and rest.
Activation and settling.
Community and solitude.

Not as a perfect balance, but as an ongoing dance.

This is why my work looks the way it does

This understanding sits at the heart of everything I offer.

• Shake the Dust - a space to let energy move, exploring movement in and out of containers

• Rhythm & Release - a monthly gathering to dance, express, and regulate together

• She Moves with the Seasons - longer, cyclical journeys that honour rest, rise, play and integration across time

Each space invites the body back into its natural rhythms. Not to be fixed. Not to be optimised. But to be listened to.

Your body is not a machine

It doesn’t need to be hacked.
It doesn’t need to be overridden.
It doesn’t need to perform on demand.

Embodiment - truly inhabiting the body - is quietly disruptive in a world that demands constant output, emotional containment, and linear progress.

To move with sensation.
To feel fully.
To honour cycles.

These are not indulgences.
They are acts of remembering.

Your nervous system already knows how to regulate.

Sometimes it just needs rhythm - not reset.