Author: Ryan Klette

  • Slow down until it feels like rest

    Slow down until it feels like rest

    Another way of seeing resilience is self care and maybe this is closer to the essence of whats it means  to be resilient –  to care enough about yourself so as to follow the natural movements that help restore balance and harmony in your life. 

    Natural movements are the ones that connect our egos with the life intelligence inside us, that life force that knows beyond our limited thinking patterns and we know when we’re following it because it feels good. Not in a fleeting or ephemeral way but rather in the ways we start to connect with the ground underneath our feet, with the knowing that regardless of what happens we are held by life (even when we feel just the opposite!).  Life still has us,  the earth still supports us. We are still breathing, heart beating, life still expressing in a myriad of ways all around us. 

    In any moment we can stop and notice just how beautiful this all is, what a miracle it is. Not in the way that we think about but rather in the lived experience of being awake to ourselves. From this place,  at the centre of our own circle, life comes streaming in and when we let it, will move us in all the right ways towards the destiny we long to walk, the life that is only ours to live. 

    The cost is simply being willing to meet the unpleasantness and disease in our systems. To turn towards ourselves, bringing our attention into the body and little bit at a time, to meet what is there as it is.  Not in a way of attaining  some kind of end goal but rather in the willingness to embrace the entire spectrum of human experience which includes both pain and pleasure.

    The good news is the benefit of doing this far outweighs the cost. The result of a consistent practice of coming home to ourselves is that we see that this is what we are really looking for, more so than any material or social attainment. The experience of simply being present and available to life, living the life that calls to us moment by moment. Less stuck in past patterns or fixated with future projections. Rather a gradual surrender to the shape and form that is our life right now.  

    What I notice in my own practice  as well as the people I coach, is that the most important principle is to slow down. Even if its speeding up you want, slowing down will get you there faster.  
    Slow down consistently as you move through your day. Pay attention to how you feel, whats happening in your body and when you  need to, stop from time to time. A pause here and there can make all the difference because you give your system a chance to reset itself. Expect some discomfort in the beginning but know that  you will get better at handling it.  Like Ken Wilber famously says, it can hurt more sometimes but also bothers you less as you practice. That’s the paradox of paying attention, it not like the pain goes away. Its just not what we thought it was and without our resistance to it, ones whole experience changes. 

  • focus on the sun

    focus on the sun

    first focus on the Sun.  What greater resource is there than the feeling of sunlight on the skin.  When you stay there a little while and allow yourself to be present with a simple moment in the sun, you double up the power of the resource. That’s because your nervous systems follows what you give your attention to.

    Taking a moment in the Sun is also another way of saying Resource.  Its amazing how quickly we can forget to do this, neglecting those aspects in our life that lift us up. The sun is also a metaphor that reminds us to focus on something good before we get to the business of being in our day.

    I say business because from one perspective its like that, one day as a holder for many transactions, each one having its affect on our nervous system –  some replenishing and uplifting while others leaving us feeling depleted and less energized.  
    The question is, will we stay with these daily ‘transactions’ and notice how our system is responding as we go.  If we pay more attention, we are far more likely to follow the movements that lead toward balance and calm. 

    The key is simple noticing with kind attention – not needing things to be different so much and instead getting interested or even better curious about how things are. Its that curious mindset in my experience that really fast tracks change.

    How we do this is .. build a habit of staying in the body, bringing your attention into the body more frequently in your day. As you find ourselves being pulled  up to the head again, simply notice and bring your attention back to the body, allowing the sensations to be there as they are. And that really is as simple as it gets – stay with what you might normally push away, little bit at a time.

  • Social problem solving mindset

    Social problem solving mindset

    A few thoughts about the collective moment we are in – We are all part of the problem. Part of the solution is recognize that if you have an ego structure (and lets not downplay the utility in that) then you are going to have a point of view. That perspective is bound in someway to contradict something or someone else in subtle or not so subtle ways. Even if I/you/we didn’t as much as utter the thought, we had it – it originated in someones head.

    That one thinking is far more likely to be part of the solution with the realization that they can never really not be part of the problem or disconnect in any meaningful way. I think this is especially true for the collective/ social /political landscape right now. And there is beauty in that because problems have the potential to give shape to life in extraordinary ways. #problemsolving

  • A simple pause

    A simple pause

    The most important part of my day is a simple pause.  I have a habit of pausing the mornings and I feel it in my day if I miss it. My day is always different when I start out in stillness – not caught up in activity. 
    So what I do is just sit, I sometimes breathe a bit in the beginning. Longer exhales and a few deeper inhales. What has been especially useful are one or two breath-holds. That just means after an inhale holding the breath for 20 seconds or so and then again really concentrating on the feeling and experience of the exhale. Noticing  how the nervous system responds to deliberate focus on the breath.  Then I let the breath go again and just come back to the experience of sitting with myself. Pure and simple as I am, resisting the temptation to change anything.  I just sit and see -a kind of witnessing of myself that gives permission for things to be as they are.

    For me, that’s  when the work starts. I exercise the muscle of allowing and being present to the good, bad and ugly in me. Its a practice and a commitment in a way, to continually meeting myself and make friends with what is stressful and uncomfortable, disease-full inside. In essence, catching up with myself on a regular basis. What I notice when I don’t do this is that I tend to be more in automatic [and unconscious] behaviors that lead to distractions. I get distracted usually because I am avoiding something uncomfortable inside so a I reach out for something will give some relief from experiencing what ever this something inside is. But what always amazes me is the experience of it is not the same as my thinking about it. Experiencing it means an allowing of something to complete even if it doesn’t feel good. The completion is what brings more calm to the nervous system.

    Why make a habit of this?  I feel the rewards are limitless as we can keep discovering more of what we are and take that of that out to life.  The firs pause in the morning is invaluable because it gives a reminder of whats with us and space to let some of it go. The result is less of a load and a connection with stillness as we go about the day. The more connected to life, the more constructive and fulfilling experiences we are likely to have.

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  • What are the Instinctual drives?

    What are the Instinctual drives?

    In Enneagram language, we talk about instinctual variants or drives as being related to personality but also separate from it. Personality happens up in the prefrontal cortex where our rationality and judgement reside too. But the instinct drives are sub-perceptual in the way that we can’t really reason with them because they originate in the body. We don’t think them into being. Our bodies alert us to these instinctual needs by way of sensation. If you are hungry, you know it right?  there are sensations in  the body associated with hunger or thirst. Those sensations move us towards satisfying the need.   What’s most important about this is that more often than not, people aren’t aware of their biases or the ways they prioritise one dominant instinct over other often neglected instincts.

    Here is an important point, what makes these impulses healthy. To my mind if they are in the body they serve some purpose and therefore must be a useful  reference point to keep life in balance. i.e. if  you feel hungry you can probably trust what the body is telling you and eat something. But when there is an emotional pattern at play, it may disrupt or override the natural functioning of instinctual energy. The simple impulses  in the body can then get distorted and we can end up doing things that really aren’t good for ourselves and those around us like over eating or neglecting nutrition, or hanging out with the wrong people or putting ourselves in groups we don’t want to be part of and the list goes on. All because for whatever reason, we weren’t listening to the intelligence of the body.

    What are the instincts? there are three, base need is Self-preservation. that’s all about our immediate needs to survive – food, water, temperature, shelter, resources to live, skills and livelihood. 
    Next and one notch up on the chakra line is the sexual/ creative instinct and sometimes referred to as one-to-one variant. Although, I think that Russ Hudson makes an excellent point here that one-to-one can be misleading in the way it implies that this drive depends on another person. Its more accurate to see the sexual drive as an electrical-like energy that exists on its own and has no other purpose but to evolve life, to diversify and perpetuate this life into greater and greater forms of beauty, wisdom and truth. It is vital life energy that move us fearlessly towards the things that excite and arouse us. if we block or accelerate/ overuse this energy because of shame or guilt we get from the many avenues in society, we pay the price in attracting partners and people in our lives that reflect this imbalance. The emotional patterns that make us doubt our attractiveness or worth so often get in the way of us experiencing this energy in a free and natural way. When we are present in our bodies and paying attention to ourselves we can also be present with this energy. When we do this, we don’t do anything that will cause us more shame later. We just follow the innocence of the expression and  in our vulnerability surrender to  an aspect of ourselves that is there to move us out of our comfort zone. That is the essential purpose of  this instinct, look at nature – male lions fight for their lives sometimes for mating rights. It is very much a question of life for life with the underlying current being a certain fearlessness that allows us to face the odds and move with an intelligence we simply cant control. That’s also why the end result always has the potential to be something more magnificent then we could have ever imagined from a limited left brain only state. 


    Finally, the social instinct is about our well-being in the context of the group. Its an essential part of our survival in the way that we are stronger together. Not only are we stronger together, we are biologically  wired to be together. This is clearly shown in the way that the worst forms of torture have a theme of social isolation. Regardless of our preservation needs, we simply don’t survive  on our own. We need other people to have a sense of belonging and place in the world. Without that, I’m not sure whether having meaning is even possible. Our social bonds make us more resilience in the face of adversity and keep us psychologically healthy when we have good relations within and between the groups that we belong to. Importantly, the social drive is not about being a good socialite. Rather its about knowing and sensing where ones best possible place is in the group and equally being able to discern whether the group context we find ourselves in is right for us. This can be the instinct that when healthy, drives us away from groups that have more destructive  energies and outcomes. The social intelligence keeps us tuned in and awake to the collective energies and movements with the group.