Attunement Quotes

“We are aware of the fallibility of our perception and know how easily our senses can deceive us. This should remind us to be cautious and reflective in our judgments and actions. Therefore, In navigating the uncertainties of life, let us cultivate a balance between groundedness and attunement. ( "Trompe le Pied - Trompe l'Oeil.")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“If we can engage with both verbal and nonverbal signals, sensing the emotional texture of another’s actions, we are able to feel, comprehend, and care. Empathy requires an attunement to the subtleties of interaction. ( "Lost the Global Story." )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“One mood can be replaced by another, but it is impossible to leave attunement altogether. However, profound boredom brings us as close to a state of un-attunement as we can come.”
― Lars Fr. H. Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom

“Through mirror neurons and resonance circuitry, we are taking in each other's bodily state, feelings and intention in each emerging moment (Iacoboni, 2009).

This gives us an approximate empathic sense of what is happening in the other person, but it is important to be aware that the information is also being filtered through our implicit lens.

This filtering colors our perceptions and pretty much guarantees there will be ruptures that invite repairs, as our offers of empathy will sometimes not reflect what the other person is experiencing.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“the practice of nonjudgmental, agendaless presence [is] the foundation for safety and co-regulation.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Since we began with a felt sense of safety this day, several neural streams are initially supporting the renewal of our connection.

In our midbrain, the energies of the SEEKING system are animating the CARE system, which can both foster the good feelings between us and support offers of repair should we have a rupture (Panksepp & Biven, 2012).

Once in connection, our ventral vagal parasympathetic system is affecting the prosody of our voices, our facial mobility, and the attentiveness of our listening, maintaining social engagement (Porges, 2011). Since ventral lateralizes to the right hemisphere, we more easily stay rooted in the right-centric way of attending that keeps us in connection with this moment and with each other (McGilchrist, 2009).

In this intimacy, our brains are coupling in many regions, so there is an experience of social emotional engagement and embodied communication as we become a single system in two bodies (Hasson, 2010).

Because we are trustworthy partners in this healing process, social baseline theory tells us that our amygdalae are calming just because we are together (Beckes & Coan, 2011).

All of this is happening without doing anything, even without saying anything, in microseconds below conscious awareness because of the safe space we have cultivated over time.

We can more clearly understand why Porges says, "Safety IS the treatment".”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“The room was very quiet with that familiar deepening that arrives when something is happening underneath, beyond the words.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“If we trust that our inner world knows what is needed next, one outcome isn't preferable to another.

It is so easy for us to want healing to pursue a more linear path: Something arises and it would be best if we could stay with that.

There can be a sense of disappointment in therapist, patient, or both if the sensation doesn't return. This might be perceived as a lack in our patient's ability to maintain contact, a reflection of our inadequacy of a therapist, or simply discomfort that the therapy feels stuck.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Align your questions with the success you want after the goal is achieved and watch a host of nonsensical excuses disappear as the answers emerge.”
― Richie Norton, Anti-Time Management: Reclaim Your Time and Revolutionize Your Results with the Power of Time Tipping

“How much respect I have for each person’s system knowing what will support healing. Not everyone responds to the process of going directly into the body toward the root of implicit memory. For some, being consistently in the presence of a caring other provides disconfirmation for attachment losses. For others, sand tray or art may be the resonant support, or EMDR or Somatic Experiencing. So many modalities have emerged in recent years, primarily in response to our expanded understanding of the neuroscience of wounding and healing. Each way of working has value and may become even more supportive of our people if it rests on the practice of leading, following and responding. In this way we are able to cultivate a safe space for the fluid emergence of any specific protocol.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“by aligning with her autonomic nervous system (ANS) activation instead of trying to move her toward a ventral state, ventral could arrive on its own.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“With our increased sensitivity and awareness, we might notice small shifts in breathing or coloring, a little greater tension around the eyes. We might feel our muscles tense a bit or our stomach tighten, perhaps in tandem with theirs, perhaps not. As best we can, we just receive and hold without too much speculation about what it means, and also with awareness of our own human limitations as our perceptions are colored by our own implicit memory. Our availability to deeply listen, even when we get it wrong, is also like the beginning of a ... reparative experience.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“I am not sure how we came to believe that we know more about what our people need than they do. A core, culturally supported assumption about their brokenness may have something to do with it, and so might our left-dominant culture and training that makes it more challenging to be present to anyone's implicit experience. Many it is equally about our inability to trust our own inner wisdom to guide us because no-one helped us listen when we were young. Without this trust, we may get frightened for our people and the process, and such feelings bring on the need to assert control ...

experiment with the pause, remembering that our rupture and repair are optimal, trust will grow as we and our 'patients' stumble together into the tentative, fluid process of attunement with one another that supports the awakening of the inherent wisdom and health.”
― Bonnie Badenoch

“There are so many valuable techniques for regulation, for exploring and integrating traumatic experience, and so on. Once we get to know these protocols, they may pull on us in ways that invite us to seize control of the therapy.

The other pathway suggests that her system holds the answers and that if I can offer enough safe support, it will likely begin to speak with us.

At least cognitively, I can recognize that this person's inner world contains much more information about the root causes of her upset than I do.

From this perspective, I am less interested in dealing with symptoms than moving towards making room for the implicit origin to emerge so that the protective systems can take care of themselves.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“if our attention is what we're going to do next to accomplish a specific goal (often decrease a symptom) rather than openness to what the other person is bringing to the moment, we have stepped into our left hemispheres and out of relationship- and our patient will feel that as a kind of subtle abandonment. This interchange will likely happen below the level of conscious awareness and yet lead our person to step back a bit internally, awaiting the arrival of true presence, without agenda or judgement, so that safety can arise in the space in between. At that moment, the healing power inherent in this co-organizing/co-regulating relationship arrives. We have been returning to this crucial distinction in these pages, as much as possible with ongoing compassion for the challenge we experience as we open to the right remaining consistently in the lead.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“The land of Maren, my island,
calls to me in my fretful sleep.
Like dancing ribbons of light,
it winds its memories around
my starved, yearning torso,
tearing at my aching heart.

“I am twirling now,
unravelling a ribbon memory
of light, warm sand
and cresting waves around me.

“To feel at breath with my
unique, native land
and to retrace my footprints
across its terrains would be ...
heavenly.”
― Susan L. Marshall, All the Hope We Carry

“So many of us who choose this work come from backgrounds of pain and fear that have been instrumental in calling us to now co-suffer with others as they find the courage to approach their wounds.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“It sometimes surprises me that people don't find questions addressed to their bodies silly, especially in therapy, but they rarely do”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“When we talk about cultivating a nonjudgemental, agendaless space between, we might easily believe this means we are passively present. Quite the contrary. We are dynamically awake in the midst of the inner stillness and receptivity, attending to and following what is emerging in our people.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Following is about linking with another and keeping that one in the center of flowing awareness, which is exactly what the right hemisphere has the potential to do beautifully. In fact, we may best begin by following our own internal movement as it arises in the presence of the other person.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Anything we determine to do in advance has already separated us from being in this emerging moment with ourselves as well as the other person.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“I have found that much that happens in supervision/consultation focuses on what needs to happen next. There can be a sense of the person under consideration becoming a static object to be analyzed, and then advice may be offered about how that person could/should be shaped in a certain (presumably healthier) way.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Struggles between our people and us over the pace of therapy can disregulate the process into a frenzy or stall it. Returning to following and responding may ease this.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“At moments of deep uncertainty, I find that I sometimes jump the tracks into taking control, and in those moments, if I can move back toward following, the process often finds its own feet again. All of this has gradually led me to believe that letting go of expectations about the outcome of therapy as much as possible gives the process the most room to show itself.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Dave had carried the Zen bell, and rang it every few minutes with the tap of a small hammer. The sound was clear and beautiful. The tone was harmonious and rung out as the sun rose over the water. Some thought the sacred arose when a local action mirrored a more universal rhythm—like that morning. The sun rose. The bell rang out. The druids walked a pattern which resembled the sun’s movement. All one event.”
― Ruth Ann Oskolkoff, Zin

“My mind and body are in attunement with Nature, so freedom is available to me in every moment”
― Leo Lourdes, A World of Yoga: 700 Asanas for Mindfulness and Well-Being

“A large part of photography is about being in tune with our deeper selves and the world around us.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Think of your intuition as a radio. If you are not in tune with the correct frequency on the radio, all you hear is static. Fear sabotages your ability to hear, sense, and feel your intuition. Intuition is when you are aligned and attuned to your ‘higher guidance.’ It’s a sweet spot. It will guide you, direct you, speak to you, warn you, and send you signals.”
― Dana Arcuri, Intuitive Guide: How to Trust Your Gut, Embrace Divine Signs, & Connect with Heavenly Messengers