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Into the Forest I Go

Writer's picture: Pastor LizPastor Liz

“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul”

― John Muir


Co-regulation is the way two people can influence and help balance each other’s emotional state. Most often talked about in parent (trusted adult)/child relationships, the parents’ presence can soothe the child's emotional distress. Beginning in infancy the loving adult offers a safe dynamic and facilitates the development of the child’s emotional intelligence and social/emotional skills.


Co-regulation is a vital human dynamic that helps calm our autonomic responses and deepens connection. Being a non-anxious presence with someone in a moment of distress. While it is often assumed to be a dynamic exclusive to parent(trusted adult)/child relationships, there is newer research that highlights the benefits of co-regulation within intimate parter relationships. Researchers have found that the presence of an adult partners' intimate partner leads to stress reduction, and even more so for individuals in reportedly "high quality" relationships. (A research note; while the study focused on marriages, I imagine there is a similar regulating effect within non-romantic/monogamous/sexual/etc. relationships too.)


The importance of emotional regulation in both adults and children cannot be understated. Not just for those who are neurodiverse (ADHD, ASD, etc.), it is impossible to be a fully functional and compassionate adult when your nervous system is dysregulated. Feeling overwhelmed, quick to anger, distracted, depressed, or anxious are all expressions of an endocrine system that is out wack. Dysregulation causes our nervous system to be quick to activate a “fight or flight” response. (Which is actually fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or fatigue.) 


There is much in the world that pushes us into a dysregulated state and I genuinely do not know anyone who isn’t experiencing some form of emotional dysregulation. Meditation and bubblebaths alone are not going to protect us from the ongoing trauma of late stage capitalism and a rising oligarchy. While there are many tools we can reach for to tend to our nervous systems, we cannot find regulation in isolation. Co-regulation is a biological and fundamental need that must be met, equal to our need for food, water, and shelter.


Co-regulation articulates the scientific context for the spiritual knowing that we need each other, our lives and beings are intricately woven together. A web of connection that expands beyond the human to all of creation. Many of us know what the scientific cannot quantify, that we find co-regulation with the earth and natural world. In fact, co-regulating with creation is our natural way of being in the world. Woven together, inextricably linked in and through all things. Co-regulating with the peace of the wild things, as Wendell Berry wrote.

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

It's supposed to be a beautiful day on Sunday, we'll meet at Squaxin Park as the sun sets across the water to share poetry and wise words to ground and calm our anxious bodies. Inviting us into co-regulation with the trees, water, and lichen around us. (And with each other too.)


Sunday, January 19 at 4 pm

Picnic Shelter # 2

+ Kiddo Care

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