Yesterday was Remembrance Day. We had a day off work.
Which means I had coffee.
I know what coffee does to me. I know the harder thing: get up, drink water, make green tea, do my kettle-boiling exercise session—a few reps of weights while I wait. That’s enough to shift my biology without hijacking my dopamine system.
But my monkey mind whispers: Just sneak the coffee in. It’s going to make you feel ever so good.
This morning, I’m paying the price. Discomfort I won’t detail. But also clarity: I’m living exactly what Sapolsky teaches. The prefrontal cortex knows the harder thing. The limbic system wants the shortcut. And the body keeps the score.
So today becomes my practice day. Notice. Name. Navigate. Rest and Notice.
Notice the sensations in the body. Name them simply—fear, resistance, heat. Navigate with a physiological action: a VOO breath, a posture adjustment, tapping my sternum or the vagus receptors in my shoulders.
Then—and this is the piece most people skip—Rest and Notice.
Let the body complete what I just started. Let the nervous system finish the cycle. This is where the rewiring happens.
It’s 5:59 a.m. The golden hour. The time I can get things done—if my body cooperates.
But this morning, my body doesn’t want to move. It’s in dorsal. Shutdown. The collapse that comes after too much activation, too much coffee, too much holding.
So I practice what Taylor Somerville taught me: hands on belly and chest, breathing, noticing sensations—pulse, weight, tingling, numbness. Not forcing anything. Just being with what’s here.
Then the basic exercise from Stanley Rosenberg’s book on accessing the vagus nerve: hands behind my head, eyes moving right for 20 seconds, center for 20, left for 20. Simple. Somatic. Effective.
Then I rest. And notice.
Warmth spreading through my chest. A sigh releasing. The heaviness beginning to shift.
It’s the resting and noticing that brings the neural change. Not the doing. The allowing.
Walking the Colonial Corridor
By 8:34, I’m in the building.
I notice the urgency as the doors swipe open and close behind me. The pale institutional light. The voices echoing in the corridors. My body starts to brace.
I’m about to see X —the student who loves to boo me, who hides behind doors and jumps out laughing. And my internal family systems—my firefighters, my protectors, my exiles—have a conference: Let’s get the fuck out of here.
But I don’t leave. I notice the tightness in my chest. I name it: activation, protection. I navigate: feet on floor, slow exhale, widen my gaze.
Then I rest. Just for ten seconds. And notice: the urgency softening, my breath deepening, my system remembering it has options.
Because this is the work. As teachers, as educators, we need to be able to start again. Every moment. Every interaction. Every time our nervous system goes into protection mode.
Everything happens for me, not to me. Everything happens through me.
I’m the experiencer experiencing the experience.
The Science Teacher and the Bullying Paradigm
First period. Grade 11 science. Students are doing presentations, reading from slides.
The challenge for me? My own attention. I’m sitting still, listening to monotone delivery in a poorly ventilated room. My brain is going foggy.
So I ask myself: What is this moment inviting me to pay attention to?
Porges reminds us that simple shifts in posture change the signals our brain receives. Lean back, become more relaxed. Sit upright, become more alert. I adjust. I ground.
Then I rest and notice: clarity returning, alertness without urgency.
The presentation ends. Nobody asks questions.
The teacher’s frustration is palpable. He says: “Fourteen people watched a five-minute presentation and you can’t figure out a question?”
He threatens a zero participation grade.
About 50% of this class is ESL.
I watch the bullying paradigm in action. A smart, well-meaning, content-expert teacher using shame and threat because he doesn’t know the biology of safety. He’s frustrated that students won’t engage—but he’s never taught them how to ask questions. He’s punishing the symptom, not addressing the cause.
The kids are sedentary. Sitting. Quiet. Probably in dorsal shutdown or freeze. And he’s adding more threat.
I feel heat rising in my own chest—judgment, protectiveness, my own dysregulation starting. I notice. I name: sympathetic activation. I navigate: slow breath, soften shoulders.
Then I rest and notice: the judgment loosening, compassion returning. He’s doing the best he can with what he knows. We all are.
I want to give him a copy of this workbook when it’s done. He’s intelligent. Teachers here are incredibly strong on content knowledge. But nobody taught them that state comes before strategy. That you can’t reason with a dysregulated nervous system.
“I Feel Like a Failure When He Won’t Do Math”
Later, I’m with X. We’re supposed to be in math class.
He doesn’t want to do math. He wants to leave immediately.
And I feel it: that familiar sense of failure. The shame that says I’m not good enough. I can’t get him to comply.
But then I notice the sensation—tightness in my solar plexus, heat in my face. I name it: shame. Institutional expectation colonizing my biology. I navigate: hand on my heart, one slow breath.
Then I rest and notice: the shame beginning to lift. The recognition settling in: That’s the institution permeating my biology. Not my failure. Just conditioning.
The school expects compliance. It expects students to sit still, focus, perform. And when they don’t, the adults absorb the failure—even when the expectation itself is biologically unrealistic.
X’s body needs movement to access focus. Sitting still doesn’t help him think—it shuts him down.
So we leave math. We walk to the gym.
Rubbing Sticks Together to Make Fire
There’s a girls’ PE class happening. A substitute teacher. X walks right up and asks if he can join.
The girls look at each other. Then they nod. He’s in.
I watch him move—running, dodging, not quite understanding the rules but not lost in his body. He’s alive. He’s seeking connection. He’s seeking the blend of movement and safety that his nervous system craves.
This is what I call rubbing sticks together to make fire. X needs friction—movement, intensity, sensation—to generate the energy that shifts him toward regulation. The institution sees this as dysregulation. I’ve learned to see it as the path to regulation.
We had a moment the other day where he said: “Finally! Finally, I can focus. Finally, I feel coordinated.”
He knows his body. His body knows what it needs. The biological imperative—Porges’s term for the nervous system’s drive toward connection and safety—is working perfectly in him. He seeks out people, animals, movement. He co-regulates instinctively.
The system just doesn’t have space for it.
After 40 minutes, we step outside. Just 90 seconds of fresh air. Then he wants back in.
I notice my own system during all this—the vigilance of tracking him, the subtle anxiety of being responsible, the relief when he’s regulated and connected. I rest into it. Notice the co-regulation happening: his aliveness feeding mine, my steadiness anchoring his.
This is the biology of relationship. This is what Porges means by social engagement.
The Hand-Grab Moment
Later, with X, I’m setting a boundary about screen use. “It needs to be flat,” I say, reaching to adjust the laptop screen.
He grabs my hand. “No!”
Then he swears.
Heat rises in me. My chest tightens. My jaw clenches.
Freeze. Anger. Humiliation.
The thought flashes: I’m being disrespected. I’m being seen as not in control.
This is big for me. For all of us. The bullying paradigm says: Be in control. Stay in control. If you’re not in control, you’ve failed.
But then I notice. The heat in my chest. The freeze in my body. I name it: threat response. Social threat. The fear of being judged by others as incompetent.
I navigate: one slow breath. Soften my stance. Widen my gaze to take in the whole room, not just X.
Then—crucially—I rest. Just for a few seconds. And notice.
The heat beginning to dissipate. My jaw unclenching. My breath deepening. The story loosening its grip: Everyone is functioning through their reflexes.
X’s hand-grab wasn’t disrespect. It was his nervous system detecting threat—an adult reaching toward him, moving too fast, invading his space. His amygdala responded before his prefrontal cortex could catch up.
And my heat, my freeze, my anger? Also reflexes. My nervous system detected social threat: loss of status, judgment from others watching, the institution’s expectation that I “manage” him.
But I rested and noticed. And in that resting, the whole thing shifted. Not the situation—X is still dysregulated, I’m still navigating a difficult moment—but my relationship to it.
I’m okay. My nervous system is learning: I can feel threatened and still choose how I respond. I can notice the reflex without becoming it.
That’s the rewiring. That’s what happens in the rest and notice.
The Handshake
Earlier in the day, I saw M in woodshop. He tells me he’s feeling nauseous.
I thank him for helping me build a box. I remind him I’m there to support him in English, that we’re working on Macbeth together.
“You’re helping me with the box,” I say. “I’ll help you with Macbeth. Deal?”
We shake hands.
Deb Dana calls these moments glimmers—brief experiences of ventral vagal safety and connection. I call them joy traces.
Small. Transient. But real.
And when I rest and notice after—when I let myself feel the warmth of that moment instead of rushing to the next thing—it lands differently. My nervous system registers: Connection happened. Safety exists. This is possible.
Over time, those glimmers accumulate. They become the pathway my system learns to return to.
Notice. Name. Navigate. Rest and Notice.
I have access to dozens of frameworks. Taylor Somerville’s breathing practices. Deb Dana’s polyvagal exercises. The 5-S’s I developed for reflection: State, Story, Stance, Steady, Start Again.
They’re all useful. But here’s the truth: in the moment—when Jasper boos me in the corridor, when X grabs my hand and swears, when the science teacher threatens zeros—I need something simple.
Notice. Name. Navigate. Rest and Notice.
That’s it. That’s the practice.
The 5-S’s work beautifully for journaling at the end of the day. But in the corridor, in the heat of dysregulation, in the split second before I react?
Notice what I’m sensing in my body.
Name it simply—activation, shutdown, fear, shame.
Navigate with a physiological action—breath, posture, orientation, movement.
Then Rest and Notice.
And here’s the piece most people miss: that final step is where everything changes.
The Neuroscience of Rest and Notice
When you Notice-Name-Navigate, you’re interrupting the threat response mid-cycle. But the stress hormones are still in your system. Your muscles are still holding tension. Your heart rate is still elevated.
Rest and Notice lets the cycle complete.
The nervous system needs to discharge the activation. When you rest and notice—when you allow the body to just be, without doing—you’re giving it permission to:
- Release residual tension through sighs, yawns, tremors, temperature shifts
- Metabolize stress hormones
- Return to baseline
- Strengthen vagal tone—the biology of safety and connection
This is what Peter Levine calls “discharge” and what Porges calls moving back toward ventral vagal regulation.
My night sweats? That’s completion happening while I sleep. But when I Rest and Notice consciously, I’m teaching my body it doesn’t have to wait until 1 a.m. to finish the job.
More than that: Rest and Notice is where neuroplasticity happens.
When you navigate (breathe, orient, soften), your body shifts. But when you Rest and Notice the shift itself—when you feel the heat dissipating, the jaw unclenching, the breath deepening—you’re creating a conscious feedback loop:
- Activation happened (X grabbed my hand)
- I noticed (heat in chest, freeze response)
- I navigated (breath, softened stance)
- I rested and noticed the shift (heat dissipating, safety returning)
That final step—noticing the shift—is what wires the new pathway.
Because you’re teaching your nervous system: When I do X (breathe, orient, soften), Y happens (I feel safer). The brain registers cause and effect. Over time, that becomes automatic. The body learns to trust that regulation is possible.
This is experience-dependent neuroplasticity—the brain rewiring based on repeated, conscious experience.
Without the Rest and Notice, you’re just surviving the moment. With it, you’re training capacity.
Porges calls this the state where “health, growth, and restoration” occur. You can’t force it. You can only create conditions for it.
That’s what Rest and Notice does. It tells your body: You don’t have to do anything right now. You can just be. And being is safe.
This is the noticing on the other side of noticing.
You’re not just aware of the sensation. You’re aware that you’re aware. You’re witnessing your own nervous system learning. You’re updating the memory in real time: threat happened, I regulated, safety returned.
And that witness consciousness—that meta-awareness—is what creates lasting change.
Why We Skip This Step
Because it feels like nothing is happening.
Navigate feels active. Breathing, moving, adjusting posture—these feel like doing.
But Rest and Notice? It feels passive. Unproductive.
But that’s the bullying paradigm talking.
The institution values doing over being. Action over stillness. Productivity over integration.
Rest and Notice requires you to trust that not-doing is also work. That stillness is where the nervous system reorganizes. That the pause is where the rewiring happens.
This is countercultural. And it’s essential.
The Living Laboratory
I treat my work as a living laboratory. Every interaction is data. Every moment is an opportunity to study the nervous system—mine, the students’, the institution’s.
This isn’t about fixing anyone. It’s about noticing what’s actually happening beneath the surface of behavior, policy, and expectation.
The universe has been unfolding for 13.8 billion years. It hasn’t been a walk in the park. It’s been full of chaotic energy—and that’s how it’s supposed to be.
You, my friend, are a product of that. So am I.
Everything is always moving. Everything is transient. Growing. Evolving. Being what it’s meant to be.
Energy.
And in that energy, in that movement, there’s the possibility of regulation. Of repair. Of starting again.
Because that’s the key thing, friends: as teachers, as educators, as humans—we need to be able to start again.
Every moment. Every breath. Every time we notice we’ve gone down the ladder.
We get to climb back up.
And the climbing happens in the rest and notice.
What I’m Learning
Coffee doesn’t help. My body is clear about that.
Frameworks are useful—but simplicity is essential. Notice. Name. Navigate. Rest and Notice. That’s what I can remember when my nervous system is activated.
The rest and notice is where the rewiring happens. Not in the doing. In the allowing. In the conscious witnessing of the shift.
The institution permeates my biology. When I feel like a failure because a student won’t comply, that’s not my failure—it’s the system’s expectations colonizing my nervous system.
Movement is regulation for some bodies. Jasper doesn’t need to calm down before he focuses. He needs to move in order to focus.
Everyone is in their reflexes. The science teacher threatening zeros. Me freezing when X grabs my hand. Jasper seeking connection. All reflexes. All biology.
Joy traces matter. A handshake. A student joining a game. A moment of co-regulation. Small, transient—but when I rest and notice them, they accumulate. They become the pathway back to safety.
The work is noticing, not perfecting. I’m not trying to be the perfect EA or the most regulated adult in the room. I’m practicing noticing my state, naming it, navigating back toward regulation, and then—crucially—resting into the shift and noticing it.
Enough times that it becomes capacity.
A Final Thought
If you’re reading this and you work in education—or any helping profession—you know this territory.
The exhaustion. The institutional pressure. The moments when you feel like a failure because you can’t get someone to comply with expectations that may not even be biologically realistic.
You’re not broken. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it’s designed to do.
And the students you work with? They’re not broken either. Their bodies are seeking safety, connection, and the conditions that allow learning to happen.
The system often makes that hard. Sometimes impossible.
But within that system, there are moments. Glimmers. Joy traces.
A handshake. A breath. A decision to start again.
And when you rest and notice those moments—when you let them land instead of rushing past them—they begin to rewire you.
That’s the work. That’s the practice.
And it’s enough.
This post is part of my ongoing field notes from working as an Educational Assistant in a Canadian school. I’m documenting what I’m learning about nervous system literacy, co-regulation, and what it means to teach—and be taught by—bodies that are trying to stay safe while also trying to learn.
I’m also writing a workbook companion to Dr. Jennifer Fraser’s “The Bullied Brain” that translates neuroscience into embodied practice for educators.