I woke this morning at 6:35, not out of discipline but out of awareness. My sleep had been variable, the kind of broken rest that has followed me through much of my life. I’ve written before about my father’s time stationed in wartime Malta – an island bombed more than two thousand times. Four years of that kind of threat imprints a particular vigilance into a family line. You don’t simply inherit eye colour; you inherit watchfulness.

So when I wake in the middle of the night, my mind doesn’t always march into negativity. Sometimes it flows into creativity, into preparation, into the question: What am I going to do with (name of student) tomorrow? That’s the nervous system rehearsing safety. It’s not insomnia. It’s loyalty.

By morning, there’s often a dorsal pull; the heaviness, the desire to slip back under the covers, the low-grade collapse that follows long-term relational strain. Instead of forcing myself into a rigid protocol, I let things unfold.

Curiosity instead of compulsion. Permission instead of pressure.

I began with my lower back. Bursitis visits me occasionally, so I used a band to mobilize the pelvis and feel into my tissue. The psoas, sometimes called the “SOS muscle,” loves to clutch during threat. Mine loosens slowly with breath. From there I shook out my arms and legs – the old mammalian tremor that we forget as adults. Animals do this after danger. We override it. But my legs know how to discharge sympathetic charge better than my mind ever will.

Then I tapped gently across my sternum, feeling the resonance vibrate behind bone and lungs. Behind that bone sits the heart–lung plexus – one of the most direct gateways to the vagus nerve. It wakes without shocking. It reminds the body: You’re allowed to be here. My hand drifted upward to the thymus, the quiet immunological drum of grief, and then to the shoulder girdle, where tension armours the neck. Sometimes tapping is nothing more than a nervous system saying hello to itself.

None of this was planned. I simply followed sensation. Protocols are useful, but rigid routines can accidentally become micro-coercions. When we force our healing, we activate the very pattern we’re trying to soften. Curiosity is ventral. Compulsion is sympathetic. This morning, curiosity won.

Eventually, I climbed the stairs two steps at a time, holding my phone to count steps. That might look like distraction, but it’s a nervous system offering itself a container: predictability, pacing, proprioception. Counting is a quiet form of safety.

And here’s the important part: I didn’t “fix” myself first. I let the state shift gradually. I followed the felt sense. I trusted the body’s sequencing.

All of this – the micro-movements, the breath, the taps, the shakes – is how we transition from dorsal heaviness back toward ventral presence. It’s a gentle reminder that regulation is not calmness; it’s flexibility. It’s the capacity to move between states without becoming trapped in any of them.

This morning taught me something I’ve been circling for years. Letting the body lead is not laziness. It’s a form of trust. Protocols build skill, but curiosity builds capacity. When you follow sensation instead of forcing sequence, you’re letting the nervous system remember its own language – the one it knew long before spreadsheets, scripts, and school bells.

So today, instead of chasing the perfect routine, I’ll carry this line with me:

Let the morning unfold into ventral trust.

I suspect the nervous system has been waiting a long time to hear that.