Speaker 1: Something has been shifting. You may not have named it,
Speaker 1: it may not have announced itself with any particular clarity
Speaker 1: or drama. But somewhere in the ordinary hours of recent weeks,
Speaker 1: in a moment that passed without you marking it, the
Speaker 1: chooser was simply there, not summoned, not effortfully placed, simply
Speaker 1: present the pause that arrived before you found it, the
Speaker 1: breath that came before the reaction, without being deliberately placed there.
Speaker 1: The question, is this what I am choosing? Appearing in
Speaker 1: the gap as if it had always lived there? Breathe
Speaker 1: feel the particular quality of this breath, not the breath
Speaker 1: of someone beginning something, but the breath of someone who
Speaker 1: has been doing something long enough that it has begun
Speaker 1: to change the shape of them. You have been repeating
Speaker 1: something in the ordinary moments and the unremarkable ones, in
Speaker 1: the quiet Tuesday afternoons and the difficult Thursday evenings, in
Speaker 1: the private spaces where no one was watching, and the
Speaker 1: chooser showed up. Anyway, the nervous system has been listening.
Speaker 1: It has been receiving the signal, and the signal calm consistent,
Speaker 1: has been doing what signals always do when they are
Speaker 1: delivered with enough patience and enough safety, and enough quiet repetition.
Speaker 1: It has been building a pathway. Feel that pathway now,
Speaker 1: not as metaphor as something real in your body, the
Speaker 1: particular quality of a nervous system that has practiced something
Speaker 1: enough that it has begun to prefer it. The pause
Speaker 1: that is slightly easier to find than it was, the
Speaker 1: breath that is slightly more available than before, The gap
Speaker 1: between the queue and the automatic that is slightly wider,
Speaker 1: not because you have been forcing it open, but because
Speaker 1: you have been walking through it often enough that it
Speaker 1: has learned to stay. This is what stability feels like,
Speaker 1: not the absence of the automatic, not immunity from the
Speaker 1: craving or the trigger or the old familiar pull, Simply
Speaker 1: a nervous system that has another option available, a pathway
Speaker 1: that is becoming slowly and without announcement of least resistance.
Speaker 1: Think of one behavior that is easier now than it was,
Speaker 1: however small, however unremarkable. The pause that used to require
Speaker 1: effort and now simply arrives. The breath that used.
Speaker 2: To be a technique and now is simply what happens.
Speaker 2: The question that used to need to be remembered, and
Speaker 2: now appears without being called. Hold that feel the weight
Speaker 2: of it. Not pride, something quieter than pride, the deep
Speaker 2: animal satisfaction of a nervous system that has learned something new,
Speaker 2: that has been taught gently, patiently, through calm repetition, That
Speaker 2: a different response is possible, that a different response is safe,
Speaker 2: That a different response is slowly and irreversibly becoming normal.
Speaker 2: You are not the same as when this art began.
Speaker 2: The change is quiet, the change is real. The change
Speaker 2: is in the pathway that is slightly more worn now
Speaker 2: than the one It is replacing. What you repeat calmly
Speaker 2: becomes who you are. You have been repeating something calm,
Speaker 2: and it is becoming, breath by breath, choice by choice,
Speaker 2: ordinary moment by ordinary moment, who you are. The chooser
Speaker 2: is building something, something that will not need to be forced,
Speaker 2: something that will not need to be summoned, something that
Speaker 2: will simply, one ordinary day, in one unremarkable moment, arrive
Speaker 2: without being called, and you will recognize it not as
Speaker 2: something new, as something that has become.
Speaker 1: Simply you h