The Art of P.A.U.S.E. : An Inner Rhythm

I remember the moment when I knew I was going to end my job with the National Park Service and begin my journey helping people feel better instead.  I was hiking to a beautiful spring in the Maze district of Canyonlands National Park to collect a monthly water sample and I remember having the thought “If people felt better, they’d take better care of the planet. They would see how it - and we - are all interconnected.  Healthy people = healthy planet.”

I remember walking into the chief of resource management’s office to tell him that I would be finishing my season and then I’d be on my way.  I appreciated so much getting to go to all of these incredible places on foot, by jeep, by boat, protecting natural resources like plants and water, but I thought my gifts would be better served working with people and their health.  I knew that was my deeper calling.

If I wanted to serve the parks, the land, the whole planet, I could do that best by helping people with their health and well-being – and I would have to begin with my own.

Fifteen years of health coaching and thirteen years of massage & bodywork later - the honor of working with thousands of humans physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually – I’m so glad I followed my heart’s intelligence even though it was scary and I had no idea what I was doing.

And in the last year of teaching HeartMath, I’ve had the supreme delight of introducing and guiding well over a hundred people into coherence and hopefully inspiring them to access their own heart’s intelligence.

Scientist that I am… that’s a lot of data.

One of my greatest strengths is recognizing patterns.  From all this data, I've come to see:

• patterns in what people say

• common blocks and fears we come up against that stop us from realizing our dreams

• common beliefs that spill out of our mouths (often unconsciously) that shape our reality

• patterns in people’s bodies, facial expressions and how we carry ourselves

• patterns and themes in the stories we tell around our conditioning

I’ve become fluent in my own patterns as well.

Because the more I pause, the more I P.A.U.S.E. 

The more I practice heart-brain coherence, the more space I create for my intuition and heart's intelligence to show me what’s there waiting for me to embrace and embody.

This is how the Art of P.A.U.S.E. was born:

from a deep understanding that if we all spent more time pausing, then we’d all have more energy, permission and freedom to experience our true heart’s desires.   

These desires can range from small decisions to life-changing ones, from tiny habits to big changes.  It really doesn’t matter because the rhythm, the arc, the inner mechanics are the same.  

As I pause, and reflect back on my life and all the people, places, things that have shaped me, I contemplate the common threads.  Weaving together all of my schooling, teachers, and thousands of sessions, I have distilled the path of change into a transcendent arc.  

A path that moves from:

Pressure & Pushing  → Pause & Presence

Activation & Anticipation   →   Allowance & Awareness

Unsure & Unseen    →   Untangle & Understand

Stuckness & Stagnation   →   Shift & Sense

Exhaustion & Escape    →  Embrace & Embody

This is what I call the Art of P.A.U.S.E. and I’d like to share it with you here in this post.

I’m also offering a 40-day journey through this inner rhythm that takes us through the month of December, beginning Monday December 1^st, all the way into the 9^th of January of next year. 

Why?

Because without practice, nothing integrates. 

Without repetition, no new neural network forms.

We forget.  We fall back into unconsciousness.  We make decisions based on our past, not on our present or future selves. We loop until we wake up and make a new choice from a new level of consciousness.

This takes energy.

Where is that energy going to come from?

Well, we gain energy when we pause, when we allow, when we untangle, when we shift and when we embody. We gain energy when we P.A.U.S.E.

It takes energy, yes - but it also simultaneously gives us energy when we stop allocating our own precious natural resources to patterns, beliefs, and emotions that are draining our inner battery.

Each week, we’ll explore one letter of P.A.U.S.E. and in the last five days, we’ll integrate.

If you're interested in taking one small step at a time, you can sign up here.

The Inner Rhythm of P.A.U.S.E.: Domain, Pressure Point, Result

To understand the power of P.A.U.S.E., it helps to see the inner rhythm it follows.

Each letter corresponds to a domain of your inner world, a pressure point that tends to activate when you’re stressed or unsure, and a result that emerges when you move through the arc consciously.

This is the natural sequence your system uses when you pause. When you move from activation to awareness, from emotional charge to “pressure’s off”, from stagnation to movement, and finally into embodying what’s true for you.

P:  Pause + Presence

Domain: Nervous System / Physiology / Gut

Pressure Point: pressure itself, autopilot, the “tail wagging the dog”

Result: regulation, grounding, relaxed & engaged

Ever heard the expression "it’s hard to stop a train"?  We begin by interrupting the momentum of our habitual patterns and conditioning.

Pausing isn’t just a concept - it’s a biological event. Here your breath deepens, your heart rate changes, your biochemistry changes – you either physically stop what you’re doing with a time out or you stop the train of your thinking by becoming present to your breathing.

Bringing your attention to the here & now is the first doorway to coherence & re-membered wholeness.  Pausing is re-membering (coming back together with).

There’s a reason why the acronym is PAUSE and P is for pause – this is the entry point to everything.

A:  Allowance + Awareness

Domain: Mind / Mental Resistance / Predictive Thinking

Pressure Point: activation, anticipatory tension, bracing, hypervigilance, assumptions

Result: spaciousness, open focus, perception, choice, emotional safety

As soon as the body and breath soften (through pausing) then the mind follows and softens as well.

Anticipation is the action of the emotion of anxiety - the leaning forward, the bracing, the activation in anticipation of a perceived threat. The “I need to know" or "I already know what happens next” energy.

Allowance is the antidote. You just allow what’s happening to be happening.  When you’re not under threat, or in survival mode, you can open your focus to see with a greater (and safer) level of awareness.

This is the moment the mind shifts from defense to curiosity.

This is also the realm where you have to get clear on what you value, who you want to be, your north star, the character you want to play in the movie that is your life.

U:  Untangle + Understand

Domain: Hybrid Layer / Identity / Beliefs / Meaning-Making

Pressure Point: Unsure, unseen, entanglement, expectation, projection, old identities

Result: emotional freedom, insight, clarity, self-trust, identity differentiation

This is the heart of the journey. The U is the YOU in PAUSE. 

It’s a hybrid because it’s mental, emotional, somatic, relational, and spiritual – it’s all encompassing - in an often times tangled mess where it’s hard to see the truth of who we really are at our core, beneath the many messy layers of social conditioning and out-dated beliefs.  

Untangling is where you separate your truth from:

   •     other people’s expectations, beliefs, values

   •     past patterning and conditioning

   •     childhood wounds

   •     internalized stories

   •     projections

   •     fears around belonging, safety, love

This is the “meaning-making layer,” where the real re-framing happens, where we can ask questions like:

• What am I making this mean about me?

• How am I over-personalizing this?

• Is this true?

• According to who is this true?

• Whose voice is that?

• What if I didn’t believe this story anymore?

• Who would it affect if I changed?

• What’s the underlying fear here?

• What’s the recurring theme?

In this realm, we untangle everyone else’s stuff from ours, we look at what we’re believing about ourselves, about others, about the world.  From a more regulated (P) and aware state of being (A), now we're in the perfect brain wave for untangling and understanding the answers to these ground-work level questions. Without being activated, we can objectively and contemplatively loosen the knot and loosen the grip we have on it.

This layer might sound heavy, and it can be, but it doesn’t have to be.  And once it’s understood, it’s incredibly liberating. As my husband says, "it's pretty easy once you get used to it." From how and when you eat your dinner to what you wear to where you live to how you live. This is the Art in the Art of P.A.U.S.E.

S: Shifting + Sensing

Domain: Energetic & Emotional Realm / Intuition / Heart-Focus

Pressure Point: stagnation, stuckness, mental looping, blocked

Result: momentum, insight, alignment, assuredness, homecoming

I’ve found that a lot of the untangling happens from shifting because adding in coherence reverses entropy or chaos. Shifting into our heart’s intelligence helps us become more of who we really are, not more of someone else.  What bubbles up from a coherent field is often enlightening, clarifying and uniquely ours.

HeartMath® is at the core of the S rhythm.  Coherence techniques, knowing your values, keeping your attention on your north star, spending time feeling regenerative emotions, understanding how emotions are literally energy-in-motion that create chemical changes in your body whether you're aware of them or not.

When the systems, organs, tissues and cells become entrained by a coherent heart rhythm, the mental, physical and emotional stagnation and congestion that was stuck begins to flow again.

We begin to:

• sense right relationship

• sync up with natural timing

• feel direction

• intuit next steps

• perceive options

• reconnect to desires

• hear subtle inner guidance

When we shift into the heart, we begin sensing new possibilities and new paths - we become aware of more choice - not from panic or pressure, but from alignment and clarity.

All we have to do is take one step in the direction that our inner compass is pointing us towards.

E:  Embrace + Embody

Domain: Behavior / Integration / Physical

Pressure Point: exhaustion, escaping, avoiding, postponing

Result: wholeness, authenticity, integrity, honesty

This is where the arc, the decision, the change becomes realized.  The hardest part is actually behaving as if you are whole, free, loved, worthy, safe. Letting your behavior match what you know to be true for you is an act of courage.

Embracing is when you stop overriding yourself and instead embrace a willingness to do things differently. Embodying is when the willingness becomes who you are - willing to be whole, free, loved and safe by demonstrating it in your behaviors.

This is the final phase - the landing.

Exhaustion and escape show up when you’ve been operating out of entanglement, pressure, survival, or someone else’s idea of what you should do. But when you’ve paused, allowed, seen clearly, untangled, and shifted, something delightful happens...

You’re no longer pushing the river or abandoning yourself.  You become your best support, the one you can trust, count on and treat with respect. You become the you you've been waiting for.

You’re aligned. You're in love. You're free.

Embodying is when a state becomes a trait –

You’re not just calm sometimes, you’re a calm person. 

You’re not just thankful when things go your way, you’re a thankful person. 

This is coherence - not as a concept or something you measure sometimes, but as a way of being.

So who do you want to be?

This is when your life begins to match your truth.  And no one knows your truth except you.  It’s not your mom’s, your grandpa’s, your spouse’s, your sister’s, your teacher's or your religion’s – it’s yours. Here's where you stop micro-managing and controlling everyone else and control the only thing you can - yourself - your thoughts, words, and actions.

We Become What We Practice the Most

This is why I created 40 Days of the Art of P.A.U.S.E.

To give you (and me) a guided experience of this inner rhythm - not once, but over time.

Because practice creates pathways.

Thanks to neuroplasticity, practice builds new neural networks in your brain.

Practice shifts your state, your stories, your identity, your life - decision by decision, habit by habit, moment by moment.

We begin Monday, December 1st.

We journey into the new year with consciousness, coherence, and a relaxed but engaged heart.

Delight comes from depth. 

We go into the darkest time of year to P.A.U.S.E., nourishing the roots of our being before we spring forth and bear fruit in the year to come.

If this speaks to you, for a modest $33, you can join me here.

I would be honored to see you in your inbox every morning for 40 days as we dance this inner rhythm of the Art of P.A.U.S.E. together. It could be a quote, a meditation, a contemplation, a video, a somatic exercise, a question or two - but it will always be in the spirit of love, ease and pause.

P.S. One More Thing...

Just to be clear, P.A.U.S.E. is not linear because life is not linear! 

P.A.U.S.E. is not a rigid formula, hack, trick or 5 step plan guaranteeing results – it’s simply an inner rhythm, a beautiful container with the main point baked into the title – to pause and reflect upon what’s most important to you, your heart and your one wild and precious life. From there, you follow the path, the arc, the rhythm to actually living what's most important to you, your heart and your one wild and precious life.  

It was born from years of experience, a variety of teachings and the patterns I’ve observed in working with thousands of people - as well as my greatest test subject - my own life.  It’s been curated for you to use for support, guidance and growth for greater clarity, connection, alignment and health in your blessed time here on earth.

We grow in spirals – rememberings, returns, layers.  But spirals are not chaos and spirals are not closed.  They have intention, rhythm and design and every time they come back around, there’s more space and growth than the time before.

So, while life itself is the art, life itself is the creative process, P.A.U.S.E. offers a container that helps you move through the non-linear beauty and magic of being human in a way that couples intention with surrender.

It’s a way of creating more coherence, a way of adding more heart into your life, while leaving plenty of room for mystery.

love always,

Sarah

We start Monday. You can sign up here 🎉