the bronx
Dog on the leash, I head outside. It’s morning but after school drop off, so it’s quiet. I stand on my porch and take in the scene. It’s a spectacular day. The sky is blue, not a cloud to be found. It’s both warm and cool at the same time, depending upon how much sun is hitting your skin. I bring in the garbage can from the curb and see my neighbor has planted sunflowers in his little grass patch that runs parallel to the sidewalk. Those are going to be gorgeous, I think to myself.
Zara and I begin our walk. She wants to go to the park so she pulls a bit at the corner. I have other plans so I insist we go the other way. This is an around the corner walk, not a roll around in the grass and sprint around the grassy knoll walk. She stops at every tree and sniffs. I day dream and wonder why my HRV is higher when I strength train then when I meditate. I look at the flowers my neighbors place in their windowsills. I see the recording device another points that the sidewalk. It’s quiet and peaceful.
I arrive at the corner, where there is a day care center. A father has just double parked and is carrying his toddler with her stuffed animal and lunchbox in his arms. All of a sudden, there are three cars behind him and more coming. Horns start blaring.
The father begins to shout at the first car “My brother, you have muthaF@$&ing room on the left. Where did you get your license, Texas?”
That makes me chuckle.
Horns are aggressive now. It’s been a total of 20 seconds since he double parked.
I cross the street in between the cars and take a peak. He has room. You got this dude, I think to myself. Just pull that mirror in and squeeze through. He starts to do just that.
Horns are still honking though. A man passes me and I hear him say to no one in particular “I hate this fucking neighborhood” in a way that seems like this is some sort of last straw.
And it occurs to me. He and I, just passerby’s on a typical Bronx traffic skirmish, are interpreting “the neighborhood” completely differently.
I am seeing all that is lovely and he is seeing all that is awful.
And we are standing on the same street corner observing the same location.
I have no idea who this man is, where he was before or where he was going. I don’t know the things that happened to him in his life or what his childhood was like. I don’t know the weight of life his body carries. I don’t know why his perception was trained to see all that was wrong. I can guess that his nervous system is skewed towards fear and reactivity. I can guess that he sees what is ugly to him before he sees what is beautiful.
As for myself - I have absolutely gone outside and been irritable at the horns and the traffic. I have been frustrated by the garbage that mysteriously gets dumped on the corner overnight. I have lamented when the guys at the community garden play music so loud it rattles my windows.
I get it. I want to move upstate and not see neighbors. I want to walk on the grass in my bare feet and not worry about glass. I want to know what it is like to sit in quiet and stillness and not hear sirens in the background. Or teach a class online and not have sirens on the background. Or just in general, not have sirens in the background.
Yet, here I am. In The Bronx until my youngest graduates from high school. It is a choice we made and as with most life choices, it is rich with opportunities.
Because you see, if I can regulate my nervous system and control my perception of my own life experiences in The Bronx, I can do it anywhere and any time.
How I feel about my neighborhood on any particular day is a good barometer for me.
Does the honking feel like needles on the outside of my skin? I likely need more sleep or more relaxation for system.
Does garbage piss me off and have me thinking negatively about the entire population of the earth? I would benefit from an hour of strength training or strong yoga.
Do I feel like crying when the music rattles my windows? I likely could use a good release for all the tension in my body.
Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that we wouldn’t prefer. I would prefer to live upstate and closer to the earth, but that isn’t possible right now. I can sit in my home and resent my experience. I can bitch and moan and complain and perceive life through the lens of all that is fucked up.
And I could go down a rabbit hole here. I could get on my phone and doom scroll my nerves into a fried scared mess.
Or… I could not.
I could intend to interpret my experience differently. I could elevate my perception in such way that I see all the beauty. And there is PLENTY of beauty to see. I could clarify my perception in such a way that when I am feeling irritated or out of sorts, I care for my nervous system appropriately and in real time so my perception expands again.
I’m not bypassing. I see the garbage and I hear the horns. But thats not the only view available to me. I can shift my gaze to the budding sunflowers and the rose garden across the street. I can sit in my backyard and watch the bees do their thing. I can feel the sun on my skin and the cool breeze in my hair and think what a beautiful day it is.
I can, as my Yiayia used to say, count my blessings.
How lucky am I to be alive? To be safe and fed and educated and able to pursue my creativity and my dreams. How lucky are my kids to have NYC as their backyard - to go to museums, see Broadway shows with their school, to go to Chinatown on weekends and know how to get anywhere in the five boroughs on the train whenever they want.
Pretty freaking lucky. This is what prosperity and abundance actually means. Seeing all that is good. Focusing there.
I wasn’t necessarily raised to see all the good. I was raised to be productive and high achieving and to get shit done and done well. I was raised to see what needed to be improved and fixed (starting with myself). I was not raised in a home where nervous systems were regulated. They were amped with coffee and depressed with alcohol or weed. I mean. It was the 70s and 80s. No one thought about this stuff then.
They didn’t need to. There wasn’t an influx of information thrown at us daily. There wasn’t this intensity of life that we all feel now. There wasn’t an epidemic of mental health issues with kids and teens. There wasn’t AI, constant wars, UFOs that the Pentagon calls “a threat to national security.” There wasn’t an oligarchy of tech billionaires quietly ruling the world and harming the earth while they do it.
But here we are. Here I am. Here you are. With nervous systems that were conditioned in times when no one thought about how we were being conditioned.
Now we are living in times that require us to take control of our own experiences.
Maybe that’s why I’m seeing so many Substack articles about “regulating our nervous systems”. It’s definitely having a moment. As it should.
I can’t do anything about the global stage. I can only control my response to it.
And when my response to it is steady and clear, I can absolutely impact my local stage. My family, my neighbors, my friends and all those who read my words and come to my classes and listen to my work.
Same goes for you.
This has become the heart of my work. My work at home as a therapeutic foster/adoptive parent and my work as a teacher.
Helping others take care of themselves skillfully so they can perceive their lives from a regulated and expanded state.
Because how we perceive our life dictates how we experience it.
And our experience is everything.
The work is embodied. It is physical in that we access higher states of consciousness THROUGH the portal of the body.
In the Immersion we focus on the perception shift.
In The Practice Room, we train the system to be able to hold that shift.
The doors are open and I invite you into my room.
I’m very excited to show it to you!
Top notch. You nailed it