The Dojo and the Dirt: What Cultivating Resilience Actually Takes There is a man who shaped the way we think about resilience here at Hope Reimagined. His name is Tesfaye Tekelu, a trainer with the Strozzi Institute and someone I had the honor to work and learn along side at Destiny Arts Center. Today he lead the Strozzi Community Dojo—a practice space that brings us back to body, in relationship and growing together. This is an open free space and the link is attached. My relationship with Tes and what I have learned from him is deeply embedded in the NSIF. Today Tesfaye led us in practice to cultivate resilience. He reminded me it’s not a trait you either have or don’t. It is not toughness. It is not the ability to push through. It is something much more alive than that: the capacity to be moved by life and return to yourself. To be knocked off center—by grief, by conflict, by overwhelm, by joy—and to find your way back. Not perfectly. Not immediately. But reliably, over time. Resilience is not the absence of being shaken. It is the practiced ability to return. And that return is not a mental decision—it is a somatic one. The body knows the way back. We practice so that path becomes familiar. Within the Neuro-Somatic Integration™ Framework, we understand resilience as a nervous system capacity—not a personality trait, not a mindset, and not something you perform. It is built through patterned, rhythmic, embodied practice. It is built by presenting moments of joy and how they felt in your body,. By recalling in sensation the memories of those moments. It is not toxic positivity it is remembering viscerally authentic moments of joy that help us navigate day to day. Tes talked about resilience as a spring rather then a bucket and our somatic practice is to identify the blocks to resilience and to clear the path for it to flow in ways we can return to over and over again. 🌱 Micro-Practice: The Joy That Lives in Your Body Rather than a centering exercise, it becomes a guided somatic resourcing journey — walking the reader back into a real memory of joy through each sense, in sequence:

There is something profound about this time of year. For those of us woven into the rhythm of schools, the end of a school year is not simply a stopping point — it is a completion. And completion is one of the most underrated gifts we are given. In the Strozzi model, there is a cycle that maps beautifully onto the life of a school year: Awakening. Increasing. Containing. Completion. We ride this arc together every year — and then, if we protect enough space, comes the reimagining. This is where creativity lives. Where renewed energy finds its footing. Where hope returns with more depth, informed by everything we've moved through. I find myself in this rhythm personally, too — parts of my life completing, others quietly awakening. And I'm trying not to rush past the endings to get to the beginnings, but let the completion be complete. To every educator, student, and school community arriving at this moment: you made it through another full cycle. Rest. Reflect. Let it land. The fall will come. And you'll bring something new — because you took the time to close this chapter with intention. Here's to honoring the power of completion. In the chat share how you are reflecting or reimagining over the summer? How does rest support your practice as an educator?

Rooted community 🌿 I’ve been holding something with me since Saturday, and it feels like time to share it here. Saturday was my 56th birthday. I spent it in deep practice and community at the Strozzi Institute — that particular kind of immersion where the body is organized through rhythm and repetition, where you arrive as one version of yourself and leave as something slightly different. Somewhere in the middle of feeling into my commitment and my dignity, something landed in my body that I’m still learning how to hold: My time has come to be an elder. Let me say what I don’t mean. I don’t mean old. I’m not stepping out of vitality, or aliveness, or the rising energy of spring. I’m not handing in my badge or going quiet. What landed wasn’t an ending — it was a role. A different way of holding the work, the tale, and all the wisdom that’s been gathered over decades of practice, mistakes, returns, and refinement. Elder isn’t a stage of life. It’s a posture. A way of standing in the body and in the world that says: I have something to offer, and I no longer need to prove it. What I’m noticing is a shift in the quality of my pursuit. For most of my life, I’ve been chasing — chasing more capacity, more clarity, more credibility, more enough. There’s been beauty in that chase. It’s what built this work. But somewhere on Saturday, in practice, my body offered a different invitation: You’re allowed to slow the pursuit. You’re allowed to feel enough. That doesn’t mean stopping. It means a shift in posture. From striving to sharing. From accumulating to offering. From leading every charge to holding steady so others can take the helm. The work doesn’t need me to push harder. It needs me to stand here with what I’ve gathered — the tale, the practice, the long arc of return — and offer it. Within the Neuro-Somatic Integration™ Framework, Rooting (formally regulation, more on that change to come!) is the capacity to synthesize internal sensations, emotions, and thoughts with external cues — to hold complexity without collapsing and while staying connected to ground. Elder energy, as I’m feeling into it, is rooting in its most mature form: the body’s capacity to hold the joy and the pain at the same time — to celebrate a birthday in a fractured world, to laugh fully in a season of grief, to keep speaking honestly to inhumanity while refusing to let go of our humanity.

Hello, Rooted community. 🌿 Something has been sitting with me this past week, and I want to bring it here because I don’t think we talk about it enough. We’ve gotten really good at teaching regulation tools. Educators, therapists, counselors, parents—we have a beautiful, growing toolkit. Box breathing. Bilateral tapping. Five-senses grounding. Cold water. Co-regulation walks. These tools work. The science is sound. But here’s the question that’s been catching me: What are we using these tools to do? Because there’s a difference between using a regulation tool to stay with what we’re feeling and using a regulation tool to get away from it. Regulation is not the absence of distress. We don’t center to be calm. We center to be present and organized enough with what is, so that we have more choice. When we use our tools to override what’s surfacing—to push through, numb out, or skip past the hard stuff—we may feel better in the short term. But we have unintentionally interrupted something the body was trying to complete. Grief that wanted to move. Anger that needed witness. Fear that needed acknowledgment. Tears that were already rising. The body keeps the score not because it’s stubborn, but because it’s wise. What doesn’t get felt and expressed in a regulated, resourced way doesn’t go away. It goes underground. And from underground, it shapes our reactivity, our relationships, our sleep, our sense of being alive. This may be the most important distinction in nervous system work: we don’t regulate away from our experience. We regulate with it—so we can stay present long enough to let it move, complete, and integrate. The Neuro-Somatic Integration™ Framework reminds us that regulation is the capacity to synthesize internal sensations, emotions, and thoughts with external cues—allowing for greater choice and flexibility in how we respond. Regulation is not the same as calm. It is the same as presence with capacity. So this week, the invitation isn’t to skip the tools. They matter. The invitation is to ask, gently and honestly: Am I using this to come back to myself—or to leave myself behind?

Happy weekend, Rooted community. 🌿 I’m a mother. A daughter. A daughter-in-law. And as Mother’s Day rolls around again, I’m keenly aware of how complex this day can be—for me, and for so many of us. It can stir up grief. Longing. Regret. Discomfort. And there is space here for all of it. I also want to offer something else: mothering is more than being a mother. We can mother our own inner child. We can lean on Mother Earth and the steady holding she offers. We can listen to what our body is asking for as we navigate whatever relationship we have—right now, in this season—with the powerful energy of mothering and being mothered. Many of us are carrying losses, distances, or complications around mothering. And alongside that, we can still extend mothering—to ourselves, to each other, to the land beneath us. Both can be true at the same time. This year, with Gus and Izzy moved out of the Bay, my mom across the country on the East Coast, and real complexity with my mother-in-law right now, I’m in a strange in-between feeling. Today I’m heading out with a friend who has her own complicated relationship with this weekend. We’ll mother each other a little. We’ll let the land hold us. That feels like enough. Within the Neuro-Somatic Integration™ Framework, co-care doesn’t only flow downward from mother to child. It moves laterally—between friends, between strangers in shared moments, between us and the natural world. When the relationship we’re “supposed” to lean on is unavailable or complicated, regulation can still come from somewhere. Wherever you are in this, I invite you to share what feels generative. 🌱 Weekend Micro-Practice Take a few quiet minutes this weekend—ideally outside, with a hand on your heart or your feet on the ground—and let these questions land. Where do I most need mothering right now—and what part of me is most able to offer it? Is there a place on the land—a tree, a trail, a patch of sky—that feels like it holds me, even just a little? What does my body need today that has nothing to do with productivity, performance, or anyone else’s expectations?