133 - Orienting: The Nervous System Tool That Changes Everything
What do a child's missing tooth, a broken steering wheel in the middle of the ocean, and nervous system regulation have in common?
In this Mini Musing, Sarah explores one of the most foundational nervous system tools: orientation.
When we're activated, our world tends to shrink. We become convinced that what's happening now will last forever, that there are only bad options available, or that we need to fix everything immediately. Orientation helps widen our perspective and reconnect us to what's true, stable, and supportive in the present moment.
Through stories of parenting, personal transformation, and an unexpected boating mishap off the coast of Maine, Sarah shares how orienting can help us move from panic and overwhelm into possibility and grounded action.
Whether you're navigating a major life transition, feeling stuck in uncertainty, or simply looking for practical nervous system tools, this episode offers a simple practice that can help you find your footing.
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey there, friends, threshold momenters. Is there a better name we can go by? Thresholders? Uh, I wanna rift a little bit today. I would like to speak to you about orienting In these Mini Musings, as always, we start to look at nervous system tools that can help us when we are in thresholds. So if you are on my newsletter, then you recently received a newsletter about me looking at the gap in my daughter's teeth.
So she lost a baby tooth. The space that is remaining is, like, three times bigger than the tooth she lost, so the space keeps getting bigger. And I said, "This is just the perfect metaphor for life, isn't it?" When things [00:01:00] we hold onto, things that are dear to us, things that eventually start wiggling and say, "Shoot, it seems like it doesn't fit anymore," but maybe you, like, don't want it to leave, or maybe it's not ready to leave, but it's, like, time for the transition, and the tooth comes out, and sometimes something comes in right away, and sometimes that gap is there for a year before the big tooth comes through.
And when the big tooth comes through, it's often not comfortable. I, in this newsletter, give a whole write-up about, like, what was that for me in my life. But this podcast is actually about orienting because when I was in this gap in my life where my old life, my baby tooth, the thing that had already grown, had already pressed through with discomfort to create the life of my dreams in my, you know, late 20s and early 30s, [00:02:00] and then motherhood happens and, and, and I walk through the different phases of that tooth, that baby tooth that I thought was my adult tooth, that was really comfortable, that I thought was doing the job, uh, falling out, and how Therese Jornlin, who is also on this podcast, who is this wise woman in our community, said to me, "You're getting your adult teeth."
I was laying on the floor. I was exhausted. I could barely get up. My bones felt tired. And I was kind of insulted. Like, wait, what? I've been doing this work for 20 years. And what she was doing was she was orienting me to a phase, to saying this is cyclical. There's a part that has fallen out, and when you get your adult teeth, it takes time, and it's uncomfortable, and they may come in crooked.
You [00:03:00] know, there may be more stages, braces. But it was an orienting moment. In nervous system work, we often use things, like if you just came out of a session where you visited a hard time in childhood, we might look around the room and go like, "Okay." Here I am July 7th, 2026. You might state your age. Be like, "Okay, I'm here now.
I'm, I'm not seven," the place that I just visited. Or if something happened that really triggered you, and you could look back like, "Oh yeah, that triggered me because this thing happened when I was 12." You could be like, "Hey, I am again 43 years old," whatever it is, right? You, you orient to date, you orient to time, you look around your space, and you see like what is stable now.
So in the most basic orientation practice of nervous system work is to literally like feel the floor under your feet, to [00:04:00] feel the stability of the desk, to look around your space, to say your name, your age, to notice stability in the base of a tree, in a rock, the frame of your window, the wall that's the same as it was yesterday So orientation brings us to time and space.
The orientation of losing the big, the baby teeth is widening my perspective. It is what Therese was doing for me in that moment, was widening my perspective from I know you think that this is hell on earth and I know you think you might be here forever, and I know that the next step is not clear, but you can see this in life all over the place.
You can see this in the way teeth form, that actually this is just part of a predictable process. This is [00:05:00] predictable
And it helps a little, right? Like in those moments, it helps a little to know this is not forever, 'cause that's how it generally feels. When we're activated, it feels like all or nothing, this is forever or needs to be fixed right now. So we orient either to time, place, age, to a bigger perspective of things.
We can also orient to notice safety. So this last weekend, we were on our boat. We have a 30-foot boat that we live on the coast of Maine, and this is kind of a big thing to do in the summer, whe- whether you're on the lake or the ocean. But we were on the ocean, which has tides, which has winds that tend to be greater than they are on the lake, which also has the possibility of being pulled out to sea or onto a rocky edge.
So there's a little bit more risk involved [00:06:00] We were two and a half hours on a drive going north up towards Camden. Like, "Oh my gosh, my mom doesn't know this yet." And my husband's steering, and the steering wheel, you just hear, like, we go over a bump, and you hear all of this metal just blop. Like, it's not a metal sound, but it just, like, shatters to the ground, and the steering wheel goes completely loose.
And w- you know, we pull back the engines, and Steve is like, "I'm gonna go try to fix this." But this is a time where I begin orienting. I begin looking around and saying, "Are we truly in danger?" So we're about 17 miles off the coast, but I can see land, and there are two islands that I can also see. We are close enough...
So this is what I'm doing, I'm orienting. We are close enough that we could get possibly to land or to an island. We [00:07:00] have a little dinghy on the back of our boat. We would make it. We would be okay. I'm noticing that although we're being moved around by the waves quite a bit, that we're not actually getting closer or further away from land or any of the islands.
Something I wanna make sure is that we're, like, not gonna actually cr- everything in Maine is very rocky, so you actually don't wanna get too close to an island. It's not like in the movies where you wash up on a sandy beach. Like, these are rocky edges, so you don't actually wanna be close to an island, too close.
So I'm like, "Okay, we're not getting closer to a rocky island." Then I start also orienting to, we could call the Coast Guard. We have cell phone service. We have a radio. We could also call Sea Tow. And so I'm checking in with my husband, and our daughter is there. And so I'm just, like, staying pretty calm.
Like, "You know what? We are actually safe." Seems really bad to lose your steering wheel when you're out at [00:08:00] sea, but actually, we have a lot of layers of possible support. It was a heatwave, so my husband's, like, down below. It's 110 degrees under there. He comes out, and he is just, like, dripping sweat all over his body, and it takes about 45 minutes until he fixes it.
And he is not a boat mechanic, but he fixed it, which is amazing 'cause I was like, "We can call for help." And it was very, very stressful for him
And I am just really grateful because, because of orienting, because of the practice of noticing all of the possibilities that show me that we are okay, we're gonna be okay, I really felt pretty calm the whole time. I will also say that childhood experiences can really affect how we orient what we pick up on and what feels true.
So as a child, there was a time where I lost [00:09:00] a bunch of jewelry that had been given to me by my grandfather and also for a 16th birthday. I took it off for practice, and then I could not find it, and I was freaking out. And I called my father from a payphone at school, and I was like, "Dad, I cannot find..."
And I listed off all the pieces. I was like, "They're all gone." And he said to me
"Are you healthy?" And I said, "Yes." "Are you safe?" "Yes." He said, "That's all that matters. Losing your jewelry is not something that we want to do, and I'm not saying it's a good thing that it happened. But what is true is you have your health. You are safe." And so while I realized the worst-case scenario here might be that the boat would go out to sea or that it would crash into an island and that would be a major financial [00:10:00] stressor
Having a dinghy or having the Coast Guard, having Sea Tow meant that we were actually going to be safe and okay
There have been other scenarios which maybe is less stressful, is like, uh, being at a big event with two hundred people and, uh, the presenter up front is having us haven, which means you hug yourself and you put your hands up and down your arms and you say, "I am safe. I am safe. I am safe." Before this, he's like, "You gotta look for signs."
And as he's doing that, he... the alarm goes off, the fire alarm. So this is where I start orienting. So before I freak out, I do question myself like, "Oh, is this me being a little Pollyanna saying I'm safe, and this is a sign that like the universe is like, 'No, you're not.'" But no, what I [00:11:00] actually do is I look around and I see this big, strong man by the door who looks really safe, and he looks really calm, and he looks kind, and he has some sort of microphone where you can tell that he is calling in to make sure that everything is okay.
Is this a false alarm? And the person up front stays calm. I see no fire. I smell no fire. And so everything that I'm orienting to tells me that this is just a false alarm, and I'm able to stay calm. And again, there may be things from times past that certain things that are small or big would set us off in a way that is bigger and more amplified than the thing that's actually happening, or perhaps just meet the moment.[00:12:00]
So I can't promise you that orienting will always help. But I would say that- The practice is as things come up, we get to say like, "Is this true? Is this really true?" We even do this in double bind work where it's like, "Ah, I have to do this or this." There's a win-lose situation. We get to say, "Oh, this is true partially.
Is it the whole truth?" And we start to orient and widen to other possibilities that could be true at the very same time. When we are in fight or flight Our perspective tends to narrow to all or nothing options that are generally lose-lose options or win-lose options, and it closes down our perspective of what's possible.
So any time we can notice ourselves starting to get activated, if we catch ourselves, like, at the early [00:13:00] stages, and whether it's, like, jumping up and down and shaking out or putting your hands on your heart and taking a breath in and a breath out, saying like, "Hey, I'm gonna orient to health. I'm gonna orient to support."
So it's not saying the thing isn't there, the challenge isn't there. There is a fire alarm happening, therefore, therefore I am orienting to is there fire? Is there a smell of smoke? Is there anybody checking in to see if there's an actual challenge or problem? With a boat, I'm not orienting just like in that moment like, "Oh, my feet are on the ground.
My hands are on the table." Then I'm orienting to Are we going adrift? Are we going out to sea? Are we going towards land? Are we going towards an ocean? Like, what is working on our behalf during this challenging time? Where are our layers of support during this challenging time? What are our possibilities?[00:14:00]
How could I reach out? So I start asking questions to widen the field of support and to widen the field of possibility. I'm orienting to something bigger. Other ways people use orienting to orient to something bigger is, like, orienting to something divine, something beyond us. Show me how this is in my greater good.
Y- how, how this is in service to my greater good. Show me the lesson. Show me... Surprise and delight me with tools I would never have seen on my own So there you have it, folks. Orientation. It's one of the first and most basic tools of nervous system work. We can orient to the group, we can orient to our age.
It's like bringing us back to here and now, as well as what other possibilities like that. I would always say in [00:15:00] yoga, can we broaden our base of support? Broadening our base of support with orientation. I hope this was helpful. Please feel free to reach out on social media. You can find me @SarahTacyT.
Leave comments, ask questions. I'm always so curious, how does this land with you? Did you use it? Did it make a difference? Does it not land? Let me know. Until next time Ooh, I forgot. Before I do until next time, I usually close with a prayer
Yeah, what feels true now as I close out with this, this reticular activating system prayer
May I also orient to self when I find myself reaching out to everybody else for information? [00:16:00] for opinions. May I self-orient. May I bring awareness back to my own body, back to my own wisdom
From there, may I remember that there are 11 million bits of information that are available to me and that I'm generally only picking up a few. So may I remember that there are probably more possibilities than I'm currently seeing
May I remember my name, all the years of experience I have, my adult self, my ancestors, those who came before me, the stable walls around me, the earth beneath me, [00:17:00] the rock that's been here for millions of years, the earth, the seasons that I don't need to control. May I see all the layers of support that are most useful in the moment.
May I orient to the bigger picture without losing the ability to stay with what feels real. Surprise and delight me Thank you