033 - Mini Musing: Feeling into the Tension Field
Welcome back to Threshold Moments, dear ones.
Today I’m returning to the podcast to share my experiences of the Tension Field — those moments when we set a boundary, break a pattern, or make a difference choice, even though it feels uncomfortable and painful.
Join me as we navigate the space between the familiar and the optimal, holding open the awareness that life itself is looking to move toward healing and wholeness. Then DM me on Instagram @sarahtacyt and let me know how today’s episode landed with you.
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Sarah Tacy [00:00:05]
Hello welcome, I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, the podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us. Hello Threshold moment listeners.
Sarah Tacy [00:00:42]
I am here feeling like I have been through a whirlwind of a month. I was told that Venus in being in retrograde would mean that we would visit the shadow land of our relationships and I am unsure what is happening for the next 18 months. Something about Jupiter and Taurus. My apologies to all astrology people who really know this, but that there will be a continuous refinement of how we communicate, of stepping into who we are, of breaking the binds of the things that no longer work. And I'm really feeling this in a super significant way in relationships that are near and dear. And before I was really feeling this, I was already leaning into the inquiry of the tension field and moving from what is familiar to what is optimal.
Sarah Tacy [00:01:47]
And the timing is interesting as I get to feel myself in the tension field in a myriad of different places. So I think where I want to start is some definitions and also some recognition of where I first heard these terms. I was once in the assisting role in alchemical alignment until Darden was leading. And I'm sharing this because I was an inside person. So it feels kind of like my experience and we were doing right distance.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:25]
And I won't share the whole experience, but as she was energetically getting closer to me, I just kind of had this like, yeah, come all the way into my heart. And if she asked me, is that optimal or is that familiar? And I was kind of blown away for a number of reasons. I could say it was both familiar and optimal, but I was also in this place of like rights as an empath, as a caretaker, as someone who loves to get like right to the soul of another person and vice versa. That might also just be familiar.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:12]
And so I say come on into my heart when in some situations I could be a little bit more clear with my boundaries. And in an entirely different conversation, Tell mentioned the tension field. And I want to say that she has a background in biodynamic cranial sacral therapy. And my understanding is that this term comes from there. And so as I speak about the tension field today, I would like to take permission to say that these words have had an impact on me and that I don't understand them from the same clarity and lineage of somebody who has studied and felt and experienced it from the biodynamic cranial sacral therapy background.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:59]
It was more like a term that I started to feel and sense and explore. And so just again, permission to say one, it is not mine. And at the same time, the version that I share is mine because it's from my experience. And so it might not be the most direct connection to how somebody would want it to find. So my understanding when I first heard of the tension field is that we all have blueprints.
Sarah Tacy [00:04:36]
We have what seemed to me, my teachers will never describe a blueprint. They want everyone to feel into like, what is blueprint to you? But maybe to try to give some context, like what is whole and healthy. And for me, I like to imagine that the blueprint is not something like we would see for the drawing of a house, that it is not static, but that it might be a living document, the living possibility of health, wholeness and an ecosystem amongst ourselves and the ones that we are with. And that an imprint that may come in might be an idea that we were taught, that is something out of alignment with our soul, with our purpose.
Sarah Tacy [00:05:24]
It might be a trauma Physiology, and it can kind of like get stirred up in that blueprint. And I believe there's just this theory that if we can hold the tension field, if we can hold this space where we don't immediately try to fix the imprint, but we hold the awareness that there's a blueprint there, that life itself is looking to move towards healing and wholeness. I've gotten to experience being in a field, being in a container when a teacher holds such a space where they're not immediately trying to fix a person who is feeling out of alignment, who's feeling destabilized. But they hold this tension field and offer just the amount of resources and support for this natural healing to come through and their own insights to come through. And there is no rush and there can be like a nothing has to happen here type thing.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:33]
When I was playing with this idea inside a mastermind container in which I was just, you know, moving into this idea of the discomfort that is sometimes in the place between moving from familiar to optimal that I realize I have to get a little bit clear too, what do I even mean? Familiar and optimal? So I want to say that familiar doesn't mean it's bad. Something could be familiar and optimal at the same time. And sometimes there are patterns that are so familiar, that are so habitual that we don't recognize that they're there, and we start to have things come out sideways that are no longer serving us or the people around us.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:24]
They're often patterns that once helped us for survival that are no longer up to date. And it's familiar. And oftentimes blind spots. Not always, but can be an optimal rarely means perfect. Optimal could be that the messy gets to come alongside your attempt of communicating with love.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:56]
That maybe messy comes alongside your honesty. It comes alongside your desire to get all the links right in the emails that you sign up or send out or never make, or if you're an athlete, that you don't miss a shot or right like these could be these. Optimal is not that actually you get it all perfect. It might be that all of you gets to be included and that you're moving more and more in towards what is in alignment and truth for you. I have been significantly impacted by Andis Pert's work.
Sarah Tacy [00:08:37]
I'm going to say 10 or 15 years ago I read her book Molecules of Emotion. Andis is no longer with us on this earth in physical form. And there's a part of me that's just wondering, why doesn't everybody know this book? Why isn't this foundational? And is she was the person to 1st isolate the opiate peptide as I remember.
Sarah Tacy [00:09:03]
And what she began to discover was that we have a non local brain that all through our body we have these neurons and that each neuron has millions of receptor sites. And that these receptor sites are not actually like a lock and key, but that the receptors, you can imagine a neuron and almost like little doors, but again, not in like a certain shape, but a little door that would say like, welcome this party's a Latin dance party and welcome this party is an art party. And, you know, like each, each door, each receptor is looking for something or welcoming or vibrating in a certain way that would then attract A ligand, a protein, an amino acid that would be vibrating just the right way. I like to imagine it as a dance that sounds like, oh, you're my dance partner. And they start dancing together.
Sarah Tacy [00:10:02]
And then it's like, you know, come on in. And that there's this reception. There's not like a pushing in of the door. And when the ligand, the molecule of emotion comes in to the neuron, then it brings with it a message. It brings with it an emotion. And you will soon see how this ties into the tension field. So when I think of familiar, I think about how our cells vibrate in a certain way most days, most of the time, or we have these habitual responses and reactions to things. And instead of just thinking of our nervous system as an on off circuit, to think of these dance parties that are going on where your resonance matters, your vibration matters and what is familiar generally feels good enough. And even if your day-to-day is painful, there is what Bridget Vixens would call a body security system that would say, oh, but I can survive here. So this is this is like actually this pain is what I'm comfortable with or actually this joy is what I'm comfortable with, whatever the case may be.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:16]
So when we decide to update a pattern to go from what is familiar to what is optimal, it's not unusual that there is going to be this field this time, this space, this experience that. It's uncomfortable. I'm having to save this own information because I find myself in this field right now and all discomfort is not the tension field. I'll speak to that in a minute of like what it is and what it is not. So now imagine that your cells are saying, actually, I'm going to dance in a different way.
Sarah Tacy [00:12:03]
And now the ligand comes up, the molecule of emotion comes up and or maybe that's the one that's dancing in a different way. It's deciding actually, I have a new boundary, I have a new goal, I have a new vision. I'm unweaving myself from that thing. That was for something that's more up to date with who I'm called to be now. So one partner starts dancing differently and they no longer fit.
Sarah Tacy [00:12:29]
And there's a really big chance that in this moment, we are not going to get the oxytocin, which is the love hormone that we're used to getting. Or maybe we don't get the endorphins that we're used to getting, the serotonin, the dopamine, and it feels bad. And in general, we don't like to feel bad. And in our society, we don't have a ton of experience of having to stay with bad without having like having ways to soothe and distract, which I just talked to a dear friend and I was like, thank goodness, pursue and distract when we're about to start looping and losing it. Thank goodness for that too.
Sarah Tacy [00:13:11]
But as our capacity grows and we don't get those hormones that would tell us that we're OK, do we have the capacity, do we have the resources? Do we have the support to stay there until we start vibrating or resonating with a new dance partner that is up to date with what we are calling for? And in between place A and place B, or however you'd like to name it, there can be a feeling like an internal feeling of rejection, of withdrawal, of abandonment. So in episode 24 for interdependence, when I talked about sovereignty and being interrelational in a healthy way, how sometimes unweaving for a purpose that is truer to you and sometimes feel like a brick wall with a person that you are woven with that you could possibly be enmeshed with, which generally has a negative connotation. So it doesn't have to be negative.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:26]
I recently had a situation where somebody decided it was time to make a change in their life, and it actually wasn't because I'll just say it was time. It was like a threshold. And so really holding the space for that person to make that decision, even when I'm feeling grief, just knowing that, wow, this isn't the highest good for them. And I can hold this grief and I'm actually not going to hold it alone. I'm going to talk to a few people.
Sarah Tacy [00:15:04]
I'm going to reach out. I'm going to put my feet on the earth. I'm going to jump in the ocean. I will be OK on the other side. I believe this is for the highest good. I believe like Glennon Toyle says, there is no one way liberation and it hurts. And I want the best for this person. So in Tracy Levy's episode, I believe she talks on it about being in the kitchen like that. So Tracy Levy talks about the heartbreak of a divorce, one that she didn't want, a divorce with a man that she loves so deeply with every soul, the man that would be her forever man. And the pain of being in the kitchen or maybe being in the bedroom, these places where she's so used to his touch, to his conversation.
Sarah Tacy [00:16:01]
And when she describes me, the pain, I could just say, of course, you have cells inside your body, millions of receptors that are expecting something that is familiar to them and they're not getting it. And it is actual withdrawal. It is actual pain. That is exactly how you're supposed to feel in this moment. And as Pert says that she went into a prison and spoke to some women who had heroin addictions.
Sarah Tacy [00:16:35]
And that she let them know that their body had the ability to make those same hormones, but that when they started taking them from the outside of their body in that their inner landscape said, oh, we don't need to make this anymore. So when we break from receiving it from somewhere else, then we have to wait a while until we can start receiving it from within ourselves. Those same opiate peptides are available within us. And to me, this is the tension field, the place where we were receiving something, somewhere that helped us feel good, maybe made us feel like we belonged, maybe that we were known, maybe the situation didn't feel good at all. It could have been a really long term relationship that was ****** and toxic.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:32]
The tension field does not actually like the staying in the relationship and in most cases and kind of the numbing of ourselves in order to be able to stand the relationship. The way that I would interpret it would be that it might be as you start unfreezing from the various degrees of freeze, as you start to unthaw and you notice that you have a preference, each time you speak, your new preference, there may be this tension field. And the good news is that there's health. There's health right there in the moment that you claim to preference. There's health that you said no longer.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:17]
And when you were there in the place that wasn't healthy. There was health because that got you through it. And on the other side of the tension field, there's health as you get to know yourself better. And I realize as I'm saying this stuff, because for me, there's this like, oh, can I stay with a discomfort, that there are two important things that I want to say. 1 is about capacity.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:42]
There are times in our lives and situations in our lives, and I think Tamika touched on this a bit when she was on the podcast with Truth Aches where it might not be right timing to come out with your truth. It might not feel safe. You might like, I just think of like the days of deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep exhaustion. And that might not have been my time to claim my sovereignty like that may have been my time to use what was familiar to just get me through until the next stage. If you're curious about somatic exploration or nervous system support, you can check out the link below to make a connection call.
Sarah Tacy [00:19:31]
If you're feeling serious about it or truly curious, you can do a one off session. And because this work, especially in relationship to the nervous system, is small doable pieces over time, I would consider thinking about a one month, 2 month, or three month period of time that you might dedicate towards nervous system support. Again, you can start with a smaller step of a connection. Call if it's calling you. And so I'm not here promoting to the masses that everybody should be moving right now from familiar to optimal.
Sarah Tacy [00:20:20]
It is just seems to be in the field and like God bless you wherever you are, universal consciousness bless you wherever you are. And the other part, the idea of resources. So a really beautiful example. I asked my friend if I could share this. She shared a story with me. Her name is Katie Soul. She has an incredible clothing line and has a soul school program and is just in, I would say in this process of reclamation and has decided that she is now ready to invite an incredible man into her life. And she went out on a date with this guy who was really great. I all mean, super nice. And she was going away the next weekend.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:13]
And the man was like, great. Like, maybe I could meet you there for a few hours or maybe I could come along. I don't know the exact details. And she tuned into her center and against the familiar pattern of I don't want to hurt somebody else. Kind of like I'll deal with like, good. I mean, this is good. I can totally do good. Like, no, my new optimal is outstanding and I'll know him when my soul knows. And so I have to tell this man, you're like, you're so nice, you're so great. This isn't it.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:57]
Thanks for offering to make that drive. No, thank you. And she went home and had all the uncomfortable feelings. Oh, my God, I just really hurt somebody. And she reached out to two friends. So this is a resource. Reaching out to friends is a resource. And I've said, like, nature's a resource. Trees are a resource. And they were just able to say, like, yeah, way to listen to yourself.
Sarah Tacy [00:22:30]
It's not your job to comfort every human and make every other human feel good at the expense of yourself. And this idea that it could even be a growth edge for him to receive a no. And so it's maybe hard as you're listening to even imagine how uncomfortable that could be. Or maybe you're like, Oh my gosh, recently this thing happened and I sat in the discomfort to stay with what is. And I think I have a lot of parents who listen in here.
Sarah Tacy [00:22:57]
And so I'll say maybe a really easy example would be your child. I was just thinking of like, I went to Storyland and we go through the gift shop and it's already known ahead of time. And this actually didn't happen this time. But I will play out this scenario. You're going through a gift shop, your house is filled with stuffed animals.
Sarah Tacy [00:23:19]
And maybe you're one of those people who are like, I want like, great, bring home the memories for me. Too many Knick knacks overall, my system of it. So this could be like with food, with having a friend over with just something they really want and they really want it. And you've, you've said you're no, you've set the boundary. And my kids kind of know like after we go somewhere fun, if there's a gift shop like we can look through, we can ask questions.
Sarah Tacy [00:23:46]
Most likely we're not taking something home. It might be like my 3 year old started wanting like food at 8:00 at night in her bed and just that night when I said no oh man she was hungry. And my Mama heart just wanted to give her what she wanted. Oh I don't want you to be hungry. And we just kept clarifying like remember before we go upstairs we check in are you hungry?
Sarah Tacy [00:24:11]
Would you like to eat anything? And at 3, she could really give a fight and really scream and all I want to do is go to sleep. And but if I can hold the boundary, then she can also count on me to hold the boundary. So it's doesn't have to be a negotiation every time. It can be such clear boundaries that it's like, oh, yeah, my mom says something and she holds to it.
Sarah Tacy [00:24:35]
And it doesn't mean that we never compromise and talk through it and say, oh, yeah, that's a good point. You're right. But there is something to holding to something, even when the easier thing is just to, like, give in. Doctor Becky who might. I never remember her last name because I'm just, she's like, it's like Madonna.
Sarah Tacy [00:24:52]
She's so famous that I think everyone just knows Doctor Becky. And she has spoken before about not every time will your child be invited to the thing that they want to be invited to. And before you quickly fix their hurt feelings by bringing them to a place that's even more fun, can you sit with them? Really hurts. I've had that happen before too, and I don't get invited and I actually want to go.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:24]
Sometimes I'm not invited and I don't want to go. That feels different. I've had that happen. I've had this wanting to be a part of something and I don't get the opportunity and Ouch. And then the child gets the practice of being with feelings of discomfort.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:45]
And then of course, they can make a decision. What do I want to do now? What would fill me up now? But to first sit on the bench with them. I kind of think about all these different, like what are all the different ways that I could give examples of the tension field?
Sarah Tacy [00:26:01]
I'll say in business, the tension field might be that Once Upon a time I was an athlete, and it was just like, be tenacious. My body is there to get me to the goal, to do the thing, to work harder than anybody else. And if it got injured or if it was tired, it was an inconvenience. It wasn't a message. So I guess I'm going to go body and this will move into business.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:25]
And that was a familiar pattern. And I took it into work. And the first job I got without getting paid hourly, I was like, yeah, 40 hours a week. I'll go 60, I'll go 80 because I just am so passionate about this thing. And then, you know, and then I collapse and then I get shingles at 23 years old.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:44]
Like my body wasn't there as an intelligent receptor that is here to give me messages and so updating to include my body in the process. To include my body as intelligent, to include my body as having trillions of receptor sites that are vibrating in certain ways now becoming resonant with other people, other ideas in the field. On a physiological level, on an energetic level that is teeming with information for me that when honored, the world starts working through different laws. So in business, if I'm going to move from perfectionism from working the most hours more than anybody else to breaking myself before I let the business break, if I move from that to is it safe to go slow? Can I trust and write timing, meaning that if I'm in business for myself and I set a deadline and it feels like I'm pushing and jamming, can I actually let go a little bit and see what is right timing?
Sarah Tacy [00:27:59]
But I'm actually not going to die if I don't get it out on that exact deadline. I've watched Kate Northrop, you know, say publicly, I will release the podcast in March. Maybe it was February 1st and then maybe April and then maybe it was June and it's about to come out pretty soon. And to really just listen to the rhythm of her business, her family, her body until the right timing. And as we do that, my belief is that we start to give ourselves opportunity to run into people at the right time, in the right place and have the right opportunity come.
Sarah Tacy [00:28:39]
So transitioning though, from the familiar of work harder, or even if we say work harder, work smarter, to letting our body be a part of it and letting slow be a part of it. I'll say for myself, a super adult, sometimes I feel like I'm not going to make it. Sometimes I feel like I might disappear. And it feels like life is an experiment. So far.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:07]
I'm still here. So I'm still here. And I just got some of the like the coolest emails I opened up the other night. And I was like, is this a trick for these incredible opportunities that I was just like, like, it seems so good that I was like, is that possible? And it is.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:26]
And I think at the beginning, I just kind of put down my notes like perfectionism. Somebody in one of the groups I was talking with spoke about perfectionism. And yeah, and I think I spoke about that a bit of like, it's not saying that optimal is perfectionism. And so that tension field might be that you write a newsletter and it goes out, or you give a presentation and it's in front of other people and you slip up on your words. Or you're teaching something and you forget the next line.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:59]
Yeah. Or that newsletter goes out and there were typos. Or clearly this is all the things that I can make up that should go wrong on my end. Maybe you say the wrong thing, say something that is culturally insensitive and you didn't know and you've caused harm. To allow ourselves to be in that place where we say we're going to put ourselves out there and it's going to have impacts and it may be messy and I may get feedback.
Sarah Tacy [00:30:37]
The perfectionist might not put anything out, and if they do, it might not have the same soul and authenticity. And I'm thinking that maybe the tension field is like putting out the imperfect thing and just putting it out. Somebody spoke to the idea of like the creative life maybe sometimes being isolating or the entrepreneurial life being isolating. You know, there are some that would be called like the solopreneur where you don't have a team working with you to bounce things off of and what is familiar, what is optimal in that transition and we have friends that we bounce ideas off of. I just want to say over and over again, like inviting in this resource this other day where I don't really have today really actually went out of my window of tolerance.
Sarah Tacy [00:31:32]
And I was so happy that I have been in a field over and over again that is telling me to reach out, don't try to fix it all on my own. So the resource here and this idea of, you know, the possibility of loneliness in a solopreneur job or loneliness in motherhood, This is where I'm going to say like let's in that in that tension field of saying like, oh, this is just how it is to I'm going to change it, but I'm gonna change it without like all the effort I used to do. And is it possible? There's so many things I'm thinking of Kate Scudder's program that just released that I am no longer, you know, who's no longer to sign up for him. I'm still gonna say like the millionaire mother, that there's so many things in there that could feel so tricky because it feels so impossible.
Sarah Tacy [00:32:23]
So like lean into a possibility to have hope for something that may not work out for you. But I'm gonna try anyway. And so, yeah, whether that's friendship, whether that is that you're in the middle of a threshold moment and you're in the discomfort of moving from possible imprint to blueprint or moving from familiar to optimal, or just in the unknown and it's uncomfortable yourselves are learning a new dance and new partners will come along and new patterns will set. And just like episode 2, with the cycle of awareness, like we get to go through the whole thing until we have revelations and a new state of consciousness and then we repeat. I'm gonna end this with some of the I Wonder statements where if I were to borrow from Bridget Vicksman's the Show Me statements, Show me as many mothers as possible who are well resourced.
Sarah Tacy [00:33:34]
Show me and remind me of every time already in my life when I have Salat will place a discomfort for the sake of moving towards my truth and remind me of how I came out on the other side, happier and more joy closer to my truth. Remind me that I've done it before. Show me others who continually do that. Show me relationships where two people are brave enough to come forward and speak their truth, even when discomfort is a byproduct. Pain is a byproduct.
Sarah Tacy [00:34:19]
That it can be done with love, with consciousness and understanding that in the transition without knowing the other side, that just saying I'm going to hold this space for this unwinding, for this unraveling. Show me people who do that, survive it, and are so grateful that they chose that. I'm a Stapleton from the Nosara Yoga Institute from Self Awakening Yoga used to say the biggest intention wins out. Let me hold my intention for the highs, good for all in truth, and remember that I can stay and sustain the uncomfortable and that there's health. That there is health before there's health now there's health on the other side.
Sarah Tacy [00:35:19]
And that our bodies, our lives and the universe, this is something I want to lean into, this idea that the blueprint is there, working to help us move into it, back to it, return to it, return to health. There is an energy beyond us within us that is wanting us to move into alignment and is working on our behalf. Show me so many examples for that. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in.
Sarah Tacy [00:36:07]
It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy. It's very helpful.
Sarah Tacy [00:36:22]
You can find it at sarahtacy.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you Scroll down to the bottom subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it.
Sarah Tacy [00:36:41]
It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.