As Close As Our Own Pulse
On inhibited, uninhibited, and inhabited expression in a culture exhausted by performance and hungry for presence.
Dear friend,
I keep hearing some version of the same exhaustion.
Everything feels so performative.
You probably know the feeling before you have words for it. Someone says exactly the right thing and yet you still can’t quite actually find them inside the words. Then someone else loses their sentence halfway through. They pause and start again. Maybe their voice catches or they change their mind while they’re still talking. Nothing about it is particularly polished and yet something in you settles.
There you are.
I’ve been wondering what our bodies recognize in the difference—and why it feels increasingly important these days.
Life asks a great deal of our capacity: to hear ourselves when the world gets loud, stay inside uncertainty, and recognize an old pattern before it makes the next decision for us.
Capacity is how much of myself I can remain in relationship with while life is happening.
And the faster life asks something of us, the more valuable it becomes to know where we are when we answer.
Years ago, while working in professional theater and casting, I watched this difference play out in audition rooms. Some actors held tightly to the script. You could almost feel them checking themselves against it. Am I doing this right? Am I giving them what they want?
Others entered with enough charisma to fill the room. They seemed to abandon the script and put the character on like a spectacular coat. Then, every once in a while, something else happened.
The performance disappeared.
The script remained. So did the preparation. But the actor stopped reaching outside themselves to find the character. For a few minutes, we stopped watching someone audition.
We met who was there.
They had learned how to inhabit what they had practiced.
Inhibited. Uninhibited. Inhabited.
I know all three. You may recognize them too.
I know the feeling of scanning a room before deciding how much of myself can enter it. The sentence gets edited before it reaches my mouth. My shoulders draw in. I know everyone else’s temperature before I’ve checked my own.
Inhibition can happen when I lose contact with some part of my pulse to remain in relationship with the room.
I know the other swing too.
Something I’ve contained for too long finally gets air.
All of it. Right now.
There can be tremendous relief there.
Uninhibition can happen when I privilege my pulse in a way that loses contact with the room.
Especially after a long time making ourselves smaller, the other end of the pendulum can look a lot like freedom. Finally. I can say it.
Sometimes saying it is exactly what the moment needs. And sometimes what we were actually reaching for was much closer.
As close as our own pulse.
Inhabitation begins when I can remain in contact with what is alive in me while staying in relationship with what is here.
I am here. You are here too.
An inhabited expression might whisper or shake the room. A fierce no can be inhabited. So can a tender yes. Volume cannot tell us where someone is, friend.
Relationship can.
These aren’t identities or diagnoses. They are places we move through, sometimes several times inside the same conversation. Inhibition can protect something that isn’t ready to enter the room. Uninhibition can break open something held too tightly for too long.
Inhabitation lets what is alive in me enter the room without losing relationship with what is already there.
Pulse says: I am here. Poise says: You are here too.
Pulse is contact with aliveness—the heat in your face, the grief that takes language away, the truth your body knows before your mouth can carry it. Poise, as I mean it here, isn’t polish or composure.
Poise is the bridge between my aliveness and yours.
Pulse without enough relationship can consume a room. Poise without enough pulse can leave us exquisitely composed and strangely absent.
Inhabitation lets them find each other.
Something in us can exhale.
Getting there, though, isn’t always as simple as moving away from what has inhibited us. Sometimes we simply change scripts.
We all inherit scripts about expression. The scripts we inherit—and the consequences of departing from them—are not the same for everyone.
Be agreeable. Be quiet. Be strong.
Over time, we may begin loosening our relationship with one script only to find another waiting.
Take up space. Speak your truth. Be unapologetically yourself.
These words can open doors inside us that desperately needed opening. They can also become another mirror, another performance.
Sometimes, in loosening our relationship with one script, we find ourselves inadvertently reaching for another.
The reflection changes while the question remains:
Who am I supposed to be here?
Inhabitation asks something closer to the bone.
Where am I? And can I stay here long enough to know?
And then Tuesday happens.
Someone you love says the thing that always gets underneath your skin. You can already hear yes forming while something quieter inside you says, Please, no. Reflex knows its favorite route, doesn’t it? Appease. Defend. Explain. Withdraw. Fix. Attack. Numb.
Inhabitation gives us somewhere to stand before reflex becomes response.
The response might take thirty seconds. The second-guessing can take the rest of the night. Why did I say yes? Did I mean that? Should I send another message?
I’ve spent nights there.
Inhabitation doesn’t guarantee certainty. It gives me somewhere to return. I was there when I chose. Self-trust isn’t knowing every decision I make will be right. It is being able to find myself inside the choosing. I know what was alive in me. I know what was mine to hold.
I was there.
Perhaps this is what the practice of inhabitation gives us:
more of ourselves available for the lives we are already living.
Pulse says: I am here. Poise says: You are here too.
Inhabitation lets both be true.
From my heart to yours,
Practice Postscript
Where the letter stops being read and starts being lived.
Choose one thing in your life that is asking for a response. A decision you keep circling. Something you want to say. A conversation you need to have or a message waiting for an answer. Before deciding what to do, give yourself one minute.
Notice what happens when you imagine holding yourself back.
Where does your body change?
Now imagine saying everything exactly as it wants to come.
What happens then? Stay for one more breath. Then ask:
What is alive in me? What is here with me? What expression can remain in relationship with both?
You may discover a sentence. A no. A yes. A no longer. A question. A pause. Something you aren't ready to answer yet. The practice isn't finding the perfect response.
It is being there when you choose it.
Then return to your life. Take yourself with you.
A place to practice
It can be easier to recognize ourselves when nothing is being asked of us. The practice changes when another person is in the room.
There is someone to witness the sentence catch in our throat. To notice when something shifts before we have words for it. To remain with us while we speak, pause, reconsider, and find our way into the words.
Can I stay with myself while you are here too?
Many of us have become practiced at working things through alone—with our thoughts, a screen, a journal, or a walk.
There is another kind of capacity we can practice in relationship.
To hear yourself while another person is listening. To notice when you begin to edit what you mean. To practice the conversation before you have it. To stay with what is alive in you while amother person stays alongside you.
This is part of what we practice at The Courage Practice.
The person alongside you isn’t there to author what you find. Their presence gives you somewhere to practice remaining in contact with yourself while being in contact with another.
If you have become very practiced at finding your way alone, perhaps the next practice of courage is letting yourself be accompanied.
