Elevated Frequency Podcast Episode 57: Training to be an Awake Human
Hi Fam!
We had
The thing we kept circling back to, and the thing I haven't been able to stop thinking about since, is how almost none of what's changed between us over the years of navigating our "relationscape" came from a book.
I have the somatics training. We've both done the embodiment work, the nervous system education, the attachment-style deep dives. All of it has mattered. But the actual transformation in our partnership — the part where we stopped arguing the way we used to argue — didn't come from a chapter, a course, or a framework.
It came from the community we've attracted in Brentwood, Tennessee, and now from sitting in this room — The Belonging Circle — every Tuesday and Thursday. We get to have a dedicated space to explore the work of relating every single week alongside others who are doing the same.
This episode of The Elevated Frequency Podcast dives into the exploration we're living every day.
πCheck out this podcast episode here
What We Actually "Argue" About Now
Over the years, we've had some doozies of conversations. And through this work, the most concrete thing that's changed is the way we argue.
Before, we had what Rafa calls our autopilot arguments. Dysregulated nervous systems. The same scripts on a loop. Both of us bracing before we even knew what we were bracing for.
Now, we catch ourselves faster. We remember, mid-sentence, that we're on the same side. We come out of it more quickly, and we almost always learn something — about each other or about ourselves.
Sometimes the lesson is, that's an old script.
Sometimes it's, that hurt because I haven't actually told you what this means to me yet.
That kind of repair doesn't come from a book. It comes from being in conversations where we surround ourselves with other people who are practicing it too, and where we've gotten enough reps that the new pattern begins to live in our bodies.
What's Actually in the Room
These conversations are happening every week inside The Belonging Circle. It's a monthly membership we built — men's, women's, and co-ed circles — where the only commitment is to show up, tell the truth, and reflect each other back.
There's no guru in here.
That's the part I want to underline.
We're not standing on a pedestal saying, Here's what your body needs. Here's what's happening for you. Here's what to do about it.
I can't tell you that. Nobody can.
What I can do is share what I've noticed in my own journey and then ask the question almost nobody in normal life seems to ask:
What's happening for you?
Someone messaged me in our group chat last week asking whether they should be feeling a certain way about something.
I simply wrote back:
I don't know. How does it occur for you?
That question is the whole thing.
Most of the work doesn't happen in the answer. It happens in the space that opens after the question is asked.
What It Feels Like Inside
These calls, to me, feel like training to be an awake human, in a group.
Someone says one sentence in the room and it lands in three other people at the same time. Someone else asks the question that's been sitting underneath the surface of their marriage for months. And we all walk out of the call carrying a slightly different lens back into our weeks.
Then reality starts responding differently.
The shift isn't that we suddenly find the right lens. It's that we become aware we're looking through one.
Most of us spend our lives assuming our perception is reality. Through this work, we start to notice that what we're experiencing is happening through a lens—one shaped by our history, our relationships, our beliefs, our nervous system, and the stories we've collected along the way.
And the same is true for every other person we meet.
Not so we can judge their lens. Not so we can make ours wrong. Simply so we can become aware that a lens exists at all.
Because once we see it, new choices become available.
We can choose how we act. We can choose how we respond. We can become curious instead of reactive. We can realize there may be more than one way to see what's happening.
I'll give you a small example.
Today at the gym, I wore a different hat. For years, I've worn the same yellow one with a smiley face pulled down low — don't talk to me, I'm here to lift.
Today I wore one that simply said Lover across the front.
Somebody walked by and said, "You're not a fighter."
I laughed and replied, "You got it."
Same gym. Same body. Different lens. Different reality showed up.
You can't unsee it once you've seen it.
That's the part nobody can prepare you for.
Once you realize that perception is participating in the reality you're experiencing, life becomes a very different conversation.
Why I Built This
I grew up in a house where some things were kept so secret that everyone in the room felt them anyway. The elephant in every room. The unspoken thing pressing against the walls.
Nobody talked about it directly, but everyone organized themselves around it.
Looking back, I can see how much of my life was spent navigating what wasn't being said. Trying to read the room. Trying to anticipate what was happening underneath the surface. Trying to make sense of realities that everyone could feel, but nobody seemed willing to name.
I'm not interested in living that way anymore.
Part of becoming an awake human, at least for me, has been learning that awareness itself changes things. Not because every conversation needs to be solved. Not because every perception is right. But because once something can be seen, it can be related to differently.
Once we become aware of the lens we're looking through, we have a choice. We can continue repeating the same inherited patterns, or we can become curious enough to create something new.
What I want — and what we've built — is a room where every conversation is welcome. The hard ones, the beautiful ones, the ones in between, the ones you didn't think you were allowed to have out loud.
A room where nothing has to be hidden in order to belong.
A room where we each build the personal trust to hold our own depth, and then the communal trust to hold one another's.
That's the work.
What's open right now
Next week we're running both our women's call and our men's call — and you can try either of them for free.
Drop in for free to the men's call -> here
Drop in for free to the women's call -> here
If you've been wondering where you sit on the masculine-feminine map — leaning forward, leaning back, where you skip in the cycle of emotions — we built a short quiz called The Belonging Depth & Direction Quiz that will tell you where you are right now. It takes about five minutes.
And if you're already ready to be in the room every week, the monthly membership is open.
Join the weekly human conversations -> here
I'll leave you with the thing Rafa said on the podcast that I keep coming back to:
Think about the most important people in your life. Now think about the day before you met them. If you weren't open to meeting them, you would have missed out on every person who matters most to you now.
The door is open.
With you,
Shannon
