Threshold

Today in yoga, Tahl shared a few reflections that have stayed with me.

She spoke about the New Year.

About how the 31st of December is, in many ways, just another day. A date in the calendar. And how easy it is to get swept away by the hype around it, as though something must happen simply because the number changes.

And yet, there was something else named.

That there is a collective energy on this day. Because so many of us, at the same time, pause. We reflect on the year that has been and the year that is coming. Some people set intentions. Some make vision boards. Some quietly sense into how they want to move forward.

What stayed with me was the emphasis on inward manifestation.

Not the kind that says I want to manifest this or that, but the intention we hold inwardly, toward ourselves. With compassion. With courage. With honesty.

In my work, and in my own life, I see this again and again: the inward journey is often the hardest one. And also the most rewarding.

Going inward means meeting what I sometimes call the inner family. All the parts that developed early, often in response to experiences we didn’t yet have the capacity to fully understand.

There are no bad parts.

There are only parts that formed very early, when the brain and nervous system had grown only so far, when understanding was limited, and when survival mattered more than meaning.

When parents separate, for example, a child doesn’t understand the complexity of adult relationships. At that age, everything is self-referential. A six-year-old doesn’t think, this is about the limits and struggles of my parents. A child thinks, this is because of me.

Dad rejected me.

Mum rejected me.

I did something wrong.

I wasn’t enough.

That logic makes sense at that developmental stage. Children are meant to be self-referential. It is how attachment and survival work.

Those understandings can stay with us.

We grow older. Our lives expand. And yet some parts remain frozen in time, still carrying beliefs, fears, and responsibilities from a much younger age. Sometimes they move through the world with blinkers on, unable to see that life has changed, that the original situation is no longer happening.

A child cannot pack a bag and leave.

And often, beneath that impossibility, there is grief, shame, or a sense of having failed without knowing why.

Only later, sometimes much later, do we begin to understand that these things did not happen in isolation. That our younger parts were not the cause. That the world was more complex than they could grasp at the time.

For me, this understanding has been a long journey.

The younger part of me is no longer in that situation. The danger has passed. The context has changed. And slowly, with support, that part can learn that it is no longer alone, no longer responsible in the way it once believed.

What we often judge in ourselves were once the only available options.

Dissociating. Freezing. Running away internally. Becoming hyper-vigilant or overly responsible. Trying to be good, or invisible, or perfect.

An adult can begin to build bridges.

Not by rejecting those parts, but by bringing them back into relationship with the rest of the system. By offering perspective, safety, and choice.

Neurons rewire. We change. Always.

Often with support, whether that comes through therapy, yoga, friendship, art, being with animals, or through something completely idiosyncratic, like going for a run, joining a Pokémon card club, or finding a place where you feel unexpectedly seen. We come to know ourselves through relationship. Most of us, at some point, need another human or a community to help us find our way back.

For me, this year and moving into the next has been very much about coming home.

About the body as home. About learning to feel safe within myself.

By nature, I’m quite cognitive and analytical. Thinking has always been a strong suit. So I’m intentionally leaning into the opposing principle, into being rather than thinking. Into noticing sensation, breath, sound, the quieter signals of the body.

It hasn’t been easy. There have been many layers to work through. But toward the end of this year, I feel as though I’m coming out of it, at least for now.

Another intention that feels alive for me is community.

Community as a place to be held. To form connections. To feel part of something. For me, that looks like yoga, perhaps art classes next year, small, human spaces.

Later, sitting in traffic, I found myself reflecting more.

Driving feels almost hypnotic to me. The body knows what to do. Muscle memory takes over. And in that drifting, widening state, thoughts arrive more freely. Like walking. Like yoga. Like breath.

So I came back again to this idea of the New Year as re-orientation rather than reinvention.

Where have I drifted from my values?

Have my values shifted?

Have I been focusing too much outward, and not enough inward?

One of the reflections that stayed with me was about letting go.

I’ve written about this recently in my post on forgiveness, about the process of loosening our grip on old hurts, on stories and emotional burdens that have stayed with us longer than they needed to.

There was also a reminder that we often imagine letting go means becoming light and floating, perpetually happy, detached from life.

But letting go isn’t meant to be that way.

It’s more like alchemy.

Transforming what hasn’t been sustainable. Recognising what doesn’t belong to us anymore, and what perhaps never did. Allowing responsibility to rest where it actually belongs.

As humans, we all develop ways of soothing or surviving. Sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes out of necessity. Different people find different paths. Over time, if those paths are used rigidly or for too long, we can lose touch with our capacity to be with the most difficult parts of ourselves.

Learning new ways of soothing, of staying present, of meeting pain rather than escaping it, often requires support. Often another person. Often community.

Healing, as I understand it, isn’t about becoming permanently serene. It’s about understanding.

Seeing clearly.

For me, that has meant turning toward the parts of myself I didn’t like, the parts I wanted to disappear or be better. And meeting them with compassion.

Understanding that my heart was never against them. It was always for them.

At the end of class, there was something simple and grounding offered: have courage during change.

Because we are always changing. That is not failure. That is the process.

There was also a reflection on learning to take care of our own needs.

When we are very young, we are not meant to do that. Caregivers feed us, clothe us, soothe us. As we grow, ideally, we are gradually supported to learn how to recognise and meet our own needs.

Because relationships are complex, and families are complex, sometimes we end up meeting someone else’s needs without knowing it. And later, there is a time to unlearn, to relearn, and to ask: what do I actually need?

And just as importantly: what can I give, and what can I not give?

No single person can meet all our needs. Not a partner, not a parent, not a friend. And when others can’t meet them, the question becomes whether we can meet ourselves there.

Sometimes that looks like movement.

Sometimes like rest.

Sometimes like a glass of wine, a meditation, a walk.

Sometimes like doing nothing at all.

Sometimes it’s simply saying, I am exhausted. I’ve done enough today.

I believe we give far too little rest to our bodies and our minds.

It is okay not to have it all figured out. It is okay to rest for as long as is needed.

Our needs change across time. Shelter, food, love, care, autonomy, connection. Learning we have choices. Learning we are allowed to need.

So as this year turns, I don’t wish certainty or perfection.

Just movement held by stability.

Strength alongside softness.

One step at a time.

And the trust that, somehow, things are figure-out-able as we go.

May we move into the next day, the next week, the next year, and into relationship with ourselves and others, with courage, trust, and the capacity to both receive and give care and support.

***

Word - Threshold

From Old English þrescold (the step at a doorway).

A threshold is the line between inside and outside, the place where one space ends and another has not yet fully begun.

It has come to mean a moment of crossing, a pause before change (where neither side is complete),and the quiet tension of standing between what was and what is forming.