When the Familiar Comes Calling

What was happening? I had grown, worked on myself, moved on.

The unexpected nature and proximity to him triggered an internal battle.

My body innately started running an old narrative. One that is spoken in bodily sensations — I felt a flutter in my chest, an impulse to lean forward, a quickening of my breath, a rush of energy.

But, I knew better.

A quiet but palpable tug-of-war began, between my young, conditioned self – still drawn to his familiarity, “familiar once meant safe” and the older, wiser self “my preservationist” who learned the art of discernment — the part of me that knows how to identify and track threat in real time.

My nervous system wasn’t being logical, it was being safe — following old wiring that once helped me survive, but no longer fits who I am today.

I couldn’t rely on that wiring anymore — it was familiar, but no longer trustworthy. Survival had shaped it, but discernment was now here to guide me.

Old Wiring Meets New Wisdom

The struggle was real. It left me uneasy. My preservationist stepped forward – stay grounded, move slowly, really listen.

This advice didn’t just come as a voice in my head. It was physically felt in my body as containment, limitation, guardedness — my breath and heartbeat slowed, I kept my distance, my voice responded but didn’t elaborate.

Wisdom was on board.

Mind you, this might seem as if this all happened in slow motion like the ending scene in the Titanic. But, nooo…the nervous system operates with lightning speed, most often outside of our awareness. So that’s why, before realizing, we do something again and again and then find ourselves scratching our heads about it afterward.

In the past, not heeding this advice had cost me time, clarity, self-trust, peace, and my health.

This process can stop you from living a full version of yourself. It can throw you off balance, rob you of peace and bait you into cycles of going nowhere — all on the premise of safety. The body truly is only set up to keep you safe based on what’s it’s been conditioned to believe. Its intent is to function as your ally, wise resource and guide. But, through no fault of its own, conditioning during formative years, lays down an unconscious template that we continue to use in the present, even when it doesn’t serve us.

Chemistry or Conditioning?

Often, we mistake these instinctual sensations in romance –- that feel magnetic — for chemistry. That spark isn’t always true chemistry; it can be a nervous system reflex. A conditioned familiarity. An old idea of safety.

Have you ever taken the time to trace what chemistry means in your body. What are the origins of your beliefs around chemistry? How did you experience chemistry in your youth? What were the examples you grew up with? What did you end of believing as a result?

In my case that meant a trauma bond — attaching to those that hurt me. Because, in my young mind the consequences of not attaching would’ve been far worse.

This Isn’t Just About Love

This process doesn’t just show up in relationships.

Because this wiring lives in the body, it doesn’t stay contained to romance — it shapes how we socialize, work, parent, heal and even lead.

We are living inside systems that endlessly trigger our nervous system without allowing the body restoration, space or perspective. Our bodies are flooded by headlines, feeds, politics, healthcare philosophy and hustle culture.

This is called dysregulation.

Dysregulation is a Cultural Condition

Dysregulation shows up in groups, families, workspaces, communities, nations -– living in chronic stress, threat, speed, scarcity or disconnection. And, then it gets normalized as ”just how life is”.

Dysregulation narrows us into reactivity. Shortening our patience, collapsing our perspective. Hijacking our choice.

It creates reactive systems across families, workplaces, healthcare, finance and institutions — systems that react to pain rather than building conditions that prevent it.

Reactive leaders do not build resilient organizations, they create burnout cultures and are often regulation failures, not strategy failures.

Regulation is NOT softness. It is a STRATEGIC advantage.

The Cost of Not Listening

Before I stepped onto this path, I was somatically illiterate — like so many of us.

I made choices that didn’t honor who I was — because I didn’t fully understand who I was.

That cost me.

In everyday life, this looks like staying too long, leaving too quickly, burning out, experiencing chronic pain or illness, shrinking to belong and silencing ourselves. Expansion or growth can feel dangerous when the body remembers that love, belonging and safety once came with conditions.

The Tool That Changes Everything

The turning point for me began with a simple tool: the pause. This is the difference between repeating and rewiring. Choice comes back on board.

The pause allowed me to interrupt the trigger of my old wiring without automatically being hijacked by it.

When I began choosing to pause. I had to sit and stay in the moment. While hard at first, the body responded. My body softened. Breath relaxed. Heart rate steadied. I had access to the full spectrum of cognition and choice.

Healing happens in that present moment. Not when we are thinking of the past or the future. But when we are sensing what is happening in the right now.

Over time, my ability to stay in the moment longer — my capacity — expanded.

Everything shifted. My system could hold polarities and complexities. This offered me the ability to observe, negotiate and decide what the right next move was. Not default to a pattern that was wired in me when I had less tools at my disposal.

Relationships became: “Do I want them? Do I feel good around them?”

Health stabilized. Decisions clarified. Uncertainty became tolerable. My work deepened.

Georgette Zacharias

Helping individuals and leaders build lives of regulation, not reactivity.

From Interaction to Connection

True connection begins with awareness — specifically, understanding and engaging with our nervous system. Understanding the role our bodies play in emotional and relational experiences. What if slowing down was the answer. Taking the time to learn what connection feels like — not just what we’ve been conditioned to believe it looks like.

The bridge between interaction and connection is built through the body — by reconnecting with our own sensations, emotions and needs. From here, our actions, words, and responses shift. We stop reacting and begin responding — authentically, compassionately and with greater relational presence.

As we connect more deeply with ourselves, we create a space for deeper and more meaningful connection with others. And so, it begins with us.

The SANCTUARY Practice

Embodied connection is a practice — one we return to again and again. Just as we wouldn’t sit at a piano and expect to play a classical piece without practice, we can’t expect to drop into relational connection without repetition, patience, and compassion.

Think of the following practice as a gentle map — a return to your inner sanctuary. A shift from autopilot interaction to nourishing, embodied connection;

• S – Simplify – Connection doesn’t always mean more. Pause the need to fix, fill space or perform. Sometimes a moment of eye-contact, a breath, or shared stillness nourishes us more than hours of conversation..
• A – Anchor – Let your body be lead. Feel the ground. Place a hand on your body – heart, belly or chest and check-in: Am I present? Is it safe enough to be real?
• N – Notice – Shift out of auto-pilot. What’s alive in your body right now? Tension? Numbness? Warmth? Simply notice without fixing — honoring what is. This helps us increase capacity for whatever arises.
• C – Curious – Be gently inquisitive. What might your inner experience be revealing? What’s needed? Curiosity creates spaciousness and interrupt habitual patterns..
• T – Tune in – Name what’s true — “I’m feeling unseen.” “I’m craving connection”. These truths often lay buried under our reactions. Give them space.
• U – Uncover – Get underneath the surface. What’s the deeper need? To feel safe? Seen? Heard? Acknowledging these needs is often what fosters connection.
• A – Allow – Let the moment be what it is. No need to push it down or figure it out. Let your nervous system feel it.
• R – Regulate – Invite coherence. Breathe. Move gently. Exhale with sound. Let your body recalibrate and integrate the moment.
• Y – Yield – Release control. Lean into rest, let the connection land. Let your body receive the safety it’s been asking for.

Safety is the soil

In a world that rewards speed, surface-level and rapid-fire exchanges and digital exchanges, this idea is radical. But this is the way we find our way home — to ourselves and to each other. Not in a giant leap, but moment by moment, breath by breath — until embodied connection becomes our new normal!

Connection is a human need and it deepens when the body feels safe enough to soften. When we tend to our inner sanctuary, safety becomes the soil And from there, true connection grows.

I am thrilled to tell Georgette’s story here today and how she has parlayed her journey into a mission to help others. Through intense schooling and practical experience, her drive to bring Somatic Therapy to the mainstream has been both challenging and immeasurably rewarding to both herself and her clients.

I welcome Georgette to my small business spotlight, and am honored to bear witness to your honest, authentic, and thought-provoking responses to your five Essential questions:

Question #1: In your own words, what brought you to this line of work?

Georgette: Personally, I was on a quest for a better life. I gave serious consideration to going back to school for social work, and took some core courses at NYU. As my spiritual growth was outpacing my academia, it became clear that the confines of social work were not where my attention was needed. I remember it distinctly, feeling like a tugging in my heart as my intuition pulled me in another direction.

From that space I researched what felt right, leading to the inexorable conclusion I could no longer ignore my body at the expense of my mind. Somatic Therapy came into view, and it was like a lightning bolt, my a-ha moment. Then my education began in earnest. The body is so much more than a vessel, it’s the “black box” that stores all our experiences. Befriend our body, and we can recalibrate the mind. How could that not gain wisdom for us?

We have to learn how to communicate with our own bodies, which is something we have never been taught to do. This is the foundation of Somatic Therapy.

Question #2: Give us some background as to Somatic Therapy education and experience.

Georgette: It is a 3 year long program, of which I’ve just completed year two, of study, that includes webinar lectures, reading, experiential homework, reflection papers, practicums working directly on people, mentor sessions and personal somatic sessions.

Certification at each level involves a minimum of 25 practice clients, with several of them being recorded and submitted to be critiqued for improvement and passing that level of study.

– Please elaborate on the three training levels in Somatic Therapy.

Level One: The overarching goal is learning how the body is a reliable resource, ally, and guide for your life and how to tune into the sensations of the body as the communicators of its knowings. Each of our bodies
communicates differently, in a very individual and personal manner based on our life experiences.

Level Two: The focus here is on tuning into the body’s emotional channel. Resourcing the body for emotional competence. Learning how to befriend your emotions and recognize that emotions are a full-body experience. It is about learning how to tap into emotions, locate where they exist, what meaning they have, and how they can guide us. Essentially, our emotions are energy in motion – Everything we are is a physical manifestation of energy.

Level Three: In level three, the body remains the resource, but the focus expands to include an exploration of the relationships, both internal and external. You will recognize and help repair core beliefs, family of origin dynamics, and other relational injuries that are imprinted on the soma and the psyche. This helps in that you determine if that automatic wiring is working for you or not, and leverage your self-awareness to change that feedback loop – changing the way you show up in your own life. This is incredibly powerful.

One interesting and important note is that we are required to ‘walk the walk’ and do the actual sessions ourselves with an experienced somatic practitioner. This parlays into empathy and understanding in sessions with clients and allows me to hold a very supportive container for what they are going through. We are better for having navigated our own emotions or experiences that may be triggered through the work. It is critical that we as practitioners are always able to hold our own ground, which allows the skills of prosody, mirroring, gentle touch, and directive dialogue to steer the session.

Question #3: What has been your greatest challenge to overcome?

Georgette: Vulnerability and authenticity. I literally had to work through layers of conditioning that prevented me from being truly present in my own life. However, this has made me a better practitioner. I am not just saying these words, I have lived them. You CAN change the way you show up in the world, but the first step is building awareness of where you are right now. Tell me what’s worse, repeating the same old patterns and showing up the same old way or spending the time befriending your body to gain new perspectives to show up in a more expanded way. I know the latter may trigger fear, but that is just an illusion. What is on the other side of that is a freedom, ease, and grace everyone should know. I can guide my clients through that process because I have done it myself.

Question #4: What has been your greatest strength?

Georgette: The fact that I have given my clients the ability to have been heard and seen in the container I provide. Being seen offers us an authentic sense of who we really are, that is a true gift. The reward to me is immeasurable in a session that is intuitive, flows organically, and provides access through our bodies for whole, authentic healing.
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Question #5: Who is your ideal client?

Georgette: I have always been a seeker, and always knew there was a healthier way to live, so I was going to do what I had to do to find it. My hope is that my passions speaks to the seekers out there, to let them know that I am here for them, have walked the path, and want to share everything that I have and am learning along the way. This is not about diagnosing anybody; this is about a collaboration for growth.

I often end my blogs with a ‘Final Thoughts and Forward Thinking’ segment. Where do you see SomaLuv and Somatic Therapy in five years?

Georgette: My fantasy: It becomes a movement for people to step into a heart-centered reality, we can be heart warriors, and unearth the power that lies within our hearts. I don’t want to discount the mind, but the heart has an inherent ability to peel back layers, thus accessing enormous potential to positively influence the mind, and by mind I refer to the “embodied mind”. There is the capacity for this beautiful dance between the heart and mind to help us step into the best, most authentic version of ourselves. From there, what can be accomplished is limitless.

Consider taking your wellness journey to the next level by reaching out to Georgette through her contact form or phone (917) 453-1830.