You may have noticed in the last few days, weeks, that you are experiencing maybe a little bit differently, that you are experiencing everything more intensely. Maybe you are reacting in some irritable way or you see it around you.

A possible reason for this is deep global healing of the so-called survival mode, which has been very active in our collective consciousness and in our cellular memory for generations, as a legacy from our  ancestors. And the whole enormous grace of the situation is that we have the opportunity to step out of this survival mode and this constant flight and fight for life, and through that we can begin to live a fuller and more relaxed life.

And I'm so glad Silvie Šabacká accepted the invitation to do this interview. Silvie guides clients to connect with the wisdom of their body through Somatic Experiencing and helps her clients to connect with the signals of their bodies so that they can stop ignoring them, so that they can learn to understand the signals, and remove from the body anything that is preventing them from living their life fully and freely.

Silvie, can you start by introducing yourself a little bit?

Hi Žaneta, thank you for having me. This topic is really very interesting and I also find it very important to get my bearings, which is exactly what the Somatic Experiencing approach gives me. It's an approach that really understands how the nervous system works, how to know which reactions are healthy, that I'm overloaded and how to get out of it. And it's also amazing that it's a simple approach, something that we actually have in our brains. However, we are part of society so we can't quite let our bodies do certain things because it's not appropriate. And that's the hitch, we're not in the wild, we don't have the full freedom to let our bodies express and experience fully in the way that nature has provided.

We need to have a very good understanding of what our body needs and what we can provide within social norms, so that it can do its job and we don't carry the stress on and we can really put all the difficult experiences behind us. Which is the main pitfall with any stress, and when we don't do that, we stay in the activated mode because there hasn't been any release.

You call this activated mode a survival mode. And when there' s too much of activated mode, there can be a shutdown. We're not enjoying anything, we're very tired and worn out. I'd like to add to what you said at the beginning, that someone may notice a lot of activation and that they are experiencing more fear or emotion, and someone else may simply at home, listless and not knowing what to do. And that‘s the nervous system saying hey, there's so much activation that I need to shut down. It looks so diametrically different that it seems like they're different things, but it's basically a reaction to overload.

Thank you so much, Silvie, for introducing yourself and your work. Thank you for mentioning the other side of the same coin, which is that it's not necessarily just the activity, the urge to escape from myself, in whatever way. Whether through big purchases, watching videos, often through exercise. Also, for example, work that I would normally enjoy and do with pleasure and peace of mind, I suddenly do under pressure to perform.

Thank you for adding that it can also be the other way around, that it doesn't have to be an urge to act, but quite the contrary. 

And I would like to ask you, Silvie, to explain at the beginning  a little bit more in detail what survival mode is, how it works. If you could give us details about what the body needs, etc., so that we can get a feel for it, so that our minds can get the necessary information.

It's actually hard to describe the survival mode as something special, because we're really used to it. Like you said, it's written into our cells in a way. Our whole society is very efficient, and it's amazing sometimes how much we can carry on our shoulders, still manage it professionally, and have a family, a house to go with it. We often think that this is not within the power of one person.

And this is exactly what survival mode does. It's a reaction of the nervous system - something is happening right now and you have to turn on all your powers. And once all my powers are turned on, I'll achieve hyper-power, but actually just for a limited time. And what's unhealthy is that we have this hyper-performance pretty much all the time. For some people it can be survival mode? I mean, I live like this all the time. It’s important to say that we're so used to it that we may not even realize we're in it.

Would you please tell us, Silvie, the difference between us and animals? We humans are in this mode more or less constantly, we may not even realize it anymore, and then we get into a stage where it's actually unhealthy. If we compare ourselves to animals, beasts, which act more naturally in this regard, what does a healthily integrated survival mode actually look like?

I immediately pictured a hare. It has longer hind legs to produce enormous energy to run and jump. They showed us a video in Somatic Experiencing trainings and I really couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the hare jumping 3 meters. If a predator is chasing it, its hind legs do the job for the hare. And that's exactly what survival mode does. The hare was indeed jumping and running, then it managed to get into a wetland where the predator lost track.

So what exactly is the healthy response? How is it integrated? It's very important to point out that this very powerful and activated mode has an end. I would say a happy ending. So the hare stops running and says yeah, okay, the predator didn't catch me - and that's where most of us humans end up. Fine, the predator didn't catch me, okay, I caught the bus, now I'm going to work. But the hare will never do that. It just sits there, droops its ears and keeps breathing trying to recover. It gives its body some time, because when the hare was in danger, its body released adrenaline into its blood to get into hyperdrive. Now it's waiting to catch its breath, and in the meantime, performance and especially stress are waning.

The hare often shakes during the process and thinks, gee, I almost got caught. This is the kind of thing we don't allow ourselves. When our hands are shaking because we're nervous, we don't let our bodies do that because we‘d show our weakness. But we actually don't let the body work off stress. When we're stressed, we don't even go to the restroom and let our body shake for half an hour. And the rabbit won't do that because it doesn't care what anyone thinks about it’s body shaking. So it just sits there, waiting, breathing and lets the body shake. Then comes this phew, and that's when the work ends.

That's when we'd say, yeah, okay, that's enough. But we still need to counterbalance. When I have given a hyper-performance, I eat well, crawl into the den, sleep, regenerate, so that everything harmonizes. Basically, the hare needs as long to recover as it was running and maybe three times longer. It's only when it's all done like this that we can say it's integrated.

I mentioned two moments when we say to ourselves that it is good, but it is not good, there is still some tension left in the body that makes us go into action to work off all the tension at the end of the activity. But we actually stop everything when the action is over. And then we are like a hamster in a wheel, always running, but never happy and never able to rest. It actually manifests itself when we sit down, finally start to relax – and we feel guilty. That's what happens when survival mode is still on. The body keeps pushing us to take action and work off stress, but if we ignore those two phases at the end, it becomes a vicious cycle.

Survival mode is a very functional mechanism that we have developed, as I mentioned, over the last few generations. However, it's a mechanism as old as humanity itself, and in a way it's an evolutionary thing that has helped us survive as a human race. But we lead a social life, where our body isn't so involved in life, we don't listen to it, we don't follow the signals that it gives us, we've actually left out the last two phases of the three-phase process and we're just stuck in the first phase. 

During the war and after the war, our ancestors were guided by the motto we can do it, we will activate our powers. The following generations, even our mothers, dragged their children under their arms, bags from the shops and in the evening after working in the factory they still went to cook.... for their husbands.  It added up and our generation's internal system no longer remembers or knows that there are still these two follow-up phases.

Like you said, we just keep adding and the moment we should be cutting back, it still forces us to be active. In the evening, I sit down in front of the TV and I have to at least knit or crack nuts or do something because I don't really remember how to rest, how to relax, feel relief, that phew, so I've run, I've survived, the mode is over, I'm safe and I can relax. We spend a lot of energy to make huge effort, but then when we don't gain the energy back, of course we miss it.

I realized, as you were talking, that actually if the release never comes, we never have access to those resources, whether it's intuition, our energy source, vitality. Nowadays, we keep talking about boosting our immunity, but our immunity is actually extremely weakened by this constant run in a hamster wheel, because there's never been any really valid way to regenerate it. We've said we've been doing it for generations, we don't even realize that right now I'm like a hamster in a wheel. So how can I recognize that I'm just running for my life, I'm just like the hare, trying to escape danger?

The quarantine in the Czech Republic and the whole world, is a mercy. There are a lot of things we can't do now, and even if people were used to somehow release the tension, like going out to play sports, go to the sauna or get a massage, they really can't do that now. And it might cause them even more stress. So how can they tell?

It's quite simple now. The moment the quarantine started, a lot of people got really upset or scared in some way, or they feel like there's no way they can stay home and it's terrible, what they're going to do at home. Just the fact that these people, who are extremely overstressed, are activated when someone from the outside tells us to stay home and sit on our asses, shows that they can't keep calm. And that's how you can tell because, yeah, I can give a great performance and I can go on but I can also be completely still, quiet, rest and not have to do anything at all. Just wander in nature, look at trees, listen to birds, and not feel like I'm working at all. To just sit with my kids and go oh, that's nice, ahh, so that's what you did and how did you do it? and just be with them, be present here and now. And we're not able to do that, that sitting, when there's always something going on. Survival mode is really created by nature to save us, and it's the most necessary, the final option.

The ultimate one.

Yes, ultimate, that's the word. And it means that certain body circuits are shut down so that energy can build up in the body so that we can escape, defend ourselves. It means that some things work less and work worse, and in some areas the energy doesn't flow at all. And when I need my immunity to be strong and healthy, I need that energy to flow beautifully throughout my body and this only happens when I'm relaxed. This is the key.

Even when I guide my clients in scar care, it's pointless to massage your scar after any procedure or fall, if you don't put that space in there where it doesn't hurt anymore, the wound is healing. Letting that tissue work the stress out and feeling yep, that's nice. I like to surround myself with soft comforting things. I'm a little cold right now, so I've got this fuzzy blanket and that's just what a wound like that needs, to be wrapped up like that.

I think that the words softness, tenderness, gentleness, slowness are important. When I tell someone to stroke themselves, they do it quickly. And when I say slow down, they're not able to do it, it's so hard for them. And that's how I can tell that they're always urged to do something and they're not able to relax. So what? It's Sunday, I'm not doing anything. I'm fine. And if I can't do that, then in life and in this particular period of quarantine, it shows in my ability or my inability to adapt. To adapt flexibly, to respond to new conditions.

Especially we, Czechs, like to grumble and instead of saying, yeah, there are these limitations but  I can still move, and let myself move and use the one gift that is still left, we'd rather still grumble about how terrible it is.

We were talking about the quarantine, the current situation, which is a rather nice trigger. It's basically an intervention that has come into our lives and brought about a lot of emotions. Whether it's just anger, fear of illness or fear of the limitations, of where it's going to lead, of what we're going to live in the future.

And I wonder what activates survival mode. Even though we're quite used to it, suddenly there's this wave of oh my, what am I going to do, I have to save myself quickly, I have to run away from this danger, and it triggers compulsive need for our activity even more. What is actually happening in the body in that moment?

We're all unique and I can't generalize and say this is the trigger. In fact, our body is great. It has senses and it perceives, it can see, hear, smell. There are even sounds that can trigger a reaction and it surprises us. And similarly, somebody may come from the left side and since I had been hit by a bike from the left side before, for example, and I haven't overcome the experience, it will startle me more than if somebody comes from the right side. Our personal story and the trace that is already written in the body have a big influence.

But if I were to speak in general terms, from a neurological point of view, we can simplify the brain into 3 parts. The frontal part is the neocortex, where the newest, youngest part of the brain stem is. The neocortex, that's our thinking, our ability to see, analyze, calculate, the seat of logic. It's basically our thinking part. It's like a computer. Then there's the limbic system, the center of emotions, social interaction, the ability to respond.

At the very beginning, there were reptiles, and they only needed simple reflexes. And that's the back of the brain stem, which is the center of our reflexes. Car horn honks, I jump. Or I put my hand on a hot stove and I flinch, and by the time the neocortex notices the stove is hot, my hand's already away. This center has to act very quickly because it's about survival in the wild.

When mammals appeared, it was important for their development that the mother was able to understand the young, how they were feeling, if they were hungry, if they needed to hide. That's why all mammals have incredible facial expressions that we observe. When I think of my cats and the faces they can make, it's amazing. And that's higher in evolution, the newer part of the brain that used to take care of social contact, so that we understand each other, with gestures and mimics. And it's still important in evolution for mom to take good care. And when an adult male or female meet, they know if there's danger and if there's someone to threaten me or not, based on facial expressions. Reptiles don't care.

Later on, the neocortex developed which starts to understand it but at the same time keeps a perspective.

Survival mode is linked to the oldest part of the brain stem. It behaves very reflexively and quickly because it has to. And it is fear that explicitly triggers it. And the greater the fear, the more it hits that I'm in danger, I have to act, so it turns on. And we're at the point where the lower part of my brain turns on and I don't actually know it, I can't see through my neocortex that my reaction is actually not at all adequate to the situation. I'm not able to stop it because it's a reflex. And it's only ex post that I realise oh my, what did I do, that didn't make any sense at all. I start feeling guilty again and I load myself up even more.

So it's a bit of a circle, I don't really understand that it's a natural reflex reaction, that something's triggered it. I feel like I've gone mad or I can't control myself. No, you can't control it. That's like trying to control the fact that if you put your hand on the stove, you won't flinch. I mean, I guess if I practiced it a lot, I could do it, but it's very dangerous. I'm actually shutting down my defense mechanism and my reflex.

I have a lot of respect for the survival mode, it's important to be humble about it because we need it and we will continue to need it. That doesn't mean that we should dump it and wipe it out now, but that we should just step out of it, rest, and when something really happens, it will kick in.  It's terribly hard, so we should be very compassionate about it. Because when we're in that mode and in the constant activation, we're not able to do that in quarantine.

I'm glad you said that it's not about getting rid of the mode of fighting to survive, about erasing it, but it's a functional response that we need. We just have to step out of it so that we're not stuck. So that we don't spend our whole lives running away from the predator, but we learn to integrate it, to incorporate the two remaining components - run, ok, I'm alive and then still satiate the needs of the body. I'm glad you said that it's an important part.

When you mentioned the fuzzy blanket and the softness, you started talking about the care that we can give ourselves and thus working with it. Clearly, it's hard to step out of what's been around for generations. So when I identify it, when I know I'm running like a hamster in a wheel, what can I do for myself to be able to at least flip that switch for a moment? How can I nurture myself, how can I begin to practice that having survival mode constantly on is not necessary, that I can take a break from time to time?

I really like the way you talk about it. It's gradual trying for a little while each time. It's not about switching off, you can't make a radical change like that. And if I've been in a rush for 40 years, I can't meditate for 4 hours tomorrow, it would kill me. That's taking it from extreme to extreme, and the defense system decodes such an action as another threat. Often, when people know they need to rest, they'll say well I'm going to meditate, but they'll actually set time, like meditating for half an hour. What if the nervous system can only handle to rest for one inhale and exhale to begin with and not more, because then it actually starts to panic? And why? Because survival mode is very close to when it's too much, when the predator catches me, the system shuts down and I experience death.

So when the system is in survival mode, it's hard to decode if resting is death or actually just resting.  And we need the neocortex, which needs to understand what's going on and talk to the reptilian brain and say hey calm down, I know you feel absolutely terrible right now, but look, nothing happened, we're home, I'm still healthy, I've got these four walls, I can do this, I can do that. Really talk to the thing that got scared, calmly. Which is basically the first thing paramedics do with someone who's in shock.

The first thing that I find very important is to neutrally accept, with the distance of an observer who doesn't see anything as good or bad, that I'm in this mode and that now something has been triggered. And to not feel guilty about being somehow bad - because that's what I'm stressing myself out about.

That's the first step, and it‘s a very difficult one in the beginning. Just to say okay, now it's back. I'll say aha okay, now my hand's gone off the stove, now something's burned me, I'll put my hand back in, see if it's burning or not, what it feels like, and I'm actually kind of staying there for a moment and allowing the neocortex to figure out what's going on. Don't get angry at the body's natural reactions.

A client of mine wrote to me last week saying he was grateful for that. That he still gets into similar states, but he understands them now. He can say to himself aha, Sylvia says you've dissociated again, you've had a lot on your plate again, so don't worry about it, get some rest. Before, if he didn't understand, he would feel bad or he would think you're incompetent, you've got into it again, etc. Now he doesn't bother. So that's the most important stage, that there's no one there to judge it. Who would judge the nature of the body. To say aha, when I'm doing this crazy thing, I'm probably very overwhelmed. And consequently being willing to give myself some care. Because if I'm mad at myself, I definitely won‘t give myself any care.  And it's perpetuum mobile. Neutrality is the key.

Then comes a moment when I start to practice fine, so I'll try to stop for a second. And I don't say observe the body at all. I can just walk through the woods and look at the trees. If I start looking at the trees and it's good, my body will relax. And when it does, I'm like okay, I’ve taken my dose of rest, I've taken one breath, and okay, I'm just going to go on. I let my nervous system get used to look, you're in the woods, you've calmed down there, you've breathed a little bit - did you die? Oh, you didn't die. Oh, so I can have  peace in the woods. And that's how I'm slowly orienting my nervous system and my whole self to when rest is death and when it's actually fine.

It sounds  crazy, but we really need to get used to goodness again, and to the fact that someone loves us, can caress us. That we can caress ourselves. We need to get used again to having a place where we can rest for a while and not really have to do anything at all.

This is a space that I create for my clients. I always tell them I'm not actively doing anything, I'm not asking them to do anything, I'm not going to lead them anywhere, I'm just going to prohibit activations that are not good for them. So there are situations where I say no, we're not going there. Sorry. And I'm strict about it. I just don't let the nervous system add fuel to the fire. I'm watching it, and I'm also creating a space where they can let go. What sometimes happens is that when they relax, the stress works out, the body starts to shake. It sometimes scares people. If they, however, take a homeopathic dose of rest, they just inhale and exhale once, then the big release, the big shaking can't come. The more rest I get, the more release comes. If I meditate for an hour, it makes me pretty sick. What we need is gentle dosage.

I really admire Somatic Experiencing as an approach - and its founder, Peter Levin - immensely for something I actually haven't found anywhere else, which is respect for my capacity. And when I'm a turbo-charged person who's in a rush, I can't just stop, I only have a thimbleful of rest. And no one tells me work harder, do more, you have to have a bowl to calm down. No, it's a very respectful approach, where we look for what the client's capacity is. We measure it by guiding the client into relaxation and finding out, tracking, how long the nervous system is able to stay still. If it' s still working hard, I know there's only a trace amount of that stillness and I'm certainly not going to lead it into a half hour meditation. And we train gradually.

I have an amazing client who wouldn't sit still, she got sore there, she got sore there, and we progressed slowly. OK, now it hurts here. I'm just going to look at it a little bit, it stings. Okay, okay. And now it hurts there, so I'm going to look over there. That's exactly the moment, I'm going to examine it a little bit - does the stove burn? I'll just make it a little longer. That's how I start to create that space. And now she can sit on my bean bag chair for half an hour, happy. And I always say to her "So much work, what a huge change.“

This is really important. First of all, not to beat myself up for reacting like that and say, oh, I must be very overwhelmed. Secondly, to respect that I can't rest for half an hour, to look for a given amount and respect it. How long can I stay still? If it's really just one inhale and exhale, I'm not going to get upset and just take a three-second rest. And if I take it four times a week, I've been resting for 12 seconds. The nervous system slowly starts to get used to it. Later on, when I can rest longer, there comes a caring moment, like I said, I can snuggle down.

It's a chance to go into my space, my den, and regenerate there. And in doing so, we strengthen our immunity immensely. If we can go into that den and really rest there, regenerate tremendously, that's the best thing we can do right now. If I were to simplify it - because it may seem like a 10-year job, but I'm in quarantine right now, a very simple recommendation - go to bed early. Tell yourself if I'm really sensitive to this period, I'll go to bed early. And if you go to bed and your thoughts are still racing, artificially create the rabbit that runs, go for a run, have a fresh drink, take a shower and go to bed, even at 8 o'clock. Be aware of having got rid of something, of having released something. If you‘re afraid to run outside, run around the room or do push-ups. If you don‘t enjoy that, mop the floor, just do something active. In any case do not turn on the cell phone and whatever can build up the fear and activation that we've released with that activity.

Silvie, I have one more question I wanted to ask. Women are now locked at home with their children, 24/7, and they experience challenging interpersonal situations. My clients and the women around me often share that it outgrows their capacity, it outgrows a certain level, and they start yelling at the children like furies. And they realize at that point that something is going on, that the line has been crossed and they're freaking out, but they don't know how to take the step back. How to step out of that most frightening moment, that biggest crisis, when it leads us to the critical reaction, and give ourselves some space, some care, throw a furry blanket over ourselves. So would you have any advice, any tips for when I'm yelling at my kids or my partner, my husband, it's already happening and I'm just having that flash of realization, what can I do?

This is the exact moment when I realize dude, I'm overwhelmed. It means get out of the situation immediately. If I'm in a room where I'm dealing with kids not listening or making a mess, I go to another room.

Even now, when I'm dealing with my daughter's learning, she gets upset that she's not doing well, I tell her to put on shoes, face mask, go outside. And she comes back in 5 minutes, with a bouquet of flowers she picked, and she's fit again, she's focused. Somehow she's switched outside.

So if you're getting that flash, it says oh my, you're totally overwhelmed. And this, that it exceeds some capacity of theirs, this is the edge where the reflex actually kicks in already. This was already the survival mode. And the moment I turn on or survival mode turns on, it just has to run. So sometimes you can't really stop the situation.

I tell my clients, when they ask me about this situation, when they‘ve already flipped the activation so the mode is on, there is nothing to be done. You've just turned it on, you've just set off the alarm in the whole house. It's too late to stop it. It's pointless. You need to learn to stop for a restorative preventative moment, and get used to it. If you, for example, stop in the morning to be mindful for a moment of your own body, how am I right now? hey, I feel weird, you'll be more sensitive to the kids and you can think about whether you‘ll go into some of these interactions and whether you‘ll go clean the room with them now or put it off to when you feel more you.

There is a moment of decision. So when I hit the roof, I've hit the roof, it's done. It's wreaked havoc. And that's where neutrality helps. Oh, I've totally overloaded myself. Then I can go back like I'm watching a movie and realize when I had the first signals my body was giving me that it was getting tired and I ignored those first signals. We often do. And when we ignore them over and over again, we usually only hear those signals moments before it happens. It's still better to notice the last signals and leave before we hit the roof. And get a refresh. If I'm able to stop it, then I'm gradually able to notice even earlier signals. And that's how I keep moving on and on until I realize that three days ago I didn't say no to this and here I go.

I start to have a real dialogue with my body. And I start to really honor and respect its signals - you're tired, take a break. There is no therapy that will turn this off and it will disappear from your life and you will never get mad at your kids again. If someone promises you that, they are wrong.

I get angry myself, but when I do, I know that was a trigger, but what was the signal, what can I do? Now, the thing is, before I get mad, I tell my daughter to put on her shoes and go outside. And she goes out, I calm down, and when she comes back, the important thing is that I don't reproach her, no, we just turned it off, we erased it. And I greet her and I say: „Hello, so you've been out, how was it, what did you bring, how are you feeling now?“ And she'll say: "Mom, I'm tired.“ And I'll tell her to go to her den, sonuggle down. Or she'll say: „Yeah, I've got my clothes on, let's do schoolwork.“ And I have a kid who wants to do that thing.

But flesh is frail, and if my kid tells me she's not going to do that, even if I were a buddha, I'd get upset. You can't turn that off. But I can tell myself that I'm going to let her tell me three times, and if she tells me the third time, I'm going to do something so I don't hit the roof the hundredth time.

You've chosen a situation that happens to us on a daily basis that we blow up like that, and we can take that as a parameter of how used to survival mode we are. That sometimes all it takes is one little snip from a child and it goes boom. And that's exactly it, it's so accumulated that it only takes one drop and there's an explosion.

If I were fine, there's  this space where one drop falls, another drop, a thick drop, and more coming – and I'm still fine. And it's not that I'll stop feeling, but I'll stop having hyper reactions.

How much on a daily basis we argue with our partners, partners with each other, how much we argue with our children, shows how overloaded our society is. Extremely so. And I'm grateful that the coronavirus has stopped it, and we can finally realize jeez I was in such a terrible rush. The pace was insane, it was unbearable.

It's a great grace that we can realize this, and once the quarantine is over, we'll be very mindful of when to exercise and compensate for exercise with rest. And if life gets more challenging during the week, I'll rest over the weekend. And be kind to myself again. For example, I had a very intense day yesterday, a very joyful day, because new cooperations came up and I was creating my own things and it brought me a lot of joy. Even that is actually a kind of activation. And today, I'm completely tired. By understanding that, I know I was actually so overwhelmingly joyful yesterday that now I need to rest. So I was in the garden, kind of lazily digging something, now I'm talking to you, then I'll come home and I'll probably read, bake a strudel with my daughter and go to bed. And that's the kind of day to have after a day full of work.

I feel like all of this stuff that's going on now, even working with the fight for survival mode, is actually kind of an invitation for us to practice learning this new form of communication that wasn't handed down to us by our parents, nor did we learn about it at school. Now we have to find out for ourselves (which may be a good thing, because we are all different and we won't adopt other people's concepts; instead we have to make our own way) how the body actually communicates, how it sends signals.

It's a way of kindly caring for ourselves, because there's not much room for kindness in action, there's pressure and delivery. And suddenly, there is actually some care, to indulge in something, to be at peace, to be relieved, that requires a kind approach to oneself, a loving approach. But we're still on the run.

I feel it's a very loving process of learning that most important communication that we have in life, communication with our own body that gives us signals. And to accept the invitation into the space of that gracious life with myself, not the space of a life where I disregard myself.

I'd like to ask you again if you can tell us at the end if the audience wanted to work with you or the system or wanted to know more information, where and how they will have the opportunity?

Thank you very much. I find it nice, as you said, to accept that invitation to care, to a space, to have a loving approach. For a very long time, I've been trying to find a name for what I actually do. I've found that that's actually the main thing, the invitation into some space where I don't really need to do anything. Even if it's just for one inhale and exhale. I can blow away for a little while.

A client of mine once told me that he found a sanctuary with me. And that gave me a name for I do. So I would like to invite all viewers to begin to create in their own homes, in their own dwellings, that sanctuary that they'll invite themselves into. This is the most important thing.

And if they want some inspiration to do that, I decided to start an open Facebook group - Silvie Šabacká's Sanctuary - and you can find there insights that come after some of the meetings. I often explain something to people and then I think wow, I said this so well, I'm going to send that inspiration so that people know how to grasp it. And because we're all different, there's no one-size-fits-all guide. It's a space where I can tap into, I resonate with this, I could try it out.

And that invitation is not just to a fb group, but it goes hand in hand with a request for everyone to start creating a sanctuary at your own place. And when we create sanctuary for ourselves, we will be instantly more loving to our children. Our children won't have to run away from their homes, but they will have that sanctuary next to us. We will transcend the pattern of constantly running away from our homes because we have nowhere to hide.

Thank you so much, Silvie, for the interview, for all the information that you shared, I believe it was very useful, I believe all the viewers found at least one essential piece of information there for themselves. And thank you for the beautiful invitation to find your own sanctuary whether it be physical, in your own space, or in your Facebook group.