In my previous This Neuro Life article, I reviewed Sensate, a device that rests against the sternum and delivers gentle vibrations through the chest. You can read the free article here:

Using it reminded me of a vocal exercise I’ve practised for several years, which creates a surprisingly strong sensation of vibration in much the same area.

It also raised an interesting question: could we use our own voices to create a calming experience of vibration, without the expense of a device?

The physiological mechanisms may be a little different, although the felt sensations have some similarities.

In an earlier article for paid subscribers, Can You Support Your Vagus Nerve for Free?, I explored the research into humming and introduced a gentle bee-humming practice. We looked at the relationship between sound, breath, vibration and the autonomic nervous system. You can read the article here:

In this paid companion piece to This Neuro Life (Part 4), I’d like to share a slightly different vocal exercise that I’ve found particularly helpful during periods of stress.

It’s called the puffed-cheek O.

Read more

This Neuro Life is a series exploring devices, medications and other approaches to supporting neurodivergent wellbeing, alongside neurodiversity-informed mindfulness and body-based practices.

Previously in the series:

Imagine a cat curled up on your chest, purring contentedly. There’s something about that gentle, rhythmic vibration that can feel deeply soothing, particularly when the cat is warm and settled and seems to have no intention of moving.

Now imagine a small, black, pebble-shaped device that can create a similar sensation, accompanied by immersive soundscapes designed to help you relax.

That’s probably the best way I can describe Sensate.

I’ve owned mine for several years now, having bought it long before I started using medical cannabis, when I was looking for ways to help my nervous system settle. I remember it being quite an investment at the time, although I managed to get a deal by buying two: one for my husband.

I used my Sensate regularly to being with and found it helped me to feel calm and rested. Since then, my relationship with Sensate has been rather intermittent.

There have been periods when I’ve used it regularly and found it wonderfully relaxing, and others when it’s remained in a drawer for months while different things in my growing collection of nervous-system tools have taken precedence.

It’s very helpful at points when I don’t have the energy to meditate but need to access a deeper sense of calm.

And I always take it on holiday.

As I’ve been thinking about Sensate again, and what it actually does, I’ve found myself wanting to get it out of the drawer and start using it more regularly.

Which raises an interesting question. What exactly is happening when a vibrating pebble on my chest leaves me feeling noticeably calmer? Is it stimulating the vagus nerve, as the manufacturer suggests, or might something else be going on?

What exactly is Sensate?

Sensate is a small, rechargeable device that rests against the sternum, or breastbone, using an adjustable lanyard around the neck to keep it in position. It connects wirelessly to a smartphone app, which offers a selection of specially composed soundscapes accompanied by low-frequency vibrations from the device itself.

The vibration patterns are designed to work alongside the music and sounds, changing in rhythm and intensity as the soundscape develops.

Sometimes the sensation is subtle, almost like a distant rumbling, while at other times it becomes more pronounced, rather like that contented cat purring against your chest.

There’s even a soundscape featuring a purring cat, which is one of my favourites.

In my experience, Sensate works best when I’m lying down, because the device makes more consistent contact with my sternum and the vibrations feel more pronounced. It’s also very straightforward to operate. Once the device and app have connected, I simply choose a soundscape, put in my earphones, press play and settle down.

The sessions vary in length, generally from around ten to thirty minutes, and I nearly always choose the longer ones.

Ten minutes might be useful if you’re short of time, but personally I find that twenty or thirty minutes gives me much more opportunity to relax into the experience. Thirty minutes is probably my ideal.

One of the things I particularly appreciate is that I don’t have to do very much, which is great for low energy days.

There’s no complicated technique to follow, no requirement to concentrate on my breathing, and no spoken meditation asking me to direct my attention somewhere specific. I can simply lie down, listen and feel the vibrations.

When the soundscape doesn’t soothe

Sensate’s app organises its soundscapes into several categories, including Nature, Space & Time, Sacred Spaces, Breathe and Somnus, alongside a section for personal favourites.

Within Nature, for example, there are recordings such as Forest, Gaia – First Garden, Solstice Dawn and Avian, with some available in different durations.

The basic app includes a selection of soundscapes, while an optional Plus subscription provides access to a larger library.

I have an MA in Sonic Art, specialising in the composition of spatialised soundscapes for multichannel environments, so I’m particularly attentive to the sounds accompanying Sensate’s vibrations - and I have mixed feelings about them.

Some are beautifully immersive. One of my favourites, Darwin’s Octopus, has an almost underwater quality, with rounded, bubbling electronic textures that I find particularly soothing. I also enjoy several of the nature-based recordings, particularly those featuring birdsong.

Others are less successful, at least to my ears.

Some compositions feel musically oversimplified and the melodies occasionally have a naive quality, as though a few notes have been picked out on a keyboard without much consideration for the melodic line.

Meanwhile, others rely rather heavily on repetitive found sounds. There’s one extended recording involving a train, for example, which I find increasingly monotonous as it goes on. I can imagine someone else finding that repetitive mechanical rhythm comforting, but it does very little for me.

There’s a fine balance, I think, between creating something sufficiently repetitive to be settling and allowing enough musical and textural variation to sustain gentle attention.

A soundscape doesn’t need elaborate melodies or frequent harmonic changes, which could become distracting in themselves, but thoughtful layering, subtle shifts in texture and a sense of spatial movement can make an enormous difference to how immersive it feels.

Sensate’s vibrations add another layer to this experience, because the physical rhythms are composed to complement the soundscapes rather than simply reproducing the bass frequencies of the audio.

I’ve also noticed similar vocal treatments and sonic textures recurring across different recordings. I suspect there’s a shared approach to sound processing and spatialisation, although I haven’t been able to establish exactly how the soundscapes are produced.

Some of the vocal passages have an almost eerie, discordant quality that I find uncomfortable and sometimes invasive, particularly when listening through earphones, where the spatial effects can feel quite immediate.

I tend to gravitate towards nature sounds or carefully considered electronic textures, and over time I’ve built up a collection of five or six favourites that I know I can return to comfortably.

That familiarity matters.

As an autistic person, I know that something marketed as relaxing can have quite the opposite effect if the sensory qualities aren’t right for me. A soundscape that feels soothing to one person may be irritating, distracting or unsettling to another.

And I think this is an important consideration when we’re talking about tools intended to help people feel calmer.

What’s happening beneath the pebble?

Sensate describes its technology as using low-frequency vibrations transmitted through the sternum, sometimes referring to this as bone conduction.

The company suggests that these vibrations help engage the vagus nerve and encourage the nervous system towards a calmer state.

If you’ve read my previous article about Nurosym, you’ll already be familiar with the vagus nerve, which plays an important role in communication between the brain and several internal organs, including the heart, lungs and digestive system.

It’s also involved in the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, which contributes to processes associated with rest, digestion and recovery.

But Sensate and Nurosym use rather different approaches.

Nurosym delivers electrical stimulation through an electrode positioned on the ear, where a branch of the vagus nerve can be accessed. Sensate, meanwhile, produces mechanical vibrations against the chest, accompanied by sound.

And although the vibrations can certainly be felt around the sternum, that doesn’t necessarily mean the vagus nerve is being directly stimulated.

The nerve travels through the neck and into the chest and abdomen, where it contributes to a complex network of physiological processes. Simply applying vibration to the breastbone doesn’t establish that those particular nerve fibres have been activated.

So what might explain the calming effect?

One possibility involves the way our nervous systems respond to rhythmic sensory input.

Predictable, repetitive sensations can provide a relatively stable focus for attention, and for some people that may make it easier to settle, particularly when the surrounding environment feels demanding or unpredictable.

Music and natural sounds may also contribute, as can the simple act of lying quietly for twenty or thirty minutes without needing to do anything else.

There’s also the possibility that the combined experience of sound, touch and rest produces something more effective than any one element alone.

It’s an interesting idea, although establishing precisely which components are responsible requires carefully designed research.

What does the research tell us?

Sensate has published preliminary research examining changes in stress, brain activity, heart rate and sleep.

In a Lisbon pilot study, Sensate reports that 24 participants experiencing moderate stress underwent a twenty-minute session, with physiological measurements, including EEG recordings using brain activity, taken before, during and afterwards.

According to Sensate’s published account, participants showed changes in brainwave activity associated with relaxation, alongside a reduction in heart rate.

The company reported an increase in theta activity and a reduction in beta activity, which it interpreted as evidence of a shift towards a more relaxed state.

These findings are interesting, although interpreting EEG activity isn’t quite as straightforward as associating particular brainwave frequencies with particular states of consciousness.

More importantly, the study didn’t include a separate comparison group listening to the same soundscapes without vibration, or resting with an inactive device.

Consequently, it cannot establish how much of the observed change was attributable to Sensate’s vibrations rather than the music, the opportunity to rest or the combination of all three.

Another small study, involving 25 adults using Sensate daily for fourteen days, reported improvements in perceived stress, anxiety, sleep and wellbeing.

Average perceived stress scores fell from 23.0 to 16.2 over the study period.

Again, that’s an encouraging result, particularly when we’re considering how participants experienced the device, but the study didn’t include a control group, and the outcomes relied heavily on self-report.

Without a comparison group, we cannot confidently attribute those improvements to Sensate itself.

There’s also a broader body of research examining vibroacoustic therapy, which combines low-frequency vibration with sound.

In one randomised crossover study recruiting 24 participants, of whom 22 completed the study, researchers compared sessions using low-frequency vibration accompanied by nature sounds with sessions involving nature sounds alone.

Participants experienced improvements in several measures after the sessions, including perceived stress and aspects of mood, but the differences between the vibration conditions and the sound-only comparison were generally not statistically significant.

That finding is particularly interesting because it raises the possibility that the accompanying sound, the period of rest or the overall sensory experience may account for a substantial part of the benefit.

Another small randomised controlled trial, involving 54 university students, found differences in certain measures of heart-rate variability between those receiving low-frequency vibration and a comparison group. However, the researchers did not find corresponding between-group differences in participants’ subjective ratings of stress or muscle relaxation. The study used a vibrating bed rather than Sensate, so its findings cannot be taken as evidence for the effectiveness of this particular device.

Heart-rate variability is influenced by numerous factors, including breathing, posture, activity and emotional state, so changes in HRV need careful interpretation and HRV is not a direct measurement of vagus nerve activity.

At present, the evidence suggests that sound and vibration may have useful applications in relaxation, but the research specifically supporting Sensate’s proposed mechanism remains limited.

What about Sensate’s bigger claims?

Sensate’s marketing includes claims about substantial reductions in stress, improvements in sleep and changes in brain activity following use of the device.

For example, the company has advertised a 48% reduction in stress over 28 days and an average increase of 55 minutes of sleep per night.

Those are striking figures, particularly for anyone struggling with persistent stress or poor sleep.

However, it’s important to distinguish improvements reported by participants from effects demonstrated in controlled clinical trials.

Small studies without appropriate comparison groups cannot tell us whether the same improvements might have occurred through listening to relaxing music, taking regular rest breaks or simply participating in a daily relaxation routine.

Nor do changes in brain activity or heart-rate variability establish that the vagus nerve has been directly stimulated.

So while I find some of the preliminary research encouraging, I think the stronger claims deserve considerably more scrutiny before being accepted at face value.

How does Sensate compare with Nurosym?

I’ve been using Nurosym regularly, generally twice a day, and have previously written about my experience with that device and the emerging research into transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation.

Although both products are marketed around nervous-system regulation, they use different technologies.

Nurosym applies electrical pulses to a specific location on the ear, while Sensate combines low-frequency mechanical vibration against the sternum with specially designed audio.

That difference matters when evaluating the research.

Evidence concerning electrical stimulation of an accessible branch of the vagus nerve cannot simply be transferred to a device that vibrates against the chest.

I haven’t found a controlled clinical trial directly comparing Nurosym and Sensate, so we don’t currently have reliable evidence establishing whether one is more effective than the other for relaxation or other outcomes.

From a practical perspective, though, the experiences are quite different.

Nurosym is something I use as part of a regular routine, whereas Sensate feels more like an invitation to withdraw from the surrounding environment for a while, particularly when I’m lying down with earphones and a soundscape I enjoy.

And perhaps that’s one reason I’ve continued to return to it.

What has Sensate actually done for me?

When I use Sensate with a soundscape that suits me, and give myself enough time to settle into the experience, I generally finish feeling considerably calmer.

That’s been my experience over several years.

I particularly enjoy the longer sessions, when the vibration and sound seem to become part of a continuous sensory experience rather than something I’m actively paying attention to.

There have been occasions when I’ve used it more than once in a day and found the physical sensation beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable, so I generally limit myself to one session.

Although Sensate can be used with sound playing through a phone’s speaker, I find that much of the immersive quality is lost, and immersivity is one of the things I value most about it.

The right soundscape offers me a spatial environment that allows for a very relaxed, almost diffuse attention, particularly when I’m trying to withdraw from environmental noise or simply take a quiet break during the day.

I don’t know how long the calming effects last in any measurable physiological sense, and I wouldn’t claim that Sensate has altered the underlying course of my chronic illness.

Is it worth £299?

Sensate currently costs around £299 for a single device in the UK, which is a substantial investment for something intended primarily to support relaxation.

The app includes a basic selection of soundscapes, while an optional Plus subscription, currently listed at £49.99 annually in the UK App Store, provides access to a larger library.

There are also packages available for people purchasing more than one device.

Would I buy it again, knowing what I know now?

Interestingly, yes.

I say that despite the fact that I don’t use mine consistently, and despite having some fairly strong reservations about the musical quality of certain soundscapes.

I’ve acquired other tools over the years, including Nurosym, and I now have a wider range of ways to support myself when my nervous system feels overwhelmed.

So Sensate doesn’t always get a look in.

But when I do return to it, I’m reminded of why I bought it in the first place.

I find the combination of vibration, immersive sound and uninterrupted rest helps me to feel more settled. Sometimes it produces a depth of calm that has parallels with some of my meditation and contemplative practices.

Whether that makes it worth £299 for somebody else is another matter.

It’s a considerable amount to spend, particularly when the research is still preliminary and some of the benefits may also be available through less expensive approaches involving music, sensory comfort and rest.

Sensory preferences will also make a difference. Someone who dislikes vibration against the chest, or struggles to find soundscapes they enjoy, may have a very different experience.

For me, though, Sensate remains a useful part of my toolkit, even if it’s one I sometimes forget about.

And perhaps that’s where I’ve arrived after several years of using it.

I don’t know whether the vibration is directly stimulating my vagus nerve, and the available research doesn’t convincingly establish that it is.

What I do know is that, with the right sounds and enough time, I can lie down with this curious little pebble on my chest and feel my system gradually becoming quieter.

Sometimes, that’s exactly what I need.

References

Research and scientific sources

1. TM Studio Research Lab (2022). Using Sensate in a Single 20 Minute Session Quiets the Mind and Improves Relaxation. Lisbon pilot study. Manufacturer-published summary (2026). Sensate Lisbon Study Summary.

2. Sensate (2023). Sensate Maastricht Study Summary. Manufacturer-published report of a 14-day pilot study involving 25 participants. Sensate Maastricht Study Summary.

3. White Mirror Research Lab (2022). Sensate: Testing Vibroacoustic Wearable. Laboratory case study. Read the study.

4. Vilímek, Z., et al. (2022). The Effect of Low Frequency Sound on Heart Rate Variability and Subjective Perception: A Randomized Crossover Study. Healthcare, 10(6), 1024. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10061024.

5. Kantor, J., et al. (2022). Effect of Low Frequency Sound Vibration on Acute Stress Response in University Students—Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 980756. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.980756.

In this paid article, I explore the emerging science around humming and the vagus nerve, and share a step-by-step guided practice drawing on my specialist training as a neurodiversity-informed mindfulness teacher. You can explore the practice at your own pace and adapt it to your individual needs.

Paid subscriptions support my mindfulness teaching here and help keep my independent, research-led journalism freely available to everyone.

In the accompanying article, This Neuro Life (Part 3) — Can Revving the Vagus Nerve Help Chronic Illness?, I explored my experience of using Nurosym, a device designed to stimulate the vagus nerve through gentle electrical impulses delivered via the ear.

But Nurosym is expensive. And not everyone can afford, access or tolerate a device like this.

So I wanted to explore another question:

Is there anything we can do ourselves, without specialist equipment, that might influence some of the same nervous-system processes?

Read more

For paid subscribers, there is a companion article called:

Can You Support Your Vagus Nerve for Free?

You can read it here:

https://somaticsofautism.substack.com/p/can-you-support-your-vagus-nerve?r=1qjx40&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

In it, I explore some of the research around the vagus nerve and regulation. I also offer a simple, accessible neurodiversity-informed mindfulness practice that takes just a few minutes, and invites you to explore sound and sensation as anchors for mindful awareness.

There is a pale grey device sitting beside my bed that sends tiny electrical pulses through my ear.

I realise that sentence requires some explanation.

I first heard about Nurosym through Dr Dani Gordon at the London Resilience Clinic. I had originally gone to see Dr Gordon about medical cannabis, which I wrote about in Part One of this series, and at some point she mentioned a device that stimulated the vagus nerve through the ear.

I didn’t think too much about it initially.

But I was curious.

What is the Vagus Nerve?

The vagus nerve wasn’t new territory for me. Through years of mindfulness, somatic work and an increasing interest in the relationship between brain and body, I have worked with it many times. It is sometimes described as a kind of communication highway between the brain and the body, although that rather simplifies something much more complicated.

The vagus - cranial nerve X - travels from the brainstem into the neck, chest and abdomen, communicating with organs including the heart, lungs and digestive system. Importantly, that communication isn’t simply the brain sending instructions downwards. Much of the information carried by the vagus travels towards the brain, so it’s a two-way communication system.

Which rather undermines the idea that the brain sits somewhere at the top, running the show.

Body and brain are in continual conversation. In fact the nervous system and the brain are inextricably linked.

A New Puzzle

By the summer of 2025, I was becoming increasingly interested in that conversation, because I was dealing with a new set of challenges for which I had no real answer.

I had been meditating for decades. Vipassana. Mahayana. Tantra. Mindfulness.

And yet something strange had begun happening.

I couldn’t settle.

Meditation had previously given me relatively easy access to my body and to quieter states of awareness. Now my system seemed somehow over-activated. My mind was busy and overstimulated and getting underneath that activity - dropping into the body in the way I was accustomed to doing - had become much more difficult.

I wondered about hormones - I was transitioning out of the menopause. I also considered neurodivergence and stress. There can be a complex interplay of all of these things and I had to admit that I couldn’t get to the bottom of it.

I was also still living with ME/CFS, which I have had for nearly twenty years. By then I understood very well that there probably wasn’t going to be a fix, as such, but I was beginning a search for another layer of support to add to my growing toolkit.

When you have lived with chronic illness for a long time, you develop a remarkable ability to carry around a pocket full of hope.

So I started reading about a new device on the market that appeared to be helping other people.

What is Nurosym?

Nurosym is a non-invasive neuromodulation device made by Parasym. It uses something called transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation, mercifully abbreviated to taVNS.

Instead of surgically implanting a vagus nerve stimulator, taVNS delivers a small electrical current through the skin of the ear. Nurosym clips onto the left tragus - the little firm projection just in front of the ear canal - where it aims to stimulate an auricular branch of the vagus nerve.

It reminded me of a TENS machine, although technically it isn’t one.

The device itself is remarkably unexciting to look at. Pale grey, with a darker grey front, a few controls and a wire leading to the ear clip. There is no attempt to make it look sexy - and sadly no purple versions - instead it has medical device written all over it.

However, this was not going to be a “give it a go and see what happens” affair due to the eye-watering price tag.

After extensive research and a long conversation with my husband we thought we both might benefit, which made the cost slightly easier to justify. He tried it for a while but didn’t get on particularly well with it and stopped. I carried on.

I had also agreed to participate in Nurosym’s research programme, which reduced the price. Customers with qualifying disabilities or chronic illnesses may also be eligible for VAT relief, bringing the advertised £599 price down to approximately £497. I was dismayed to discover this online after purchasing it, so it’s worth knowing!

A few days after biting the bullet and purchasing the device, Parasym confirmed that they had received the introductory video recording I’d been asked to make and told me that the next stage would involve four weekly check-ins about how I was feeling and progressing.

Oddly, those check-ins, if they were ever genuinely required, never appeared in my inbox. I don’t know what happened or why they didn’t chase me for the check-ins.

For the first month I started using the device religiously according to their request: thirty minutes in the morning and thirty minutes in the evening.

The sensation of the electrical stimulation is difficult to describe.

At the right intensity, I feel a very gentle, rippling pulse in my tragus. It’s actually quite sweet and pleasant. After a while I barely notice it.

Too low and I can’t really sense anything.

Too high and the sensation becomes sharp and uncomfortable.

When I started, my happy place was somewhere around 18 or 19 on the device’s 0–50 intensity scale. These days it tends to be around 24 or 25. I’m not assuming that means anything physiologically; it’s simply where I now find that same subtle rippling sensation.

Sometimes I meditated while wearing it, and this was where things became interesting.

I seemed to find it easier to settle into my practice. Some of the inexplicable internal noise softened and allowed me to find a way into meditation, giving me more of an experience of calm that had been in short supply.

At the end of the session there was less noise and a little more clarity. It seemed easier to inhabit my body again.

And that was enough to make me curious.

So then I started measuring things.

Eventually Nurosym became entangled with another of my experiments: Visible, the chronic-illness tracking system I wrote about in Part Two of this series.

And this gave me something I hadn’t had when I first bought the device.

Data.

I began noticing that very often, after using Nurosym for thirty minutes before bed, my overnight heart rate appeared steadier and my HRV looked better the following morning.

Not every time, so I can’t say it’s always effective for this - but enough that I can confidently report that I’ve repeatedly observed what appear to be differences.

Over time I’ve noticed a pattern whereby, when I stop using Nurosym for a while, my heart rate and HRV generally don’t appear as stable overall. When I use it more regularly, they often look better.

There is one other noticeable result I’ve experienced with Nurosym.

When my nervous system gets stuck in full threat mode and all the alarm bells start ringing, I put on my Nurosym and perhaps a weighted or heated blanket.

I absolutely do not try and meditate when my nervous system is that ramped up.

When the rumination is looping, and I’m rehearsing a case for the defence in a conversation that might never happen, it’s better to keep my senses occupied externally - with some relaxing music, an audiobook, or a regulating TV show.

Thirty minutes later, I often feel as though the threat response is considerably dialled down. I’ve tried weighted blankets and regulating sensory input without Nurosym, and the effect is very different. That for me is a huge win. Because as you may know, those loops can be hard to interrupt.

My experiences made me wonder what the research actually says, and this is where things get both interesting and considerably less tidy.

There is genuine science behind transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation. Nurosym isn’t simply a wellness gadget built around the fashionable idea of “regulating your nervous system”.

There are peer-reviewed studies of taVNS, including randomized and sham-controlled trials. Some specifically use Parasym’s technology.

Nurosym itself now says its technology has been involved in more than 60 completed clinical studies and advertises some impressive-looking figures: improvements in HRV, fatigue, sleep, post-viral symptoms, inflammation and other measures. The company does state that these results come from particular study populations and that individual results vary.

So I wanted to look underneath the headlines.

The HRV Question

This was particularly interesting to me because of what I had been seeing on Visible.

There is research suggesting that taVNS can influence measures of heart-rate variability and autonomic activity. But when researchers have looked across the evidence, the picture hasn’t been entirely consistent.

Different studies use different stimulation sites, intensities, timings and protocols, and not every HRV measure changes reliably. In fact, one meta-analysis of sixteen sham-controlled studies in healthy participants found no reliable effect of acute taVNS on vagally mediated HRV compared with sham stimulation.

In other words, what I’m seeing on Visible is plausible, but it isn’t proof.

I’m becoming increasingly interested in the place where data and embodied experience meet, rather than asking one to overrule the other.

A Particularly Interesting POTS Study

One of the more compelling studies I found was a small randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled trial in people with POTS.

Twenty-six participants used either active tragus stimulation or sham stimulation at the earlobe for an hour a day over two months.

At the end of the study, the increase in heart rate on standing was significantly smaller in the active-treatment group than in the sham group. Researchers also found differences in HRV and some inflammatory and immune markers.

No device-related adverse events were reported.

It was a small proof-of-concept trial, so it doesn’t establish taVNS as a universal answer to autonomic dysfunction. But it is interesting - and particularly because the researchers used a Parasym device.

I don’t believe I have POTS, although tests are still ongoing for this.

I do, however, experience orthostatic intolerance and other symptoms that seem to involve autonomic regulation.

So I read this with interest rather than assuming its findings apply directly to me.

A Long Covid Study

That said, Long Covid muddies the waters.

There is a small study in women with Long Covid which used the Parasym system.

Twenty-four women used the device for thirty minutes twice a day - morning and evening - for ten days.

Researchers reported improvements in several areas, including cognition, mood and sleep, with fatigue improving later at follow-up.

Encouraging?

Yes.

Conclusive?

No.

There was no control group.

Everyone knew they were receiving the intervention. Long Covid symptoms fluctuate. Expectation can affect subjective outcomes. A small uncontrolled pilot can tell researchers that something is worth investigating further; it can’t tell us that the device caused the improvements.

And then the story becomes even more interesting.

A separate randomized, sham-controlled trial published in 2026 tested taVNS for Long-Covid-related fatigue. This study used a different taVNS device, so it wasn’t a trial of Nurosym itself.

Fatigue and quality of life improved - but active stimulation was not significantly better than sham stimulation.

The researchers concluded that taVNS appeared feasible and well tolerated, but the trial had not demonstrated superiority over placebo for Long-Covid fatigue.

So one small study says this looks promising.

Another, more controlled study says hang on, we’re not sure.

So I guess the jury is still out.

What About ME/CFS?

This was obviously the part I particularly wanted to know about.

Nurosym’s website includes ME/CFS amongst the conditions associated with some of its post-viral material. But I haven’t found good published evidence demonstrating that Nurosym is an effective treatment for ME/CFS.

What I did find was much more interesting.

The University of Liverpool has recently completed a Phase II randomized controlled feasibility trial specifically using Nurosym in people with ME/CFS.

Forty people with mild to severe ME were enrolled. Researchers looked at feasibility and acceptability, but also collected measures including HRV, activity, autonomic symptoms, standing heart rate and blood pressure, metabolic measures, functional capacity and quality of life.

The study was completed in February 2026. As I write this, the trial register doesn’t yet list published results.

So Nurosym is being properly investigated in ME/CFS; we just don’t yet know what that investigation found.

What About Safety?

Here the evidence is reasonably reassuring.

A large systematic review of taVNS safety looked at 177 studies involving 6,322 participants. It found no increased overall risk of adverse events in active taVNS compared with controls and no causal relationship with serious adverse events. Ear pain, headache and tingling were among the more commonly reported effects.

There was an important limitation: adverse-event reporting wasn’t particularly good across the research, with more than half of the studies failing even to state clearly whether adverse events had occurred.

So I would describe taVNS as appearing generally well tolerated in the research so far, rather than declaring it completely harmless.

My own experience has certainly been fairly benign.

Where I Become More Cautious

I find some of the language on Nurosym’s website harder to swallow than the underlying science.

The company talks about things such as resetting “healthy brain chemistry”, strengthening neuroplasticity and activating mechanisms involved in regulation and recovery. It presents striking percentage improvements across a range of physiological and psychological outcomes.

However, to be clear, Nurosym’s own website states that the device is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent disease.

There are plausible biological mechanisms behind auricular vagus nerve stimulation, and some genuinely interesting research.

For me, that’s enough.

It doesn’t need embellishing.

And when you’re selling a device costing several hundred pounds to people who may be chronically ill, exhausted and searching for something - anything - that might help, I think the distinction between promising evidence and established benefit becomes particularly important.

Because I know what it’s like to be that person.

I bought mine with a pocket full of hope.

So, Has It Worked?

More than a year later, I still don’t have a satisfying answer.

It hasn’t cured my ME/CFS, but then again, I’ve now seen enough patterns in my Visible data to wonder whether it might be contributing to greater overnight stability in my heart rate and HRV.

I have found it effective as a nervous system band aid when in a threat response.

I often experience a little more clarity and settling during and after using it and it can help me access the embodied quality of meditation that had become more difficult for me.

Nurosym has become one small part of a much larger ecology of things I do to support myself.

Would I Buy It Again?

This was the question that finally clarified things for me.

If my Nurosym broke tomorrow, would I spend £599 replacing it?

Probably not.

It’s an enormous amount of money, and my results simply haven’t been clear or substantial enough for me to justify spending it again.

I have it. I use it. I think it helps me enough to continue using it, and I’m very interested to see what comes out of the ME/CFS research.

But there is an enormous difference between:

I own this and it’s worth using

and

I have £599 and this is where I would spend it.

For me, at the moment, those are two different questions.

Perhaps the University of Liverpool study will eventually give us more information. Perhaps larger trials will clarify who is most likely to benefit from taVNS, at what dose, at what time of day, and for which conditions.

For now, I’m still experimenting.

Which, when you’ve lived with chronic illness for as long as I have, is an extremely familiar place to be.

The pocket full of hope is still there.

I’m just a little more careful these days about where I spend it.

References & Further Reading

Soltani, D., Azizi, B., Sima, S. et al. (2023). A systematic review of the effects of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation on baroreflex sensitivity and heart rate variability in healthy subjects. Clinical Autonomic Research, 33, 165–189. DOI: 10.1007/s10286-023-00938-w.

A review of 21 controlled studies. Results for HRV were mixed, with considerable variation in study design and stimulation protocols.

Wolf, V., Kühnel, A., Teckentrup, V. et al. (2021). Does transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation affect vagally mediated heart rate variability? A living and interactive Bayesian meta-analysis. Psychophysiology, 58(11), e13933. DOI: 10.1111/psyp.13933.

This analysis of 16 sham-controlled studies in healthy participants found strong evidence that acute taVNS did not reliably alter vagally mediated HRV compared with sham stimulation.

Stavrakis, S. et al. (2024). Noninvasive Vagus Nerve Stimulation in Postural Tachycardia Syndrome: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology, 10(2), 346–355. DOI: 10.1016/j.jacep.2023.10.015.

A small double-blind, sham-controlled trial involving 26 women with POTS. Active tragus stimulation was associated with a smaller increase in heart rate on standing after two months, alongside changes in several physiological measures.

Zheng, Z.S., Simonian, N., Wang, J. & Rosario, E.R. (2024). Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation improves Long COVID symptoms in a female cohort: a pilot study. Frontiers in Neurology, 15, 1393371. DOI: 10.3389/fneur.2024.1393371.

Twenty-four women with Long Covid used the Parasym system for 30 minutes twice daily for ten days. Improvements were reported in several outcomes, but this was a small single-group study without a sham/control group, so causation cannot be established.

Gierthmuehlen, M. et al. (2026). Transcutaneous Auricular Vagal Nerve Stimulation Against Fatigue Syndrome in Patients with Long COVID: Results of the Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Pilot Trial COVIVA. Neurology and Therapy, 15, 1327–1343. DOI: 10.1007/s40120-026-00928-w.

Forty-five people with Long-Covid-related fatigue received active, sub-threshold or sham stimulation for four weeks. Symptoms improved across groups, but active taVNS was not significantly superior to sham. This trial used a different taVNS device rather than Nurosym.

Kim, A.Y., Marduy, A., de Melo, P.S. et al. (2022). Safety of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS): a systematic review and meta-analysis. Scientific Reports, 12, 22055. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-25864-1.

The review included 177 studies and 6,322 participants and was broadly reassuring about safety, although more than half of the included studies did not report clearly whether adverse events had occurred.

University of Liverpool. A phase II feasibility trial of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation for people with myalgic encephalomyelitis. ISRCTN15931869. DOI: 10.1186/ISRCTN15931869.

A randomized feasibility trial involving 40 enrolled people with mild-to-severe ME. Recruitment is complete and the study is recorded as completed in February 2026; published results are not currently listed on the trial registry.

Nurosym / Parasym. Scientific Evidence / Results from Scientific Studies.

The manufacturer’s overview of research involving Nurosym/Parasym and taVNS. Useful for seeing the evidence on which the company’s claims are based, but I have treated manufacturer summaries separately from independent peer-reviewed evidence. Nurosym scientific evidence:

https://nurosym.com/en-gb/pages/scientific-evidence-research

As someone living with ME/CFS for nearly twenty years, I’m no stranger to pacing. Although, when I was initially diagnosed and referred to the CFS/ME service in Derby, I was taught graded exercise therapy.

NICE guidance has since changed significantly. Fixed incremental increases in physical activity or exercise - what NICE defines as graded exercise therapy - are no longer recommended for people with ME/CFS. Current guidance places much greater emphasis on staying within individual energy limits and recognising post-exertional malaise.

Needless to say, graded exercise therapy was not working for me.

There was very little support otherwise, and so, as an unknowing autistic, I did what I did with most things in life that might be problematic to fitting in - I masked a lot of my struggles.

At the time of my ME diagnosis, I was raising a child and was eighteen months into a doctorate I could no longer manage. Walking my son the eight minutes to school (I timed it) was pretty tough to start with - and my vague recollection is that I had some support getting him to school for a while. Or I drove.

Part of my autism has meant pushing through to meet expected neuronormative speed and standards. I had a sense I was pushing against something once the ME started. If you can imagine trying to walk uphill in a gale, that’s kind of how it felt. Whilst smiling and making it look easy.

I tried to pace, but I had commitments. I had to give up the doctorate - brain fog and the regular commute of nearly two hours made it an impossibility. But I had to do something. So I started a piano teaching business from home. It helped me pace somewhat, and importantly, to raise my son.

We needed money to live on and that was that.

So I carried on pushing, and because of my need to earn love through performing success and ambition, I was always working an edge and quite often going beyond it.

I can’t say how much autistic burnout has intersected with my ME/CFS over the years, although I suspect it has been - and still is - somewhere in the mix.

I formed a band, brought out an EP, taught piano, managed a social life and a relationship, and continued pushing beyond my capacity. I tried so many different things to try and improve my health, from therapy to acupuncture, to meditation, to kinesiology. The list is long, but the improvements, if they happened, were short-lived.

I might use any expanded capacity on a new project or ambition.

I do not blame myself for this. I had many dreams I wanted to realise and I was only in my thirties.

Fast forward to my autism diagnosis three years ago, at the age of fifty-three. Things gradually began to fall into place. I undertook a year-long course for people with autistic burnout, with Dr Alice Nicholls, and began to realise that there were particular energy drains I had not been able to name before.

Sound sensitivity was both a blessing and a curse. Processing in conversations, and in groups, was especially taxing and I realised I was often filling gaps with automatic responses due to longer processing times. Bright lights, transitions, crowded environments - these were all taking a toll.

The more I noticed where my energy was being drained, the more I could pace effectively.

I was slowly beginning to turn around a big ship. It meant setting more boundaries, saying no more often, and reducing friction by spending more time at home.

But my body was changing.

The menopause seemed to create more health problems and less capacity.

I needed another level of support with pacing.

I couldn’t be quite sure what was changing, but my capacity was beginning to shrink. It was hard to understand why my attempts at pacing were still falling short.

And frankly, it was quite hard to justify.

How was I going to explain this to family and friends, and mainly, to myself?

Old feelings of falling short were creeping in.

In December 2025, I saw the Visible wearable being advertised on social media. It was not a conventional fitness tracker and more activity was not the desirable outcome.

After experiencing another major burnout after taking up weight training, I was becoming increasingly suspicious of working with personal trainers - even ones who knew I had ME - and I liked the fact that it was designed for people with chronic health conditions.

That in itself felt validating.

I had been trying to follow the autistic burnout course protocol, but if I’m honest, I struggle with the executive function side of form filling and diarising on a daily basis - and numbers are not my strong point.

So I needed something to ease the load and do that job for me, to a large extent.

Because Visible supports pacing and rest, rather than endless encouragement to push harder, it felt like it might offer safety rather than endless attempts to push me out of my comfort zone.

I had been out of my comfort zone for almost my entire life; I needed something to help me stay within my capacity.

I couldn’t have known how useful it was about to become.

A matter of days later, I suddenly found standing and walking was becoming incredibly difficult. I had to cancel a family visit at Christmas because I couldn’t manage it, and shortly afterwards, a holiday abroad.

I felt dizzy, uncoordinated, and as though standing up was pushing my body against some invisible ceiling. It was quite unlike anything I had experienced before, and the one thing my doctor could identify with some confidence was orthostatic intolerance.

I was referred to several consultants to try and ascertain what was going on.

Nine months later, I am not much closer to knowing.

Suddenly, the pacing system I’d developed over years of ME/CFS wasn’t calibrated for the body I now had.

OI had changed the landscape entirely.

Over those bed-bound months, Visible came into its own. Sitting, standing and walking had to be rationed to a great extent. Showers were often too much.

I hadn’t bought Visible to support the OI, but it became invaluable as a capacity I no longer recognised needed strict monitoring in order that I could try to manage some basics.

My early Visible report captures that period: from 20 December into early February I was consistently recording fatigue, brain fog and memory problems, together with numerous days I marked as crashes.

What Visible does is monitor heart rate and heart rate variability. PacePoints measure exertion based on how much time your heart rate spends in different heart-rate zones. For me, standing and walking were among the things that frequently pushed my heart rate into the exertion zone.

Each morning, Visible also gives me a Stability Score based on resting heart rate, HRV, self-reported sleep and, when I complete the previous evening’s check-in, symptom severity. The score compares these with my own baseline.

This score is designed to give clues about capacity. The highest Stability Score is five, and the lowest is one.

The way I interpret this is that scores of four and above are a green light that the current pacing is going well. A score of five isn’t an invitation to do more, and I rarely get a five - for me it’s like finding the hidden Pokémon!

However, there may be a little headroom to increase the PacePoint budget after a few days of readings in this range.

If my reading is at around a three, I treat that as an amber light and exercise caution, and a score of one to two means I need to take it very easy, and do less until the reading improves.

When my capacity collapsed, I set my PacePoint budget at around 18.

That was tops.

I wasn’t aiming to reach it. I was aiming not to.

I began logging what was happening when my heart rate entered the Exertion zone. Things like climbing stairs, showering, getting dressed and standing waiting for the kettle to boil were all draining my tiny capacity.

It was incredibly helpful because I could visually see where my spoons were going.

As a result, I made some adaptations. I bought a shower stool, a bar stool for the kitchen and I sat on the bed to dress, often lying on it for around thirty minutes afterwards to recover some capacity.

I wasn’t judging myself for failing. I wasn’t trying to push. I was trusting Visible to validate my capacity to some extent and to be my guide.

After some initial advice from a cardiologist to take electrolytes, wear compression socks and optimise my blood volume by drinking plenty of water - copious amounts seemed to help - my capacity gradually started to improve.

I later found myself comfortably using around 30 PacePoints a day, so I changed my daily budget.

At points my capacity fluctuates and I change the PacePoint budget accordingly.

Of course I would like to have more fitness. Of course I would love to break the PacePoint barrier.

But I know better than that.

I’ve had too many crashes and I’m rather more keen to avoid them and keep my life sustainable.

Curiously, I always do my Stability Score in the morning and sometimes it doesn’t reflect how I feel.

Visible says that Stability isn’t intended as a direct wellness score; it takes several factors into account relative to my baseline.

It’s slightly discouraging when the numbers are lower than the feeling, or when the Stability Score is high and I’m feeling bushed.

What I’m viewing it as now is a forecast.

And a bit like the weather, it may be interpreting things based on the information available, but that is not fixed. However, having a forecast is still useful, and if my numbers are lower, I do tend to take that into account and take more care with my capacity.

Visible explicitly describes its mission in terms of making “invisible illness visible”, and I can validate this through my own experience.

I have explained the Stability Score to my husband. So if I am having a 2/5 morning, he understands that I will be needing a calmer day. He sometimes now asks me what my reading is, which helps us communicate my capacity in a quick and simple manner.

So while I can often look much the same as I did the previous day, we both know I need to slow down to prevent a crash. It puts us on the same page with ease.

I don’t need to rattle off all my symptoms and concerns - I just say that my Stability Score is a two, and he gets it.

There is another side to using Visible, which is the data input required.

For best results there is a short evening check-in and there is a monthly check-in questionnaire. To be honest, I’m already keeping other health diaries. I have supplements and medications to remember to take, rest times to build in, a gentle exercise routine, meditation.

Sometimes I have several appointments in one week for various health-related issues, and before I know it, just managing my health is a part-time job.

That may not change much, but I don’t give myself a hard time about it anymore.

And if there are too many things to monitor, I ease off.

So I stopped doing the evening and monthly check-ins. I may start again at some point, but when I have days where the questions become can I even wash or feed myself?, evening check-ins feel like just another thing for a very limited body to manage.

So they gradually fell away - and that’s okay.

Ironically, it’s often the person who most needs to track their health who has the least capacity to do it.

Another feature of Visible is the growing archive of podcasts.

I’ve listened to clinicians and researchers as well as people living with chronic illness and hidden disability. While I am waiting for further investigation into my own orthostatic intolerance, I’ve been listening to interviews concerning EDS/hEDS, POTS, ME/CFS, Long Covid, fibromyalgia and MCAS.

Dr Peter Rowe is one example. He is Director of the Chronic Fatigue Clinic at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in the US and a leading voice on orthostatic intolerance, ME/CFS and EDS in adolescents and young people. He has been interviewed by the Visible team about EDS and orthostatic intolerance in chronic fatigue conditions.

To get his insights is actually very significant to me while I wait for further investigation into my own OI.

Meanwhile, the interview with Dr Lucy Foulkes, who waited 23 years before finally getting a diagnosis of hEDS, is an example of someone sharing their lived experience of coping with multiple chronic conditions until a stranger’s message on Instagram finally helped her to join the dots.

It shows how, when you have multiple conditions involving multiple healthcare departments, sometimes the main cause can fly under the radar.

Nine months later I am still using my wearable to religiously track my Stability Score. I still watch my PacePoints and adjust the PacePoint budget when it becomes evident over a week or so that my baseline is trending up or down.

Visible hasn’t replaced my own knowledge of my body.

I don’t think I’d want it to.

It gives me cues and clues - another source of information to place alongside what I’m feeling.

And it validates my experience quite a lot of the time.

Nine months after I first put it on, I’m still wearing it, charging it and using it every day.

So for me it’s an important part of how I manage my health, and I will continue to use it alongside my own knowledge of my body.

References

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) (2021). Myalgic encephalomyelitis (or encephalopathy)/chronic fatigue syndrome: diagnosis and management. NICE Guideline NG206. See particularly Section 1.11, Energy management; incorporating physical activity and exercise. Published 29 October 2021.

Visible. Understanding your Stability Score. Visible Help Center. Explains the 1–5 Stability Score and its use of resting heart rate, heart-rate variability (HRV), sleep quality and symptom severity relative to an individual’s baseline. Accessed September 2026.

Visible. PacePoints and the PaceSetter. Visible Help Center. Explains how PacePoints are calculated from time spent within personalised heart-rate zones and how the PacePoint budget and PaceSetter can be used to support pacing. Accessed September 2026.

Visible / Make Visible podcast. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome & Orthostatic Intolerance in Chronic Fatigue Conditions with Dr Peter Rowe. Episode 24. Interview with Peter Rowe, Johns Hopkins, discussing EDS, orthostatic intolerance and chronic fatigue conditions.

Visible / Make Visible podcast. Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), Undiagnosed for 23 Years with Dr Lucy Foulkes. Episode 33. Foulkes discusses her experience of multiple chronic health problems and eventual hEDS diagnosis.

I have wanted to share my experience with cannabinoid medicine for a while, partly because there is still so much stigma around cannabis, but also because my experience has challenged something I had believed for a long time: that if I practised meditation with enough focus, I should be able to manage whatever arose in my mind and body. I had read plenty of stories about Zen and Tantric masters who seemed to have developed extraordinary capacities for working with mind and body, and it made me question my seeming inability to meditate myself out of insomnia.

For a time, I thought I was failing in my meditation practice, but I now realise that trying to self-regulate should not always be the responsibility of the individual. We need human systems to meet us where we are, but, in my experience, we are not there yet. For those of us who have experienced long-term burnout and other chronic health issues, perhaps alongside significant hormonal changes, it is not giving up to need extra support.

Over my adulthood, meditation has been a core part of my life and I believe it has really helped me to cope, to remain resilient and to stay regulated. Because I have experienced significant trauma and chronic health issues, I have also sought help from nutritionists, EFT practitioners, psychotherapists, and other complementary practitioners, alongside mainstream medicine.

With their input and support, I have found various, mostly natural ways, to support IBS, ME/CFS and much later, autism.

With the knowledge I picked up, I was managing to live and work using various supplements, foods and movement therapy to support my system as best I could. Some of these took a lot of energy - for example slow cooking chicken carcasses to extract the goodness from the bone and marrow, which later meant wearily picking out all the bones from the crockpot. Or undertaking paced exercise therapy through the NHS, which only made matters worse.

Living with ME/CFS while raising a child and working was a huge struggle. However, when the menopause hit later in life, I was unprepared for the fact that my usual sleep supplements weren’t doing the trick anymore, and my nervous system felt constantly on edge.

Things felt more difficult than ever, which is partly what led me to seek an autism diagnosis.

But having a diagnosis didn’t fix my sleep.

Despite following sleep hygiene suggestions, I was regularly waking up at around 3 to 3.30am in the morning and not getting back to sleep. Regardless of my best efforts at EFT and meditation, rumination was often cycling at full pelt, while drinking hot milk and honey and reading a book did little to assuage the early morning anxiety. Sometimes I would wake up in the early hours excited and wired about a project too, and had to write things down in case I forgot them. Then the wired excited feeling would hang around, and yet again, I couldn’t get back to sleep.

With ME/CFS, I need to manage my energy carefully, and sleep has often been necessary during the day as well as at night. My already spiky nervous system appeared to be getting spikier, so my days became harder as hormone imbalances and sleep deprivation created a perfect storm.

My normal meditation practices were becoming increasingly hampered, as something I had found a huge comfort and support became harder to access. While I still continued to meditate in ways that felt sustainable, I had to accept that it wasn’t going to get me out of the insomnia, and it was sometimes taking more than it was giving. This meant reframing my relationship to meditation practice in unexpected ways.

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I have tried many over-the-counter herbs and supplements for sleep, including Kalms, Lemon Balm, Passiflora, L-Theanine, Magnesium, various combinations of the above, and various sleep teas - one that was prescribed by a herbalist and helped for a while. These were all assistive to a certain point, but as the menopause wore on I would become drowsy, but never reach the nirvana of a full night’s sleep.

I tried over-the-counter medications next, including Boots Sleep Aid, containing diphenhydramine hydrochloride, and Phenergan, containing promethazine hydrochloride. These are both types of antihistamines that have a sedative effect. I know of people who take Night Nurse for their sleep because it contains promethazine. The issue I had with these medications is that they left me with a hangover in the morning and increased feelings of dysregulation. I tried taking them on alternate nights, so I was left with some very patchy nights, and medicated sleep plus the hangover on others.

I found a London clinic quite by chance when Googling for support for autism, and it was on this site that I read about cannabinoid medicine. The founder and medical director of the clinic is Dr Dani Gordon. She began her medical career in Vancouver, Canada, and subsequently developed expertise in family, integrative, functional and cannabinoid medicine. She is now a UK-registered, double board-certified physician with more than seventeen years’ experience treating complex chronic illness and neurodivergence.

Having smoked ‘weed’ for periods in my younger adult life, I was a little skeptical about medical cannabis. I was used to weed having a dampening effect - a feeling of being ‘monged out’, sleepy and unmotivated - so I could see how it might aid sleep, but I didn’t want to go through the lack of drive I had experienced before.

My initial appointment with Dr Dani Gordon was very helpful, and while there was an option to do functional medicine tests, the costs were prohibitively high for me and getting them reliably collected from our rural Scotland location was not going to be straightforward or indeed guaranteed by the carrier. Instead I focused on trying cannabinoids. Because prescribing rules in the UK are different from those in Canada, my assessment also involved a one-off appointment with a psychiatrist at Imperial College London to establish my eligibility for treatment.

Once they concluded I was eligible to receive the medication, I started with low doses of full-spectrum CBD oil. Full-spectrum means that the oil contains CBD alongside other naturally occurring cannabis compounds, including trace amounts of THC. There is a proposed “entourage effect”, whereby different cannabis compounds may interact with one another, although the clinical evidence for this remains limited. The CBD was calming - better than the shop-bought oil I had been using - and although it was assistive, it didn’t support my sleep to quite the level I needed.

I went on to continue taking the full-spectrum CBD by day, and another cannabinoid oil containing 20% THC at night. The doses were carefully prescribed and titrated, with some trial and error at the beginning to find what worked for me.

I also tried prescribed cannabis flower during the day and in the evening. The different flowers had different cannabinoid profiles. During the day I was prescribed a flower intended to help with energy, and in the evening one to assist in relaxation. The daytime flower was less effective for me personally, but the evening flower was especially helpful, given I was sometimes working with clients into the evening and could feel very pushed afterwards. I was also prescribed a vaporiser for the flower, which allowed me to take the prescribed amount without mixing it with tobacco.

For me, the most life-changing aspect of taking prescribed cannabinoid medicine has been sleep. I now sleep like a baby, most of the time. I don’t experience the nasty hangovers and dysregulation with shop-bought sleep aids and I generally don’t experience anxiety in the night like I used to. The daytime CBD also helps my system feel calmer and more regulated. I haven’t experienced the anxiety, paranoia or increased heart rate that can occur with THC, although I wouldn’t assume that my experience is universal.

Another plus of taking this medication is that I feel more grounded. As a mindfulness teacher it is important to me to feel connected to my body. However, as I am autistic this is not always easy or natural. This may in part be due to interoception differences and possible alexithymia. I also suspect I have learned to disconnect from my body as a way of surviving the mismatch between myself and a neuronormative society. I noticed how much I unconsciously brace - tensing my muscles without realising it. CBD really helps me to feel more embodied, which works well alongside embodied awareness practices.

One thing that really stands out for me is this:

I no longer view myself as having failed at meditation. Actually what I see is that cannabinoid medicine has made my practice more possible and more sustainable. The two work harmoniously together.

While I am not expecting miracles, having the solid nine or ten hours of sleep that my body seems to need and feeling calmer and more grounded during the day is a giant leap forward. I still need to pace because of the ME/CFS. I still need to be aware of environments and people that drain me due to being autistic. And I still have significant limits due to other conditions that are still being investigated, which may well fall under the associated conditions that Dr Gordon treats.

Of course, this is a personal account. I’m not suggesting that cannabinoids are the answer for everyone, or that anyone should consider them without appropriate medical advice. My experience is simply my experience. But if you have been wondering about them, I hope this article may have given you some insights.

One thing I’ve learned through this process is that it’s okay to accept support when the things that used to work are no longer enough on their own.

And here’s a question for you:

Have you ever mistaken needing additional support for having somehow failed?

“Nothing is itself without everything else.” Thomas Berry

Wonder can arrive unexpectedly: a sudden rainbow, birdsong in the trees, sunlight falling across water. But what makes us receptive to those moments? And can we create conditions that make it easier to be present enough to notice them? In last week’s article I explored this through my own lived experience. You can read it here:

In this final part of Alive in the Wild, I’m exploring how mindfulness, embodiment and our relationship with nature might help create those conditions - particularly for neurodivergent people, whose routes into presence may not always look like the ones we are traditionally offered.

Different Ways Into Presence

Mindfulness is often described as paying attention to one’s experience with present moment awareness and without judgement. The eminent mindfulness teacher and activist Tara Brach describes it like this:

“In the simplest of terms it’s the felt sense of wakefulness, openness and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience.” (Brach, 2013)

The late Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh said,

“Mindfulness is the practise of being fully present and alive, body and mind united. Mindfulness is the energy that helps us to know what is going on in the present moment.” (Nhat Hanh, 2008)

Mindfulness isn’t synonymous with sitting meditation - that is only one way of cultivating mindful attention. It can also involve walking, listening, noticing, eating, moving, relating and simply becoming more aware of what is happening.

The familiar image of the seated Buddha with his right hand touching the Earth depicts the bhūmisparśa mudra, the “earth-touching” or “earth-witness” gesture. In the traditional story of the Buddha’s enlightenment, he calls upon the Earth to bear witness. For me, it also symbolises grounding the body in the earth and the possibility that nature can be a guiding force in awakening.

Thomas Berry, the cultural historian and ecological thinker, argued that we need to move beyond seeing the natural world simply as a resource or an “environment” around us. We are members of a much larger Earth community, and our own wellbeing is inseparable from its wellbeing. As Berry put it, “the well-being of the human could only be found within the well-being of this more integral Earth community.” (Berry)

Berry was also concerned with what happens when we lose our capacity to experience the natural world with wonder. He wrote of the “numinous presence” encountered through the natural world - through dawn and sunset, mountains, rivers, flowers, birdsong and wildlife.

I find these ideas helpful when thinking about mindfulness in nature. Perhaps presence isn’t only something we cultivate for our own wellbeing. Becoming more present may also change what we are able to notice, and what we notice can be a doorway to wonder. It can also be a doorway to caring and compassion - and I will talk more about this later.

Where Do We Begin?

I think we can loosely say that mainstream mindfulness practices assume a certain starting point. I would like to question that assumption.

Before we ask “Which mindfulness practice works?”, I believe we need to ask:

What is the starting point of the person doing the practice?

One of the difficulties in transferring contemplative practices developed within particular cultural, philosophical, religious and relational contexts is that we may not always begin from the same place. When some of those practices are transplanted into contemporary Western settings, some of that original context can be lost.

Embodied Awareness

Nowadays, mindfulness is sometimes used interchangeably with embodied awareness. Embodied awareness invites a different kind of perception. It asks us to privilege the body. For some of us, this may feel an alien approach. However, it can be a useful distinction, because when we think about “mind” most of us connect that with “brain”.

Many of us in contemporary Western societies have learned to privilege cognition, productivity and thinking over bodily knowing. Is it possible, then, that some of us are being asked to practise embodiment from a starting point that may have been assumed in a different age, within a different culture? For example, in some Buddhist traditions, the heart-mind is understood as more than an intellectual process, but is a form of knowing that is embodied rather than purely cognitive.

Before I trained in mindfulness, the meditative teachings I received were from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. In the particular tradition of which I was a part, the heart-mind was referred to on a fairly regular basis. This felt like an anomaly at first, and it took me many years before I could sense I was meditating from my heart, and not my head. Even so, it fluctuated.

Some of the mindfulness practices I have learned since, such as grounding practices and mindful movement, weren’t taught in this tradition; I believe it took longer than it might have to get a sense of being in my body. I also believe that being unknowingly autistic and having lived through trauma was a big part of the obstacle to my own embodiment.

Later on, during my mindfulness training and latterly, teaching, I came across students who, like me, could not easily develop a relationship to their bodies. The body’s felt sense took some time for them to recognise.

The Neurodivergent Starting Point

Even within contemporary Western mindfulness, there’s another assumption we need to question: that everyone’s nervous system, sensory system, attention and relationship with their body are broadly the same. That is an assumption that needs broadening, because many of us on the spectrum experience things quite differently.

For an autistic or ADHD person, the starting point may include:

• different attentional patterns

• different sensory processing

• different interoceptive experiences

• alexithymia

• difficulty identifying or interpreting bodily states

• heightened bodily awareness in some circumstances

• difficulty sustaining attention in conventional ways

• a history of masking and adaptation

• chronic stress from environments that don’t fit

• trauma or traumatic experiences.

Already we can see that the way we approach mindfulness may need to be different. For some of us, focusing on the breath is dysregulating. Some of us need motion and novelty in order to stay focused. Some of us have difficulty connecting to body sensations in body scans due to interoception differences or alexithymia. The spectrum is beautifully varied, and neurodiversity-informed mindfulness needs to reflect that and offer choices, or different ways in to experiencing present moment awareness.

When Mindfulness Takes Us Further Away From Ourselves

Some conventional mindfulness practices may not work well for neurodivergent people. If we try to follow neuronormative practices it is possible we can end up bypassing our body, our trauma, our unprocessed emotions and our needs. Certainly, this has been my own experience. As an unknowing autistic, I spent many years as a Buddhist practitioner trying to do meditation ‘right’. I ended up with a dissociated experience, which I later understood to be spiritual bypassing. This term was coined by psychotherapist and Buddhist teacher John Welwood to describe the use of spiritual ideas or practices to bypass unresolved psychological and emotional material.

I later learned to embody through various practices, whilst simultaneously receiving trauma therapy and later working with EMDR and Internal Family Systems (IFS), among other things.

I have one particularly uncomfortable memory of undertaking a month-long “counting retreat”. This is where 100,000 mantras are counted (followed by an extra 10,000 for good measure). I found sitting cross-legged difficult, so chose instead to sit on a chair. I can remember feeling incredibly uneasy on so many levels. The chair was hard, sitting up was very tough on my nervous system, and counting mantras at speed probably did nothing for an already burnt-out brain. I figured it was some kind of slow torture process and I would find benefit in the long term. Instead, I heard some of the other attendees talking about what an incredible and blessed experience they’d had, meanwhile I was more fatigued than ever.

Looking back now, I can see that some of what I was doing was not bringing me closer to myself. In some circumstances, I was moving away from my own needs, feelings and embodied experience.

What Might Bring Us Back?

Before asking which mindfulness practice might work, I would like to explore what conditions might make presence more accessible.

So let’s talk about context.

If you were to attend a mindfulness class in your local area, you might be invited to take a blanket and a cushion, or those may already be provided. Hopefully it’s a fairly quiet space. You might sit in a circle with other people. You may be required to sit still for at least some of the session. You might be invited to have a cup of tea and a chat afterwards.

Lovely. If that’s what works for you.

I feel that for some of us on the spectrum there could be a few ingredients in that mix that may be dysregulating. Sitting still. Quiet. Internal focus. Chatting afterwards. Already, there are several assumed starting points in that imaginary mindfulness class that may not resonate for you. However, there is great power in community, and I would not wish to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It’s really about pressure-testing how you feel in these situations and whether it is conducive to your own mindfulness practice. It may be that you can find a mindfulness community online, if that feels more assistive, and potentially less draining.

This is where nature might bridge a gap, particularly for those of us who need a lot of solitary time.

Nature can sometimes function as a kind of exoskeletal support system - providing external sensory input, movement, rhythm, space and relational cues that help us access a state that may be difficult to reach through internal focus alone.

It also offers a degree of quietude and respite.

Nature as Support for Presence

Looking back across the five previous parts of this series, we can see a kind of progression: regulation gives us capacity; belonging gives us somewhere to land without performance; immersion draws our attention into the environment and invites spaciousness; reciprocity makes that environment relational; and refuge gives us somewhere to put down some of the adaptations we carry. Together, these conditions may create more room for presence - and perhaps, when something unexpected or beautiful emerges, for wonder.

Using nature as an external support system is not new. When you look at some of the traditional Buddhist texts, many of them talk about leaving the world of human thinking and systems and finding somewhere conducive to practice. Even then, they knew that nature was supportive to their practice.

Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogi, is traditionally associated with solitary mountain retreats and caves, and his songs repeatedly express his intimacy with the landscape in which he practised. I have visited such caves high up in the Tibetan mountains - some are still in use to this day. In Tibet and Bhutan, meditators might spend months or years meditating in nature, in caves, and sometimes deep in the Himalayas. Shantideva was one such practitioner, who yearned to be in nature.

“When shall I withdraw into the forest and live among the trees, with birds and deer who say nothing unpleasant but are a joy to live with?

Or dwell in a cave or an empty shrine, or abide beneath the trees with a mind unfettered by attachment…” (Shantideva, 2002, p.117)

When I visited the Tiger’s Nest monastery in Bhutan several years ago - a high monastery perched on the side of a mountain - I could see tiny rooms known as “cells” even higher up the mountainside where practitioners on their longer, multi-year retreats were living. The view from up there would have been astounding, and their practice was very unlikely to be disturbed.

I am not suggesting we should go and live in a cave or a cell, but what we could take from Shantideva’s yearnings is that nature might be assistive in offering relief from the distractions of everyday life, helping us to attune to our bodies and to the present moment.

For me, embodiment is one route into presence. It is easier in my experience to ground in nature than it is in a high-rise building. There is also something about nature that also lends itself to a more open mind that is less caught in “me” and “mine”. Shantideva wished for similar:

“When shall I live in a place that no one calls mine? A place that is naturally open and spacious, where I can act freely and do as I wish without any attachment to body or possessions?” (p. 117)

Now let’s explore how the conditions nature offers can invite more presence. In combination with certain mindfulness practices, we can use nature as a support.

None of these practices are prescriptions. Nature can be unpredictable, inaccessible or overwhelming, and what feels regulating one day may not feel regulating the next. You don’t need to force yourself into an experience because someone has told you it is “mindful”. The invitation is to notice what actually helps you feel more present, connected and alive.

If you’d like to keep exploring this with me…

In the rest of this essay, I draw on my experience of Buddhist practice, neurodiversity-informed mindfulness training and teaching, and my own lived experience to explore some practical ways we can use nature to support presence - through movement, listening, self-enquiry, reciprocity and creative practice - and how these conditions might open the door to wonder.

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“From wonder into wonder, existence opens.” - Lao Tzu, translated by Witter Bynner

After everything I’ve explored in this series about regulation, belonging, relationship and reciprocity, I’ve been thinking about what happens when all those conditions come together - and what it feels like when we come alive in response.

If, like me, you were entranced by the children’s book The Secret Garden in your childhood, then this secret garden may hold a similar fascination. It exists in a kind of middle ground between wild and formal. It is lightly tired, and slowly being brought back to some of its former glory. For me, it became a doorway into wonder.

We crunched and rumbled along the winding driveway, passing a smiling white-haired man tamping some recently filled potholes with his motorised whacker plate.

On entering the sweeping forecourt we were greeted by an elegant ostrich flaunting its white plumage and a few resident alpacas roaming the corner of the adjacent field.

Pulling up by the stable buildings in front of the red stone Scottish pile, you could be forgiven for thinking it was off-season. But this was a hot August day - one of the hottest - and Cloud was already getting thirsty in the back.

There are many old, hidden estates in southern Scotland, some still standing proud and inhabited, some unkempt, derelict and beyond repair, and others, that have long since disappeared with only the old gatehouses still visible.

We had purchased our tickets at the entrance, some way back along the dirve in preparation to show them as we entered the garden, but with no one around to show them to, we took out the map, wandered through the brick arch and headed straight for the gardens, Cloud dismayed to have to be kept on a lead.

The smell of the tousled box hedge in the parterre garden transported me back to my childhood exploring the National Trust gardens of Charlecote House, and Packwood House in Warwickshire. Packwood, with it’s topiary splendour and spiral mount that had always felt like a secret discovery to my five-year-old self. From the yellow ladder positioned near a tall, dishevelled box hedge, it was apparent they were soon to be clipped and re-sculpted, which would have rather detracted from their charm

Imbued with that childlike sense of serendipity, Clara and I took off to explore this hidden gem. Clara hadn’t visited in over thirty five years and was keen to see what had changed. It was a part of her birthday celebration.

Clara and I had met by a loch in the Scottish Borders just over a year previously. I had seen a number of women swimming in there and had been curious about trying it myself. Clara had kindly offered to come with me, so we exchanged numbers and one wetsuit purchase later I was enjoying an experience of green-blue wonder, surrounded by hills, blue sky and blue water. Afterwards I felt unexpectedly alive from the cool, pure water and nature connection, and from Clara’s warmth and Cloud’s amusing insistence on paddling and splashing his large white paws at the shallow end just within his depth, even as we swam out. Cloud was clearly not going to be a deep loch swimmer. To be honest, neither was I. I was far more comfortable swimming near the edges, where I could touch base with the loch floor in my surfing shoes.

This is a garden where you stumble upon unexpected delights, via little bridges, along earthy tracks and past crumbling dry-stone walls. Even with a map, I have little sense of direction, and here, getting lost was as much part of the fun.

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Through a small beech wood we crossed a tiny wooden footbridge and, in a shaded area, stumbled upon the Japanese garden. There was a feeling of quietude and stillness here, of a garden that was once a jewel - and could be again. I spied an area that looked as though it would once have been a raked Zen garden, overseen by a statue of a samurai warrior. On the opposite side, there was a small stone bench, perfect for meditation, with Buddha statues and bamboo wind chimes. I made a mental note to return one day to sit here and breathe it all in. The leaves of the Japanese acers were turning burgundy at the edges, as we ambled over another tiny bridge, past a swathe of overgrown bamboo and a rather algae-ridden large pond. It was called The Lake, which was perhaps, slightly optimistic. Around the lake were large gunnera. Like giant rhubarb leaves, they have a primeval quality, and I could half imagine a stegosaurus plodding past with a large one in its mouth.

As we wandered further, we discovered an Italianate sunken garden, which, despite its age, was verdant and abundant with flowers, including gloriosa daisies, a tumble of yellow cistus, a vivid cerulean mountain hydrangea, and arum lilies half hidden under a tangled mass of overgrown ferns. Stone reliefs on the walls and a small loggia finished the picture in this garden that existed somewhere between neat Victoriana and a wild Scottish paradise lost. I could imagine elegant Victorian women sitting under their parasols, or in the loggia, talking together in subdued voices and trying not to faint in their corsetry in twenty-six-degree temperatures.

There is something about secret gardens, and particularly semi-wild ones like this that elicit a feeling of wonder in me; an aliveness at the sense of discovery.

We left the containment of the sunken garden and made for the white sand and slightly rocky beach overlooking the silvery sea. En route we passed a number of cedars, one of which appeared to have two arms, with elbows bent and hand-like branches reaching for the sky. The aroma of buddleias was a welcome olfactory delight, with its purple flower clusters a favourite of the butterflies. We set up our picnic rug on the sand as Cloud looked excitedly out at the water. We saw only four other people on the beach, despite it being the school summer holidays.

The long stretch of shell-littered sand was a perfect backdrop for cheese and biscuits, looking out over the fast receding tide. Cloud was becoming increasingly curious about the cheese, and after unintentionally kicking sand onto the rug and the cheese (still thankfully in its wax coating), he was diverted by the other visitors and their picnics. I had fond memories of my own dog who used to make picnics a complex back and forth of doggy distraction ploys with balls, sticks or treats, between quick bites of an often sandy sandwich.

It was too hot to linger long, and en route back along the shadier track past the cedars and cypresses, we stopped on a shaded bench for coffee from the flask, and birthday cake.

Clara and I had a chat with a local who was walking her two dogs - tightly trimmed grey poodles, one who greeted Cloud with curiosity, and another, younger one, who put his muzzle firmly between his owner’s legs. He was apparently quite shy, having been born during Covid when socialising puppies had been virtually impossible.

This kind of non-demanding social interaction is something I enjoy. A passing conversation with a stranger who knows nothing of your past, and is unlikely to see you in your future. There is a certain simplicity to passing encounters, of connecting without too many pre-conceptions, assumptions or narratives about who you - or they - are.

For me the morning had been a perfect blend of gentle companionship, slow walking, doggy shenanigans, dishevelled Victoriana existing somewhere between the tamed and the wild, a quiet beach, and undemanding human connection.

All of these conditions came together to create a slowly and gently unfolding constellation of wonder, and of joy. Something about this secret garden lent itself to an everyday sacredness, a supportive rhythm and a kinship with people and place.

If these are some of the conditions in which we become more available to wonder, how might we cultivate the kind of attention that allows us to notice them?

Next week in the final part of the series, I’ll explore this through the lens of neurodiversity-informed mindfulness.

In the meantime, what conditions help you to experience wonder, and how might you create more of them?

References:

Bynner, Witter, trans. The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu: An American Version. New York: John Day, 1944, Chapter 1.

Let’s go deeper today and explore how, for millennia, nature has provided space to breathe, to slow down, to receive and to find somewhere to truly feel at home - and why this may be particularly important for those of us on the spectrum.

Unsustainable Environments

Environment can be key for many neurodivergent people, because we so often find ourselves in unsuitable contexts that drain our energy and work against our natural ways of regulating. This may not be exclusive to neurodivergent people, but our sensitive and sometimes more porous systems can quickly become dysregulated, leading to overwhelm, including meltdowns, shutdowns, burnouts and other related issues.

Many of us on the spectrum experience this mismatch day in and day out.

We struggle to find places, people, occupations, and other pursuits that hold us in ways we actually need. Without safe containers, there is nowhere for us to land, which is why in my own life I have experienced decades of feeling disconnected, ungrounded, unsafe and unseen.

At its essence, refuge is typically understood as a place of safety, or sanctuary. Its very definition implies that there are scenarios that can feel inherently unsafe, and therefore refuge may need to be intentionally found or developed.

A Search for Refuge

Refuge can take many forms, such as relationships, inner experience, creativity, special interests and place.

I’ll come back to the others in future articles, because the focus of this series is how nature can offer refuge, and for different reasons.

When I think back to my time working in radio and television, it’s very clear with hindsight that I was in the wrong context. There were elements of my job that I was good at, and even wired for. However, the environments were depleting because there was so much sensory, social and emotional processing required just to exist inside them.

By contrast, nature offers me something quite different; relief from processing and absorbing human environments that can quickly overwhelm my system.

In previous articles in this series, I have explored nature as somewhere to regulate, to feel unconditional belonging, to find spaciousness and immersion, and to experience reciprocity. I have also noted in a previous article that nature is not inherently regulating - it can be wildly unpredictable - so within certain parameters, let’s say, it can offer refuge.

Neurodivergent people often have specific needs that can evade us in our everyday lives. First and foremost, we need safety. A different pace and rhythm. Solitary time to be ourselves - unmasked - in order to process and reflect. We also need to spend time with our special interests, which for many of us are more than just pleasurable activities - they help us to down-regulate. This is often part and parcel of being somewhere the nervous system can relax. We need people and places that are non-judgemental, and sensory stimuli that nourish us. Clarity, accuracy and fairness are often important to our wellbeing, too.

These are all perfectly reasonable needs, yet they can be surprisingly difficult to meet in our fast-paced, economy-driven societies. Safety can be difficult to access. Our working and home lives may not accommodate different rhythms. Quiet time can be scarce. Masking consumes energy. Sensory environments can be overwhelming, and misunderstandings and judgements can leave us feeling alienated. As a result, dysregulation, uncertainty and confusion can become the norm.

Being in a constant state of stress while existing in an unsuitable environment can also make it harder to hear our own authentic voice, to trust our own judgements and intuition, and to truly express who we are.

This may not speak to all neurodivergent people, but it gives a flavour of the amount of compensation and adaptation required by our nervous systems to function in daily life - most of which remain completely invisible to others.

What’s missing may be an understanding that extends beyond the neurodivergent community. However, its lack can affect us more deeply.

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It’s 4.30 a.m. in a quiet West Yorkshire village.

There’s no traffic. It’s too early even for birdsong.

The alarm goes off and, as I do five days a week, I get out of bed already feeling a pit of anxiety in my stomach, without quite knowing why it feels so intense today.

I creep around the house so as not to disturb my partner. My tailored, handmade jacket, complete with the essential shoulder pads, is hanging up waiting for me. It’s a beautiful two-tone pale and mid blue with handmade buttons, but I’m not entirely sure I like it. I’m not entirely sure it’s me.

If I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure any of this is me.

I get into my little Vauxhall Corsa and drive the thirty-odd minutes to the Yorkshire Television studios. The first regional bulletin is just after six o’clock in the morning, when the national GMTV presenters hand over to the regional news.

When I arrive, there are a few other people in the building. It’s my favourite time of day. The newsroom is still quiet.

I collect my scripts — I always need a printed copy in case the autocue fails — and head upstairs to my little eyrie. Behind me, through the glass, is the newsroom that viewers will see as the backdrop to the programme.

I fit my individually moulded earpiece, tuck the springy cable beneath my jacket, clipping it carefully to my collar, and hear the bulletin controller speaking in my ear from the production gallery downstairs. The producer, bulletin controller and I have a quick conference. I arrange my scripts, take a breath, and before I know it the countdown has finished and I’m live on air.

These early bulletins, between six and nine in the morning, are probably the gentlest part of my day.

I’m under bright studio lights, reading from the autocue, listening to instructions in one ear while speaking live to camera. Oddly, that’s the easy part.

On a different day I might be sent straight out with a camera crew. Today we’re covering an inquest. I sit in the courtroom trying to capture every detail in my rusty shorthand. If I miss something, that’s on me. There are no second chances. Afterwards I have to pull the story together, record a piece to camera outside the court, then race back to the newsroom so the report can be edited before transmission.

Meanwhile I’m preparing to co-present the evening programme with Richard Whiteley.

The newsroom has few windows — none of them at eye level. I don’t remember any natural light. During the news programmes the glare of studio lights is ever-present because the newsroom itself forms the backdrop behind the presenters, who stand on a raised stage. It’s open plan. Telephones ring. Conversations overlap. Fax machines clatter and screech. Editors shout across desks. Stories change by the minute.

It’s competitive. There are old newspaper hacks with little time for young women, and women fighting hard for editorial positions in a world that often rewards them for behaving like the men around them.

If I’d understood my own nervous system back then, I might have looked around and said, this is the opposite of what I need.

I mostly feel fizzy and slightly disembodied. But I know how to appear competent, how to keep smiling, how to say the right things, mostly in the right places — although there was that awful time when I actually signed off, “That’s all from us at Canada News” — instead of “That’s all from us at Calendar News.” And there were a number of times when I had terrible hiccups before news bulletins, which miraculously disappeared once we went live. Just.

The six o’clock programme begins.

Some of the reports still aren’t in. People are talking urgently in my ear while I’m live on air beneath the hottest studio lights of the day. I’m relieved my co-presenter Richard Whiteley is beside me, because he can fill almost any unexpected silence with effortless warmth. When one report fails to arrive altogether, we suddenly have three minutes of live television to fill at the end of the programme. Somehow I find a joke about pensioners’ bus passes to tease Richard with, and we make it to the closing credits.

The programme ends.

I remove the earpiece from my ear.

Little does my audience realise that on some mornings I arrive at the studios, burst into tears, and need to walk around the carpark — on at least one occasion with the news editor. I have been to my GP for stress and anxiety and am prescribed medication. I can’t face taking it. It means I am somehow failing at a coveted, well paid job that I am, without doubt, lucky to have. Vague thoughts of defecting to the relative calm of the programme research department next door are quickly quashed. That would be a backwards step. What would my work colleagues think?

Only years later would I understand that, to my nervous system, the newsroom was a place of almost continuous exposure.

At twenty-three, I assumed this was simply what adult working life felt like. I had no idea that my nervous system had spent the entire day filtering noise, bright light, urgency, social complexity and constant shifts of attention without pause. Three decades later, when I was finally diagnosed as autistic, many of those experiences began to make sense in a way they never had before.

Looking back now, I find myself asking a different question.

What happens when a nervous system spends months, or even years, in an environment that never really allows it to recover?

After several years working in radio and television, something in me—or perhaps more accurately, something in my body—made it clear that this way of living was unsustainable.

I couldn’t have explained why.

I didn’t have the language of nervous systems, sensory processing or autism. I simply knew, with an urgency I couldn’t ignore, that I needed a different kind of life.

I’d already glimpsed one.

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Several times I’d visited my uncle in Portugal. Years earlier, he’d packed up his young family, converted an old Oxo van into a mobile home, bought a piece of land and driven south. He dug a well. Built a small house. Gradually, over the years, they made a life there.

There were no streetlights for nearly a mile. Their home sat in a peaceful, if slightly dusty valley among a small community of British, Dutch, German and French expats who had also chosen to leave something behind.

Looking back, I realise it wasn’t just the place that drew me.

It was the people.

There was something in their faces that I couldn’t quite name. Their eyes had a clarity about them. They looked fresh. Alive. Somehow freer.

I wanted to know what that felt like.

So three months after handing in my resignation, I packed my Vauxhall Astra estate with almost everything I owned—my clothes, my beloved piano keyboard, the things I thought I’d need—and headed for the Algarve.

It felt like the beginning of an adventure.

The Valley was connected to the west coast of the Algarve by an eight-mile track that could be walked or cycled. In the other direction was a small village where horses and carts still shared the road. Higher up the hillside was a forest with a restaurant where I would later work.

People chopped wood. Fetched water. Mended things instead of replacing them. Grew food. Life unfolded at a different pace.

Something inside me began to settle.

Or at least, I thought it had.

Life, of course, is rarely that simple.

During one of my earlier visits I’d fallen in love. What I hadn’t understood was that the relationship itself wasn’t a safe one. So while I had found a kind of refuge in the landscape, I had also walked into a relationship that slowly eroded that sense of safety.

It’s one of the many reasons I understand that refuge isn’t simply about geography.

You can live in extraordinary beauty and still not be happy, nor safe. Even so, I have many happy memories from those years.

I awoke at dawn and left early for my tomato picking job, walking the mile or so along the dusty valley tracks to the windmill-cum-farm, mesmerised by the almond blossom drifting to the ground through the morning mist like a Spring snowfall. I heard the sound of cowbells as the local herd made their daily route through the valley.

I picked up a faint smell of marijuana floating through open windows of huts, caravans, and makeshift wooden houses. Perhaps some of the Valley dwellers were awake early, or perhaps they had not yet gone to bed.

Another smell wafted through the morning air that will forever remind me of the Valley - sticky bush. Then the heady scent of eucalyptus trees. On my walk I saw the flowers of the yellow mimosa. Cork. Olive.

My body was beginning to find congruence within the natural world, even though I could not yet put that into words. The slower pace, a sensory world that gave instead of taking, and a sense of wonder that had become obscured in early adulthood — these were the gifts from that time.

I can see that life had shifted from one of performance and exposure to something more tender. I had found a haven, of sorts, through a sensory world that nourished me.

A sense of being was slowly emerging from behind an identity based on striving and doing well.

I was greeted regularly by the old men of the village: “Bom dia! Está bem?”

“Obrigada. Sim, tá bem.”

Some of the village women were already at the communal wash house — or lavadouro — scrubbing their clothes with strong smelling laundry soap.

On return, after a good morning’s tomato picking I went home via the village, hearing the familiar sound of the weekly fish van horn, the gentle village bustle around the market where dried chillies hung and fresh vegetables, and other comestibles were on sale.

I caught the smell of sardines browning on small outside grills on the cobbled side streets. The sight of old men shelling almonds by their weathered wooden front doors.

Zé’s Bar. Zé’s Shop. Zé’s kindness.

Zé the shopkeeper and bartender was renowned in the village, and many of us only survived winter because of his conta aberta — his system of allowing people to pay later — which was sadly abused on occasion.

On evenings when I worked at the restaurant I would run the five kilometres through the forest to get there. The run back was often after midnight. I ran in the dry, in the wet, in full moons and new moons. Somehow, even without external light, something within seemed to light my way.

On clear, starry nights I would often see falling stars and shooting stars. I felt a sense of oneness with the universe that is hard to explain; I can only point to the experience by saying it was a knowing feeling.

There was something deeply comforting about running under starlight; a reconnection to the constellations that had evaded me growing up in suburbs and under streetlights.

On one occasion I first heard, and then, in the gloom, I made out the shapes of a wild boar with her babies by the edge of the track. I was relieved I could run past at relative speed.

When I had first come to the Valley, I was scared of the dark; just getting from my uncle’s house to the outside loo had caused me to freeze with fear.

Now, I was master of the darkness. Under the night sky I felt fearless and alive.

In order to wash, I drew a bucket of water from the well each day and poured it over me with soap in hand, until one particularly dry summer I could almost see the bottom and noticed large black salamanders snaking slowly through the darkness below. It was our only water source, so when the rains eventually came it was a great relief.

At times it felt as though I had stepped back into another century, and yet modern life still followed us there. We still needed to work. We still wrestled with paperwork and bureaucracy, and earning enough to get by when the seasonal work dried up was often a struggle.

While the complexity hadn’t disappeared, something had become clearer.

The successful television presenter I’d hung my identity on had vanished. Without the studio lights, the tailored jackets and the familiar identity of “newsreader”, I realised I had very little idea who I was underneath.

That was the real journey I had unknowingly begun.

Last week, in Part 4A, I described a walk in nature after a long period of illness, and how it filled me with wonder, as though I was in a conversation.

Moving through nature with mindful attention is a practice that for many, has ritual significance. It teaches us to strengthen our relationship with the earth through our feet, to become awake to the animate and inanimate world around us and to see its wonder with fresh eyes.

Contemplative traditions have long regarded walking as more than a means of getting from one place to another. In Zen and other Buddhist traditions, walking becomes a way of arriving fully in the present, and discovering each footstep is already part of a relationship with the world around us.

The late Zen master, the late Thich Nhat Hanh was renowned for his walking practice. He was often joined by his community of Zen practitioners for walks around Plum Village, the monastery where he lived and taught.

“If we practice walking meditation even for a few days, we will undergo a deep transformation and learn how to enjoy peace in each moment….Everything we think, feel and do has an effect on our ancestors and future generations and reverberates throughout the cosmos.” (p.18)

This points to our interdependence with nature and the living world. Every footstep leaves an imprint, not only on the ground beneath us, but on our relationships with ourselves and the world around us.

In some Buddhist traditions there is a retreat that is known as a wandering practice. Wandering practices typically last three or four years, and the practitioner undertaking the journey does not set out with a destination in mind. Rather, the practice becomes an intentional act of letting go and trusting that their needs will be provided. It is taking refuge in the earth and its inhabitants on a profound level - a radical reliance that many of us in the West would never dream of. On a deeper level, what comes is a direct understanding of impermanence. Our usual routines and identities cannot hold for long when continually walking, and this can allow for a certain freedom of perspective once we are no longer tied in the same way.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche has undertaken such a journey and writes about it in his book, In Love With The World. While much of it centres around the scrupulous preparation and very early stages of his journey where in fact he nearly dies, this is itself testament to the courage it takes when each step removes you further from your known world and necessitates trusting completely in the unknown. It is not until the end of the book that we come to understand that despite his near death experience he goes on to wander and completes his retreat.

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A Zen teacher was once asked, “What is the path?” His answer was simple: “Everyday life is the path.” (Zen Flesh, Zen Bones)

It wasn’t a walk you would consider groundbreaking in any way. I didn’t scale any heights, cover any significant distance, or enter unmapped territory.

It was a simple, local walk where I came alive.

After months of being largely bed-bound, my body said yes to a walk in the woods.

To be able to drive again, and take myself to the local woodland felt like regaining independence after months of needing full-time care.

Living with a dynamic disability makes you appreciate things in a very different way.

I stepped out of the car, and the dappled light felt inviting and warm. I didn’t need sticks to walk with today.

My legs carried me willingly to a short asphalted track leading to our local castle. Lined with beech and coniferous trees and running parallel to a wide, clear river, my senses were wide awake to the world around me.

Walking more slowly than usual, I spotted the baby toad in the middle of the road. Concern led me to shuffle behind it, guiding the toad off the road and safely into the trees. A small act of care, however insignificant it may seem, changed the quality of my walk. Perhaps one little toad might have a better day for not falling victim to the tyres of a passing car.

Leaving the road, I wended my way along the familiar woodland track, listening to the rush of the river after rain.

My acutely attuned senses experienced this walk as if for the first time. In reality I have covered this ground countless times.

I was experiencing what is sometimes called Beginner’s Mind - at least to some degree.

There is a freshness that comes with living in the moment with full attention and without the constant stream of commentary that can fill the mind.

My years of contemplative practice, coupled with illness requiring enforced rest, had awoken something sensitive, exquisite and very present that was seeing things with unusual vibrancy and freshness.

In Zen, there is a famous exchange in which a monk asks the teacher Joshu why Bodhidharma came to China. Rather than answering philosophically, Joshu simply replies, “An oak tree in the garden.”

For me, this exchange points towards the possibility of meeting what’s already here, before concepts and explanations arise.

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As I wandered towards the castle, in no particular hurry, with no fixed goal except to ensure I didn’t overdo it, I saw - and felt - the beauty of the wildflowers, nodding gently in the breeze. A mass of harebells, their corollas swinging slightly, as though ringing out, and a plethora of flowers on long stems I have seen many times in ditches, along roadsides and here in the woodland. Their bright magenta hue inviting me to look afresh.

It’s easy to dismiss weeds you see often, but today I was entranced, and determined to know their name.

Fireweed. Otherwise known as rosebay willowherb.

Its former name comes from the fact that it is one of the first hardy perennials to grow after fires or bombings. It has uses in herbalism to treat the skin and digestive issues.

A third flower, with beautiful orchid-type blossoms, is less kind to the landscape, as it is not native, and can weaken the land over time, especially near water. In that moment though, I was transfixed by the elegance and geometry of its blooms.

Himalayan balsam.

I don’t profess to be a specialist of plant species, I’m learning as I go, but with enhanced perception, it’s possible to fall in love with weeds.

It was a slow saunter to the castle and under an old stone bridge I looked up and marvelled at the crumbling red stone parapets that have survived over five centuries of the Scottish elements.

There is a quieter route that led me back. The rhododendrons have flowered now, and their branches, looking gnarled an whorled, suggested a gateway of sorts to the narrow track that in winter is often eroded and impassable. This lesser known path offers quietude and immersion among the trees.

Breathing in their oxygen and absorbing the greens, I felt almost plant-like myself, leaving a vegetative state after a winter of illness into a spring of new possibility.

This was no ordinary walk in the woods. My joy and gratitude were visceral and I had a distinct sense of reciprocity. I found myself thanking the trees, the flowers, the earth and the water for their nurturing presence, for holding me and for sustaining my life.

Without nature, I would not be here.

It’s humbling to realise this. No ground, no trees or plants, no water? No life.

Walking changes the way I pay attention, and as I am wont to spot details, I experienced wonder in discovering the plants, birds and wildlife at my feet. In the words of Rebecca Solnit’s book, Wanderlust,

“Walking ideally is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.” (p.5)

As I walked back to the car, I knew this had been more than merely exercise. It had been a dialogue. Perhaps that’s why walking has remained such an enduring human practice - not simply because it gets us somewhere, but because it brings us back into relationship with the living world.

Reciprocity is not something we invent. It is already happening. Every breath, every footstep, every drink of water reminds us that we live through relationship. The invitation is not to create reciprocity, but to become conscious of it.

Next week I will be looking deeper at our reciprocity with nature over millennia, and the understanding we have historically had as ourselves being part of that weave.

References:

Reps, P. and Senzaki, N. (1991) Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings. London: Arkana, Penguin Books.

(“Everyday Life Is the Path”, p.109; “An Oak Tree in the Garden”, p.123.)

Solnit, R. (2001) Wanderlust: A History of Walking. London: Granta Books.

This week I’d like to explore that question more deeply.

Sound as a Vibrational Field

There is a classic question my university professor once asked me:

“If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

The answer points to the difference between sound as received by the human ear - a perceptual experience - and sound as experienced vibrationally - through pressure waves in the air.

If there is no ear to receive the sound - whether human or animal - there is no one to hear the tree fall - hence there is no sound. However, that does not negate the vibrational impact of the falling tree within the context of its own environment. Both things are true.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, in her book, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, is clear that scientifically the answer to this riddle is no.

“A falling tree itself makes no sound. Its descent merely creates vibrations in the air and the ground. These vibrations become sound only if something special is present to receive and translate them; say, an ear connected to a brain.” (p.129)

Sound impacts us both aurally and vibrationally.

But what if you are profoundly deaf? Sound may be travelling to the ear, but it cannot be perceptually received. It can, however, be vibrationally felt.

In this sense, profoundly deaf people receive sound somatically, through sound waves impacting the body, which becomes a resonant chamber through which vibration passes.

This is not different for the hearing, however, we are used to receiving sound aurally and may not be tuned into the vibrational effects in quite the same way, unless for example, through the impact of a loud subwoofer in a cinema, or even an explosion.

For Beethoven, his progressive hearing loss left him unable to hear the music he so deeply loved. To mitigate this he placed one end of a wooden rod against his piano and the other between his teeth, allowing him to perceive the instrument through bone conduction.

Many years ago I saw the famous percussionist, Evelyn Glennie perform with an orchestra. The final piece was a composition by Peter Maxwell Davies. The orchestra began An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise with Evelyn off in the wings, until a bagpipe could be heard offstage. A barefooted Evelyn walked onto the stage playing the bagpipes in perfect time with the orchestra. She was using the vibrations travelling through the floorboards into her feet, allowing her to keep time with extraordinary precision.

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The first explores how wild places can feel like home to a neurodivergent nervous system:

And the second explores how nature can help us to experience ease of belonging that can be hard to find elsewhere:

During a period of chronic exhaustion while largely bed-bound, I can’t get into nature as I normally would in order to regulate. Instead, I’m dependent on looking out of the window from my bed, and listening.

I am listening to audiobooks, Substack posts, and something quite enchanting; I am developing a new and special auditory relationship.

One born largely from stillness.

Over a number of days now a song thrush has been visiting the birch tree near my open window and singing. Its melodies are unique and captivating. I have not been familiar with its calls before now, and I’m learning that every song thrush has its own unique tunes. I am reminded of Alan Powers’ unique observation in his book, Conversations with Birds: The Metaphysics of Bird and Human Communication, where he says, “Avian language may well be the language of the psyche, of the soul and mind.” (p.69)

It becomes more audible when the traffic noise is quieter. I can hear the comforting chattering of the swallows who have made a number of homes under our eaves, and the familiar cheeping of sparrows who call our boundary hedge home, and yet, the song thrush is extraordinary.

It has a wide vocabulary of calls, and I’m beginning to recognise their patterns. I marvel at its range and variation. There are cheeps, twitters, ululations, glissandos - often a result of mimicking other birds.

It’s a sonic feast for the ears and I feel very privileged to be listening to it. In her book The Genius of Birds, Jennifer Ackerman says,

“Many people assume that birdsongs are genetically encoded, but songbirds go through the same process of vocal learning that people do. They listen to adult exemplars, they experiment, and they practice, honing their skills like children learning a musical instrument.” (p.141)

Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise me. As a musician, singer-songwriter and composer of sonic art in surround sound, music has always been close to my heart. I have also had to learn my oeuvre over a lifetime.

What I’m appreciating more these days, is that nature offers its own auditory immersion, which can be at once calming, regulating and joyful.

It also moves me in ways I have recently understood as ‘glimmers’ - moments of joy that help me to regulate in my everyday life.

I also note with curiosity that in my own life, like the song thrush, I have learned mimicry. As children we all do, but for a porous autistic girl and woman trying to fit into a neurotypical world, mimicry continued well past the age where individuation normally begins. I picked up local accents, in part as a source of humour, and also because I absorbed them so easily. Living in Yorkshire as an adult, I developed a slight touch of the local dialect, which was not altogether conscious, and helped me to blend in. When I lived in the States I learned to amplify and project my voice more - especially at work - another camouflaging technique. We all learn to adapt sonically to our environments, but many autistic people continue adapting long after childhood because belonging - and sometimes survival - depends upon it.

Belonging is a profoundly acoustic thing.

On a different day, still bed-bound and highly sensitive, I awake to the call of a wren. It’s a quiet Sunday morning. My window is open and the blinds are gently thwacking against the window frame in a light breeze. The traffic has abated.

I find solace in its clear, unimpeded song, and feel less alone. There is a relationship that demands little of me, except to receive. Powers’ words resonate when he reflects that,

“In discussions with bird enthusiasts, I have found that their interest often grew fastest during a period of personal crisis. Some wonderful ornithological works also acknowledge the sanative effects of birds, especially bird song.” (p.69)

For a brief moment, as can happen in these states of chronic health where the usual identity demands are lessened, something within me loosens and expands. There is less grasping.

For a short time I become the listening.

There is no self. No bird. There is listening and birdsong as a unified experience. They are not two things, but one; the subject-object field has collapsed.

My companions - the wren and the song thrush speak a language I do not understand, but can still appreciate. Like music, theirs is a universal language that doesn’t require analysis, merely appreciation.

During a period where I can’t manage much human company even if I want it - because human relational company requires me to use energy that I have very little of - this kind of relational paralleling feels undemanding, regulative, safe and supportive.

It was only a few days ago I was in tears because I could no longer tolerate the constant drone of the traffic. So to have respite from that and to be able to attune to nature’s sounds feels deeply companionable and restorative.

R. Murray Schafer, who established the World Soundscape Project in Vancouver, Canada, says,

“…no sound in nature has attached itself so affectionately to the human imagination as bird vocalizations. In tests in many countries, we’ve asked listeners to identify the most pleasant sounds of their environment. Birdsong appears repeatedly at or near the top of the list.” (P.29)

The exquisite tones of the song thrush and wren can get quite obscured at busier times of the day because of traffic noise. This made me think differently about how communication depends not only on language, but on the acoustic environments through which language travels.

I’m reminded of a visit to the small island of La Gomera a few years ago - one of the lesser known Canary Islands. We stayed in a forest that felt intensely alive to me. While I was there I learned about Silbo Gomero - a language based on whistling. This was how the Gomerans communicated across the steep ravines of their mountainous terrain. Their unique language is still taught today and has parallels to the language and sonic properties of birds. Its high pitched frequencies are designed to cut through foliage and woodland and can travel up to five kilometres. It is now a protected human language taught in the schools of the region.

I wondered how Silbo Gomero would fare with constant traffic noise.

We’re about a third of a mile from a main bypass. It’s the primary A road that carries traffic through our county including large lorries going to and from the Northern Ireland ferry.

My usual buffers are down, which means my hypersensitivities are up, and my normal ways of managing emotions are not working; I’m hyper-permeable.

Depending on the way the wind blows, sometimes the traffic noise can be overbearing and visceral, making it hard for my nervous system to relax.

I wondered what it would have been like if a great bypass had been built through the middle of the Gomerans’ mountain valleys, and thundering traffic noise meant they could no longer communicate across those valleys. How would they have been impacted?

Likewise, I think about how birds are impacted by the man-made noise that constantly interrupts their own frequencies and ways of communicating across distances.

There is a poignancy as I notice how my own nervous system responds to different types of sound - how bird song rarely troubles me, but traffic certainly does. Traffic has a visceral low rumble to it that is more than just sound through the ears; it’s vibratory. It impacts the whole of my body.

Sound is not apart from vibration.

It is vibration.

And for sensitive nervous systems, that changes everything. Next week I’ll explore what happens when we begin listening not only with our ears, but with our whole bodies.

References:

Ackerman, Jennifer (2016). The Genius of Birds. Penguin Books, New York

Powers, Alan (2022). Conversations with Birds: The Metaphysics of Bird and Human Communication. Bear and Company, Rochester, Vermont

Schafer, R. Murray (1994 edition). The Tuning of the World. (Originally published 1977.) Destiny Books. Rochester, Vermont

Sitting here, on a favourite bench, I’m drawn to the canopy above me. Beech, sycamore, birch, chestnut.

Looking up, I can see light playing on leaves, titivated by a light breeze. Tree crowns are propelled in a gentle swinging motion, a largely improvisational dance.

I am enthralled, and gladdened to be out at all today, given my cyclical health flares.

Being among trees has a noticeable effect on my system even after a short time. It is as though I join the dance for a fleeting while, sensing the shifting patterns, rhythms and light.

I am steeped in a sensory delight precipitated by nature’s multi-sensory interplay.

There is no standing ovation, no critical acclaim, no expensive ticket sales.

And just one seat.

It’s nature’s very own unique and singular “happening” for which I am the only witness.

The trees are not alone. They are a stage for the multiple choruses of many birds. The song thrush, the wren, robins, sparrows, pigeons and the inimitable percussive rhythm of a distant woodpecker.

A captivating counterpoint in the canopies.

Dr Qing Li has been advocating forest bathing over decades with his extensive research into more than just its health benefits; his research also explores its ability to give us perspective.

“Several studies have shown that, when we connect with nature, we are reminded that we are part of something larger than ourselves. Faced with the awesome vastness of the universe we can feel flooded with gratitude. We become less selfish and start to think about others.” (p.108)

My local woodland is a regular haunt, a place to go when I need to feel the aliveness of a forest. It seems I am not alone. Research by Peter Wohlleben in his book The Hidden Life of Trees points to many physiological benefits of being among them.

“Korean scientists have been tracking older women as they walk through forests and urban areas. The result? When the women were walking in the forest, their blood pressure, their leg capacity and the elasticity of their arteries improved, whereas an excursion into town showed none of these changes.” (p. 223)

Last year, I regularly walked through Edinburgh, heading to a piano lesson on the outskirts of town. I traversed the roads to cross town from Waverley Station to a leafy suburb on the outskirts. I experienced the fabulous architecture, museums, shops, art galleries and cafés. I also encountered a sense of the weight of its Georgian architecture and history — a manifestation of the Scottish Enlightenment. It is my favourite city apart from Thimphu in Bhutan.

But without my agreement, lately, even Edinburgh has become a drain on my limited capacity.

By comparison, in nature, I feel the tingling of aliveness and curiosity.

It is June.

I take a walk on the shores of our local estuary. An incoming tide persuades the birdlife closer to the shoreline. With my monocular I can spy the plovers and lapwings amassing on grassy hummocks. I spot the redshank, cormorant and heron, and the long-legged snowy egret, perambulating the mudflats.

What strikes me also, is how the flora and fauna have their own rhythms and seasons.

This month there is now an array of silverweed, with its delicately sheened leaves and buttercup-like flowers, hosts of pink sea thrift, and throngs of wild mustard lining the shore path.

In May it was gorse, and its heady, coconutty aroma that took centre stage; the silverweed was flowerless, the sea thrift and wild mustard nowhere to be seen.

Of course, we are all familiar with seasons and changing vegetation, but to be present to those changes over time stimulates in me pattern recognition, the curiosity of discovery, and the novelty of return.

My mother has a very good grasp of Latin, having studied it at A level. As a young child I would wander with her through National Trust or other public gardens, and she would call various trees and plants by their Latin names. The naming of them crystallised something about their form and feature. It discriminated them from an otherwise unnameable visual cacophony. I could recognise and draw out different trees and flowers once I had names.

Today, living so far from my mother, I rely, rather ashamedly, on PlantNet. But still, honouring plant life with curiosity and names, even through an app, feels like a reciprocity of sorts.

My experience in nature appears to reflect a wider perception among neurodivergent people - something I’ve gleaned from a note I posted recently on Substack that received hundreds of responses. In this note I commented that I feel nature is less about leisure and enjoyment for me - although that is a side effect - and more about essential maintenance for my nervous system. Your replies amplified and expanded on this in fascinating ways. And it got me thinking.

For the record, I cannot say that all the replies were by neurodivergent people. However, I know that many were, due to the wording in their responses, their Substack profiles, and the communities they inhabit on Substack.

Many of the people who responded said they experience more belonging in nature.

Why?

Let’s go deeper to find out.

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“All roads start from the body and lead back to it. The body is the road.” - Edmond Jabès

The last few weeks have been spent largely flat on my back after a period of dizziness and lightheadedness on walking. For someone like me who has a busy and creative mind, lying on my back shows me how limiting life can be when even writing and reading become more difficult.

There is also a poignancy in it, because I know the way I regulate best is when I am in a natural environment. Not farmland or managed green space, but wild nature.

Today, in a heatwave, I am lying in a hammock in our garden.

From here I can see clouds gently drifting across the sky in languid, linear trails.

I can hear young bullocks gorging on grass in the field nearby, locally nesting swallows chattering in the trees, and the sound of a trickling burn running under the decking.

There is a sycamore tree above me, heavy with sticky buds that fall onto the patio and sometimes onto my clothes, later leaving breadcrumb trails in my wake.

In this recovery phase, the garden becomes a bridge to alignment. It offers sensory support, oxygen, and open views, having a beneficial physiological effect on my well-being.

It is well documented that gardens can significantly improve mental and physical health, bringing deeper contentment, inspiring creativity and offering a nurturing and peaceful safe haven.

The Nature Connectedness Research Group at the University of Derby says, “We found that people who are more connected to nature tend to have greater eudaimonic well-being - meaning they are functioning well - and in particular have higher levels of self-reported personal growth.”

For me, regulation happens when the world stops requiring constant translation.

For a neurodivergent nervous system, there are typically ongoing scenarios that cause chronic stress. Many of us are living in what we call a systems mismatch, whereby the structural, psychological and emotional needs of an individual are not being met by the largely neurotypical systems around them.

Many neurodivergent people report a differing sensory tempo, differences in social interpretation speed, interoceptive differences, and a need for predictability of output and recovery time between stimuli.

This necessitates an individual constantly having to translate their needs, or to live in denial of them, through over-functioning or over-adapting in order to fit in. For many people who come late to a formal diagnosis, their nervous systems have dysregulated to the point of burnout, or multiple burnouts lasting months or even years.

For a neurodivergent system to regulate, there need to be environments and structures in place to support it.

We do not exist apart from context.

Many of us who have been exhausted through years of survival adaptation seek out places that will help us to find equilibrium. Indeed, we may rely on it. For some of us, that environment is nature.

Something happens whereby the nervous system is able to recalibrate.

I cannot personally scientifically explain this, but I can attest to my lived experience. What happens within my system when I’m out in nature, and particularly wild nature, is that I can feel a sense of freedom and autistic joy. When I’m among trees, or in water-based environments, such as lochs, rivers or sea, there is a particular kind of connection that requires less of me, where I can watch the birds as they go about their day, where I can simply listen to the sound of the sea.

There are two things going on in this scenario. There is pattern recognition - a rhythm and patterning that I don’t experience very often in modern society - and equally, there is no need to translate my experience to anybody; importantly, there is no judgement and no correction. In his book Neurodivergent By Nature, Joe Harkness seconds this when he says, “We know that the natural world doesn’t judge us like the human world does. It allows us to be free and to be ourselves.”

For me, the garden, and any tamed or manufactured natural landscape, serves as a prelude to something larger, more expansive and more free.

In Olivia Laing’s book A Garden Against Time, she questions our assumptions about the roots of the notion of paradise, not as some abstract place in the future, but as something grounded in human life - an important facet of it; a garden.

“At first I thought it was the gardens that were being compared to paradise, as in heaven, but to my surprise the concepts ran the other way around. Our word ‘paradise’, with all its charmed associations, has roots in Avestan, a language spoken in Persia two thousand years BCE. It derives from the Avestan word pairidaēza, which means ‘walled garden’…”

Some gardens contain both the manicured, and a nod to the wild.

One of my favourite gardens that I visited regularly as a child on family holidays and returned to as an adult is Dartington Hall in Devon. I love its undulations and varied levels, the Henry Moore sculpture lazily surveying the estate from on high, the walled garden with its carefully selected plants - irises, hollyhocks, lupins, lavender - and the wilder corners less traversed, where the insect hotels have been thoughtfully positioned under the trees.

As an adult, I have meandered through this garden on a number of occasions when I stayed at the Hall, before heading to Dartmoor for various meditation retreats. Sometimes after the retreats, I have walked around them in a kind of sensorily tactile heaven, as though I had eyes in my hands and feet.

To my dismay, on a recent visit, I realised I had missed a talk by the author, Raynor Winn. However, I bumped into her and her husband Moth in the dining hall over breakfast the following morning.

I had enjoyed reading her books. According to the narratives, Moth is living with an invisible illness impacting his capacity and energy. Walking the southwest coastal path of Cornwall, his symptoms appeared to abate.

Expressing my gratitude to Raynor for her writing over the toast and jam counter, she replied, “You never know what’s next in life”, or words to that effect.

Perhaps this was rather prophetic, given the allegations that followed surrounding the truth of their adventures. Still, The Salt Path, in my opinion, speaks to the idea of nature as a force that can breathe new life into us. I do not mean it can heal per se, that would be too broad an assumption, but that it may be assistive in the body’s recovery process - as a regulating force.

What I am noticing more and more is that wild places are doing something to me. Regulation is not something I generate internally through effort. It is something that arises in relationship to place. I do not just feel more relaxed there. My whole system shifts. My shoulders drop. My attention becomes less tight. There is something about the felt sense that extends beyond the body. Something the writer Robert Macfarlane captures in his book The Old Ways:

“I felt a sensation of candour and amplitude. Of the body and mind opened up, of thought diffusing at the body’s edges rather than ending at the skin.”

Not only is there more ease, but feelings of wonder are visceral. I experience what I can only describe as autistic awe - a feeling of being vividly, almost cellularly alive.

It feels as though my nervous system is constantly responding to what is around it. In natural landscapes that response feels coherent. In more built up or high stimulation environments, that same responsiveness can feel overwhelming or draining. This has become very clear to me over time; regulation is not separate from environment. It is shaped by it.

Late-diagnosed ADHD-er and educator, Joe Harkness, speaks to the full body experience of being in natural environments.

“Grounding in a natural environment is more than just focusing, it’s a fully immersive experience. Sometimes I stand in the natural environment and as I process the range of information flooding over me, it results in instances of euphoria. Walk down a woodland path after a springtime rain shower, carpets of bluebells either side of you, as the smell of wet soil and grass cloys in your nostrils, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a sensory buffet.”

One of the reasons I have remained in Scotland, despite periods of illness and despite many of my family and oldest friends living in the English Midlands, is that I have gradually come to understand how profoundly environment affects my nervous system. I do not mean this romantically or aesthetically, as though I simply prefer a prettier landscape. I mean it in a much more functional and embodied way than that. Wildness does not necessarily equate to beauty. It is less about aesthetics and more about engagement - a reciprocity with the body - cell to cell.

People who care about me sometimes understandably imagine that moving closer to family would automatically mean more support, more connection, perhaps even a better quality of life. And I can see why they feel that way. But what is difficult to explain is that for me, regulation is inseparable from place. The landscapes I live amongst here are not incidental to my wellbeing. They are part of the ecology that allows me to remain connected to myself.

Even now, living where I do, I am still surrounded largely by farmland and roads rather than truly wild environments. But the difference is that beyond that, within reach, there are coastlines, woodland, estuaries, lochs, hills, islands, weather systems, vast skies. Places where human presence loosens slightly and something primal and less managed becomes perceptible again. In those places, my system recalibrates. I feel spacious again.

For years I joked that moving to Scotland felt like going “free range,” and beneath the humour there is probably some truth in that. My body experiences this landscape as a widening rather than a narrowing. There is more room to roam physically, mentally, and sensorily. That experiential understanding has become difficult to un-know.

I don’t wish to simply paint wild nature as a consistent form of regulation - it can be savagely unpredictable. So much depends on weather, coastline, sea, and flora and fauna. The northern edges of the Scottish Mainland, for example, are comprised of impenetrable bogs, vertiginous cliffs, and inaccessible islands such as Stroma and Swona - once inhabited by humans, and now only by feral cattle, fed by visiting farmers when the dangerous cross currents of the temperamental Pentland Firth permit.

During a recent storm here in Dumfries and Galloway, gales reached 100mph in our village and 104mph on the coastline a few miles away, which was highly dysregulating. The house felt as though it was going to be prised from its foundations at points, or that the walls might cave in. The loft bedrooms rattled as though being shaken by an unseen force. It was every bit like the opening scenes of the Wizard of Oz. Fortunately, the house survived, but my system took time to settle again.

Even in a garden, wild, elemental weather defies the domicile.

Wild nature, then, is not inherently regulating. It can soothe, but it can also overwhelm.

Scotland is known for its many strings of islands of varying characteristics, some large, some small. Many are home to beautiful gardens - walled and otherwise - but are perhaps better known for their wildernesses, wildlife, and coastlines. One such island is Mull - the largest of the Inner Hebridean Islands that is comparable in size to the whole of Singapore, or Bahrain.

It was here, on a recent visit, that I became unerringly conscious of my need to go beyond the containment of a garden, however paradisal, and to immerse in wild nature.

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Since beginning this newsletter in January, something unexpected has slowly begun to evolve.

What started as a place for essays, reflections, and fragments of thought has gradually revealed a deeper coherence beneath it. Themes I once experienced as separate — nervous system regulation, sound, place, neurodivergence, illness, ecology, perception, relationship, and meaning-making — have begun to fold gently into one another, as though they were always part of the same underlying landscape.

Increasingly, it feels less like I am writing isolated posts and more like I am uncovering a larger body of work in real time.

The next series, Towards an Ecology of Regulation, will unfold across six parts and explore the relationship between nervous systems, environments, perception, culture, and the living world around us.

It draws from lived experience, but also from a growing body of research across neuroscience, ecology, psychology, disability studies, philosophy, architecture, environmental writing, and contemplative practice. The work is becoming slower, deeper, and more research-intensive, requiring far more reading, contextualising, and synthesis than my earlier posts did.

At the same time, it is also becoming more narrative in form: a kind of creative nonfiction where lived experience and wider inquiry can sit alongside one another and speak into each other.

As I’ve been writing, I’ve begun to notice how many of these threads have been present across my life in ways I didn’t fully have language for at the time.

I spent several years working as a journalist in radio and television with both the BBC and independent broadcasters in the UK, and later travelled extensively and lived abroad, often finding myself drawn towards remote or wilder environments without quite knowing why that pull felt so persistent.

In my thirties, during my degree and MA in Sonic Art, I became deeply interested in found environmental sound, sound walks, immersive listening, and multi-channel spatial audio systems — work that explored atmosphere, perception, embodiment, and what it means to be sonically held within an environment. Sound, listening, and sensory immersion remain central to the questions I am now returning to in a more integrated way.

Alongside this, my thirty years of contemplative practice, mindfulness training and teaching practice have shaped how I understand attention and perception — through practices of noticing, mindful walking, sensory awareness, and listening more closely to what is present. Over time, these practices have become less something I “do” and more a way of orienting toward experience itself.

Increasingly, I find myself wondering whether many neurodivergent people may experience a particularly intensified relationship with environment, sound, and nature — not only as something restorative, but as something more fundamentally regulatory and deeply intertwined with how perception and nervous system function. And while this feels personally resonant, I also suspect it touches something broader about human experience.

In middle age, I’ve had a sense that these different strands might one day connect into something coherent, even if I couldn’t yet see the shape of it. Looking back now with an expanded perception, I can begin to see how they have been forming a weave, like threads in a tapestry.

A diagnosis of autism has given me a lens through which areas of interest I once considered separate now appear deeply connected. They suggest a congruent whole, and something greater than the sum of its parts. All these threads of my lived “narrative” are part of this weave encompassing a search for alignment, for meaning-making and for authenticity.

At the same time, my own health and daily capacity have shifted significantly since I first began writing here. I need to work in a rhythm that allows this project to remain sustainable, spacious, and alive. While writing and research feed me, protecting my energy is also part of modelling self-compassion and healthy boundaries.

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So from this point onward, the newsletter will move to a fortnightly schedule rather than a weekly one.

Posts will also begin taking a two-part form:

Part A will remain free for all subscribers, while Part B will move into the paid section for those who wish to follow the deeper layers of the work.

It matters deeply to me that the free writing remains meaningful and complete in itself. But this new structure gives me the space to continue developing these ideas with the depth and continuity they increasingly seem to ask for.

I suspect that what is emerging here may eventually become a book, though I am still discovering its shape as I go.

For now, I am very grateful that so many of you have chosen to read, think, reflect, and stay alongside this unfolding process.

I’m genuinely excited about what comes next, and I would love for you to stay with me for this next part of the journey.

The first piece in Towards an Ecology of Regulation arrives in two weeks.

In the meantime, I’ll be posting regular notes and replying to your comments where I can. Substack is more than a writing platform to me, it also offers a meaningful community, and I value this engagement with you all.

When I think about the many years I spent over-adapting to fit expected systems in meditation environments such as group retreats, institutions and practise systems I had adopted, it is clear I was working hard to bridge a mismatch in both my capacity and my neurological difference.

Being unknowingly neurodivergent, and living with M.E./CFS, I have, in later life, come to understand how hard I was working to “do life” in general. My processing differences, invisible to me, were causing me to over function and crash. This became a pattern throughout my late thirties and beyond. The more I pushed through burnouts, the more deeply entrenched they became.

What I want to do in this article, is to look at what has worked for me in terms of mindfulness and meditation, and how I am reframing it to work with my own nervous system.

I will offer some pointers, things that may work for you too, while recognising we are all on a spectrum. I’ll be developing more content here on Substack that you may find helpful. You can find neurodiversity-informed breath practices in my archive in the podcasts section, and I will be adding different neurodiversity-informed practices over time.

Noticing and The Window of Tolerance

The first thing I’d like to unpack a little, is the basic premise of mindfulness, which is noticing.

Very simply, when we are unaware, or “asleep at the wheel” we are operating from an automatic, unconscious state. When we are noticing, we are bringing our awareness into direct contact with a particular experience, or sensation, so it ceases to be unconscious. It becomes seen.

From one perspective it’s simple, and also, it’s not an easy thing to master, when so much of our life is lived on autopilot.

Earlier today, I went for a walk around our small village. I might have travelled further afield, but it was a “tired day”. In my mind there was a slight resignation, because I have done this walk so many times. That was the first noticing.

Ah. I am assuming this walk will be the same as all the others.

I was able to challenge my own assumptions around sameness.

On the walk I noticed a number of things I hadn’t seen before. A host of swallows, flying around a tall hedge in blossom. A variety of different coloured bluebells. Cute lambs popping their heads through a fence to eat the succulent grass on the other side. A tree heavy with cherry blossom. This was definitely not the same walk.

I came back with more joie de vivre, after a somewhat frustrating morning doing admin.

Impermanence is a great teaching, and noticing was the key.

When we are living with neurological difference such as autism, or chronic illness, our systems can be subtly over-activated for a number of reasons. These can include sensory load, social processing, fatigue, brain fog, interoceptive confusion, alexithymia, transitions, overwhelm, and over-adaptive behaviours. These can push our nervous systems into a sympathetic state; our systems get used to being in flight, fight, freeze or fawn.

Sometimes we can live in that state for months, years, and even decades.

Regulation should not be an assumed start point in mindfulness, and sadly, it often is.

In traditional approaches to trauma-sensitive mindfulness, the first thing to do is to notice. Being stuck in the sympathetic nervous system means we are outside what is called the window of tolerance.

Inside the window of tolerance our parasympathetic, or “rest and digest” nervous system is at the fore. We feel more relaxed, steadier, more centred, and calm.

So the first thing is not to try and do a sitting practise in a dysregulated state. It is to notice what being inside the window of tolerance feels like, because until we have access to that state, regulation is difficult.

Learning to regulate the vagus nerve through gentle movement is another way to access the parasympathetic nervous system. You can explore some excellent resources through trauma-sensitive mindfulness approaches and somatic work informed by people such as Peter Levine and Stephen Porges.

For many neurodivergent people, regulation is not separate from mindfulness.

It is the foundation of it.

It’s also important to frame trauma sensitive mindfulness in a wider context that includes our differences, rather than exempting them, because it’s these differences that have often been the cause of our dysregulation in the first instance. There may be both dysregulation from neurological difference and trauma. It’s not always easy to untangle the two.

Sometimes they are intimately connected.

I would suggest a two-pronged attack, if this is workable for you and your body. Use both mental noticing, and polyvagal or somatic work to help the nervous system find its window of tolerance. Some polyvagal work doesn’t require movement - it uses sounds, such as humming or resonating the chest cavity, so where mobility is an issue, these approaches can help.

When the window of tolerance is experienced, and more importantly, felt, this becomes a vital reference point for those of us who have been living with chronic over-activation.

This in itself is a huge win.

If you notice signs of PTSD, or trauma, then getting support can be crucial. I would advocate finding a psychotherapist, somatic therapist, or clinical psychologist who is neurodiversity-informed. I speak from experience when I say that if they are not, or say they have worked with neurodivergent people but have no specific training in this field, it can do more harm than good.

The Art of Self Inquiry

Noticing is the foundation of regulation.

It is also the foundation for self inquiry.

When we think of mindfulness, it’s easy to conclude that it’s about sitting meditation, but the net extends far beyond that.

If noticing is the lock, then self inquiry is the key.

Self inquiry generally means conceptualising a question, such as:

“What am I feeling in this moment?”

”What is happening in my body right now, and specifically, where?”

“What are my needs in this moment?”

These questions guide us towards an experiential understanding.

When honed well, these are the questions that can start to bring us back to ourselves.

Gentle check-ins throughout the day can help to orient us towards a more awakened state.

For example, if you’re prone to disconnecting from your body, then certain self inquiry questions can help to bring you back. It can be helpful to set an alarm every few hours during the day, for a one or two minute check-in. It could be as simple as asking:

“What’s here now?”

Many of us on the spectrum have survived through people-pleasing, and so asking for what we need, or tuning in to how we feel, can feel alien to begin with. Interoception differences can also make it harder to notice what’s happening somatically. This can be included as part of self inquiry. For example:

“Is there no feeling at all?”

“If there is some sensation, what is that, and where in the body is it?”

It’s not wrong if there is no sensation. It’s information. Perhaps some days it’s easier to sense into certain parts of the body than others. Noticing and self inquiry can help build a picture over time, even if that picture is that there is no particular pattern.

Bringing ourselves back to our feelings, our body, or the ground beneath our feet, is like working a mindfulness muscle to help us to become more present.

There are numerous self inquiry questions, and with some regular journalling around what you are noticing about yourself, personalising those questions becomes clearer over time.

Sometimes there can be all sorts of automatic programmes running under the surface of our conscious awareness, including thoughts, feelings or bodily sensations, and self inquiry can gently draw them out.

Over time, a picture forms around tendencies we may not have explicitly noticed before.

Noticing is a kindly witnessing, it is not an exercise in self judgement.

This kindly self awareness combined with self inquiry allows for more agency in our lives, as we “wake up” to deeply ingrained habits and responses.

It doesn’t require sitting (although for some it helps to be still during the check-ins), we can do it on the move, and regular check-ins can sometimes be far more beneficial than sitting in a formal practise, feeling subtly, or not so subtly, frayed at the edges.

Introducing the ecology of regulation

As tailoring my practise becomes more necessary, and as structures and systems I once embraced feel more like a systems mismatch, I’m gradually finding ways that do work.

I’ve reached a territory with no map, and so I’m beginning to create my own.

One thing I notice, and it’s very clear to me now, is that mindfulness is not separate from context, it is informed by it. You only have to read about some of the meditation masters of old to learn that they lived in remote caves, or even cremation grounds as part of their practise, and especially as it became more refined.

In the modern world, this is not so easy and perhaps not advisable. Other regulatory environments can provide this context, such as quiet woodland, by a lakeside or stream, or under a tree. Preferably somewhere undisturbed.

Many of us need to down-regulate through solitary time in conducive natural environments, and sometimes around animals to feel more connected. For some of us, that’s also where our autistic joy lives.

I recently discovered a new walk by the Merse, close to where I live.

Every year, we are blessed with migrating geese who over-winter here in Southern Scotland.

The Merse is their home, and recently I was treated to a field full of barnacle geese as I wended my way through farmland and onto the boardwalks that took me out onto the boggy, but picturesque open views of the estuary and beyond. This is a place where I feel more aligned and in awe. Away from “Box World”, as Carl Jung so aptly put it, something in me opens up that can’t open up in the same way inside four walls.

On the Merse, alone, I have access to myself in a different way. I can sit on a bench and meditate, or on a cooler day, potter to the bird hide, open the window, take in the view, and feel the breeze.

Meditation doesn’t need to involve cushions and incense. But it can, and that’s fine too.

If nature is harder to access, or not your bag, some people find drawing, painting, colouring or crafting helps them to enter a flow state, and this too, can be deeply regulating and meditative.

I also enjoy meditating in temples. We have a Tibetan one local to us, and I occasionally visit. The reason I enjoy this is because it’s infused with the energy of other meditators. The Dalai Lama has been there, as has the current Karmapa, and while I don’t now get too involved with spiritual institutions, dipping in like this can give me access to something energetically stimulating, in a good way.

Having a safe and quiet space inside your home for contemplation can also be regulating. If it’s hard to get quiet time, or if the quiet is subtly dysregulating (you can check, using self-inquiry), wearing headphones, or earphones and playing masking sounds can help, and this gives something on which to focus the mind. It could be the sound of rain, a calm sea, gentle wind, white, brown, or green noise. Listening to environmental sounds can be more regulating for some of us on the spectrum than focusing on our breath, or what’s going round in our head.

Finding, and trusting what works for you is key. A practise and environment that resonate for one person, may not resonate for another.

Now I’m going to do a deeper dive into a practise you might find helpful.

Read more

“There is no shame in not being able to practise.”

That’s what I needed someone to say to me, when my practise wasn’t working.

I’m a neurodiversity-informed mindfulness teacher, and for over thirty years, a practising Buddhist. I love the practises I’ve learned - most of them - and because some teachings and teachers have been more difficult to access, I’ve travelled abroad, or gone to great effort to receive them. While I don’t regret this, I recognise that, as someone who was unknowingly autistic, I was over-functioning for much of my life. The effort required to attend classes, retreats, festivals, and to volunteer, was slowly, cumulatively, adding to that burden.

When I received my diagnosis of M.E. in my late thirties, I already had a daily practise in place that gave me some insight and perspective. It helped me to keep a little spaciousness in my already taxed and tired brain and nervous system, despite the daily rub of systems mismatch and the resulting high masking.

Because of the Buddhist teachings I had learned, I knew, at least intellectually, that life is impermanent, and that sickness, ageing and death are all unavoidable. But until you are actually faced with sickness, it’s still a theoretical model to some extent.

Some of us who received an M.E./CFS diagnosis years ago were treated by those close to us as though we’d made the whole thing up. Or that it was easily solvable with some NLP and a bit of therapy. Perhaps for some, that worked. For me, I tried many modalities, but they didn’t get to the root of the issue. I lived with post-exertional malaise, disrupted sleep cycles, brain fog, aching limbs, and unreliable energy levels.

Not only was I sick, but I was having to push through. I wasn’t able to access support. The level of disbelief around me made me doubt myself, and I had responsibilities that mattered deeply to me - I was a working single mum.

No one saw the extent of the suffering because I was high masking, and kept much of it out of view. The crawling up and down stairs through profound exhaustion, the disrupted sleep, the brain fog and slow thinking on waking that might last days. All of that got covered up and pushed through. And yet, somehow, for the most part, I managed to sustain a practise.

With age, and changing hormones, that has become increasingly difficult. I am experiencing a decline in capacity that brings grief, loss and also the sadness and frustration of being misunderstood over the long term and not getting the right help.

When my M.E. diagnosis came, I was referred to a hospital in Derby specialising in CFS. It was nearly a two hour drive, and I was given various photocopies on how to do graded exercise. I knew the drive in itself was exhausting. I knew the graded exercise therapy wasn’t working. And yet, there was little information around M.E. at that time, and it was the best thing on offer.

Later I tried The Lightning Process, EFT (I’m now a trained practitioner), psychotherapy, nutrition, naturopathy, kinesiology, and later attended a specialist private online clinic for M.E. sufferers that offered both psychological and nutritional support combined. It’s fair to say that I received some benefit from these modalities, but nothing that actually fully solved the underlying issues.

My autism diagnosis came in my early fifties, when a difficult menopause meant I was unable to mask to the same extent.

It was a time of identity crisis.

I want to name that here, because meditation practise - especially if you are a Buddhist, or a mindfulness teacher, or something spiritual/religious that has a label attached - can get bound up with identity.

I’ve had to step back from attending in-person retreats. The capacity required to travel there, to process conversations, and the nervous system trying to co-regulate with others in a group setting, has become unsustainable. It takes far more than it gives.

For a while, I managed online group meditations, and now, fluctuating energy can make that difficult too. The attention and processing required to manage a two-hour Zoom call can be a big drain.

I managed home retreats for a time, over some weekends. I really enjoyed doing these, and then, again, it became more than my capacity could reliably sustain. Then my daily practises started to shrink and came undone at the seams.

I was noticing more and more that sitting meditation didn’t feel neutral, and you can read about that in Part two.

There are few books out there for sick practitioners, so I was delighted to find a book by Toni Bernhard called How To Be Sick. There’s some sage advice in there, including her own lived experience of chronic illness, plus the ups and downs and unreliability of functionality. I felt as though I was reading the words of an old friend. Someone who was walking a similar path and with similar experiences. I’m very glad this book exists, because I’m sure it speaks to many who struggle with practise for health reasons.

And yet, looking at it through the lens of an autism diagnosis, I notice areas that don’t quite sit right with me. There is still some sifting to do.

For me, self acceptance has been hard won. It was also largely unavailable to me before my diagnosis, because I was carrying deeply embedded shame and self doubt.

The grief of identity loss

It’s not uncommon for people who receive a diagnosis as an adult - and particularly later in life - to experience grief, and this can be for a number of reasons.

Many of us have been functioning within systems and structures that don’t support how our nervous systems work. This can include schooling, university, jobs, friendships and family relationships, so it’s across the board.

We have unconsciously compensated for the differences in our natural pacing and processing to fit what we see around us. This is commonly known as camouflaging, or masking, and can start very young. For those of us who have got by, the strain shows up much later, as our compensation strategies collapse under the weight of an unseen load. Not only are we trying to fit into these systems, but we are also working hard to compensate for the mismatch, which requires a great deal of effort - psychologically, emotionally, and physically.

For women, perimenopause and menopause mean fluctuating hormone levels can cause a systems breakdown, because there is no bandwidth left to manage this additional load. We are all used up.

The collapse of the mask can be devastating, because our identities are integrated with it. “Who am I now?”, is a question we are often forced to ask, as our lives begin to become unstable, or uninhabitable. It’s not just about the job becoming too much, or the family system not meeting us where we are, but it’s a deep identity restructuring that’s needed in order that we can live well, albeit, in a very different way.

When your life is bound up with the mask, it requires a lot of deconstructing first.

This has been my experience, and it impacted me at every level.

On the day of my diagnosis I was very upset, because I was worried I may not be autistic, or my autism may be missed. Women camouflage to an extent where the diagnostic criteria doesn’t always catch their differences. Their special interests might be people, animals or places and get missed, or they have learned to repress stims, smile along, and appear confident. This applies to men too, of course, but for women, the primal need to network - particularly during parenting - requires us to blend in and belong.

I was concerned about being missed and heading back to a life I could no longer keep together.

I am grateful that the lengthy process of getting the diagnosis, preceded by several months of gathering family history and speaking to relatives, had been forming a picture. Even though to some family members, I just appeared normal, and okay.

I didn’t want a badge, nor did I want attention, but I did want understanding, both from myself and others. So when the diagnosis came there was relief.

The grief hit me later, in unexpected ways, and often in my meditation practises, when I would well up with emotion and try to ‘be with’ the waves of sorrow that came, as if out of the blue. I hadn’t prepared for the level of loss I would experience. I looked back at my life and could finally see why I had made the choices I had made, why I hadn’t fulfilled my potential in the way I had hoped I would, why relationships had failed, and why I had struggled so much without a language for why.

I had to restructure my life, because I was experiencing a level of depletion that is hard to describe.

The feeling of running on empty - running on fumes.

The last push at the end of a marathon before collapsing at the finish line.

Walking through treacle in lead boots.

These are some analogies that get close, although, this was a full system disintegration.

My spiritual life was no exception. Containers that had previously held me - with effort - were not holding me anymore. The practises I had learned over years - many of them from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition - involved many transitions between micro-practices within a larger ‘sadhana’ - not something I had previously considered as an issue, but that were now clearly taking it out of me. Focusing on the breath, body scans, sitting upright for long periods, all these forms of practise were beginning to do more harm than good. I hadn’t understood at the time that some of them were not neutral for my nervous system - they were were activating and subtly dysregulating.

I realised my brain didn’t settle in the way it seemed other peoples’ did. I noted that what seemed to be pleasurable practices for others were an uphill struggle for me, and I noticed that focusing internally was causing tension and discomfort beyond the norms. My interoception was uneven, and my capacity was unreliable. I had again, fallen foul of a systems mismatch.

My identity as a Buddhist and meditator was deeply bound up with my sense of self, so when my practise began to falter, it wasn’t just the routine of practising, it was the identity of being someone who practises.

This goes even deeper than just the ego identity. Some practises are designed to take you beyond the ego, into a state sometimes described as ‘no self’, which means the witness dissolves, subject and object dissolve, and a non-dual state arises. I have had some glimpses of this, but not a ‘realisation’ in the sense that it was happening for me all the time. A realisation means it’s become a deeply integrated state whereby the efforting stops. Just like learning to swim, or drive - the mechanisms of the learning process become second nature, and are integrated into the swimmer or driver at an automatic systems level. For me, it had been difficult to metabolise this non-dual state, because my capacity was already stretched to its limit, and because the practises weren’t meeting my nervous system effectively.

For a while I felt as though I was failing, and I experienced FOMO and grief.

However, I was also a good deal more compassionate with myself as I appreciated all the unseen work I had been doing as unknowingly autistic to keep meeting the structures. This has gradually led to a level of self acceptance that was previously impossible.

In Buddhism and mindfulness it’s said that in order to fly, both compassion and awareness are needed, like two wings of a bird. I can say that my self compassion has deepened, and looking out for my needs has been evolving, as I notice all the areas of my life where I have put others first without considering my own needs. I realise that having and communicating needs isn’t selfish, it’s how life becomes sustainable and inhabitable. These pieces of the puzzle were missing before my diagnosis, and I feel more whole as a result.

Earlier in this series, I talked about what my practise looks like these days, and how gentle mindful movement such as walking or qigong seem to help more than seated meditation. Perhaps that will change. I am not yet sure.

An aspect of my life that feels more stable and grounded is that I have more self trust. It’s hard to have this when you have been corrected all your life. Those corrections were rarely named, they were simply born out of trying to fit in and having to adapt my natural ways of regulating to meet the world. There were simply no reflections available to me to show me an alternative. I am gradually finding ways to adapt less, and that has meant staying at home more, to minimise the friction with neurotypical society.

It was heartening to realise I was’t the only practitioner to encounter this kind of collapse.

In the autobiography of Hakuin, an eighteenth century Japanese Zen Master, he talks about a period of ill health where he felt, “…totally drained. Physically and mentally exhausted.”

Following this was a period of re-integration. I cannot say whether this was born of being neurodivergent, it sounds more like a great deal of intense, ascetic practise that became too much for his nervous system to bear. There are parallels here, as the re-integration process was lengthy and it took him a long time to find a practise that would help him heal. After an arduous journey, Hakuin eventually found a monk living in a remote cave who taught him the ‘soft butter meditation’.

It may have saved his life.

Milarepa is another famous practitioner whose intense practise and endurance of many trials - including the building and destroying of seven towers under his teacher Marpa that left him so weak he was barely alive - is another example of this endurance based model, so popular in previous centuries. His later years spent in solitude in the Himalayas were at least more peaceful and free of today’s relentless pace. But living on nothing but nettles? I think I’ll stick to a balanced diet.

While I respect these Masters and enjoy reading their stories, I believe that modern nervous systems - particularly in the West - are under a different kind of chronic, cumulative strain. Reflecting on their accounts, I feel that replicating the kind of intensity of those Masters is very rarely appropriate. Especially for those of us with depleted nervous systems, trauma, or neurological difference. Burnout is a cost the system doesn’t easily recover from.

Heroics, however much they are idealised, are not necessary to discovering interior truths.

Sometimes, the wisdom is in making steady progress, and knowing when to stop.

I am hoping that in time, I may find something that also works for me, and allows me to continue my spiritual development.

Part of my grief is not just about loss of the past, it is about loss of an imagined future, where I continued to practise and evolve in the way I had anticipated.

Finding integration in a neurodivergent body and mind

Despite these losses, I can also see how much more integrated I am now than I was as an unknowing autistic, and that is very much part of my path. I am more in touch with my body now, and I have realised the value of interoception and body-based practices that allow me to be present, not just in my mind, but inside my skin. I write about this in Part 3. Sometimes, it’s about allowing things to be as they are, not striving, but accepting what is.

The path, in fact, is very non-linear for many of us - Zen masters, and Tibetan Lamas included. You may have read the biographies and autobiographies of Lamas who have lived and still live during my lifetime, such as Lama Yeshe, the previous abbot of Samye Ling - a Tibetan monastery in the remote village of Eskdalemuir, Scotland. And the accounts of his predecessor, Chögyam Trungpa. They both struggled with adapting to the West, having experienced the trauma of escaping their country, and future exile.

It’s good to be reminded that we are all human, with different starting points, different abilities, different nervous systems, different weaknesses and strengths, and different life experiences. Both Chöygam Trungpa and Hakuin Ekaku enjoyed alcohol, and Hakuin may have developed diabetes due to his sweet tooth.

In the end, the paradox of being and becoming leads to a place beyond this apparent duality. We are always being, and always becoming. The threshold is the present. It’s the ego identity that strives, and gets caught in the past and future, and it’s the presence of awareness that sees its fleeting nature and settles into ‘now’. But settling into ‘now’ usually takes practice. There are exceptions; Eckhart Tolle, the author of The Power of Now, had a sudden and irreversible awakening. For most of us, it takes effort over many years.

For those of us who have become depleted through over-functioning and hormonal changes, the sudden inability to practise can be alarming, disheartening, and filled with grief.

There aren’t always easy answers for depleted nervous systems, except rest, time, lifestyle changes and self compassion.

Sometimes the deeper skill of a practitioner is in allowing things to be as they are.

Even if that means letting go of practises that no longer serve us.

Individuation in the context mindfulness or spiritual structures and practises

What if this isn’t regression, but a necessary re-organisation?

The process of individuation in spiritual life becomes more refined over time. As spiritual institutions and communities may no longer hold us fully in the way we need, as teachers cannot find the words for, nor the solution to our own suffering, and as we realise we have reached a place with no map, the journey becomes very individuated. Even solitary.

This is why I am less prescriptive about what mindfulness looks like for neurodivergent people, because there are so many variables.

If your practise has stopped for similar reasons, it’s helpful to realise this isn’t a failure. It’s a signal to change tack. Sometimes, there can be a period of feeling lost. And this is also part of the path.

I am writing from within this unmapped territory. Like Hakuin, I am trying to find solutions to a dysregulated and overburdened system, and it may take a little time before things become clear.

I can see how things have needed to change in order for me to integrate aspects of my life, and I now have more experience of listening to my body and my nervous system, and avoiding environments that are depleting by their nature. I have more clarity and self acceptance too.

I have yet to see where my practise goes - or doesn’t go - in the future. For now, I am grateful for what I have learned along the way, and hope that in time, I may again be able to access more glimpses of liberation.

Right now, my formal seated meditation routine has stuttered and sputtered to a kind of halt. It’s been demoralising. Feelings of failure have crept in, and I’ve needed to find a way to pivot into something that feels more sustainable.

I recognise that, as a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman, much of my adult life has involved pushing through, and the burnouts that came with it. Without the lens of an autism diagnosis, I was simply trying to keep up with all the reflections around me to survive.

My caregiving was largely focused on others, and while this might look like compassion from the outside, it’s been a little more complex.

There are nuances I notice now that may offer helpful insights, as I explore the ways empathy can present differently in neurodivergent people, and how mindful compassion practices may need adapting to be more accessible to us.

The search for self

A big part of my adult journey has been a search for self, at a time when no reflections were available to show me who I actually was.

I had an incomplete map.

And that entailed a long spiritual journey with hit and miss results.

I have few regrets about undertaking the journey. It made perfect sense at the time, but it was like I got into the wrong boat. The structures around my spiritual path were woefully inadequate for the way my system works. So the boat—the structures I encountered as part of my path—was tipped and unstable.

I look back at my past self with a great deal of self compassion—for the self who searched under many spiritual “rocks”—to try and find the truth about who I am.

She never quite did.

Over thirty years of that search, and with a recent autism diagnosis, I am now refining what it looks like to be me, what that means going forward, and specifically, what I need to nourish and sustain me in this phase of my life.

What works for neurotypical wiring is often not what works for me.

Perhaps you have found similar, and if so, I hope this article resonates.

What is high empathy?

Some of us with autism and ADHD profiles have unusually high empathy. So what does this actually mean? It means we ‘feel with’ intensely, especially when things or people matter to us. This is not conceptual; it is experiential. Somatic.

It’s a far cry from some of the stereotypical views of autism—that we lack empathy. Perhaps for a small minority that’s true. Many of us, however, express our empathy differently, or may not feel safe to express it at all.

The phrase “I feel you” can be quite literally what happens in a neurodivergent nervous system. We ‘feel’ the other—whether they be human or animal—at a depth that might be surprising to neurotypical people. There can be an intensity that comes with our empathy, and a lack of separation between self and other that characterises much of the way we inhabit our lives.

It’s not so much that we hold experience, but that experience enters us. Whether we like it or not.

This is worth sitting with, because it’s unusual.

The upside — if we are connected to ourselves, we can experience a depth of love and communication (not necessarily verbal) with another that is felt in our bones. This can be enriching and enlivening if it is tolerable for us. Equally, it can be draining and deleterious. Often there can be inconsistency, depending on how much energy and reserves we have, who we are with, whether we feel safe or not, and what the context of the relational interaction is. But the bottom line is this—we are often more porous people who “soak up” what is in our environment.

What does porousness look like in neurodivergent terms?

I recently listened to a podcast—part of the Sounds True Insights at the Edge series where the discussion explored a heartfelt and lived insight into porousness on the spectrum. There was a fascinating element to this: that neurodivergent porousness can be a gateway to spiritual evolution that could be of help to humanity at large. I will return to this idea in the conclusion.

I resonated with their description of porousness, and sometimes describe myself as being like a kitchen towel to liquid. I absorb the emotions of others to an extent that I can become overwhelmed, and with age, this has become increasingly apparent. Perhaps this rings true for you, too.

What often happens when we are forced to contort to fit into society without the right supports, is that we become disconnected from our bodies. It’s how we survive. It’s easier to numb out than to feel at the depths we might naturally feel, because it is simply too overwhelming, and society does little to help us to bridge that gap. Many of us may seem shut down, or the opposite, over-emotional, because we’re unable to touch base with the nuances within our own system to express ourselves authentically, to feel what we feel safely. Without those supports we are left in a sea of our own emotional intensity, so we either get overwhelmed, or we disconnect, or oscillate between the two.

In my own life, I largely disconnected from my body. And you can read more about that in part 3.

What does porousness have to do with mindfulness?

A lot more than has thus far been acknowledged, in my view.

As sensitive beings, who have the potential for deeply refined attunement, mainstream mindfulness teachings are not currently meeting us where we are. I feel this conversation needs widening.

Outmoded assumptions that our empathy is not naturally high, assume that compassion is easily accessible. It assumes an ease of separation between empathy and compassion, once the differences are known.

The difference between empathy and compassion is that empathy has no buffer. Everything is felt. Compassion has a more ‘step back’ approach and can also look more hands on— an active wish to ease the suffering of others. There can be deep care and concern, but without drowning in it.

A classic compassion-based practice is that of loving-kindness. In meditation form, it’s often focused on visualising one to several people, and focuses on maintaining compassion for all beings - even those it may be harder to have genuine concern for. This can be especially helpful for people who are resourced, and if it doesn’t trigger feelings of trauma (particularly in the case of visualising people in your life who are less easy to have compassion for). For those of us on the spectrum, I advise a little caution. Go easy on yourself if you do this practice. Make sure you have the reserves, and really check in with yourself around focusing on difficult people in your life. Some of us are living with PTSD or trauma we may not even recognise, because we’ve carried so much of it. It’s not a personal failure if this practice doesn’t resonate for you, or you can only manage it sometimes. It’s a radical act of self care.

Those of us on the spectrum may have a tendency to mirror others deeply—whether through learned behaviour, attunement, or habit—which can intensify empathic experience. This has evolved from our mimicry of neuro-normative behaviours that continues well into adulthood, and even, over a lifetime.

Because the “reflections” around us present a mismatch, we are constantly adapting to fit them. But the mirrors we are using? Like fairground attractions, they are distorting who we are. We are so wired to buy-in to those mirrors that our sense of self gets lost. This level of mirroring creates a deep dependency on others to certify our reality. It also creates a vulnerability.

Monotropism is an added layer, and with mimicry and monotropism combined, you have a recipe for a deep feeling, singularly attentive person who may lack the normal filters to buffer their empathy.

Many of us become the relational “glue” with friends and family, or we may even work in caregiving settings. Our whole identity becomes bound up in empathic choices. But these choices are not neutral. Where empathy— the ‘feeling with’—is intensified and edges between self and other are less distinct, compassion is not so easy to develop. It kind of folds in on itself. Empathy is our driving force.

There are other reasons for this too.

Access to compassion can also be more difficult due to a lack of self-trust.

In order to survive a life not built for us, we have had to adapt to belong—ignoring our needs in the service of survival. This “self denial to survive” loop that many of us get caught in as we please our way through life, is hard to see, and even harder to break. It’s possible, but it takes time, and the right support.

It’s been a lifelong habit.

So what might be viewed from the outside as compassion, might actually be fawning; people-pleasing to survive.

It’s worth sitting with this too, and using self-inquiry to ask the question, “When am I genuinely offering compassion, and when am I operating from an automatic survival response that looks like compassion, but is actually something else?”

When I was actively involved with a Buddhist centre and community several years ago, I had a deep reverence for my teacher. I can look back now at some of the dysfunction within that relationship. I was “giving alms” to them purely out of choice, and in Buddhist communities this is sometimes how teachers keep going. Their work is unpaid and they rely on the kindness of others for food, and clothing.

Retrospectively, I’m not sure this teacher actually needed this form of kindness, but they did not prevent it. Either way, it can be a useful practice for the giver.

I had a strong compunction to help. And I regularly supported this teacher with offerings of food and clothing, even at a time when I had very little financial stability myself. But mine was a compassion mixed with compunction. A compunction I didn’t yet understand. The “fawning to survive” program was running in the background.

This is something I have needed to get clear on retrospectively, to start to unpick the difference between the two.

Compassion fatigue in a neurodivergent system

It’s worth noting that some of us on the spectrum may be more vulnerable to empathy fatigue. For example, working in jobs such as nursing, or therapy means we can be stretched to be there for others without our porous systems getting overloaded. It can require a lot of conscious boundaries not to tip into overwhelm. For some late-diagnosed caregivers, the diagnosis may have come because they burned out and were unable to continue working.

Why self compassion can be hard to access

It’s important again here to address starting points, as I have mentioned in previous articles in this series.

For many of us on the spectrum, self compassion is like a foreign language.

We have been people-pleasing to survive, so our energy and kindness has been largely outsourced to others, sometimes at great cost to our health and wellbeing.

We often give more than we have capacity for, because we see others around us with energy levels we automatically seek to meet. Because we often don’t understand our own wiring until much later in life, entering the ground of self-compassion can be like learning Latin from scratch.

It may not come naturally, and can be hard to apply.

An example from my own life is that when I received my diagnosis and began looking more deeply at how autism had shaped my life without my knowing, I realised that the Buddhist Mahayana teachings that I had followed held great appeal for me because they are based on compassion for others. The word Bodhichitta is a lynchpin in Mahayana Buddhism— it speaks to the kind of evolved human who would lay down their life for another, or at least really put themselves out. I liked the sentiment, because in a way, this already came naturally.

As I began to understand more of my own workings, I could see how I had yet again outsourced my power—this time in the name of Bodhichitta. I had worked even harder at being a kind, compassionate person, when I was already experiencing multiple burnouts. It became another extension of that “belong to survive” mechanism.

I think this is really important to name, because many neurodivergent people get caught in spiritual institutions where they are trying to do the right thing and just adding more load onto their systems.

I suspect I have met quite a few.

What I actually needed first and foremost was self compassion, and I needed the lens of autism to even begin to consider what this might look like.

As someone with high empathy, of course I was attracted to compassion. But equally, as someone with high empathy, I was living with sensitivities that meant I could become easily overwhelmed. The answer wasn’t about having more empathy “out there” it was about learning to apply it to myself.

And initially that felt uncomfortably like selfishness.

Firstly, in my reading of the world, self and other are not that separate. This fits with the Buddhist “Lamrim” teachings around exchanging self with other. The analogy is that when you see another person, try to look at their perspectives from their side. An analogy sometimes used is to climb down the mountain of self and up the mountain of other. Another analogy that’s more common and with a similar meaning, is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. I had a strong aptitude for this, for reasons I couldn’t explain.

I had been constantly trying to read rooms all my adult life, and this was the mechanism. What might they be thinking, feeling, or perceiving? I was in other peoples’ shoes more than I would care to mention. And this was another aspect of the survival mechanism—second guessing. And the second guessing was a cognitive means of allaying my own anxiety, by trying to understand what might be going on with them, because of my inability to read subtle cues.

Developing self compassion for a neurodivergent system

In some respects, the classic way of teaching self compassion can be applied to neurodivergent people too, but I feel there are other elements and aspects that also need to be addressed.

In classic mindfulness terms, self compassion can be an anomaly for many human beings, and particularly, but not exclusively, in the Western world.

A group of psychologists visited the Dalai Lama in the 1990s. During that gathering, someone asked him about his views on self hatred. For the Dalai Lama this was a strange phrase—one he had rarely encountered in his own culture—and he had no reply, except surprise. When it was explained to him, he was somewhat disturbed, and said, “This is wrong.”

Self hatred runs deep for many people, and is an obstacle to self compassion. A meditation often used to develop self compassion initially, is through a borrowed perspective—imagining someone we trust and care about (it could even be a pet) having compassion for us. We sense into what that feels like, and then gently try to put ourselves in the shoes of the compassion-giver, until, over time, self compassion becomes a more natural experience.

I feel there are added layers of challenge here for neurodivergent people. Firstly, our sense of self may not be as individuated as that of a neurotypical person. Self compassion can therefore feel a bit—amorphous. Secondly, the survival wiring I talked about earlier, can fire along with the self compassion, so it’s not a neutral experience, and can feel unsafe. We have survived by pleasing others. Pleasing ourselves can feel a little—alien. Not just unfamiliar, but threatening at a survival level—it goes deeper than feeling worthless or unlovable, but there are crossovers. It’s more that if we turn our attention towards self care, this could threaten our belonging. We have belonged by suppressing our needs.

Self-trust issues can also fire off a deep sense of unworthiness. It’s hard to have self-trust when the world at large had been correcting you most of your life.

However, self compassion is also hugely important as a healing tool when we look back at our lives and see the choices we made that may not have made sense at the time, the unusual paths we took, the misunderstandings, or the abuse we may have experienced.

Viewed through the lens of a self diagnosis or a formal diagnosis, there is new light of understanding that can arise, and as the grief softens, self-compassion helps us to bridge to our past with love and care, for the unknowing self that did their best.

The road to self compassion may involve a number of modalities to reach cleanly.

In my case, separating out the survival mechanisms inbuilt with what I thought was compassion is ongoing work. I have worked with Internal Family Systems (IFS) and EMDR in tandem to de-couple some of these co-firing and wiring systems, and now it’s easier to notice when this is happening.

Trauma therapy has been another key factor for me—and here I would strongly advise finding a neurodiversity-informed therapist. I didn’t, because when I began trauma therapy I was as yet undiagnosed. My diagnosis came while I was still having this therapy, and yet my therapist seemed not to want to acknowledge my autism. They insisted I merely had “autistic traits”. The double empathy problem hit hard.

Working with grief through the compassionate practice of RAIN (Recognise, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) has been especially important for me. Self compassion often finds a place to land when grief can be sat with and acknowledged first. Beyond the tumble of tears, the sighs and the sobs lives something quieter. In that space of recognition, placing a hand on my heart and belly, or holding myself in a warm hug, or lying under a weighted blanket, I can feel the warmth of self compassion arising from the post-grief stillness.

Self compassion and alexithymia

We don’t all experience our emotions in the way neurotypical people experience them. There can be difficulty in identifying and processing them in real time.

Sometimes our emotions can be loud and unrelenting. Sometimes they can be difficult to access, and we’re sort of living on a cloud above them all, with reduced interoceptive awareness. Sometimes they are difficult to name. Sometimes we’re so busy navigating a relational situation and trying to cope, that anger, or grief, for example, aren’t available to us, hitting us much later, seemingly out of the blue. This uneven emotional landscape can be difficult for us to understand.

What can be helpful here is self kindness. Because the usual fallback can be self-blame, over-analysis and rumination. Self kindness might look like getting out and going for a walk, or talking to someone who understands us and can meet us where we are—that might be a trained therapist. I have had a lot of therapy over the last few years, and I still touch base once a month. It helps to unpack things as I refine what it’s like to become more congruent with who I am.

Self compassion and nervous system regulation

Another, extremely important aspect of developing self compassion, is learning to regulate the nervous system. This can be done through various somatic practices, and I have worked with some designed specifically for trauma, and more recently, practices designed to help neurodivergent people to set boundaries. Alice Bramhill’s Substack is a good starting point for this. Boundaries are a key piece of self compassion and compassion, but if you’re wired to please for survival, setting healthy boundaries can feel especially difficult, because the nervous system experiences this as a possible threat to belonging. Being cast out of the community is a very real, very primal fear, and it can be an overwhelming experience for neurodivergent people. So regulation practices before, during and after boundary setting can make this gradually easier over time.

Self compassion is also an important practice when our usual practices don’t work. In burnout, the nervous system cannot begin to regulate enough to allow for normal kinds of meditation or movement practices. It just needs to rest, be still, and find safety. If a meditation or movement routine has been a core piece of your day, and it’s not accessible, unworthiness can creep in. And fear of losing ground. This requires a great deal of self kindness.

Self compassion sometimes means asking for help, when we’re wired not to. Asking a partner to bring a hot drink, or calling a friend to say we’re struggling. That takes a lot for a hyper-independent neurodivergent who has had to override their system for so long. Asking for help isn’t just brave, it’s reversing the survival mechanism.

Self-compassion means acknowledging our fatigue, sickness, complex emotions, inability to experience them at points—all the things. In fact self compassion mediates self acceptance. I don’t believe self acceptance is truly possible without self compassion. It is a result of it.

How compassion evolves from self compassion

Once self compassion is starting to come online, and when the lens of diagnosis shows a clearer picture of self—and capacity—then compassion for others may look a little different to the mainstream.

Many of us don’t reliably have the capacity to actively help others in real time.

That was a truth I found hard to swallow, initially. I’d overridden my capacity for so long, it’s taken a long time to find balance, and I’m still not there yet.

Being a mindfulness teacher, I’m naturally drawn to helping others, and it’s required a big reframe.

Here’s what it looks like just now.

I volunteer at a monthly autistic women’s group. Sometimes I can’t go because I don’t have the capacity, and that’s understood.

I write. This enables me processing time, time to reflect, to go deep, to clarify, to adjust. Things I can’t often manage to do in real time, in person or online.

This writing is what you see here. And it’s evolving, as I explore the nuancing of mindfulness and meditation for neurodivergent systems. It’s a compassionate offering.

I have one or two online friends who are also mindfulness teachers, and see them one on one to do the odd practice together. This creates a space for mutual care and compassion.

I choose my environments carefully. I don’t put myself into situations that may cause harm to me, or others. That is a compassionate practice that benefits both parties.

I try not to override my capacity and not to agree to do things I can’t manage. This is an act of both self compassion and compassion. It keeps things sustainable for all concerned.

I’m generally kind and considerate, but this doesn’t equate to over-giving anymore. It includes respecting my energy.

There are times when practical support is needed. A sick partner, or an ageing family member. I do what I can and I boundary where I can.

One of the key things in amongst all of this is nervous system regulation.

So what’s happening in my life now, is that self-compassion is mediating compassion.

Compassion doesn’t need to be grand gestures. It doesn’t need to involve self abandonment. It’s sometimes quiet, and understated. It could be a short reply to someone on Substack, a text to a friend, a few words on a page. It’s about meeting my nervous system where it is, and giving from within my capacity, wherever possible.

Conclusion

It’s worth considering that as a meditation practitioner, sometimes the neurodivergent porousness that can equate to a lack of differentiation between self and other, has its advantages. Many Buddhists and meditators aspire to soften those boundaries. Mine arrived pre-softened.

They aspire to reach a state called non-duality—beyond self and other, beyond subject and object. Perhaps, in some respects, I sit a little closer to that space.

And perhaps you do, too.

This is worth sitting with, because in some respects, this can be seen as an advantage when it can be approached safely, and in harmony with your system.

Awareness practices can help to attune to this state. It may not arrive quickly, but over time—think years, not months. Open awareness practices that can feel more accessible to neurodivergent minds include listening to sounds in the environment through a gentle witnessing.

If this becomes a regular practice, you may notice over time “the one who is watching”, “the knower”, or “the witness”— these are interchangeable terms. Eventually, it may be possible to soften the witness, or it may just fall away. This creates a non-dual space where you can rest. Thoughts, like clouds, may still come and go, but you’ve entered the sky-like mind.

I’m merely naming this as a future possibility, if it piques your interest.

It’s what most Buddhist and mindfulness traditions move towards (although often less explicitly in mindfulness). This practice, however, needs titrating with self compassion; for the days you can’t manage it, for the self that has suffered, for the countless times you overrode your system to survive. This is where those earlier practices and modalities of RAIN and getting tailored support are an ongoing part of the picture.

Compassion (for both self and other) and awareness are like two wings of a bird. You need both to fly.

Mindfulness is not a one-size-fits-all, and on its own, may not nourish a depleted nervous system. At times, it may do the opposite. For many of us, it needs to be contextualised within a bigger picture.

Being skilful in your approach, kind to yourself, and creating a raft of support, can be far more effective than solely following mainstream mindfulness without a paddle. Certainly, that’s been my experience.