Numbness isn’t peace.

Autopilot isn’t presence.

If you’ve been moving through your days like a robot—checking the boxes, keeping it together, even looking successful—while inside you feel nothing… that isn’t calm. That’s survival.

And the fact that you can’t feel yourself right now doesn’t mean you’re broken—it means it’s time to work with, not fight against, your ancient nervous system.

The good news? You don’t have to overhaul your whole life to start coming back. Just one minute of practice can help you begin to reawaken and reconnect to your life.

A One-Minute Grounding Reset

Here’s the practice:

1. Before your first sip of coffee or tea, set a timer for one minute or count ten exhales.

On each exhale, drop your weight. Let your body sigh. Get heavier and heavier. If you’re sitting, feel your feet on the floor and your bottom in the chair.

2. Be curious.
Notice what happens. Do you feel yourself soften? Or do you notice you can’t surrender your weight? Either way, you’re doing it right.

3. Name what’s here.

• If you can’t feel much, that’s information.
• If you feel tension, pain, tingling, heat, or nothing at all—simply note it.
• Take a screenshot of yourself in this moment and ask: “What water am I swimming in right now?”

That’s it. No fixing. No forcing. Just one minute of noticing.

And by linking it to your coffee or tea, you’re tying grounding to something you already do every day. It becomes part of your ritual—not another task on your list.

Why Noticing Resistance Is the Win

Here’s the paradox: the moment you notice you can’t drop your weight, or you feel nothing at all, or that you’re hyped up and can’t let down—you’ve already broken free from autopilot.

Resistance isn’t failure. It’s presence.

• When you see your system won’t let go, you’re no longer in the fog—you’re awake to what’s true.
• When you name numbness, you’ve already shifted from “robotic” to aware.
• When you notice tension, your body begins to reorganize, because awareness itself is medicine.

Even a single moment of honest noticing plants a seed in your nervous system. 

It tells your brain: This matters. Your reticular activating system will quietly start scanning for more moments like it. 

Over time, those tiny cracks of awareness widen—and life begins to come back in.

What You Gain

With just one minute of grounding, repeated over time, you:

• Stop confusing shutdown with calm.
• Start recognizing the difference between autopilot and presence.
• Give your body micro-moments of rest, which build real health and resilience.
• Reconnect with yourself—even if only for a breath.

And perhaps most importantly: you remember that you’re still here.

A Gentle Closing

If you’ve been living disconnected, robotic, stuck in the motions—you don’t need to force your way back. Presence begins the moment you notice what’s true, even if what’s true is resistance.

So, tomorrow morning, before your first sip of coffee or tea—pause. One minute. Ten breaths. A chance to feel your own weight again.

Peace isn’t the absence of feeling—it’s the presence of yourself in that absence.

With grounded curiosity,
Carolyn Kubena