Understanding Elements 2 & 3 of the RIPT Framework
In my last note to you, I talked about the Somatic Doorway. Check it out first before reading on, it will make more sense! But as a recap, Element 1 is all about developing awareness. Learning to notice patterns, recognize protective adaptations, and observe the ways our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors interact.
Awareness is an essential beginning, but awareness alone isn’t enough to make lasting transformation. Ever understand exactly why you’re struggling but still find yourself stuck? It’s because “healing” requires more than insight alone. It requires a different relationship with our internal experience.
Elements 2 and 3 of the RIPT framework focus on just that.
The first asks us to loosen control while the second challenges us to stay present with what emerges. Together, they help us move from observing our experiences to fully owning it.
Element 2: Surrendering Executive Control Through Attunement
The word surrender often makes people uncomfortable. Many associate it with weakness, passivity, or giving up. However, I believe, in true holistic and spiritual psychotherapy, surrender means something very different.
Surrender is the willingness to loosen our grip on the constant effort to manage, analyze, predict, explain, and control our internal world. (phewy… insert scared emoji face)!!
For many people, these strategies developed for good reason. When life feels overwhelming, uncertain, or unsafe, the mind learns to work overtime. It becomes hypervigilant and it searches for answers and attempts to stay one step ahead of discomfort.
These adaptations are SO intelligent…they often helped us survive difficult experiences. (Hello protective part). The challenge is that what protects us from pain can also disconnect us from ourselves.
We begin thinking our feelings instead of feeling them. We tell the story of our experiences without fully experiencing their emotional impact. We remain in our heads while our bodies continue holding unresolved experiences beneath the surface.
“Healing”, “transformation”, whatever you want to call it, often begins when we stop asking, "How do I fix this?" and start asking, "What is happening inside me right now?"
The Importance of Working Within the Window of Tolerance
Before the nervous system can safely explore deeper emotional material, it needs enough stability to do so. This is where the concept of the window of tolerance becomes so important. Another phrase I like to use to explain this is our window of capacity.
When we move outside our window of tolerance, we often experience states of overwhelm, anxiety, urgency, emotional flooding, numbness, shutdown, or disconnection. Neither response is wrong because both are protective.
The goal is not to force vulnerability or push through difficult experiences. The goal is to create enough safety that exploration becomes possible.
Throughout this phase of therapy, we continually pay attention to capacity. We explore questions like: Can this experience be felt without becoming overwhelming? Can curiosity remain present? Can the body stay connected to the present moment?
When the answer is no, we slow down. When the answer is yes, we gently deepen.
This process may involve breathwork, EMDR, heart-centered hypnotherapy, polyvagal-informed practices, therapeutic yoga for trauma recovery, Reiki, somatic awareness exercises, grounding rituals, or simply the regulating presence of a therapeutic relationship.
Regardless of the intervention, the goal remains the same: creating conditions where the nervous system feels safe enough to soften.
Why Attunement Matters
One of the most powerful healing tools isn't a technique or approach at all. It's attunement.
Attunement is the experience of being deeply received by another person. It is conveyed through presence, pacing, rhythm, curiosity, compassion, and genuine responsiveness. It occurs when I notice subtle changes in breathing, posture, energy, facial expression, emotional tone, and nervous system state, responding accordingly.
Through consistent attunement, the nervous system begins to recognize something many people have never fully experienced…”safety.”
Then Something Else Arises
Once our system begins to sense “safety” (in quotes as this looks and means something different for everyone), a feeling can become clearer. When a feeling becomes clearer, we can understand that body sensation. The emotion buried underneath productivity or our busyness, comes to surface.
Many of the most meaningful moments in therapy don't occur because someone intellectually figured something out. They occur because enough “safety” existed for something deeper to emerge naturally.
But emergence is only part of the process. Once something arises, the next question becomes: Can we stay with it? (I compassionately love the look on my clients faces when I explain to them I will gently challenge them to sit with the discomfort).
Element 3: Embracing Embodiment
This is where the work of embodiment begins. Embodiment is the practice of staying present with what is being felt. It sounds simple. But in reality, this is often one of the absolute hardest fucking parts about the “healing” journey.
Many of us have spent years avoiding, suppressing, explaining away, or distracting ourselves from discomfort. We have learned to move away from painful emotions as quickly as possible.
Embodiment encourages becoming curious about what we are avoiding. Instead of escaping it, we acknowledge it, witness it, and simply allow it to exist.
Learning That Discomfort Isn't the Same as Danger
For many of us, emotional experiences feel threatening. Sadness, anger, vulnerability and even joy (this one's more common than you’d think) can feel dangerous.
The nervous system is responding as if these internal experiences need to be avoided. But through embodiment work, sitting with the discomfort, the nervous system begins to learn something new: that discomfort is not always danger.
We learn a feeling can be intense without it being harmful. An emotion can be deeply uncomfortable without requiring escape. A memory can arise without pulling someone backward into it. Gradually, the nervous system learns that it can remain present without collapsing, shutting down, or becoming overwhelmed.
The goal is not comfort. The goal is capacity.
Building Tolerance Rather Than Chasing Insight
One of the greatest misconceptions about therapy is that healing comes from insight alone. And yes, insight and understanding matter. BUT, without the piece of embodiment and with sitting with what is felt, the therapy often remains intellectual. This is often why so many people come to me and say “I’ve done talk therapy for years, but it isn’t working anymore.”
A person may understand why they struggle with anxiety while still feeling trapped by it. They may understand the origins of their fear while still reacting automatically whenever it appears. Transformation occurs when awareness becomes a lived experience. When understanding moves from the head into the body. When people discover they can remain connected to themselves while difficult emotions, sensations, or memories are present.
This is why Element 3 focuses on strengthening tolerance rather than generating more insight.
The Body Begins to Lead
As we continue practicing embodiment, a powerful shift often occurs. The body no longer feels like the enemy and internal experiences become less threatening. Our patterns become easier to recognize and its more tolerable to work with our emotions.
We begin to trust ourselves in a deeper way as we discover we can remain grounded in the presence of those experiences.
The Movement From Attunement to Embodiment
Elements 2 and 3 represent a natural progression within the “healing” process.
First, safety is established. Then control begins to loosen. As control loosens, awareness deepens. As awareness deepens, emotions, sensations, memories, and insights emerge. As those experiences emerge, we learn something profoundly important: “I can stay here. I can remain present. I can feel what is real and what my body is telling me, without becoming consumed by it.”
Attunement creates safety → Safety allows emergence → Emergence invites embodiment → and embodiment teaches us that healing is not about avoiding discomfort → It is about discovering that we can remain connected to ourselves while moving through it.
