Increase awareness of your embodied responses.

  • null
    LEXICON
    Stress
    Physiological, emotional, and behavioral responses to stressors.
    Learn more »

Why does internal awareness matter?

Within the field of ILR, there has been a strong narrative of urgency, crisis, and extinction that contributes to ILR practitioners operating in survival mode. Many ILR practitioners that I work with, facing directly imminent language loss, move through life with a sense of constant threat to their languages, cultures, and communities. Some ILR practitioners face those challenges daily. The problem is feeling like you are fighting for survival that tips our psychobiological responses into high alert. Our nervous systems do not distinguish between dangers when it comes to threat. Our nervous systems don’t distinguish between a physical grizzly bear attacking you, a colonial grizzly bear attacking you with a bureaucratic system, or a tribal member grizzly bear attacking you because their kid didn’t get into the immersion school.

What does internal awareness help you do?

As an ILR practitioner you must develop your internal awareness to distinguish between what constitutes an actual real threat to your safety, and what feels threatening. It’s confusing because the colonial bureaucracy is trying to destroy you, but it’s not a grizzly bear. Going into a highly activated state every time a colonial system does something bureaucratic is appropriate moral outrage, but it’s also bad for your wellbeing. It’s for your own wellbeing that you must grow your internal awareness-and agency-over your embodied responses. Nobody taught me about embodied responses, and I walked around for two decades with a highly activated nervous system fighting colonial systems. My moral outrage was appropriate, but the negative impact on my wellbeing was high.

  • null
    LEXICON
    Embodied response
    How body, mind, and spirit react to the world based on individual and collective experience.
    Learn more »

Can do statements for internal awareness

Internal awareness is a skill that you develop through practices like mindfulness, meditation, and yoga.

  • null
    LEXICON
    Internal awareness
    Paying attention to what happens in your body, mind, and spirit as an ILR practitioner.
    Learn more »
I am aware of how my body, mind, and spirit responds to stress.
I can feel in my body the difference between when I feel safe or unsafe.
I can observe what happens to my nervous system when I feel safe or unsafe.
I can observe what kinds of thoughts, feelings, and embodied responses arise when I feel safe or unsafe.

Journaling and Reflection Exercises

Write down in a journal your reflections on these questions.

null
REFLECT
What is something in your ILR practice that triggers feeling unsafe?
null
REFLECT
What kinds of feelings and thoughts do you have when you feel unsafe?
null
REFLECT
How does your body react when you feel unsafe?
null
REFLECT
Can you feel the difference in your body between safe and unsafe?