The Promise of Return: Co-regulation and Connection Online

Today, walking in the forest, I notice the tips of the bluebells – delicate, shiny and surely pushing through the dark, damp leaves. In this early February period, just after Imbolc, the ground holds a quiet promise. The light is clearly returning now, even if much of what is changing remains hidden beneath the surface.

While the ground promises a return, the weather is still cold and damp. This week here in Brighton, we have been immersed in a constant blanket of grey and rain. And yet, even within this, there are subtle signs of the days getting slightly longer, the birdsong a little more present, a quality of light that feels different from a few weeks ago.

This sense of spring emerging is held today within a world that often feels deeply dysregulating – shaped by constant news cycles, algorithms that amplify fear, and the impacts of ecological collapse, war and the re-emergence of totalitarian forces. This backdrop can easily lead to isolation, and I find myself reflecting on how we create conditions for safety, connection and co-regulation, particularly when contact is often mediated through the screen.

“Earth will be safe,
when we feel in us enough safety.”
— Thích Nhất Hạnh
‍

These reflections bring me back to the late winter of 2021. At that time, we were not only emerging from the darkness of winter. We were coming out of a prolonged period of lockdowns in the UK, carrying collective fatigue, loss and uncertainty around contact. While the experience of lockdown was shared, it was not equal. Each of us experienced it uniquely, and yet every experience carried its own validity and weight.

Back then, I owned Brighton Pilates Studio. My role involved leading a diverse team of movement teachers, manual therapists, and a front-of-house support team, while remaining attentive to the individual needs of our wider client community. It was a testing time – one that asked for leadership grounded in listening and adaptability, recognising the need for connection while valuing both the collective challenge and the uniqueness of each person’s experience.

Here is what I wrote back then:

"As the spring of 2021 promises a return, we find ourselves on the other side of a dark winter of disconnection. The first flowers begin to appear, strawberries from Spain fill the supermarket shelves, and despite the daffodils, I notice that I take longer to thaw this year. It doesn’t feel like the familiar ‘end of winter’ melt. It feels more like breaking open the cocoon of metamorphosis.

Like me, you may be lingering in hibernation after a year of profound change. We are living through a collective experience of touch deprivation – loss of contact, loss of business, loss of loved ones.

Now more than ever, we need nurturing resources that help us find a rhythm towards co-regulation, self-regulation and balance.

As we continue to evolve, you are likely finding your own ways to nourish the nervous system – through nature, movement, cold water, breath, meditation, chocolate… And yet, for many of us, the need for connection continues to be met, at least in part, through virtual spaces.

While online experiences can sometimes feel hollow or disembodied, there are moments in which a genuine sense of aliveness emerges. Moments where we know we are not in the same room, and yet we are drawn into a shared experience that can be felt at a bodily level.

I believe this capacity for embodied presence is available while guiding and witnessing, even through the screen. This kind of online potency – achieved through attention, pacing and presence – can support self-regulation and become the scaffolding for meaningful connection and community."

Today, as I lead the Moving Fascia LAB, I can feel how much this understanding of relationship continues to evolve. What began as a necessity during a time of separation has become a living field of shared attention and learning.

The online space is a place where co-regulation can be cultivated. It happens through shared contact in live sessions, through the exchange of reflections on practice, through questions that feed our collective enquiry, and through reading how others are experiencing the work in their own bodies and contexts. There is an intimacy in practising from the safety of our own rooms, and in being guided by exploration and curiosity.

Through our online community, we relate to others on a similar path through messages, comments and shared language, witnessing how each person titrates the work and adapts it to meet their own experience – dosing the practice in relationship to energy, pain or capacity for movement.

This ongoing relationship with the LAB community feeds my own learning deeply. It is a space of reciprocity, one where guiding and witnessing move both ways, and where a sense of safety and ventral vagal co-regulation can be supported, even across distance. The way I lead is shaped by this, informed and inspired by what emerges in the seeming space between us.