How to Understand Your Sacral Response: Is It a True No or Is It Fear?

In my last article, I began exploring how we can use the signals from our body in order to help us make decisions. In particular, we started to focus on our “sacral no” (if you don’t know what that is, please go and read that article, then return here).

We were starting to explore ways in which the trauma carried in our bodies can accidentally distort the truth of the answers we receive when we “tune in” and listen. So, I would love to explore some of the possibilities that might be happening here…

A first possibility

I cannot overlook this first possibility. I’ve been talking about the “sacral no” as if we all know what it feels like. But do we? You may have a sensation in your sacral area, but is that your true “sacral no”, or is it a mask for fear?

As one of my spiritual mentors recently reminded me, no matter how evolved we appear to be or feel we are right now, here on earth we are still babies in spiritual terms. We are just like small children starting to discover our incredible powers, but we are not yet adept at using them.

If you have been detached from your body, inhabiting your mind (as most of us are because that is how we’ve been entrained) for decades, and you suddenly become aware of your body’s sensations, how do you know what they mean?

Other people may tell you. But that’s their version and interpretation. It may be accurate – or it may not – and even if it is accurate, it’s accurate for them and might be entirely unhelpful to you.

In my experience, the way you truly learn is through experimenting. Noticing sensations, getting curious about them, following where they seem to guide you and noticing what that brings you.

But that takes a long time – just like a baby learning to walk. The first steps you take are going to be tottering: you will fall over. It takes a while to find your balance, to find a sure awareness. Even when babies start to “walk”, it is years before they gain the full body control of an adult. First, they totter, then that becomes more secure; then they run, but often fall or run with a funny movement. Eventually, they master running and learn that it’s possible to stand on one leg, to hop, to skip, to jump, and then we move onto the possibilities that only elite athletes attain with their bodies.

I perceive something similar occurring as we start exploring and learning to understand our body’s messages. And I do not believe that we are going to become “elite athletes” until we recognise and clear all of our shadows and trauma imprints. So, as long as you are carrying shadows (who honestly isn’t?), then just consider that the guidance you are receiving through these sensations may be distorted to some degree, rather like a distorted cell-phone signal.

A second possibility

Confirmation bias. If your subconscious is holding onto a deeply entrenched fear – the type that is ancestral, karmic and personal all at once – then it will do anything possible to avoid you having to face that fear. It knows that moving even the tiniest object from that scary room is going to be difficult and painful. So, it can actually create a sensation that you learn to interpret as your “sacral no”. (Again, you might want to go back and read the last article so you can understand the metaphor of the scary room).

And yes, after feeling that “no”, you will regain a sense of peace and calm and composure, so it may appear that you truly have made the best decision for yourself in this instance. But this calm may not be the calm of being on your soul’s highest path; it may simply be the calm of the nervous system sitting in its familiar place. It’s the system breathing a sigh of relief as you shut the door on the messy room and return to the hallway.

But that familiar place – the hallway - may not be the place of safety: If you have no real experience of the parasympathetic state, you have no experience of ever feeling truly safe. So, how do you know what it is that you’re trying to reach?

Again, other people may describe what the parasympathetic state looks or feels like for them, but that doesn’t mean they have fully accessed it either. They may have accessed a closer proximation of it than you have managed so far, or they may be unaware themselves. Once more, the only way to discover this state is to explore for yourself.

It’s great to be able to land somewhere that feels comfortable enough, and to rest there, but as I see it, until your outer world is showing you that you have accomplished all your dreams, that “comfortable” state is not the end of your soul’s path.

A third possibility

When you have, on some level, decided that the hallway is an acceptable place to spend your life, then the feeling you call your “sacral no” can be another manufactured confirmation of this. Not consciously manufactured: It’s more like your body is finally giving you permission to give up on trying to stay and clear that messy room.

So, perhaps you then protect yourself with belief systems. Things like: I’m not meant to have a relationship because I need my own space. Humans are wired for relationship. So, why would you be the special case who somehow missed out on that wiring? Yes, we do also need our own space – especially the more sensitive souls.

The more sensitive you are, the more you feel other people’s stuff and that can cloud your personal judgment as well as clogging your field. So, absolutely, you need practices to clear your field and decompress. But that doesn’t mean you’re not built for relationship: It’s more likely that you haven’t yet mastered how best to clear your field. And some of the stuff you may be attracting may actually be the invitation to face the deep clearing of ancestral patterns. So, sitting on your own, isolated on a mountain (or even in a room) isn’t going to clear you: You likely need to be using actual practices to release all of this.

The same principle can be applied to the common trait of fearing invisibility. Again, humans are not supposed to be invisible. We all came here to shine our light. Imagine your Christmas tree when one of the bulbs on the string of lights goes out. You notice the gap – it makes a difference. Well, the same is true for humans. So, if you are telling yourself that you just weren’t “meant” to be visible, this is another bypass – why are you special enough to not need to be seen?

And the solution to all of these: To do the thing you’re afraid of. To get into that relationship, to start shining your light. Not all at once: You take baby steps. Start by relating with someone who creates safety for you. Start sharing your truth with a trusted friend. Then build up from there. But the more you tell yourself that you’re somehow different or special, the more you are setting yourself up for stuck-ness. And stuck-ness is painful.

A fourth possibility

Choosing to ignore or misinterpret other information from your body. Let’s say you reach the sensation you understand as your “sacral no”, that confirms the bias in your mind (that you’re not meant to have or do this thing), and then you feel an emotion arise. What happens next?

Do you ignore that emotion? Some people aren’t yet in touch with their emotions, so may not even notice them arise. Or may notice the sensations, but not understand what the emotion is. Or perhaps even understand what the emotion is, but don’t perceive what it really means.

And if the emotion appears to deliver a message that is contrary to your decision, what do you do with that message? Perhaps you gaslight yourself by trying to pretend you imagined the emotion, or trying to suppress it. Or do you tell yourself that the emotion belongs to someone else? Perhaps your decision is going to require you to deliver some bad news to another person, and perhaps you believe that other person is going to experience anger or sadness when they receive your decision, so you tell yourself that the emotion you are experiencing is just the emotion that they will feel when you talk to them.

I strongly feel that it is far more likely that the emotion belongs to you. And it may be giving you very valuable information about the truth of your apparent “sacral no”. Have you just infringed your own boundary in taking that decision? Have you just strayed from your soul’s path – something that genuinely made you happy, elevated you, supported you - and the sadness is your soul mourning this loss?

A fifth possibility

Missing the accurate signal. In the event that we are flooded with a lot of feelings and emotions all at once or in fairly quick succession, we can end up feeling confused about what to trust. In fact, it’s not about trusting one thing and ignoring the rest: all of it is information showing us something, so all of it is worth exploring.

I’m thinking about something that commonly happens when we are on a true journey of soul expansion. We are offered an invitation and we experience mixed signals. We tell ourselves we are confused – and this is true – it is confusing to have these mixed signals. But rather than trying to land on just one, let’s look at what they are telling us altogether.

Somewhere in there is the “yes” in some form – or many forms. And just as we have a “sacral no”, so we also have a “sacral yes”. This could be akin to excitement, joy, anticipation, looking forward to something.

At the same time, we also have the “no” signs – the fears and anxieties. And rather than accepting that both are true, we spend time agonising over which road to take – making the assumption that this is an either-or decision.

This confusion is actually giving us helpful information. The presence of a “yes” likely indicates that this is a path that will expand us. And the presence of the “no” is likely showing us that we are carrying some fears that we will need to release in order to move into that expanded version of ourselves. So, as I see it, the most fruitful question isn’t, shall I do this or not? It’s, “how can I do this AND release my fears?”

But without that awareness, perhaps we try and follow the “yes” for a while and suppress the “no”. So, this is putting pressure on the nervous system, and eventually it will reach breaking point and we land on a loud “no”. Then we likely tell ourselves this just wasn’t the right thing, or we are somehow inadequate or broken, and so we end up stuck again.

Or, we may sense the “yes”, then feel the “no” and interpret that as the “no” being the path to follow. Perhaps we tell ourselves that the “yes” was a desire and perhaps we have been accustomed to some kind of programming about desire being sinful and something that is not permitted. Rather than seeing that desire might be here as a key navigational tool from the soul’s perspective. (It simply needs balancing by a moral code to keep us and others safe: It is the lack of moral balance that creates desires which are harmful.)

Then, with that kind of programming in mind, we decide to lean into the “no” as being the accurate answer. Again, this may be a kind of misunderstanding about the nature of challenges. If we inhabit a belief system that interprets challenges as blocks, then we have learned to stop or turn back every time we reach a block. Eventually, we may find ourselves hemmed in, as if in a prison.

Whereas, if we adopt a belief system that sees challenges as information, as invitations to clear some trapped emotions or change some limiting beliefs, then we interpret the “no” as the passport to that next layer of clearing. In this case, our capacity to move forward may then be dependent on the tools and support we possess for clearing or reprogramming our inner world. There is no judgment attached to this: Nobody is being forced to leave the metaphorical hallway.

The good news to wrap up

I’m sure there are more possibilities, and there is much more to explore in this area, so there may be more articles to come. But let’s circle back to the original idea about being stuck in the loop of repeating challenges.

All of these musings are offered to help you break out of that loop. But the exit path is not going to feel good – I won’t lie. Again, anyone who tells you that the way to discover your soul’s path is to seek only joy, is likely practicing a lot of bypassing. Absolutely, we are seeking joy – the other door out of the room – but on our way to reaching it, we get to walk through some stuff that hurts and feels uncomfortable and invites us to challenge ourselves deeply.

And our nervous system is important here. It will let us know how much we are able to tolerate. It can also keep us stuck. Until we simultaneously develop skills for supporting it, its capacity for expansion is going to remain limited and that, in turn limits our progress in clearing the blocks. So, as we expand the nervous system, so we get to clear larger and deeper blocks. And, in a beautiful mirror, as we clear blocks, so we get to expand the capacity of our nervous system.

I’m not suggesting you over-ride your “sacral no” – I would simply love you to treat it as a tool for providing information and guidance. Perhaps you don’t accept that speaking opportunity or move into that relationship this time, but don’t get stuck: Dive deeper and see the block that the invitation was showing to you. Do the deep work to release that block. I believe that you are going to keep receiving invitations until you finally do the work…your soul isn’t programmed to let you get stuck. What I have observed is that if you persist in being so stubborn and resisting every challenge, life is going to create more and more discomfort for you. This discomfort registers in the nervous system and can affect us physically. From my own spiritual perspective, I would argue that if your soul came here with a plan to experience enormous growth, it may keep amping up the pressure, creating increasing discomfort until something has to move.

And the best news of all: You can’t get it “wrong” from the perspective of universal wisdom or the “whole”. Even if you keep deciding to remain stuck yourself, your choices are probably creating opportunities for healing in others. And that may be the path your soul chose – I can’t be sure that all of us chose expansion in this lifetime.

Then, if and when you decide to move, remember you have the right to change your mind. The very same invitation may circle back to you and this time you get to say “yes”.

The entire Find My Energy ecosystem is built around the invitation to explore with the aim of getting better acquainted with yourself. So, if you feel you would like some extra support and help, I invite you to explore the Kolorlan Journeys or The Temple of Rejuvenation. Each, in their different ways will offer you a system and support that is compassionate and loving as you attempt to meet those challenges and move through life.