COMING HOME TO SOUL; Pt. 2: From Survival to Sovereignty

How to build safety, allow feeling, and gently retrain the brain to reconnect with Soul

Join this deeply practical conversation with Spiritual Guide and Soul Connection Coach, Tessa Alburn as we explore moving from fear-driven survival into sovereignty.

PROLOGUE:

Welcome to WeBeTheChange. This episode is part two of a very special interview with Tessa Alburn in the series Coming Home to Soul. This nourishing conversation opens the way for safely working through our emotions into an uplifted perspective. You’ll hear how grief can open the gateway to wisdom and how the brain’s fear programming can be gently rewired.

If you’re longing for a deeper sense of belonging, I invite you to listen with your heart for practical insight, encouragement, and soul-level truth in this episode called From Survival to Sovereignty. Visit and bookmark SongRise.live for fresh resources, supportive bonus content, and the free e-guide Out of Your Head, Into Your Light.

I realized in that moment I was connected. That was a connection to everything. I received this moment of bliss and complete connection and feeling like, “I am loved. I’m accepted by nature. I’m accepted by the planet. I’m accepted as a human. I belong. Yes, I belong.

Tessa: I’d love to address a few things that I think would support people coming into greater connection with their soul.

One of the first things we need is we need to know that we’re safe. Because if we’re not—whether that’s environmentally, emotionally, mentally, or some other way; certainly physically—if we don’t know we’re safe in the moment, that we’re not in immediate danger, it’s really, really challenging to go any deeper and feel and rest into the place of the soul to meet her.

The soul energy can be felt as a sensation. It can be heard. It can be known. Some people will feel it through their senses—“Oh, that’s what I feel like when I’m connecting with my soul.” But we don’t know what that way is going to be until we’ve experienced it.

Colleen: Yeah, it could be audible--I hear "sparkling."

Tessa: Yes. So safety is first: actually slowing things down enough to go, “Oh, I am safe, so now I’m going to deepen.”

I think for a lot of people, connecting with nature can really help—one, to be in a place of feeling safe, and also connecting with intelligence outside of the ego, right? Being in the spirit of the forest or the sea or the ocean, or the magic of watching a school of tens of thousands of fish go by and create incredible shapes and light.

An Underwater Connection

One of the pivotal experiences for me happened as I was on my healing journey—I was still in a very delicate place where I was suffering with depression, on-and-off depression, and that had started at a very early age. But I was in my mid-twenties to mid-thirties then, and I had become a scuba instructor. And I found that once I stepped outside of the paradigm of the scuba instruction—having to be concerned about risk and all the stuff with people and making sure everybody in my classes and on boats were safe—then I gave myself the luxury of just going into the water myself and doing solo dives.

If we can’t be with our feelings, we can’t access the soul. Pushing away the feelings is going to push away the wisdom of something greater that’s beyond the feelings.

At first, what would happen was my deep grief would arise. I would just be down there swimming around looking for something cool, you know? And then as I paused and I really became present to nature, my feelings would come up. And this is an arena that many people don’t want to experience.

But the problem is: if we can’t be with our feelings, we can’t access the soul. Pushing away the feelings is going to push away the wisdom of something greater that’s beyond the feelings.

And so for me, I went through grief processing.

I remember one specific time I was underwater and I’m sobbing through my scuba gear and I’m like, “I guess I’m okay—you know, I can still breathe,” keeping my mouthpiece in my mouth and continuing to just cry and cry and cry.

And then my breathing regulated and I was done with my cry. You know, just the loss in my life and the feelings of isolation and aloneness and the too-much moving and everything going fast—and I needed to slow things down for me to be able to digest and receive, because I was a very sensitive being.

After the tears I was just, “Ah—thank you.” I was so grateful for having moved through me. I continued my dive and I was just floating, hovering. And I thought, “I’m just going to stay here. Maybe something will happen.”

I was in about 60 feet of water, about 10 to 15 feet off the bottom. I was floating and I thought, “I’ll go up a little bit more,” and so I was looking down on the reef. Suddenly this beautiful light came in through the kelp forest and some bat rays came by down on the bottom, and the kelp was swaying like this, and the light beams were coming through and it was like heaven—one of those heavenly sunrises.

The fish—suddenly there was this little symphony of fish happening over here, and a school came in over here. Above there were bait fish, really shimmery and shiny, and there were orange fish—some garibaldi—over here. I was in California if anybody recognizes the garibaldi.

Oh—and I realized in that moment I was connected . . . to everything. I received this moment of bliss and complete connection and feeling like, “I am loved. I’m accepted by nature. I’m accepted by the planet. I’m accepted as a human. I belong.” Yes, I belong.

We must work through our emotions and then allow our perspective to shift. So to get that to happen, we’ve got to remove fear. And fear is what is gripping so many people right now.

The Moment That Stays

I’d had another experience similar to that years before, but not scuba diving. The scuba was much deeper and struck me on all levels. I was able to float and—yeah—very soothing. And so all those things came together and then I was just like, “I don’t want it to end.”

And then I went up and—of course—it’s clambering up onto the boat and whack, whack with the weight belt and dumping that thing and heavy tank and suddenly re-enters humanity and all this stuff. Thankfully that moment has stayed with me because it helped me to know—and I think we can all hope for that kind of moment. It doesn’t need to be on scuba. It can be sitting under a tree. It can be watching a sunset.

But what happens is we must work through our emotions and then allow our perspective to shift. So to get that to happen, we’ve got to remove fear. And fear is what is gripping so many people right now.

This is the thing about the brain: the brain generates fear to try to keep us safe. It’s one of its jobs.

We hear it all the time: “I don’t know how I’m going to deal with this. . . This is going on and that’s going on . . . I might have to this and I might have to that.”

It’s extreme. I’m not even going to get into the examples, but it’s a lot, and it’s very intense for many people.

But this is the thing about the brain: the brain generates fear to try to keep us safe. It’s like one of its jobs, I think. And it is like a computer—very much like a computer. It does not perceive beyond what it’s already been taught. So everything from the past is just like ones and zeros that you put into software.

You know, I use a Mac right now and I have Pages. Pages is never going to learn to edit videos until they put some sort of video-editing software in it. It’s just not. I can want it to; I can ask it to—it’s just not going to happen. No matter how much I try,

So the brain is like this: it can only do what it has been taught. And what it’s been taught is “keep us safe, keep us safe, keep us safe.” Whether it’s from ancient times—put your back to a wall so the bear doesn’t maul you; you’ll see the tiger coming—or whatever it was.

We had to learn to keep ourselves safe until we didn’t have to focus on that. “We’re together in our tribe tonight; we can sit around and enjoy the meal. Maybe there are a couple people out there watching out for the tiger; we can trust them.”

So we need to learn when to trust and build trust. And the person we need to know how to trust the most is us.

But we’ve got to teach our brain to slow things down and not be on high alert all the time, because it’s irrelevant. And it will keep us from connecting to our heart. It will keep us from connecting to our intuition. And it most definitely will keep us from connecting with our soul. So we need to learn how to do that—know when to trust and build trust. And the person we need to know how to trust the most is us.

“I can trust that I’m safe. I can trust that I will be able to take care of myself. I can trust I will feel something if something’s off, or I will know something if it’s askew. I will make a different choice.”

This is the only way we can come into being sovereign beings. We have to take away the onus of others to take care of us in all ways, shapes, and forms.

Colleen: Yes. Fortunately, there are people like you—and I also am a transformational coach. Often a client will come who is like a rock skipping over the waves--trying to stay above the waves but floundering.

And in the background of many people, there’s dense trauma they have experienced. Sometimes we get so used to something that we kind of know it’s there, but we really don’t want to deal with it because it could make it worse.

There are, thankfully, wonderful resources. I know you have great tools--and I do as well, to teach people who just need a little extra—which I similarly came upon out of dire need myself, because I was one of the rocks skipping over the waves, not doing very well, as in “Help, I’m going to drown!”

Remembering and Reconnecting with Soul

Help is there in so many forms, so many different ways. I’d like to let whoever might be listening right now know that you have wonderful—tools, empowering simple things that can be easily done to assure us of the truth that we are safe. Because as you say, the brain is nonstop running the stories that we’ve got to be vigilant—“you don’t have what you need to deal with that; you’ve got to pay the rent; you’ve got to keep the household calm,” or whatever it might be.

It’s a story. And the truth is that we are whole and complete. It’s just a matter of coming to that place where that is realized. Don’t you have something called The Realized Soul?

This isn’t an airy-fairy process. It’s based in techniques that ground us, techniques that calm the brain, techniques that help us become present—even when we’ve been through significant trauma.

Tessa: Yes. Well, that was a brand of mine for many years—I still use that email. Realizing Soul—it’s like remembering the soul, reconnecting with the soul, remembering who we really are.

And this isn’t an airy-fairy process. It’s based in techniques that ground us, techniques that calm the brain, techniques that help us become present—even when we’ve been through significant trauma.

I’m not saying I am a trauma expert for every single person in the world, but I have helped hundreds of people to move past that moment of trauma activation into something deeper and be able to access neutrality or calm.

While the tools themselves or the processes are not complex, they do require consistency—and time. Consistency over time.

Colleen: We’re retraining ourselves. Which can feel, in and of itself, like very good medicine: “Oh wow—I’ve been suffering this way since I can remember, and now I am doing something that is alleviating that and making space for something so much better in my life.” It’s very motivational in and of itself.

Tessa: Yes, it’s a positive motivational aspect. When one commits to the practices, then you start to see the results—and they build over time.

EPILOGUE:

Thank you for joining us in this episode, From Survival to Sovereignty, in the series with Tessa Alburn, Coming Home to Soul. Join us in the next and final segment called The Practice of Becoming, where we’ll explore soul habits, brain retraining, and inner trust.

What were your takeaways from this episode?

If you’re feeling a nudge to go a little deeper, consider accessing your free e-guide, Out of Your Head, Into Your Light. And watch for more resources that are landing soon on the Bonus Content page at Songrise.live.

This is Colleen Akiko🪶 wishing you warm alohas and namasté.

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