How Regulation Improves Your Work With Others

When your nervous system is regulated, your capacity for empathy, patience, and creative problem-solving expands. You’re less likely to mirror stress in your team, classroom, or community.

For professionals in helping careers - people who serve others - this is critical: your stability becomes a stabilizing force for those you serve. Regulation doesn’t make you less human—it makes your humanity more sustainable.

As Satchidananda says regarding Sutra 26 in Book 2: “once we realize our freedom we should work for the sake of others who are still bound. When a strong person crosses a turbulent river, he or she will not walk away after crossing but will stand on the bank and help pull out everyone else. There are many sages and saints who are involved in the world even with the knowledge that there is no happiness in it. They work for the sake of others.”

My interpretation of this is that any skill you learn that allows you to be free from suffering is a skill you should use to help others. They may not learn the same thing from this skill, but you are better equipped to be a helper, a guide, a resource to others once you have learned how to “save” yourself. The key to serving others is starting with getting yourself out of the river first. Then you can stay to help others.