"Our bodies, brains included, are designed to respond without thinking. Primed to protect our personhood via reactionary behaviors, our brain’s reliance on pre-patterned programming impacts how we interpret what we perceive and how we react behaviorally. Yet, if we slow down the automaticity, if we read our environment from a state of openness and conscious awareness and override our internalized, evolutionarily-organized, knee-jerk response, our lives change." ~ Stephen W. Porges, PhD