Peace: The Return of Safety

What Peace reveals without saying a word

After attending the Walk for Peace as the monks passed through Charlotte, and then reading the heartfelt responses from so many others who showed up along their journey, something became very clear to me:

People aren’t just attending an event. They’re responding to a felt experience they’ve been missing.

In my previous blog, I shared my my personal reflections after witnessing the monks, and recently I wrote an article for The Elephant Journal about all the heartfelt experiences I have been reading about from others who have been going out to meet the walk when it passes by where they live. They have shared moments of silence, unexpected emotion, softened anger, and a longing to protect and extend on the feeling they had just touched.

What struck me most wasn’t any single story, but the pattern running through all of them.

People weren’t saying, “I learned something. ”They were saying, “I felt something.”

And that distinction matters.

Why Peace Is Resonating So Deeply Right Now

We live in a world saturated with stress, noise, urgency, and constant mental stimulation. For many people, stress isn’t something that comes and goes, it’s the background hum of daily life.

What the stories from the Walk for Peace revealed is that when people encounter calm, real, embodied, felt calm, they recognize it immediately. Not intellectually, but physically.

They describe feeling lighter. Less reactive. Less angry. Less compelled to fill space with noise or distraction.

That tells us something important.

Peace isn’t being experienced as an idea. It’s being experienced as an aligned, recognizable place we haven't been to in a long time....almost a relief.

Relief from the spinning, scanning, reviewing, bracing state that so many people live in without realizing it has become their default.

Stress as Autopilot

When stress is chronic, the brain and nervous system organize around protection. Everything becomes about staying alert, staying ahead, staying guarded. Over time, this stress response runs on autopilot.

This is why so many people feel:

• mentally exhausted but unable to rest

• busy but unfulfilled

• reactive instead of reflective

• disconnected from their own inner clarity

  
  

The mind keeps spinning, even in quiet moments. The body stays braced, which means rigid, and tight...and the space for contemplation, creativity, and inner peace feels inaccessible.

Yet what neuroscience, and lived experience continues to show us is that this is not our natural state.

Returning to Our Natural Default

I’ve written previously about the brain’s Default Mode Network or DMN, the state of our mind associated with reflection, integration, and inner coherence. I won’t re-explain it here, but I want to name why it matters in this moment.

When stress is dominant, access to that contemplative, calming state is blocked. Not because it disappears, but because the nervous system doesn’t feel safe enough to rest there.

What people seemed to be experiencing around the monks was a temporary suspension of that stress autopilot.

No one told them to relax. No one gave instructions. No one asked them to change their beliefs.

And yet, their bodies responded.

This is what happens when the nervous system senses safety: the mind naturally quiets, the body softens, and access to our deeper intelligence returns.

Peace as a Practice, Not a Performance

One of the most powerful realizations shared by attendees was that peace didn’t depend on perfect conditions. Crowds were large. Weather was cold. Some moments were uncomfortable.

And still...peace was present.

That’s an important lesson for all of us.

Peace isn’t something we wait for once life settles down. It’s something we cultivate by learning how to lower the stress response that keeps us on constant alert.

When stress is no longer driving everything, the brain can naturally return to its default of calm, reflection, and clarity. From that place, we make better decisions. We respond instead of react. We feel more like ourselves again.

What This Invites Us to Consider

The response to the Walk for Peace isn’t about monks alone. It’s about what people are yearning for underneath the noise.

It’s an invitation to ask:

• Where has stress taken over as my default?

• What might become possible if my nervous system felt safer?

• How would my life feel if calm ,not urgency, led the way?

  
  

Peace isn’t passive. It’s not avoidance. And it’s certainly not weakness.

Peace is what becomes possible when the body and brain no longer feel under threat.

And once it’s felt, even briefly, people recognize it, remember it, and want to return to it.

That’s what I believe we’re witnessing right now.

Not a trend. Not a spectacle.

But a collective remembering that peace is real, and that it’s something we can learn to live from again.

Many people are discovering that they don’t need more strategies to manage stress. They need support learning how to reset the default their nervous system has been living in for years.

If you’re curious to explore this gently and practically, I offer Reset Your Stress Default sessions designed to help people lower stress responses, reconnect with calm, and begin living from a steadier internal place.

Peace is something we learn how to practice together.

Reset Your Stress Default

$27.00

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