Threshold Moments

What happens when you stop trying to make love happen—and start becoming more fully yourself?

In this episode of Threshold Moments, Sarah sits down with relationship expert Christine Hassler for a deeply personal conversation about love, surrender, control, and the protective strategies that can quietly keep us from the connection we desire.

Christine shares her own journey from heartbreak, divorce, and years of frustrating dating experiences to meeting her husband, Stefanos, and building the kind of side-by-side partnership she had been longing for.

Together, Sarah and Christine explore what it actually means to "let go"—not as a passive act, but as a willingness to release hypervigilance, loosen our attachment to outcomes, and stop trying to create safety through doing.

They also explore the Queen archetype: the version of ourselves who can widen the lens, stay connected to her values and vision, and trust herself even when relationships, life, or circumstances feel uncertain.

This conversation goes far beyond dating. It's about reclamation—coming home to who you are, staying with yourself when your truth creates change, and allowing relationships to become a vehicle for growth rather than another place to lose yourself.

Sarah and Christine explore:

• Christine's journey through heartbreak, divorce, dating, and eventually meeting her husband, Stefanos
• The difference between surrendering and secretly "letting go" in hopes of getting a specific outcome
• Why Christine realized she had unconsciously paired surrender with settling
• What it means to have high intention and involvement with low attachment
• Learning to experience desire and longing without suffering
• How control and hypervigilance can become protective strategies
• Why appearing highly capable or "in your masculine" may actually be a nervous-system response
• The Queen archetype and what it means to be led by your vision and values
• Moving from coaching, fixing, or rescuing a partner into true intimacy
• Why Sarah stepping more fully into herself created space for change within her own marriage
• The difference between changing your partner and changing the relationship by reclaiming yourself
• Why conscious relationships aren't about avoiding triggers—they're an opportunity to interrupt old patterns
• Reclamation, liberation, and learning to stay with yourself when your truth creates uncertainty
• How these principles can ripple beyond romantic relationships into motherhood, leadership, business, and everyday life

Christine Hassler is a Master coach, spiritual psychologist, facilitator and speaker with 20 years of experience. She is the best-selling author of three books, most recently Expectation Hangover: Free Yourself From Your Past, Change your Present and Get What you Really Want and is the host of top-rated podcast "Life Coaching with Christine Hassler" where she coaches people live on the show. Christine is known globally for her ability to identify what is holding someone back and compassionately guiding them to clarity. She also works with companies and organizations to increase productivity and decrease the stress of their employees. Christine has a Masters degree in Psychology and implements elements of NLP, psychology, spirituality, science and her own diverse life experience into her work. She's appeared on: The Today Show, CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, E!, Style, The New York Times, the Joe Rogan Show and many more. Christine believes once we get out of our own way, we can show up to make the meaningful impact we are here to make.

• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
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• Christine and her husband, Stefanos, are hosting Love Magnet, a three-day workshop on October 13–15 exploring love, relationships, embodiment, and calling in connection from a different place. Learn more about Love Magnet here >>
• Follow Christine on Instagram
• Visit her online

What happens when life looks good on the outside, but you can't actually feel it?

In this episode, Sarah reads one of her personal essays, "I Could Have Been on That Boat and Felt None of It," and reflects on a season when she had so much of what she thought would make her feel better—but still felt flat, exhausted, and disconnected from herself.

She shares her experience of recognizing functional freeze and realizing that her nervous system had been running on survival and goal pursuit at the same time: pressing the brakes while the gas was still on the floor.

From there, Sarah describes the slow, unglamorous process of coming back online—first through resuscitation and pacing, then learning what actually brought her joy, followed by movement, expression, boundaries, and resourcing her nervous system enough to feel the full range of emotions again.

And eventually, the smallest things began to bring her alive: a black squirrel in New York City, sheer blouses, coaching lacrosse, a composting machine, sunlight through autumn leaves.

This is a story about burnout, functional freeze, joy, and the deeply embodied process of finding your way back to yourself.

• What it feels like when life looks good but you can't feel it
• Sarah's experience with functional freeze
• The difference between knowing you're lucky and actually feeling joy
• Why resuscitation had to come before growth
• Learning to identify what genuinely brings you alive
• Boundaries and reclaiming your desires
• Movement, shaking, wrestling, and expressive practices
• Why anger, grief, and joy can all return together
• The relationship between nervous system regulation and aliveness
• Why healing happens in cycles and thresholds

• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
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What actually changes when you stop simply learning about your nervous system and begin practicing a different way of being?

In this episode of Threshold Moments, Sarah does something a little different: she shares the words and stories of women who have gone through Resourced.

These aren't polished success stories. They're reflections from women navigating real lives—businesses, relationships, parenting, health challenges, limited bandwidth, and moments when old patterns would normally take over.

You'll hear stories of women who have:

• stopped rushing from obligation to obligation and created more space to choose how they respond
• become less reactive—and experienced less shame when reactivity does happen
• changed the way they navigate conflict with partners and children
• developed a new relationship with time
• found the capacity to set and repair boundaries they already knew needed to change
• used small, doable nervous system practices in the middle of everyday life
• benefited from Resourced even when they couldn't attend live or didn't have the bandwidth to do everything perfectly

Sarah also takes you inside the structure and intention behind Resourced—why repetition, feedback, support, and slowing down matter when you're trying to create patterns that actually become embodied.

Because the goal isn't to make life stop being hard.

It's to build a steadier nervous system foundation so that when life gets hard, you have more capacity, more choice, and more freedom inside of it.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Real stories and reflections from Resourced participants
• Why nervous system regulation can change the way we experience urgency
• What "resourcing first" can look like in work, parenting, relationships, and boundaries
• Why you don't need perfect attendance—or perfect circumstances—to benefit from the work
• How the Daily Drips help reinforce the work through small, repeatable practices
• Why Sarah designed Resourced around repetition, feedback, support, and integration
• What becomes possible when nervous system work moves from something you know to something your body can actually access

If Opting Out of Urgency has helped you recognize the ways urgency may be shaping how you work, relate, make decisions, or move through your life, Resourced is where we take this work deeper.

Resourced is a nervous system repatterning journey designed to move you from learning and supported practice into integration in your everyday life.

Enrollment for Resourced is open until October 22.

And if you haven't finished Opting Out of Urgency yet, you still have time. Replays are available through September 22.

• Opting Out of Urgency — A free 3-day nervous system reset to help you move beyond urgency and reconnect with your energy, clarity, and rhythm.
• Resourced - A nervous system repatterning experience designed to help you build capacity, create more choice, and move through your life with greater agency instead of urgency.
• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
• Learn more about Sarah's work
• Join Sarah's email list

What happens when the life you built — the career, the identity, the pace, the version of you who could hold it all — no longer works?

In this episode of Threshold Moments, Sarah sits down with Emily Evans, a former Resourced student and founder of The Wander Years, to talk about functional burnout, identity shifts, nervous system work, and what it looks like to enter the "fertile void" without rushing to figure out what comes next.

Emily shares how she walked away from a decade-long career she loved after her body began sending signals she could no longer ignore. What followed wasn't an immediate reinvention. It was years of slowing down, letting identities fall away, learning to follow small "micro yeses," and discovering who she was when she stopped measuring herself by her output.

They also talk about Emily's recent trip to Mongolia, where she experienced a powerful real-life moment of trusting her body, honoring a clear no, and realizing just how much had changed.

Sarah and Emily explore the difference between urgency and sustainable aliveness, the discomfort of not knowing what comes next, the importance of play and joy, and how slowing down can create space for a version of ourselves that has been there all along.

Emily also shares how her own season of wandering eventually inspired The Wander Years — a space for women over 40 to connect, travel, move, read, play, and discover what might emerge when they don't have to have everything figured out.

• What functional burnout can look and feel like
• When your body starts telling you what your mind hasn't acknowledged yet
• Leaving a successful career without knowing what comes next
• Why slowing down doesn't always immediately create clarity
• The "fertile void" and learning to stay with the unknown
• Following micro yeses instead of needing the whole plan
• Separating worth from productivity and output
• How Resourced supported Emily during a major identity transition
• Boundary repair, fawning, and feeling seen instead of ashamed
• The moment in Mongolia when Emily trusted her body's no
• Letting go of the need to be liked, perform, or manage everyone else's experience
• Midlife, changing identities, and meeting a new version of yourself
• Tracking joy, play, novelty, and connection
• How Emily's own wandering led to the creation of The Wander Years

If Opting Out of Urgency has helped you recognize the ways urgency may be shaping how you work, relate, make decisions, or move through your life, Resourced is where we take this work deeper.

Resourced is a nervous system repatterning journey designed to move you from learning and supported practice into integration in your everyday life.

Enrollment for Resourced is now open.

And if you haven't finished Opting Out of Urgency yet, you still have time. Replays are available through September 22.

• Opting Out of Urgency — A free 3-day nervous system reset to help you move beyond urgency and reconnect with your energy, clarity, and rhythm.
• Resourced - A nervous system repatterning experience designed to help you build capacity, create more choice, and move through your life with greater agency instead of urgency.
• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
• Learn more about Sarah's work
• Join Sarah's email list

• Emily Evans is the founder of The Wander Years, and Wander Women Social Club - a travel-inspired community for women 40+ to reconnect with friendship, fun, adventure, and themselves as they navigate a new era of life. Through small-group travel and meaningful connection, The Wander Years invites women to embrace the freedom of not having everything figured out - and to discover what comes alive when they give themselves permission to wander.
• Follow The Wander Years on Instagram.
• You can also find Emily's writing on her Substack, This Late Bloomer, where she shares real stories about starting over at 50, blooming late, and remembering who you actually are.

What if the goal of nervous system work isn't to become calmer—but to become more alive?

In this special episode of Threshold Moments, Sarah is joined by Kate Northrup for a conversation originally recorded during an Instagram Live about Opting Out of Urgency in 2025.

Kate shares how Sarah's work helped her begin unraveling a deeply ingrained pattern of running her business on adrenaline, and together they explore what becomes possible when we stop treating urgency as the only way to get things done.

Sarah shares why urgency can be so difficult to step away from—especially when it has been rewarded with success—and why opting out isn't about abandoning ambition, productivity, or the things that matter to us. It's about bringing agency and choice back into the equation.

They also explore why nervous system regulation doesn't always mean "calming down," what can happen when unexpressed fight-or-flight energy gets stuck in the body, and how creating the right outlets for that energy can lead to more clarity, creativity, joy, and aliveness.

And when you find yourself caught between "I must" and "I can't," Sarah introduces another possibility: the Sacred Third—the option we often can't see until our systems have enough support to recognize that another way exists.

In this conversation, Sarah and Kate explore:

• Why urgency can feel necessary—even when it's exhausting us
• The difference between urgency and agency
• Why nervous system regulation isn't synonymous with being calm
• How urgency can be an expression of fight-or-flight energy
• Why your body may respond before your conscious mind creates the story
• The role of expression, movement, and nervous system "outlets"
• What Sarah calls the tension field between familiar patterns and a new way of being
• The Sacred Third and finding possibilities beyond "I must" or "I can't"
• Why supporting yourself before the to-do list is finished can actually change your relationship with time
• What it can look like to build a life and business from life-force energy instead of adrenaline

As Kate says in this conversation, this work isn't simply a nice addition to our lives—it can become foundational to how we work, relate, choose, and move through the world.

Ready to experience this work for yourself?

⭐️ If you enjoy this episode, sign up for my free 3-day nervous system reset — Opting Out of Urgency — happening live on Zoom September 10-17. RSVP here: https://www.sarahtacy.com/opting-out-of-urgency

• Opting Out of Urgency — A free 3-day nervous system rest to help you move beyond urgency and reconnect with your energy, clarity, and rhythm.
• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
• Learn more about Sarah's work
• Join Sarah's email list

• Follow Kate on Instagram
• Visit Kate's website

What if the thing you think is driving your growth is actually urgency?

In this Mini Musing, Sarah explores one of the sneakiest patterns of urgency: how easily it can disguise itself as dedication, productivity, ambition, or the desire to grow.

Sarah shares a personal example of catching herself in urgency while preparing for her upcoming work—and realizing that the feeling of "I have to do this now" was making it harder to access creativity, choice, and clarity.

She also explores the difference between urgency and agency, why moving quickly can cause us to repeat old patterns, and how stepping away from the problem—even briefly—can change what we are able to see.

The goal isn't to eliminate speed or become slow all the time. It's to develop more choices about how we move, so that urgency isn't making the decisions for us.

• How urgency can disguise itself as growth and dedication
• Why moving fast can cause us to repeat familiar patterns
• The difference between urgency and agency
• How to recognize when you've lost a sense of choice
• Why small pauses can change our perception and creativity
• Moving between fast, medium, and slow rhythms
• How nervous system regulation creates more possibility
• Why small, doable pattern interrupts are more sustainable than all-or-nothing changes
• What it means to ask, "What is the next right step?"

⭐️ If you enjoy this episode, sign up for my free 3-day nervous system workshop — Opting Out of Urgency — happening live on Zoom September 10-17. RSVP here: https://www.sarahtacy.com/opting-out-of-urgency

• Opting Out of Urgency — A free 3-day nervous system workshop to help you move beyond urgency and reconnect with your energy, clarity, and rhythm.
• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
• Learn more about Sarah's work
• Join Sarah's email list

In this episode of Threshold Moments, Sarah Tacy sits down with her dear friend, breathwork practitioner and coach Jeannine Yoder, to trace the origins of Opting Out of Urgency—including the moment Jeannine first spoke the phrase that would become the name of Sarah's workshop.

Jeannine Yoder is a New York Times–featured feminine leadership coach, breathwork teacher, and Broadway-trained performing artist. For over 15 years, she has trained coaches, healers, and facilitators while guiding transformational breathwork experiences, retreats, and private sessions rooted in nervous system regulation, somatic healing, embodiment, and ritual. She is the founder of Huntress House, a sacred studio for feminine awakening in Easton, Connecticut.

Jeannine shares how urgency once functioned as the fuel source of her life. Coming from a childhood where her nervous system learned to respond to a lack of safety, she became exceptionally good at identifying problems, mobilizing quickly, achieving, and creating solutions. But over time, that pattern became a cycle of desire, intensity, achievement, depletion, exhaustion, and then finding something new to mobilize around.

The surprising part? Even after her external circumstances became safer and more stable, her nervous system didn't automatically slow down.

Together, Sarah and Jeannine explore what it means to opt out of the internal experience of urgency—not necessarily to move slowly, do less, or give up ambition, but to stop manufacturing pressure in order to feel alive.

They talk about:

• Why urgency can feel like safety, motivation, and even creativity
• What it feels like to have nothing urgent to solve
• The difference between genuine energy and the feeling of "I need to handle this so I can finally relax"
• Why opting out of urgency can feel disorienting before it feels peaceful
• How black-and-white thinking keeps us locked into urgency
• The power of finding a "sacred third" instead of choosing between two extremes
• How co-regulation can help us access choices we can't see when we're activated
• Why our relationships can change when we stop responding from old patterns
• Learning to leave things unfinished without feeling unsafe
• The practice of "exhale first, and then respond to what actually needs me"
• Why creating spaciousness can allow grief, desire, and other feelings to surface
• How small, digestible steps can help us build capacity for a different way of living

At the heart of the conversation is a simple but radical question:

Can I have a beautiful, meaningful, creative life without manufacturing pressure in order to feel alive inside?

And perhaps an even deeper one:

Who am I when nothing urgently needs me?

⭐️ If you enjoy this episode, sign up for my free 3-day nervous system workshop — Opting Out of Urgency — happening live on Zoom September 10-17. RSVP here: https://www.sarahtacy.com/opting-out-of-urgency

• Opting Out of Urgency — A free 3-day nervous system workshop to help you move beyond urgency and reconnect with your energy, clarity, and rhythm.
• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
• Learn more about Sarah's work
• Join Sarah's email list

• Follow Jeannine on Instagram

Today I'm welcoming back my friend Ginny Muir for a conversation about what it really takes to step out of urgency culture.

After a big life transition and international move, Ginny discovered how to slow her pace, honor her capacity, and build a life rooted in presence.

If you've been craving more spaciousness in your days, this episode offers both inspiration and practical wisdom for releasing urgency and finding your own rhythm — no matter how hectic your life may feel.

⭐️ If you enjoy this episode, sign up for my free 3-day nervous system workshop — Opting Out of Urgency — happening live on Zoom September 10-17. RSVP here: https://www.sarahtacy.com/opting-out-of-urgency

• Opting Out of Urgency — A free 3-day nervous system workshop to help you move beyond urgency and reconnect with your energy, clarity, and rhythm.
• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
• Learn more about Sarah's work
• Join Sarah's email list
• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

• Follow Ginny on Instagram @ginnymuir
• Subscribe to Ginny's newsletter
• Listen to Ginny's past episode of Threshold Moments: The Ripeness of Midlife

What if the root of overwhelm, urgency, and burnout isn't that you're doing too much—but that your nervous system learned that your safety depends on everyone else being okay first?

In this episode, Sarah explores one of the most common patterns she sees in women: "I'm okay when you're okay." While this response once served an important survival function, many women now find themselves trapped in cycles of hyper-responsibility, people pleasing, urgency, resentment, and exhaustion.

Sarah unpacks why the female nervous system often defaults to tending, managing, soothing, and caring for others before caring for ourselves—and why healing isn't about becoming detached or uncaring.

Instead, it's about building the capacity to return to yourself first.

Through personal stories, nervous system insights, and practical examples, Sarah explores what it means to move toward a new paradigm:

I'm okay when I'm okay.

We can care about others, without abandoning ourselves.

• Why women are wired toward "tend and befriend"
• The nervous system roots of people pleasing
• Hyper-social behavior and hidden freeze responses
• Why urgency and burnout are often connected
• The difference between caring and over-identifying
• What happens when your child's pain activates your own wounds
• Practical nervous system tools for emotional regulation
• Clean anger, boundaries, and self-trust
• Why healing isn't about becoming unaffected
• Moving from reactivity to sovereignty

• Opting Out of Urgency — A free 3-day nervous system workshop to help you move beyond urgency and reconnect with your energy, clarity, and rhythm.
• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
• Learn more about Sarah's work
• Join Sarah's email list
• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

What if the hardest things you've lived through are invitations into your life? Ruthie has survived what most bodies are never asked to hold. I wanted the details, and she gives them. What I did not expect was how present she stayed while telling me. No performance of having healed. Just a woman living from right now, with a grace that makes a listeners body settle.

In this deeply honest and expansive conversation, Sarah sits down with writer, speaker, coach, and beloved internet friend Ruthie Lindsey to explore the thresholds that have shaped her life—and the wisdom she's found on the other side of them.

Ruthie shares the story behind the pain narrative that defined much of her public identity: a devastating car accident at seventeen, a wire accidentally left in her brainstem, years of chronic pain, addiction to approval, the collapse of a marriage, spiritual deconstruction, nervous breakdowns, and the long journey of learning who she is beyond what she's survived.

This may sound devastating, but somehow Ruthie lifts us all up during her story telling. She gives us home and holds up a light for anyone navigating their own threshold.

Together, Sarah and Ruthie explore belonging, identity, chronic pain, somatics, spirituality, relationships, and the tender process of becoming more fully human. They discuss the difference betaween healing and fixing, why some thresholds never fully end, and how life can become richer, simpler, and more meaningful when we stop waiting to arrive somewhere else.

This conversation is filled with laughter, honesty, and the kind of wisdom that can only come from living through what once felt impossible.

• Growing up addicted to approval and external validation
• The emptiness that followed becoming homecoming queen
• The car accident that changed the course of Ruthie's life
• Living with chronic pain and redefining healing
• Why pain can become a portal rather than an obstacle
• Spiritual awakening, deconstruction, and Richard Rohr's concept of order, disorder, and reorder
• Learning to descend more fully into the body through somatics
• Letting go of identities built around suffering
• Finding joy in ordinary moments, sunsets, plants, and neighborhood cats
• How Ruthie met her partner Eric and the healing power of being deeply seen
• The role of relationships in co-regulation, repair, and transformation
• Why thresholds aren't always about reaching the other side

Ruthie Lindsey is a somatic coach, speaker, and author of There I Am: The Journey from Hopelessness to Healing. After surviving a near-fatal car accident at seventeen and navigating decades of chronic pain, Ruthie has devoted her life to helping others reconnect with themselves through compassion, embodiment, and self-trust. Through coaching, retreats, writing, and speaking, she guides people through life's thresholds with humor, honesty, and a deep belief that every part of us belongs.

• Opting Out of Urgency — A free 3-day nervous system workshop to help you move beyond urgency and reconnect with your energy, clarity, and rhythm.
• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
• Learn more about Sarah's work
• Join Sarah's email list
• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

• Ruthie Lindsey - www.ruthielindsey.com
• Join Ruthie on Instagram, where she shares reflections on how to fall more in love with your life.
• Learn more about events she is hosting and teaching at this year.
• Read her longer writings on Substack - it's a space for deeper thoughts on healing, relationships, and being human
• And if her work resonates with you, she invites you to work with her!