Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
Spiral Up!
To shift out of a de-energized, contracted, stressed state (‘spiraling down’) into a calm, resourceful, energized state (‘spiraling up’) by doing one simple, concrete body/breath/sound/color action drawn from many traditions.
Spiral Up! in 5 lines: Notice when you’ve “spiraled down” (stressed, flat, overwhelmed). Pick ONE simple Energizing Option — a breath, a movement, a hum, a color, a self-touch. Do it fully and present for about a minute, following its HOW-TO. Check the felt shift toward calm/energized. Repeat or switch options as needed. Many tools, so something always fits the moment.
What it is
Chloe Faith Wordsworth, founder of the Resonance Repatterning system, collected 127 simple “Energizing Options” — short, doable actions drawn from many traditions (breath, movement, sound, color, self-touch, attention) — into one book, Spiral Up!.
The premise: at any moment you are either “spiraling down” (stressed, contracted, overwhelmed, flat) or “spiraling up” (calm, present, resourceful, energized). When you notice you’ve spiraled down, you pick one Energizing Option and do it on the spot to shift your state.
It is deliberately low-tech and self-administered: a pocket toolkit of state-changers you can use “at work when your back hurts or you’re in overwhelm, at home when you need to calm down or recharge.” This entry covers the stand-alone self-help practice of choosing and doing an option; in full Resonance Repatterning the option is selected by muscle-checking (see the separate self-test entry).
The Method
As taught in Spiral Up!:
- Notice you’re spiraling down. Catch the state: tension, overwhelm, irritation, anxiety, flatness, a stuck thought. The first move is simply naming “I’m spiraling down right now.”
- Choose one Energizing Option. The book is organized into sections (Wordsworth lists Sound, Color, Movement, Breath, and others). You can pick by category, by what the situation calls for, by opening the book at random, or — in the full system — by muscle-checking which option your body “wants.” For self-help, just pick one and commit to it for a minute.
- Do the option exactly, fully present. Each option has a detailed step-by-step “HOW TO.” Representative options (faithful descriptions of the types she teaches): - Breath options — e.g. slow, low diaphragmatic breaths; extended exhalations; a few rounds of conscious paced breathing to settle the nervous system. - Movement options — e.g. cross-lateral movements (touching opposite hand to opposite knee), gentle stretching, shaking out, or rhythmic movement to re-integrate and discharge tension. - Sound options — e.g. humming, toning a sustained vowel, or making a soft sound on the exhale to engage the vagus nerve and self-soothe. - Color / attention options — e.g. resting attention on a particular color, or shifting visual focus and field, to change inner state. - Self-touch / contact options — e.g. gentle hand placement on the body (a Polarity-Therapy influence) to feel grounded.
- Stay with it briefly, then notice the shift. Do the option for roughly a minute (or as the specific “HOW TO” prescribes), then check in: are you a little calmer, clearer, more present? You’re looking for a felt micro-shift from down toward up, not a miracle.
- Repeat or switch. If it helped, you can repeat it; if not, choose a different option. The book’s whole logic is optionality — many tools, so something always fits the moment. (Sourcing note: the “spiral up / spiral down” framing, the seven-section organization, the “detailed HOW TO for each option,” and the everyday-use examples are documented in and around Spiral Up! The specific example options above are faithful descriptions of the categories she teaches, not verbatim reproductions of any single numbered option.)
Source & Lineage
Chloe Faith Wordsworth (b. England, emigrated to the US 1964; UCLA, English Literature) trained in acupuncture, Polarity Therapy, cranio-sacral work, kinesiology, and vibrational healing with sound, color and light before synthesizing Resonance Repatterning (formerly Holographic Repatterning) over ~30 years. → (energy-medicine / kinesiology lineage).
Spiral Up! (2014) extracts the Atlas’s “Energizing Options” into a stand-alone self-help book; the foreword is by biophysicist James L. Oschman. The options themselves are explicitly gathered “from around the world — both ancient and modern,” so the lineage is a deliberate synthesis rather than a single source.
The Traditions' versions
Breath regulation — paced/diaphragmatic breathing and long exhalations appear in pranayama, Buddhist meditation, and clinical vagal-tone work.
- Cross-lateral movement — shared with Brain Gym / Educational Kinesiology (“cross crawl”) and developmental-movement work.
- Toning / humming — overlaps with mantra/japa, chanting, and humming-based vagus stimulation.
- Self-touch / energy contacts — from Polarity Therapy and acupressure traditions.
- State-shifting “menus” — structurally similar to DBT “distress tolerance” skill lists and somatic self-regulation toolkits: a curated set of in-the-moment state-changers.
Common refinements
Doing it half-heartedly. A distracted 10 seconds won’t shift state. Commit fully to one option for the prescribed time.
- Treating the theory as the mechanism. You don’t need to believe in “frequencies” for paced breathing to calm you. Lean on the action.
- Option-hopping. Flicking through 127 options without doing any is itself a spiral-down. Pick one, do it, then evaluate.
- Expecting a big leap. The goal is a small, real shift from down toward up — repeatable, not dramatic.
- Skipping the “notice” step. The practice starts with catching the state; without that, you don’t know what to shift or whether it worked.