Gregg Braden often uses a particular phrase to describe the era we are living through: an age of extremes.
Change is arriving simultaneously from many directions. Technology, the economy, climate, social transformation, geopolitics, work and human relationships are all shifting at once. Uncertainty has become part of everyday experience, while the time available to adapt seems to be getting shorter and shorter.
For years, Braden has been exploring a question that feels especially relevant under these conditions. How can a person remain functional, clear minded and internally stable when events around them move beyond their personal ability to control them?
In his book Resilience from the Heart, as well as in his more recent work on resilience, his answer begins with a distinction that is particularly important today: the difference between traditional resilience and adaptive resilience.
The traditional understanding of resilience is mainly associated with recovery. Following a crisis, a loss or a major disruption, a person tries to restore their life and their ability to function as closely as possible to the way things were before.
Adaptive resilience concerns something different.
There are changes after which the previous reality simply no longer exists. Circumstances have shifted, and restoring what came before may be impossible or may no longer be the most meaningful objective.
In these situations, resilience is expressed through the ability to adapt. A person is called upon to understand the new conditions, regulate their internal response and find a functional way to move within the reality that now exists.
In one of his recent programmes, Braden puts it very clearly:
“Your ability to respond with resilience can make all the difference.”
The key word here is response.
Braden focuses attention on the way we deal with what happens to us and, more importantly, on the way we adapt once circumstances have already changed.
In the video included , Gregg Braden explains the difference between traditional and adaptive resilience and develops the idea that when the world changes fundamentally, our ability to adapt becomes more important than our attempt to restore a previous reality.
This distinction becomes much easier to understand when we bring it into everyday life.
A person may have very little influence over an economic crisis. They may have no ability to alter a geopolitical development. They may watch their profession being transformed by a technology that, only a few years ago, barely existed in their daily life.
They may experience a change in a relationship, in their health, in their family or in their way of living that permanently alters the conditions in which they had learned to function.
In circumstances like these, returning to the previous reality may simply be impossible.
This is where adaptive resilience begins to acquire a very concrete meaning.
According to Braden, there is one area in which we may have more influence than we generally realise: the internal state from which we meet what is happening.
What happens inside us when we are afraid?
How does the body respond when it senses threat?
Where does the mind go when uncertainty appears?
How quickly does an event turn into a story about what might happen next?
How much space exists between our first reaction and what we ultimately choose to do?
Braden believes that this space can be cultivated.
In Resilience from the Heart, he describes a specific practice based on techniques developed by the HeartMath Institute.
A person brings their attention to the area of the heart, slows the breath and consciously activates a feeling such as appreciation, care, gratitude or compassion. They remain in that inner state for a short period and then turn their attention towards the issue they are facing.
For Braden, this process is connected with what he describes as heart brain coherence.
He presents coherence as a state of greater synchronisation between physiological and emotional functions and suggests that regular practice can gradually make this state easier to access.
The idea becomes particularly interesting when we place it inside a real moment of tension.
Imagine someone in a difficult conversation. They hear something that hurts or angers them. Within seconds, the body has already reacted. Breathing changes, tension increases, attention narrows and the next sentence may emerge almost automatically.
It is precisely here that Braden places the value of self regulation.
The ability to recognise what is happening inside us early enough to influence the way we respond.
Sometimes this may involve changing the rhythm of our breathing.
Sometimes it may involve shifting our attention.
It may mean consciously recalling a feeling that reduces the intensity of the moment.
It may simply involve recognising that our internal state is already affecting the way we interpret what is happening.
This matters because we often experience our inner state as though it were a direct consequence of external events.
Something happens and we feel that our reaction follows almost automatically.
Braden invites us to look more closely at that process.
Between what happens and the way we finally respond lie our breathing, physiology, attention, thoughts, emotions, previous experiences and expectations.
According to Braden, part of this process can be trained.
Fear may arise, while a person can still develop ways of regulating the intensity it creates internally.
Uncertainty may remain entirely real, while greater inner stability can also be cultivated in relation to it.
A difficult change may require time, decisions and genuine adaptation. The internal state from which we move through all of this remains an area in which we can actively work.
This is the aspect of resilience that particularly interests Braden.
It is our ability to maintain greater internal stability so that we can think, feel and decide with greater clarity while circumstances are changing.
In his current work, he speaks about an “inner resilience system” and describes the possibility of moving from automatic stress reactions towards a greater capacity for adaptation and self regulation.
What makes this approach particularly interesting is that resilience is no longer concerned solely with what happens after a crisis.
It also becomes relevant to the way we live through change while it is actually happening.
This shifts the question we ask ourselves.
The older model of resilience might lead us to ask:
“How can I restore what existed before?”
Adaptive resilience asks something different:
“How can I function within the conditions that exist now?”
A person living under prolonged tension usually sees a narrower range of possibilities. Thinking becomes more rigid, reactions become more automatic and uncertainty often grows larger in the mind than the available facts actually justify.
Self regulation, as Braden approaches it, creates the conditions for a different relationship with change.
Greater awareness of our internal state.
A stronger ability to regulate our response.
More space for conscious choice.
The world may change without our permission.
Circumstances may shift faster than we would choose.
Our capacity to adapt, however, includes elements that can be cultivated.
Gregg Braden will join the HeartMath European Symposium 3.0, Heart in Leadership, live online from 30 October to 1 November 2026 in Athens.
Watch Gregg Braden live at the HeartMath European Symposium 3.0: https://heartmathsymposium.com/
