About twenty years ago, my son told me I was too intrusive. He needed me to back off.
Shock. Hurt. Confusion. All three arrived at once, and I didn't know what to do with any of them. What would happen to our relationship? What kind of mother had I been? It was an awkward season for the whole family — the kind of quiet that sits heavy and follows you into sleep.
What I didn't know then was that moment was a gift.
I had inherited attitudes, behaviours, and characteristics from the authority figures in my own life — people who loved me, people who did their best — but some of what they passed down was creating emotional distance in my relationships without my even knowing it. I didn't like those patterns in myself. I just didn't know I had the power to change them. No one had told me that was an option.
"Getting overwhelmed is not a character flaw. It's an unregulated nervous system — and it can be addressed, deliberately and gently, breath by breath."
Some of my most challenging days were the twelve-hour days I spent training yoga teachers. I did regulate my nervous system during the teaching — it was the nature of the work. At the time I knew to breathe deeper, lower in the body — and like most people, to exhale slowly through the mouth when stress hit. It's the most common advice given. But it's not the same as The Quiet Breath. What I hadn't yet discovered was Light and Slow — less air, quieter, in and out through the nose — the shift that actually changed the physiology. Looking back, if I had known the COSC Stress Continuum then, I would have welcomed those yellow zone signals and managed the stress with far more intention.
A leadership course cracked something open. I began to understand that we are living in a modern age that calls for a different way of showing up — in family, in community, in business. That the emotional distance I was experiencing was not a life sentence. That the power to become a positive influence had always been in my hands.
So I did the work. Rigorous, honest, sometimes painful work. I studied Darren Hardy's Hero Journey — one of the most demanding things I have ever committed to — and I didn't do it alone. I brought an intimate group of my yoga students alongside me, and we met every other week for months, holding space for each other through the hard parts. What grew in that circle was something sacred: truth-telling, accountability, and the kind of belonging that reminds you who you really are.
That community changed me. And it pointed me toward the work I do now.
Today I lead The Regulated Executive — a breath reeducation practice serving entrepreneurs, executive parents, and non-profit leaders who are exhausted by the gap between who they are at work and who they arrive as at home. I know that gap intimately. I lived it. What I've since learned is that getting overwhelmed is not a character flaw — it's an unregulated nervous system, and it can be addressed, deliberately and gently, breath by breath.
Fast forward twenty years from that hard conversation with my son: our relationship is emotionally close now. It took time, intention, and a willingness to keep choosing growth over ego — and I rarely have to check and remind myself anymore. My faith sustained me through the in-between — the seasons of not knowing if the work was working, the moments of sitting still long enough to let God's love and wisdom express through me.
I share all of this because I know I am not the only one.
There are people over 50 who have poured themselves into careers, children, congregations, and causes — and quietly lost themselves somewhere in the giving. People who feel the distance in their relationships but don't have the language for what's wrong. People who are accomplished by every external measure and still running on empty and feeling unfulfilled.
I changed. So can you.
And I am here — if you are ready.
Heather Greaves · Breath Reeducation Practitioner · The Regulated Executive · Brantford, Ontario
