Resilience: The Invisible Muscle That Has Saved Me Every Time I Hit Rock Bottom

October 2025, Juan Luis Jordan

Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman explains that the Anterior Midcingulate Cortex (AMC) — a region deep within the brain — plays a key role in resilience. It activates when we do hard things, especially those we don’t want to do. According to Huberman and David Goggins, deliberately engaging in discomfort strengthens this neural circuit, teaching the brain to convert adversity into endurance.

That insight resonates deeply with me. I used to hate running. Every step felt like resistance — until I realized that doing what I resisted most was training my brain, not just my body. Over time, that discomfort became a doorway to peace, purpose, and clarity.

There are moments in life when the soul breaks, the body weakens, and the mind fills with noise. I’ve been there more than once. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that resilience isn’t a shield or an inherited gift — it’s an invisible muscle that can be trained, a daily practice that unites biology, spirit, and consciousness.

When Hitting Rock Bottom Becomes a Starting Point

I was twenty years old when I faced the first major loss of my life — the death of a family nucleus member. The emptiness was so deep that my mind searched for refuge anywhere it wouldn’t hurt to remember. One afternoon, almost unconsciously, I went out for a run. It was more instinct than logic, like that Forrest Gump scene where he starts running to cope with grief. I didn’t know it then, but that decision would mark the beginning of my reconstruction.

Eight years later, during another season of loss, a psychologist explained something that changed my perception forever: running stimulates the prefrontal cortex, the brain region responsible for decision-making, emotional regulation, and resilience. Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has shown that physical movement activates brain circuits that literally help us move forward mentally by moving forward physically. In other words, moving the body reorganizes the mind to solve problems.

Years later, amid a deep injustice that marked my life, my unconscious mind blocked the pain. I entered a defensive mode — my brain was trapped in “fight or flight. ”I tried to resolve that situation rationally, with a subconscious so disconnected that I could no longer listen to the intuitive signals coming from my higher awareness or from my closest loved ones. From my perspective, everything seemed under control, as if by intellectually structuring the facts, I could restore the justice that both my loved ones and I deserved.

Over time, I realized I was experiencing a combination of two powerful psychological mechanisms: dissociative resilience and traumatic cognitive dissonance.

Dissociative resilience occurs when the mind temporarily fragments to protect itself from pain. The nervous system shuts down the emotional connection to trauma, allowing us to keep functioning — but in a state of inner numbness. It’s not weakness; it’s survival. The body becomes a shield, and the mind switches to autopilot. Meanwhile, traumatic cognitive dissonance arises when the brain tries to justify or create coherence in something profoundly unjust or incomprehensible, fabricating rational narratives to make sense of chaos. It’s the mind’s attempt to maintain the illusion of control when the soul is overwhelmed.

Both states coexisted within me: one allowed me to keep standing, the other prevented me from feeling. I lived through logic but without intuition; I acted out of duty but without presence. My body, however, was still recording every emotion I repressed, patiently waiting for the right time to release what my mind wasn’t yet ready to face. Years later, I understood that this disconnection was part of the very process that would teach me the true meaning of resilience: not resisting pain, but integrating it consciously.

The Body as the Temple of Resilience

By that time, I had already become a high-performance athlete. I had disciplined my body, optimized my habits, and achieved athletic milestones — yet I didn’t realize that all that training was, in truth, my unconscious way of channeling PTSD. My body had been practicing resilience long before I intellectually understood it. Each intense session, every race, every mile run, didn’t just strengthen my muscles — it reconnected my nervous system with life itself.

Through therapy, introspection, and faith, I understood that my organism had been preparing for years to withstand the catharsis that was yet to come. Science calls it somatic adaptation; spirituality calls it purpose. The body builds pathways of resilience long before the mind comprehends them — as if it knew one day we’d need those neural connections to survive emotionally.

I now know that resilience wasn’t merely a talent I inherited — it was a bodily practice my spirit used to survive. Of course, genetics play a role: some of us are born with physiological predispositions that enhance endurance or recovery — what sports science calls trainability — but those biological advantages don’t guarantee mental or spiritual strength. True resilience is forged through the conscious training of body and mind, choosing to move forward even when the soul feels paralyzed.

And the most valuable part is being able to share it. To help others heal their traumas through conscious and neuro-aware mechanisms — instead of masking them with procrastination or shallow stimuli — has become my mission. Because healing isn’t about escaping pain, but about educating the body, the mind, and the spirit to move in harmony without denying emotion. That realization turned every fall into a silent mastery — each one teaching me how to guide others through their own reintegration process.

Pain as Discipline

David Goggins says pain is the most honest path to growth. He calls it the callousing of the mind: building mental calluses through adversity. Every mile run under the sun, every rainy training session, every dawn when my body ached yet I chose to move — each one was a silent lesson: the body surrenders long before the spirit does. I learned that pain, when faced with purpose, transforms into energy. Physical discipline became my moving prayer.

Flow: Transcending Suffering

In The Rise of Superman, Steven Kotler explains that elite athletes reach a flow state, a neurobiological condition in which the sense of self dissolves and action becomes pure awareness. During training, I’ve felt that silence — when everything disappears except for breath, heartbeat, and presence. In this state, the prefrontal cortex quiets down while the brain releases dopamine, endorphins, and anandamide — chemicals that expand perception and create a feeling of unity with something greater. That’s the bridge between neuroscience and spirituality — the moment when resilience transforms into transcendence.

The Mind and Soul as a Unified Field

Researcher Robert Monroe, a pioneer in consciousness studies, taught that the mind and body can synchronize into vibrational coherence, creating access to expanded states of awareness. I’ve experienced that after long training sessions or deep meditations — that weightless state where the body fades and the soul breathes through it. Monroe believed that when body and mind achieve coherence, consciousness transcends matter. In that state, the body becomes an ally of the spirit, not its prison.

The Shadow and Inner Integration

Carl Jung wrote that “one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Through my hardest moments, I learned that running from pain only amplifies it. True resilience is born when we can look at our shadow without fear — our anger, grief, and frustration. Each emotional rock bottom forced me to integrate those fractured parts and realize that healing doesn’t mean erasing the wound — it means walking with it consciously and purposefully.

The Meaning in Suffering

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote that “those who have a why to live can bear almost any how.” Purpose, I discovered, is the root of all resilience. When the body and mind fragment, purpose keeps direction. Sport, faith, and service taught me that suffering stops being suffering once it finds meaning. That insight transformed every downfall into a chapter of growth, not condemnation.

Faith as Redemption of Trauma

When I hit rock bottom again — during a period when everything seemed to lose meaning: injustice, disappointment, financial and family crisis — I understood what Chris Bledsoe describes in his testimony: the darkest moments can become portals of spiritual awakening. During that “dark night of the soul,” while everything crumbled, I began to notice signs, synchronicities, and subtle connections beyond rational explanation. They weren’t coincidences; they were reminders that faith is also a neurological language — it calms the nervous system, regulates the amygdala, and helps us move forward even when we can’t understand why. In that silence, I felt again the same divine presence I once felt while running. Faith didn’t just hold me — it gave me purpose again.

Resilience as a Holistic Practice

Today I understand that resilience is an integral discipline:

• Neuroscience, as Huberman teaches: training calm under pressure.

• Discipline, as Goggins demonstrates: turning pain into power.

• Flow, as Kotler describes: merging body and mind into one.

• Expansion, as Monroe revealed: synchronizing body and spirit.

• Integration, as Jung taught: embracing the shadow.

• Meaning, as Frankl showed: transforming suffering into purpose.

• Faith, as Bledsoe lived: trusting the unseen.

Each fall was training for the soul. Each challenge, one more repetition in the invisible gym of the spirit.

Conclusion: The Muscle of the Soul

Resilience is not who you are — it’s what you practice. Every deep breath, every dawn when you rise again, every moment of gratitude amid chaos, is a neural repetition that shapes your destiny.

Science calls it neuroplasticity. I call it applied faith.

“Your brain is plastic. It changes with every experience. Resilience is not who you are — it’s what you practice.” — Time Investors

And perhaps that’s the deepest truth of all:every rock bottom is just the beginning of a new ascent. Because true strength is not measured by how much we endure, but by how much love, purpose, and awareness we can hold while everything else falls apart.