There's a word most of us use without thinking about it. We say we got 'triggered' by something a partner said, or that a certain situation 'triggers' our anxiety. It's become the default language of healing spaces, therapy offices, and wellness content everywhere.

But what if that word is actually working against you?

In a recent episode of The Spiritually Curious Therapist, I sat down with Cynthia Abulafia, an author, educator, and yoga therapist who has spent decades studying sacred texts, guiding people through Kundalini awakenings, and doing something genuinely radical: reclaiming the language of embodied spirituality in a way that is grounded, ethical, and deeply practical.

One of the first things she said stopped me cold.

She doesn't use the word 'trigger' anymore. She uses 'activation' instead. And the reason matters more than you might expect.

Cynthia's point wasn't about softening difficult experiences. It was about what the word itself makes possible.

A trigger, by definition, is connected to a weapon. When a trigger is pulled, what comes out cannot be stopped. It's fast. It's final. There's no room in that word for slowing down, getting curious, or making a different choice. The language itself is fatalistic.

An activation is something else entirely. When your body lights up in response to something, that's information. It's your system communicating. And unlike a trigger, an activation can be slowed down. You can get curious about it. You can ask where you feel it, what it feels like, what it might be saying.

The language we use shapes what feels possible. If you believe you're 'triggered,' you're already at the mercy of something. If you notice you're 'activated,' you still have agency.

That distinction isn't small. It's the whole thing.

Cynthia's debut book, Embodying the Goddess, carries a subtitle that I keep returning to: How to Awaken Curiosity and Reverence on the Spiritual Path. I asked her why curiosity, specifically.

Her answer was deceptively simple. Curiosity, she said, is the divine feminine. It's the first step, the middle step, and the last step of the path. It IS the path.

What she means by this is that curiosity is the one quality that isn't colored by whatever emotional state you're in. When you're sad, everything looks sad. When you're angry, everything looks threatening. But curiosity can cut through that. It can touch any experience, any sensation, any pattern, and look at it clearly.

The practice is straightforward, even if it takes time to build. When something comes up, whether it's a feeling, a sensation, an old pattern, or a moment of unexpected joy, you ask: where do I feel this in my body? What quality does it have? Is it hot or cool? Rough or smooth? Does it have a texture?

That's not a spiritual detour. That IS the work.

One of the most clarifying moments in our conversation came when we got into the topic of spiritual bypassing. It's a phrase that gets used a lot, sometimes imprecisely. Cynthia offered a definition that I think cuts right to the heart of it.

Spiritual bypassing happens, she said, when the goal matters more than the process. When we're so focused on getting to peace, enlightenment, regulation, or whatever the endpoint looks like, that we skip the harder, slower, stickier work of actually being here.

The body gets left out. The messy middle gets bypassed. We go straight for the feeling we want without sitting with the one we have.

And the irony is that the very thing we're rushing toward, that sense of wholeness, of coming home to ourselves, is only available through the process. Not at the end of it.

Cynthia describes it through the image of the heart as an instrument. Every experience, pleasant or not, is an opportunity to clean the instrument. The more you clean it, the more clearly you can hear your own heartbeat, and the heartbeat of the world around you. That's the practice. Not arriving somewhere. Just cleaning.

We also spent time unpacking non-duality, a concept that Cynthia teaches through the lens of the divine feminine and sacred texts. It's a term that can feel abstract or inaccessible. She brought it down to earth.

Non-duality simply means: I'm not separate from the divine. That's it. Whatever is happening, including the difficult stuff, the confusion, the grief, the ordinary Tuesday, is all part of the same fabric. There is no split between you and the sacred.

This is a radically different starting point than what most of us were taught. Most Western spiritual and religious traditions begin from the premise that something is broken and needs to be fixed, that we started from separation and are working our way back to wholeness. That framing sets up a particular kind of suffering. It implies we're always behind, always not quite there yet.

Cynthia's framework, rooted in goddess traditions and tantric texts, says something different. We started whole. We're not working toward wholeness. We're remembering it. That reframe changes everything about how you relate to the healing process.

Near the end of our conversation, I asked Cynthia if there was anything she wanted to make sure people walked away with. She didn't hesitate.

Notice what you notice.

Four words. And somehow, enough.

It's the simplest entry point into everything we talked about. Curiosity, embodiment, reverence, the intelligence of the heart, coming home to yourself without forcing it. All of it begins with the willingness to simply notice what's happening, in your body, in your reactions, in the quiet moments between the loud ones.

You don't need a framework or a training or a five-day program. You just need to start noticing.

The rest unfolds from there.

You can listen to the full episode of The Spiritually Curious Therapist wherever you get your podcasts. Cynthia's book, Embodying the Goddess, is available now.