CUTTING INTO IT
The Relational Operating System for Self-Leadership
How do I embody what I know?
Awareness helps us see the patterns shaping our lives. But what happens when we want to respond differently—in our relationships, our choices, and the moments that challenge us?
In Cutting Into It, I share a compassionate exploration of relational patterns and a grounded approach to self-leadership—one you can return to in the midst of everyday life.
What if the patterns exhausting your relationships are not proof that you are broken — but signs that you have learned to abandon yourself in order to maintain connection?
Cutting Into It is a transformative guide to recognizing the unconscious relational patterns that keep many people trapped in cycles of over-functioning, emotional burnout, anxious attachment, avoidance, people-pleasing, and self-abandonment.
Blending personal reflection, nervous system awareness, contemplative practice, and practical self-leadership tools, Lisa M. Gunshore (Sundara Rishika Devi) offers a compassionate framework for learning how to remain anchored within yourself while navigating relationships, conflict, intimacy, family dynamics, work, and everyday life.
Inside, you will explore:
Attachment patterns and relational survival strategies
Emotional labor and over-functioning
Boundaries, nervous system regulation, and self-trust
How to interrupt reactive patterns in real time
A grounded path toward embodied self-leadership
At the heart of this work is one guiding principle:
I stay anchored. I don’t manage others.
This is not simply a healing journey.
It is a return to yourself.
about the book
THE STORY
A return to yourself
What if the exhaustion you feel isn’t only physical? What if some of it comes from the ways you’ve learned to maintain connection—over-giving, over-functioning, seeking reassurance, or placing someone else’s needs ahead of your own?
I wrote Cutting Into It to explore the relational patterns that can shape the way we respond to conflict, intimacy, uncertainty, and everyday life. Through personal reflection, contemplative practice, nervous system awareness, and self-leadership tools, I invite you to notice these patterns with honesty and compassion.
This work is a practice of learning to remain connected to yourself, even when life and relationships feel challenging.
Beneath the book is a question:
How do I embody what I know?
Read an Excerpt
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There is a profound difference between understanding a pattern and interrupting it while it is actively happening.
For much of my life, I believed healing would occur primarily through insight. I thought that if I understood myself deeply enough—if I uncovered the root wound, processed the past, recognized the attachment pattern, understood the nervous system response, and developed enough awareness—my behaviors would naturally change on their own. And while awareness transformed the way I understood myself, I eventually realized something difficult but necessary: insight alone does not automatically interrupt conditioned behavior.
The nervous system moves quickly.
Much faster than conscious thought.
A trigger appears, and suddenly the body is activated before awareness fully enters the experience. Fear rises. Urgency floods the system. The familiar relational role emerges almost automatically. We begin rescuing, managing, over-explaining, withdrawing, controlling, pursuing, caretaking, or emotionally disappearing long before we consciously realize the pattern has taken over.
This is why so many people feel discouraged in healing work. They understand their patterns intellectually, yet still find themselves repeating them during moments of stress, intimacy, conflict, exhaustion, disappointment, or emotional activation. At times, this can feel deeply frustrating because awareness creates the expectation that change should happen more quickly than it often does.
But healing is not measured solely by what you understand.
It is measured by what you are able to remain conscious enough to interrupt in real time.
— From “Interrupting the Pattern in Real Time,” in Cutting Into It: The Relational Operating System for Self-Leadership
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turn towards yourself
A moment to reflect
Sometimes we recognize a familiar pattern only after a difficult moment has passed. That recognition is a place to begin.
Take a moment to consider:
What do you notice yourself doing when you feel uncertain or disconnected?
Perhaps you try to fix the situation, explain yourself, move closer, pull away, or take responsibility for someone else’s feelings.
What might help you stay connected to yourself in that moment?
You might write a few words, notice what happens in your body, or simply sit with the question. There is no need to judge what you discover.
FROM STORY INTO PRACTICE
What happens after we begin to understand our story?
Recognizing what happened to us can be a powerful beginning. As we reflect on our experiences, we may also begin to notice patterns in the way we relate, respond, and care for ourselves.
But awareness is only the beginning. How do we bring that understanding into the way we live?
An invitation to The Living Practice
The Living Practice: A Year of Cutting Into It is a guided, year-long journey of reflection, embodied practice, and grounded self-leadership.
Rooted in my book Cutting Into It, this experience builds on the questions explored in Cherry Pie and offers a way to practice what you discover—in your relationships, your choices, and the ordinary moments of daily life.
The Cutting Into It: Monthly Living Practice Pages were created as a companion practice for healing, embodiment, nervous system awareness, and grounded self-leadership.
More than a traditional planner, this guided workbook-style system is designed to help you integrate emotional awareness, conscious relationships, intentional living, and embodied healing practices into your daily life.
Through monthly reflections, weekly sacred rhythm planning, daily grounding practices, nervous system check-ins, relational awareness tools, and guided integration exercises, these pages support you in creating sustainable rhythms for healing, self-trust, and conscious transformation.
Inside you’ll find:
Monthly planning and reflection pages
Weekly Sacred Rhythm planners
Daily embodiment and grounding practices
Nervous system support tools
Emotional trigger debrief worksheets
Relational awareness reflections
Boundary and energy audits
Future self and self-leadership practices
Integration and recommitment exercises
Guided journaling and conscious planning tools
This is not about perfection or productivity.
It is about learning to remain connected to yourself while moving through real life with greater awareness, honesty, compassion, and grounded self-leadership.
Designed to be used alongside the Cutting Into It book and immersion course—or as a standalone reflective planning practice—these pages offer a compassionate structure for intentional living, emotional healing, and embodied transformation over time.
the journey continues
From practice to the witness
Cutting Into It invites us to ask:
How do I embody what I know?
As we practice noticing our patterns and staying connected to ourselves, another question quietly emerges:
Who am I beneath everything I have experienced?
In The Witness Within: Remembering Who You Were Before the World Told You Who to Be, I invite you to explore the awareness beneath your roles, stories, and identities—and cultivate a deeper relationship with the one who has been present through it all.
Explore The Witness Within
Ready to bring awareness into everyday life?
What if the patterns exhausting your relationships are not proof that you are broken — but signs that you have learned to abandon yourself in order to maintain connection?
Cutting Into It is a transformative guide to recognizing the unconscious relational patterns that keep many people trapped in cycles of over-functioning, emotional burnout, anxious attachment, avoidance, people-pleasing, and self-abandonment.
Blending personal reflection, nervous system awareness, contemplative practice, and practical self-leadership tools, Lisa M. Gunshore (Sundara Rishika Devi) offers a compassionate framework for learning how to remain anchored within yourself while navigating relationships, conflict, intimacy, family dynamics, work, and everyday life.
Inside, you will explore:
Attachment patterns and relational survival strategies
Emotional labor and over-functioning
Boundaries, nervous system regulation, and self-trust
How to interrupt reactive patterns in real time
A grounded path toward embodied self-leadership
At the heart of this work is one guiding principle:
I stay anchored. I don’t manage others.
This is not simply a healing journey.
It is a return to yourself.
The Cutting Into It: Monthly Living Practice Pages were created as a companion practice for healing, embodiment, nervous system awareness, and grounded self-leadership.
More than a traditional planner, this guided workbook-style system is designed to help you integrate emotional awareness, conscious relationships, intentional living, and embodied healing practices into your daily life.
Through monthly reflections, weekly sacred rhythm planning, daily grounding practices, nervous system check-ins, relational awareness tools, and guided integration exercises, these pages support you in creating sustainable rhythms for healing, self-trust, and conscious transformation.
Inside you’ll find:
Monthly planning and reflection pages
Weekly Sacred Rhythm planners
Daily embodiment and grounding practices
Nervous system support tools
Emotional trigger debrief worksheets
Relational awareness reflections
Boundary and energy audits
Future self and self-leadership practices
Integration and recommitment exercises
Guided journaling and conscious planning tools
This is not about perfection or productivity.
It is about learning to remain connected to yourself while moving through real life with greater awareness, honesty, compassion, and grounded self-leadership.
Designed to be used alongside the Cutting Into It book and immersion course—or as a standalone reflective planning practice—these pages offer a compassionate structure for intentional living, emotional healing, and embodied transformation over time.