Constructed scene, written to illustrate the framework.
Monday morning. He arrives and sits down in his seat. At ten, he begins saying no to the activities he is offered. At noon, he does not respond when spoken to.
A reading centered on the moment might ask what happened that morning. It might also interpret the response as dysregulation, although that interpretation is not demonstrated by what is observed.
A reading that also looks at time might ask: what happened before, including in the previous days? Did anything change in what is being asked of him or in what surrounds him? Could there be something that came from before? And what other explanations should be considered: that he does not want to do what is being proposed, that something hurts, that he does not understand what is expected of him, or that he is saying no?
Looking at time as well does not, by itself, answer these questions. It widens what we can investigate: in addition to observing the present moment, we can examine what happened before and how conditions changed, without assuming that the explanation necessarily lies in the past.
| Looking at the moment | Looking at time |
|---|---|
| How is this person right now? | What has happened before, and how have conditions been changing? |
| It looks at what is visible in this moment: what the person does, how they participate, what they say. | It also looks at what happened before, what was asked of the person, and what opportunities for rest were available. |
| Its risk: taking the moment as the complete explanation. | Its risk: looking to the past for an explanation that the moment may already offer. |
| It directs attention to what is happening. | It also directs attention to the trajectory and the conditions. |
In this framework, a living system is understood not as something fixed, but as something that is continuously changing.
What we see in a moment is like a photograph: it shows something real, but not what happened before or what will happen after. Looking across time makes it possible to place that photograph within a broader trajectory, although that trajectory is never observed in full.
This is not only a conceptual claim. It has consequences for how we observe.
What you observe at a given moment may have to do with what happened before you arrived, with what is happening now, or with both. The visible moment is not always fully explained from within itself; sometimes it is.
This is a proposed model for organizing observation — not a verified description of a single physiological mechanism. It describes how the framework proposes that conditions, organization, access, and participation relate to one another across time.
The environment presents sensory, relational, cognitive, and other kinds of demands. The framework invites us to ask what conditions were present when those demands appeared, including other simultaneous or earlier demands, without assuming that an accumulated load necessarily existed.
The framework proposes that the response to an event may also depend on the conditions already present when it arrived, and perhaps on something that had not been resolved before. But the immediate event may also explain much of what happens.
Conditions can offer recovery opportunities, without guaranteeing that recovery occurs or that it is sufficient. Some physiological changes related to activation can be measured with instruments, but no single measure by itself establishes that a person has recovered. The framework proposes exploring whether, under certain conditions, more regulatory margin might be available. That margin is a construct of the framework: it is not observed or measured directly from someone appearing calmer or from an isolated physiological indicator. It also proposes considering whether earlier experiences or demands might continue to influence what happens afterward, without inferring accumulation, incomplete recovery, or shifts in the operating baseline from the observed behavior.
What is observable in a moment — what the person does, how they participate, whether they withdraw — can also be looked at within a wider span of time, not only as an isolated point. That moment is valid information, although it may not be enough to understand the conditions in which it occurred.
The numbers indicate one possible order for asking, not demonstrated causes. Each step is a question the framework proposes, and the steps are not always taken in this order.
The framework proposes exploring relationships among present and earlier conditions, organization, access, participation, and recovery over time. These relationships do not constitute a universal sequence, nor do they allow one process to be inferred automatically from another.
This shift widens what is observed, what is examined, and the questions that become possible.
When we look at time as well, and not only at the moment, other questions arise: what happened before I arrived? What is the environment asking of them now? What recovery opportunities have they had? What does the person say about what is happening to them? What other explanations should be considered? If there is pain, discomfort, or a safety need, it is attended to first.
Some of these questions cannot be answered by looking only at the present moment. Others can, and some can be answered by the person themselves. No answer is demonstrated solely by what did not happen.
An Example of How to Look
Observation: during an activity, the child stopped responding to some invitations.
Question about time: what happened before, and how did conditions vary?
Possible hypothesis: some earlier demand might be having an influence.
Alternatives: lack of interest, the decision not to participate, difficulty understanding what is being asked, pain, changes in the environment, or other conditions.
Limit: none of these explanations is demonstrated by the fact that he did not respond.
Think of a child, student, or client whose response surprised you: they seemed calm and, later, stopped responding. What did you know about what had happened before? What other explanations might be considered? What would that person say?
In which situations in your practice do you rely only on what happens in the moment? What would change if you also looked at what happened before, while still looking at what is happening now?
What conditions in the environments where you work support recovery? Which make it harder?
If you also looked at time, and not only at the moment, what would you observe differently? What would you start noting down — when it is useful and respectful — that you did not note before?
If a person is continuously changing, what does that mean for the way we observe them, and for what we cannot know about them from the outside?
The observations in this guide connect with several active areas of research. These traditions did not originate the framework — the framework emerged through clinical observation. They are included here because they offer relevant conceptual context and because they raise questions close to those of the framework. That thematic closeness does not constitute evidence for the framework's specific proposals: their presence does not imply that the framework derives directly from them, that the framework adopts the strongest claims of those traditions, or that they confirm the mechanisms the framework proposes.
Developmental Systems Theory
Developmental systems theory proposes that development emerges from continuous interaction between organism and context across time, and not from fixed internal blueprints that unfold independently of conditions. In this tradition, the organism and its environment are understood as mutually constitutive. It offers conceptual context for looking across time, but it does not demonstrate the mechanisms the framework proposes.
Enactive Cognition
The enactive perspective proposes understanding cognition through the relationships among organism, body, and environment, and through active participation in experience. Its various formulations question whether cognition can be explained solely as the processing of internal representations. The framework uses it as conceptual context, not as a demonstration of its own constructs.
Predictive Processing
Predictive processing models propose that the nervous system continuously generates predictions about the signals it receives, based on prior experience, and that it responds in part to the difference between what it predicted and what occurs. They are theoretical models whose scope is still debated; the free-energy principle (Friston, 2010) is one of their most general formulations. They do not allow us to know what a particular person predicts in a given situation.
The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience
Varela, Thompson & Rosch — MIT Press, 1991
Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind
Evan Thompson — Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007
Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution
Oyama, Griffiths & Gray — MIT Press, 2001
Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind
Andy Clark — Oxford University Press, 2016
Reading the Nervous System: A Physiological Reading of Autistic Experience
María E. Reyes — Neurodiversidad Consciente, 2026
First guide in the NDC Educational Series. Looking at the moment and looking at time.