Mindful Mondays|Week 10: Jubilation

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In today’s mindfulness practice, we are going to talk about celebrating our trauma recovery wins. If you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed, this practice may be difficult today. It may also be just what you need. Either one is okay. Just do your best, and maybe you’ll be able to try this again at another time in your journey. Just sitting today and spending time focusing inward is a win.

Let’s get started. Find a comfortable place where you won’t be distracted. Close your eyes if that feels safe. Settle down into your sit bones and feel the support of the ground or chair beneath you. Take a few calming breaths to find a good center.

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Jubilation is a feeling of triumph. It’s even beyond Joy because it’s a special type of rejoicing and cheer that comes from a victory, good news, or something successful. In our trauma recovery journey, often the healing looks like “5 steps forward, 3 steps back” then “2 steps forward, 2 back” then “6 steps sideways and 2 steps diagonal”. There is no straight path to recovery. We’ve talked before about the layering effect that trauma placed on us, which means there is a layering pattern to removing that and finding wellness. With that said, it’s very important to make room for celebration when you do have even small wins along the way. The more you are able to praise yourself for tiny steps, the more your brain starts to rewire with that jubilant positive reinforcement.

So for today, are you able to think of something in the recent few days or weeks for which you can find jubilation? This may be a healthy decision you made or a boundary you stuck with. Maybe you recognized a trigger reaction, paused, and chose a different response. Perhaps you did some self-care, said ‘no’ to someone who was demanding something of you, or a therapy appointment you made. These are all those small victories in our healing path that we must not take for granted. Allow yourself, just for a few moments if you are able, to recognize the little hurdle you jumped, and find a few minutes of jubilation.

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Maybe you are thinking about something that you are particularly proud of. Can you find a smile to match your happiness? Are you able to congratulate yourself?

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Maybe you have been able to think of a lot of accomplishments recently. That’s something to really find pleasure in. Go ahead and tell yourself what a great job you are doing. Let your gladness run over. Don’t be shy to relish in your successes.

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Now let’s take just another moment to find our breath. Come back from the jubilant party in your head and back into your body. Observe your breath; calm the rhythm if you got excited. Slow your heart rate with smooth exhales.

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Welcome back — to your body, to the room, to this environment, to noises around you. This practice can go with you every day. At any moment that you become aware of a small shift in your trauma responses, a small win of trading harmful coping skills with new healthy ones, a small choice to talk to your coach or therapist, or a new relationship being built — each of these things are to be celebrated and to take pride in. Taking the time to allow yourself a Jubilation Moment will help reward your brain which will product more recovery victories!

Mindful Mondays|Week 6: Flood

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Sometimes the nervous system gets flooded.  When that happens, our bodies can go into overdrive or completely shut down.  You can do this practice as an emergency meditation in times of overwhelm. 

Feel free to sit, lay, or even stand - whatever feels best. Take a deep breath before we continue.

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It’s important for us to establish safety within ourselves right off the bat. 

Let’s take another deep breath – but this time, I want you to take a low and slow inhale so that your belly completely fills up with air.  We want to stimulate our vagus nerve through our diaphragm.  Then hold it for just a moment – one or two counts.  Finally, purse your lips like you are drinking from a straw, and then, very slowly and controlled, blow out all the air in a steady long exhale.  Let’s do that together now.

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Now let’s bring our breathing back to normal with no controlling it at all.  Just watch the breath for a few moments and allow the overwhelming flood inside of you to flow out and away from you – like a branch of a river opening up and sweeping away from it. 

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For all humans, overwhelm can happen at any time.  The day is just too busy, you lose track of time and miss a meeting, your kids are really loud, too much stimuli in your space, a crowded place.  Your mind simply can’t process all the information and lights and smells and must dos for too long, and your sandbags crumble and you get flooded with emotion.  Crying, rage, screaming, going to bed, etc.  This is the normal brain trying to process through day-to-day life.  For trauma survivors, any one of life’s good or bad, calm or busy, fun or sad times can meet with one of your trauma triggers.  Sometimes you don’t even know what triggered you.  Everything may be fine, and the delivery person walks by.  And you are flooded with grief.  You didn’t even have time to realize that their cologne smells like a loved one you lost, but your brain picked up on it and immediately had a trauma trigger response.  This can be the day in and day out for a trauma survivor, regularly bumping into to people, places, things, words, etc that remind their brain of their trauma – even if they don’t even have a memory of it themselves.  The body and brain remember and will use flooding as a way to protect you if it feels like a threat is coming again via the trigger.  You will tense up, hold your breath, and brace for danger. 

This is where a type of breathing like a sharp, slow inhale with a longer exhale can calm your nervous system.  Breathing in deep to the belly expands around our vagus nerve, and the longer exhale invites in calm and relaxed feelings. 

Let’s do three more deep belly inhales and slow, pursed lips exhales.

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See how much more relaxed your internal system feels?  Getting flooded with emotion, tears, rage, confusion, exhaustion, or overwhelm is all part of a stressful life.  You can have a quick way to calm yourself and let your body know you are safe with this simple practice.

Come back to the room; open your eyes if you’ve closed them.

Take this with you whenever you need a moment to let the flood waters recede. 

Mindful Mondays|Week 4: Dream

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Today I want to talk about Dreams. Not the nocturnal ones.  The heart ones, the depths of your soul ones, the passion and purpose ones. 

Let’s start by sitting comfortably in a chair, the ground, or on a cushion.  Take an extra moment today to really get comfortable.  Anything that you need to make yourself 1% more comfortable in your body, while maintaining alertness with your mind.  Feel your sit bones sinking into whatever you are sitting on.  Feel your weight completely trust the ground beneath you.  Close your eyes if that feels safe for you.

We are going to focus right into the belly today, placing our attention right in the area of the diaphragm at the top the gut.  While you breath, notice the expansion and contraction of the belly.  Let your tummy totally relax, totally release – even if spills over. That’s okay.  If you aren’t noticing an expand/contract sensation, you are probably breathing in your chest with your lungs.  I want you to shift that to breathing diaphragmatically.  See if you are able still your chest and lower your shoulders.  Try not to let those areas rise and fall with this breathing.  Just your belly. 

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If you got lost in thought, that’s okay.  Just gently nudge yourself back to focusing on your belly.  Observe it fill up like a balloon and fall back in slowly with the exhale.  Don’t force the breath; just watch it. 

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Today I want you to think about a dream you once had.  Maybe when you were a child, or maybe more recently.  Think about something that you wanted to do, what career you wanted to pursue, someplace you wanted to go see, something you wanted to create, a trade or skill you wanted to learn, a hero you desired to be like.

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Try to sense the feeling this dream gives you in your belly.  In the depth of your being, in your gut.  Imagine yourself at the age and place and time when you began dreaming this dream.  What do you feel in your body?  What does the place smell like?  What color does this dream have?  Do you feel silly wanting this dream?  Does this dream seem impossible?  Did something happen after this dream that prevented you from obtaining it yet?  How does this dream make you feel now, whatever age you are, thinking back on it? 

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Maybe you chose to focus on a dream that you haven’t thought of in a long time – like a childhood dream of wanting to be a dinosaur.  Or maybe you are thinking about a dream that crops up in your mind from time to time, maybe asking you to revisit it.  Either way, what happened to those dreams?  Are they still somewhere in your body?  Did you feel a nudge or a tingle or sensation when you began thinking about this?  What is your dream trying to tell you about yourself now? 

If this dream was dreamt, there was a reason for it.  I wonder if there was a shifting from moving toward your dream, like focusing on your belly breaths, to focusing on real life and following societal expectations like when you got lost in thoughts in your mind.   It can be hard to come back to your gut, back to the original ideas you had as a creative child or a budding invincible teenager or even as a college student with the whole world in front of you.  Somewhere along the way, you may have lost not just a dream or two - but the actual desire and permission to dream.  It is very common for life (the good and bad parts of life) to get in the way of dreaming at all. 

I invite you to shift from your attention on your Dream back to your belly rising and falling with the rhythm of your breath.  Take a few more moments to come back into your body and remember your present state of being in your diaphragm.

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Coming back into the room now. Hear the sounds around you.

I invite you to take a few more moments after this meditation to sit and contemplate some dreams you maybe gave up on or haven’t considered in a while.  Ask yourself some questions about your dreams and see if there is something an old dream wants to share with you.  Maybe see if there is a dream that’s still within your grasp.  You could start turning it into in a goal now using your current healing, resources, finances, adulthood, strength, energy, and time. Maybe you’ll be able to resurrect that old dream.  If it wasn’t possible at an earlier stage of your life, it may be now in this state of your trauma healing journey. 

If this has been a difficult meditation for you, I welcome you to speak with your trauma coach or therapist about what bubbled up for you today.  This week we will focus on wounds of childhood and how its very normal for trauma to squelch youthful dreams and suppress juvenile creativity.  If you care to share with someone what came up in your soul today, I’d love to hear from you.  In the show notes, there’s a link to my website.  Click on the “Connect” tab and feel free to send me a message. 

Be kind to yourself as you return to your day. Let’s take on more deep breath and open our eyes slowly. 

Mindful Mondays| Week 1: And

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Welcome, my name is Sara from Full Circle Wellspring. And today is your Mindful Monday. Let’s get started. Today I want to talk about the word: And. A small little three letter word. 

So get comfortable. You can lay down or sit in a cross-legged position on the floor or in a chair. Somewhere you can be comfortable for just a few short minutes. To still your mind, take a few deep breaths to help you arrive here right now. 

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Let’s return our breathing to natural rhythm. 

Let’s focus on this New Year together. What a great time and place; an opportunity we have for a fresh start. This year I’d like to challenge you consider the word “and”. 

Right now you’re sitting here focusing on your breath or a bodily sensation — feeling the warmth of your hands or feeling your belly rise and fall with the breath. While you are breathing, your body is also breathing you. Breathing is an action of Being AND Doing. Same thing with our thoughts. We can be watching our thoughts, creating our thoughts, AND our thoughts are always happening. 

In our trauma recovery journey together, we are whole. We are a complete person worthy of love and worthy of respect, AND we can also love ourselves enough on want to continue on improving our mind, body, spirit. On improving in our trauma recovery path. We can be happy right where we are, AND we can be looking forward to even more improvement. You can be feeling very healthy and happy in a career AND also challenge yourself. You could be feeling really happy at this moment AND also grieving the year that passed. Maybe a lot of things happened that you haven’t quite processed yet. AND all that is okay. 

Let’s continue to feel our breath a few more minutes. Don’t force the breath. Just watch it. Observe it while it does its thing. Let’s pay attention to where we feel the breath the strongest— maybe the nostrils, right above the upper lip, or maybe you want to focus on your seat in the chair or on the floor. Let’s just take a few minutes and remember the duality that we have in this life. We can breathe, AND we can also be breathed. Let yourself be breathed right now. 

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This year maybe we challenge ourselves especially in the complexity of our trauma recovery journey to remind ourselves that things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. You can do hard things, and you can also give yourself space to rest and recover. You can feel multiple emotions at one time, and that’s okay. Try this week to see how it feels to eliminate one of those other three letter words “but” with the word “and”. See if that doesn’t change some of the perspective in your heart. I know for me personally when I catch myself saying “but”, and I can change it to an “and” that I’m reminded of the flexibility that life has offered me by giving me multiple options and opportunities. I’m not limited, and I’m not a victim. And we can do hard things. We can do challenging things. We can grow, and we can also take time to rest and reflect. We can find that balance. It’s not an easy journey. Trauma recovery never is, and I’ll never promise you that — AND you can find support and encouragement here through it. 

This has been your Mindful Monday. I am your certified trauma recovery coach, Sara, for Full Circle Wellspring, and I look forward to our next time together. 

When you are ready, re-acclimate your body to the room and open your eyes slowly and enjoy the rest of your day.