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 5: Everything & Nothing

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Let’s begin by settling into your space.  Let’s ground together.  Take one slow, deep, grounding breath.  Before you close your eyes, scan the room in some detail.  Count a few things, find something new you haven’t seen before, or set your gaze on something that you really love.

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If your comfortable to do so, close your eyes.  See how the room looks on the other side of your eyelids.  Can you remember most of the things you scanned?  What was that one detail you noticed?  Do you remember the feeling you had as you gazed on that one object?

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Now let’s come to our faithful breath.  The breath that keeps on going, whether we are aware or not.  The breath that moves at the right pace for sitting to watch tv to climbing stairs to mowing the lawn.  The breath that always regulates itself just as we need it.  Just watch it in your mind.  Follow it like a puppy follows its human around.  With no desire to change it or force it, just to be with it because you want to be.

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If you wandered off like a stray puppy, come back to the breath and just enjoy following it with every inhale and exhale.  Use all your effort to stay with each breath, yet don’t do anything special at all.

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If your mind has slid off the path again, that’s okay.  With all your strength, pull it right back on the breath.  However, the more relaxed you approach your wandering, the easier to slide back into the lap of the breath.

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Meditation, if you think about it really, it is everything.  It creates an awareness that, when practiced enough, can follow you through your whole day, bringing you back to the moment, back to reality.  Mindfulness is the almighty buzzword that is helping millions of people be conscious of their energy, emotions, mindset, lifestyle choices, words, and actions every day.  And … it’s nothing.  It’s just sitting here.  Effortlessly watching something that we do every moment of everyday.  We are choosing to sit here to observe ourselves doing the most obvious, unchallenging thing we do in a day – just breathing.  You aren’t focusing on the breath right this second, and yet there it still is just keepin’ on keepin’ on.  You don’t have to do anything to your breath; it’s a reflexive thing.  All the while, whenever you want, it’s this anchor that you can sit and watch.  You can even force your breath, hold it, change its pace.  But you don’t have to, and it will be just fine without your interference.  Without judgment, you can easily slide your mind back into the focusing practice, and then without demand, you will inevitably loss track of it again and again.

Mindfulness is training brains all of the globe to be aware of themselves and their surroundings – to be fully present.   What you are doing right now is a huge key to allowing you to be fully present in your day-to-day life. It’s reteaching your mind to be connected to your body to be connected to your spirit.  It’s helping you find purpose and accept your emotions.  It’s regulating your life.  Yet, it’s not really anything.  It’s just sitting, observing ourselves.  Sometimes we make really big deals out of things.  I know I do.  Meditation is a big deal that isn’t a big deal.  The effortlessness to return to your breath over and over is work, without working anything.  It’s being mindful of mindless breathing. 

Keep watching your breath.  Just try to focus on the next 3 breaths, from the inhale to the end of the exhale. 

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Isn’t that amazing?!  You were watching yourself as a human being minus the human doing.  Taking away the doing and just being for just a few moments.  That’s incredible!  Sit here as long as you like after this meditation is over and just keep being.  Meditation is the most important thing you’ll do today, and yet it isn’t anything at all. 

When you are ready, open your eyes.  When you are really ready, feel free to get up, and carry that state of Being into your day as you are Doing all the other important things.  Congratulate yourself on doing the thing that is nothing and everything.  

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 3: Calm, Cool, Collected

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Today’s meditation can be used as a regular practice or as an emergency timeout to calm during or after a trigger. 

I encourage to sit very comfortably – maybe in your favorite recliner or a sofa.  It’s even appropriate to lay on your back or the fetal position if you are using this in a stressful situation.  Invite your body to stay alert, but to relax down into whatever ground is supporting your weight.  Visualization is helpful in this practice today, so if you can sort through visions in your mind, I welcome you to close your eyes.  If you are activated and need help staying grounded, I welcome you to softly fix your gaze on something nearby you in the room that makes you feel at ease.  This could be a pretty wall color, a picture of someone you love, your pet laying beside you, or your reflection if a mirror is visible to you.  Let’s immediately ask our breath to aid us for the next few minutes by taking three deep breaths in a row.  You want to drink in from your nose as much air fills your belly, ribs, and lungs.  Hold it at the top for just a brief moment before letting it cascade slowly and controlled out from your mouth.  This may look like a count of 3 to inhale and 6 to exhale, with a brief pause in between. 

For those more experienced in breathwork, this could be a deep 6 count inhale, holding for 3-4 counts, followed by a slow 12-15 count decompression exhale. 

Whatever works for you – take three cleansing breaths when you’re ready.

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Now let’s all return to our natural breath and take a moment to focus on our heartbeat.  Can you hear it?  Can you feel it?  Is it beating fast and hard because you are still activated?  Is it finding a calm rhythm from the deep breathing?  If you need, pause this, and redo three more deep cleansing breaths. 

Focus on your belly and ribs expanding.  Focus on your chest rising.  Notice your heart settling into your chest, relaxing the way you settled down into your seat, sofa, bed, or the ground.  Eventually, you want your heart to calm to the point where you don’t actively feel it without touching your chest.  Keep listening.

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Now that you’ve self-soothed with some breaths, focus away from your heartbeat and breathing to allow your eyes to see the object you are gazing at or conjure a picture in your mind if your eyes are closed.  Whatever picture makes you feel calm.  A pretty color, a scene of nature, a pet.  Spend a moment focusing on this mind picture or whatever you are gazing at.  Notice it’s textures, patterns, colors, maybe a scent or a feeling that comes alongside the visual experience.

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Calm, cool, collected is always available to you.  You can calm yourself by grounding into the room that’s present around you or an object you create in your mind.  You can cool a hot temper or an activated nervous system with deep breaths and elongated exhales.  You can collect yourself by taking this time out to ask your thoughts to pause while you focused on deep breathing and then a focal gaze.  You are safe in your hunkered down relaxed pose. 

You can begin to relax your gaze off your focus point and come back fully into the room.  You can open your eyes if you feel ready. 

You have calmed your own racing heart, cooled your stormy insides, and collected your thought pattern.  Congratulate yourself for taking this time out, especially if you used this in a triggering situation. 

Release your attention back to the current space and allow yourself to slowly get up before acclimating back into whatever is next for your day.