Category: Self Practice Memes

Titrating Physical Constriction

Here’s something specific to try in working with constriction in the body. This is an exercise in titration that can sometimes bring important somatic insights.

Feel the physical constriction in your body, make a posture that holds the constriction. This could be clenched fists or head down/shoulders in or knees pulled in or whatever posture your body might make that holds the constriction.

Throughout this, be aware of some flavor of safety, support, and connection – could be with the Earth or with community or with particular people or beings or animals.

Now try adjusting the physical posture so that it’s just the tiniest bit MORE constricted. Just 1-2% more. Notice what happens when you do that.

There might be some sense of relief, a sense of more protection or safety (from something). Or there might be some sense of greater discomfort, feeling trapped and constrained. Or there might be some of each.

Take some time to notice what’s present in you.

Now try the opposite. Adjust the posture so it’s just the tiniest bit LESS constricted. Notice whatever there is to notice. Again there might be relief, a sense of more space or freedom, or there might be a sense of threat from being exposed or something like that. Or there might be some of each.

Keep it slow, just notice, and gently make space for whatever shows up.

Then let go of the posture altogether, let your body choose how to be, and take some time to just be with whatever has shown up or moved around in you.

When you have challenges relating to other humans that cause intense emotional reactions in you, one important key to making progress is to work gently within yourself.

Focus on your own experience of the relationship challenge, connecting with whatever resource and support you are able to comfortably connect with, inside and outside yourself.

Let yourself be aware of your body and energy with curiosity, without diving deep into any places of discomfort.

And in that place of some connection with support and some connection with your body, from a place of relative calm and neutrality, you might invite yourself to become aware of anything you need to know or notice. And gently be with what comes.

Your struggles in connecting with others may hold important clues for you and may provide the key to working inside yourself. But we identify those important clues through maintaining some neutral distance from the struggles and letting our curiosity

invite to our attention just what is relevant or useful in the moment, through insight rather than through urgency.

When we are healing developmental trauma, we don’t have to specifically and accurately identify every way that our body-mind-life isn’t working, and then find the right way to address each thing that we find.

When our sense of self became highly disorganized as a young child, there were repercussions all throughout our system. And as we do the healing work of curiosity, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, and making contact with both difficult feelings and life force, the repercussions of healing spread throughout our bodies and systems as well.

Things that were not working start to work better, even if we never even noticed that specific thing as something that was wrong.

Pause.

Feel your feet.

Feel your feet on the Earth, or sense the Earth under you wherever you are.

Pause.

Notice your breath.

Feel your hands, arms and shoulders.

Pause.

Notice your breath.

Feel your sternum and be aware of your heart beating.

Pause.

Breathe.

Notice.

We are not solo warriors

It’s not my job to figure it all out.

It’s my job to relax and surrender and to let my body realize that I’m loved and I’m safe, held by beings and forces greater than myself.

It’s my job to be open to wisdom, intuition and insight, which might come from inside of me, from Spirit, or from others.

Trust, surrender, humility, curiosity, breath.

Sincerity, not Perfection

In conveying your needs and setting boundaries, you do not have to communicate in an exquisitely perfect way that causes zero discomfort to the person you are communicating with.

Stay connected to care and compassion, be humble and open to learning about personal and cultural triggers and adjusting accordingly.

And with sincerity and humility on board, still it is not possible to be in the world in a way that causes or triggers zero discomfort for other humans. Breathe, communicate, be less than perfect.

Somatic Personal Practice

Softening our reactions to our hidden feelings

With Developmental Trauma, we have some set of feelings that are largely hidden or suppressed. Fear, guilt, shame, confusion, anger, abandonment, and so on. And because the feelings are mostly hidden, when they affect us – our demeanors or our behaviors – we often have reactions and judgments.

“I should know better than to act like this!”

“What’s the matter with me!?”

“I need to stop being so stupid!”

Reaching and resolving the original feelings can be a gradual longterm process. But it can sometimes be possible to get a fair bit of relief in a shorter timeframe by reducing and clearing the second layer of feelings.

Compassion, curiosity, acceptance, forgiveness. “No wonder things are difficult for me, look at everything I went through.

No wonder I get scared, confused, distant, angry, and so on.”

It is ok for each of us to be who and how we are. And as we can allow and accept that, or even soften to the possibility of that, then there’s more space to be and more possibility of movement in the deeper layers.

Complete this thought:

“I enjoy…”

And this thought:

“In this moment, I am pausing to enjoy…”

Take some moments with whatever brings even the tiniest smile to your face.

See if you can feel that smile, even a little, in your face and in your chest and in your whole body.

Look for that smile in your body and hang out with it for at least 30 seconds, even if it is just one tiny spot of calm within a big storm

Somatic Personal Practice

Am I OK and Safe?

At the core of Developmental/Complex Trauma is this:

I keep looking for evidence and experience to show me that:

It’s OK for me to be me

&

It’s safe for me to be myself

But I keep discovering that it’s not ok for me to be me and it’s not safe for me to be myself.

That’s the dilemma that we are each working our way out of. How to perceive and feel “Ok enough” and “Safe enough” and to believe that over the reactions that arise in our bodies to accurate or perceived insults and rejections.

Somatic Personal Practice

Slow it Down

I invite you to pause and freeze frame the moment. Notice your breath, notice that you have a body, notice your thoughts and feelings. See if you can get any glimpses of your unconscious thoughts.

Imagine everything slowing down, so slow that if it was any slower you would be moving in reverse.

If you are thinking about any actions or activities, imagine yourself taking those actions in slow motion.

If you are thinking about people, imagine yourself interacting with those people in slow motion.

What do you notice?