The meetings will include brief lectures, sharing, Q&A, guided work for the whole group, breakout groups, and demonstrations. When you go to the scheduling page, you have three price point options: free, $10, or $20. All three options offer the same dates and times. And when you provide your time zone, you can see the correct dates and times for where you are located.
In this moment and throughout your day, notice something that is pleasant or neutral and pause with it for just a moment.
Let your body experience neutral or pleasant.
This could be the sound of a bird
or the touch of your hand against your own skin
or the smell of food cooking
or the memory or image of a satisfying event.
Anything that is small and that is not unpleasant.
The idea is to add this practice in little moments, slowing down briefly, maybe even shorter than 5 seconds.
We are inviting our bodies to learn that neutral is possible, that pleasant is possible. A gentle nudging away from escalating distress and toward “It’s OK”.
I don’t want to walk around acting like nothing bad is happening. But I don’t want to walk around consumed with fear and dread about the bad things that are happening.
That is the dilemma we faced as young children when we were not safe or our needs were not met: the choice of either denial or chronic distress.
For many of us, we had no choice but to minimize the trauma and hide from ourselves the impacts of the bad stuff.
This time I want a different way. Not minimizing and not paralyzed either. Persistently alive, connected, and breathing, even in the thick of it.
My body is willing to learn how to do this. I breathe, I feel, I choose life, I choose trust, I accept not knowing, I accept the feelings of fear and overwhelm. I allow space for hope. I am here.
Even as we don’t yet know how to navigate the very real threats and challenges, both in our individual lives and in our world, still the Earth can hold and digest our shock, fear, grief and anger.
Lower your head, pull your shoulders forward, generally move toward a more curled up posture. Feel what happens in your emotional and physical body.
Now lift your head, open your chest, feel your spine lengthen, let your shoulders pull back and gently drop into place. Feel what happens in your emotional and physical body.
Try repeating this a couple of times slowly with small incremental movements.
Thank you for the work you are doing on yourself and with yourself.
Feel for the pushy currents in your body or energy.
“Play act” at being a fierce dragon who gets what you want.
Curl your hands into claws
Breathe heavily or hiss, an audible and forceful out breath that does not include your vocal cords, so you can expel a lot of air making a small but intense noise.
Stand up on your toes if you can keep your balance.
Lift your arms overhead or to the side, still with claws.
Whisper or hiss: “Me!” “Alive!” “Want!”
Continue for half a minute, moving up and down on your toes, moving your arms and body however they want to move, and continuing to hiss these words.
“I can do things!”, the intersection of agency, competence, confidence, self-identity and self worth, can be significantly impacted by developmental trauma.
Even at things we do well, we can feel like we are always at risk of failing or that we are constantly being watched and judged.
And when learning new things, it can feel like an impossible uphill climb, as if the body ‘knows’ “I can’t possibly do this.”
This is not simple to solve, there is much hidden inside us including grief, pain, contradictions and struggles for power.
But here are some places to start:
“I’m taking a breath and remembering I’m supported.”
“It’s ok that what I’m doing feels awkward and uncomfortable.”
“It’s ok to move at my pace (even if I think I should be faster.)”
“I forgive myself for not being able to do more, faster, or better.”
“I remember that I am a blessing and it’s ok to be me.”
Focusing, as taught and advocated by Eugene Gendlin, could be described as the process of:
being gently curious about our subtle inner experience (our “felt sense”),
pausing and noticing details about our inner experience that we would not be aware of without paying conscious attention,
not needing to understand, control or even clearly perceive our inner experience, yet remaining present and curious anyway,
then observing what evolves and what happens in that inner experience as we become aware of each element (noticing “felt shifts”).
As we are able to engage in this exploration, we are able to more quickly come to personal insights and shifts in the direction of healing and being fully alive.
Here is an incomplete list of shifts that can and do happen in effective developmental trauma healing work, wherever and however that work is done and regardless of whether these elements are consciously called out or even consciously known by the person holding the work.
For sure, all of these changes have occurred incrementally in me over time, throughout the past 30 years and continuing in recent months and weeks. And I see these changes in my clients, at varying paces, and not necessarily in all categories at once.
As you are reviewing these categories of change, I invite you to pause and notice within yourself whether each type of change has occurred in you over time. If yes, maybe pause to really feel into how it is different now than it was when you started your journey.
What are the intentions and goals of “trauma healing” in people?
Emotional Safety/Attachment
The experience of feeling emotionally safe (enough) with the facilitator and/or group, feeling they are accepted and seen, and have permission to be themself.
Then based on that baseline, a (likely gradual) increase in emotional safety over time, where (at least some part of) the person is able to believe that it’s ok to be who they are and feel what they feel, and they also can feel that the facilitator and/or group will continue to be accepting and supportive (enough) of them even as they reveal more painful material about who they are and what they feel.
Experiencing Neutral and Positive Things
Creating or expanding capacity to feel things that feel good or ok.
Some people have little or no capacity for feeling ok. The bad feelings and feelings of threat are so intense that it feels like anything good or ok is impossible or can’t be real. Some people can feel ok for moments, but then the ok feeling triggers an increased sense of danger, like the calm before the storm. Or some people can tolerate feeling ok or neutral but if they feel actively good or excited or hopeful, those feelings then trigger dread or danger.
Looking for, paying attention to, and staying longer with things that feel good or ok.
Some people can tolerate feeling good or ok, but they miss the chance to feel good or ok because their attention is always habitually focused on seeking out and mitigating threats. So we invite the practice of slowing down and intentionally noticing and seeking out things that feel good or ok.
Connection with the Body
Creating or expanding the ability to notice what is happening in the body: physical pain, discomfort or bodily needs; both good and bad feelings that express in part through bodily sensations; impulses or desires felt in the body; constriction, bracing, holding, openness, flow, breath.
Creating or expanding the ability to send communications to the body: inviting breath, ease, grounding, or movement; gently sitting with organs, systems, or any body part to both explore what is present and to invite useful shifts.
Safety, Support and Connection Generally
Creating or expanding the person’s/body’s ability and capacity to feel relatively safe, supported and connected. This may include but is not limited to the relational connection with the facilitator or group that was mentioned above.
Making Contact with Difficult Emotions, always while connected to a relative experience of safety and connection.
Making initial contact with specific emotions that had been hidden.
Gradually deepening and expanding contact with painful emotions that are known. Expressing what wants to be expressed (as long as it’s not a habitual expression of the same feelings and content repeatedly as generally these habitual feelings are hiding other deeper feelings and this repeated expression doesn’t help except for momentary relief.)
Disidentifying; that is, maintaining a witness or observer part of the self that can know that their overwhelming emotional experience is “just” an emotional experience and is not all there is.
Helping the body to learn that overwhelming emotions can be survived, that those emotions don’t actually bring the annihilation that it feels like they are bringing.
Reconnecting Undercouplings/Sense of Self: I matter
Incrementally increasing access to the following qualities and “knowing” within the body: Locating hope. The fire of life force; “I am alive!, I’m here!, I matter!” Boundaries, the right and capacity to claim personal space. Sense of self: “I am, I know who I am, I am the authority on me.” “I feel things, I want things, I need things, I have values.”
Uncoupling Overcouplings
Incrementally being able to relate to challenging situations without being thrown off balance by emotions, by supporting the body to realize that the situation and emotion are not inherently bound together. In particular, separating intense emotions from situations, such as: Uncoupling fear from immobility Uncoupling frustration, anger, or helplessness from the disappointments in other people’s behaviors Uncoupling shame/feeling of failure from personal challenges/lack of progress Uncoupling loneliness, grief or longing from relationship losses, lacks and challenges
Freeing the Body
Incrementally reducing unconscious habitual clenching and bracing postures in the musculature. Incrementally reducing ways in which parts of the body or body systems are offline, not fully functioning.
