I'm glad you're here to practice with me today.
We are living in times of great overwhelm.
For many of us,
Life seems to be too much,
Too fast,
Too intense in our personal lives and in the world at large.
Your feelings of overwhelm are a message from your body,
Heart,
And mind that you are inundated with too much.
When we feel overwhelmed,
Our bodies tend to move into the physiology of defense and protection and we shift into high sympathetic nervous system fight-flight or collapse with the weight of it all in our dorsal vagal freeze response.
I want to say that you're having normal feelings for abnormal events.
We are not designed to be in overwhelm for long periods and you may be feeling quite fatigued.
The following practice will offer you two tools to somatically work with your experience of overwhelm and hopefully give you a bit of spaciousness.
Let's begin.
Settle your body into a posture that feels right for you today.
You may have eyes open or closed.
Take a moment to notice and name the state of your body.
Are you feeling too low,
Too slow in your dorsal vagal freeze or are you too speedy,
Too tight,
Or too compressed in your sympathetic nervous system fight and flee state?
The process of noticing and naming is very powerful and can help you up-regulate or down-regulate as needed.
Now we're going to physically create more space.
If your arms are not able to make the following movement,
Just imagine the movement.
It can also be quite powerful.
Using your hands and arms energetically push away the overwhelm from your body.
Push out to the front,
To your sides.
Push out above you and below you and behind you.
Listen to your body and follow where it wants to have more space and push all the stuff farther away from you.
Do this movement slowly,
Intentionally,
And with curiosity.
Pause and notice how your body feels.
Is it feeling the same or different since doing this movement?
If you notice some shifts,
What are they?
Is your breath flowing more smoothly or deeply?
Do your muscles feel different?
Perhaps your gut has softened some.
If needed,
Do this energetic pushing movement again,
Pushing all that is too heavy and too much to bear out further from your body.
Again,
Notice if your body feels the same or different,
Holding whatever is happening in this practice with kindness and non-judgment.
Our second tool for managing overwhelm is the use of a container.
This is a skill from the trauma technique of EMDR.
I'd like you to imagine a container where you can place whatever is too much for you to hold right now.
This container is a sacred place,
Not to deny or forget what is too much,
But a place to put the overwhelm until you have more capacity to be with it.
Your container can be a glass jar with a lid,
A wooden box,
A metal storage bin,
Any vessel with a lid that can safely hold your overwhelm.
Take a moment to notice the size,
Shape,
And material your container is made from.
Now lovingly reach into yourself,
Your heart,
Your mind,
Or your body,
And pull the excess overwhelm out and place it gently into your container.
You may place a worry,
A grief,
An upset,
Or a trauma,
Anything that feels too much right now.
Allow yourself to be creative with this process.
You may put images or objects into your container,
Thoughts,
Or even colors of emotions.
You may put in one overwhelm or several.
As you put them in the sacred container,
Know that you can return to work with these overwhelms at a later time when you have more capacity.
You're not trying to deny their existence or stuff them down into your body.
You just need to pace or titrate your process right now.
When all that needs to be in the container for right now is in,
Close and secure the lid.
Notice what happens in your body when you do this.
Can you sense any shifts?
Is there more space inside or a feeling of lightening?
What begins to happen in your heart,
Your mind?
Has your nervous system shifted a bit back into the ventral or more present relaxed state?
Even a tiny shift in breath,
Heart rate,
Or muscle release can help your system come back into greater regulation.
If you're not noticing much at first,
Don't get discouraged.
It takes practice to be able to move some of all that we carry and notice the shifts that occur in our body,
Heart,
Or mind.
I invite you to use these somatic tools of making more space and using your sacred container to help yourself cope with what's happening in our lives and in the world.
I wish for each of you a lightening of your load.
Take care.
