25-Minute Somatic Healing To Release Feelings Of Overwhelm

Hello,

I'm excited to welcome you to this somatic healing practice for releasing feelings of overwhelm.

Somatic healing will feel meditative but it's not strictly a meditation.

What we're doing in this practice is using sensation within the body to better understand,

Process and release current emotions but also past memories,

Past experiences that have left their imprint on our nervous system too.

You can also use this practice for feelings of pain whether that's physical,

Emotional too.

Today we're covering overwhelm and I'll guide you through a deep body scan that brings you into sensations within the body that are maybe deeper than you felt before and then we'll go into a visualization that will help to start to release that feeling of overwhelm and everything that comes under that umbrella.

The thing about overwhelm is it can kind of creep up on us a little bit just from trying to be everything to everybody else,

From trying to process all of the information that we have in front of our eyes in our modern lives because there is a lot or just trying to speed up a processing of an emotion that actually needs a little bit more attention.

There's a lot to it but through this practice of sensation and visualization I hope that you'll feel a little bit more relieved by the end of this.

As I said this is a meditative but it's not strictly a meditation so you can do this practice anywhere.

You can sit,

You can lay down,

You can even walk in nature if you feel like that's something that's going to help you.

However you want to be in a space that you feel calm and that you can connect deeply with the sensations in your body.

So let's begin.

Begin by either closing your eyes or focusing your gaze towards something.

Keeping your eyes focused towards something if you'd rather not close your eyes will enable your mind to stay relatively distraction free or maybe limit those distractions anyway.

Start to just soften your attention towards your breathing and we'll follow this body scan in actually a different way than I normally teach this.

I usually go a little bit slower but I want this to be quite a short release for you.

So this will still be as effective but sometimes I do this a little bit slower.

So starting your body scan we're just going to go quickly down the whole body and then we'll come back and address a little bit more deeper.

So starting just to notice your face.

Notice the muscles of your face with curiosity not with perfection.

You don't need to relax the muscles along the way you just need to observe what's there with interest,

With curiosity and with a complete acceptance.

Shifting your attention from being the controller of this body to being the observer to what's happening in front of you.

So observing your face.

Notice tiny muscles of expression twitching,

Contracting,

Relaxing,

Broadening,

Scrunching,

Anything in between.

Notice your jaw,

Your tongue.

Travel down and notice your neck and shoulders.

From here we'll travel down the arms you could do one arm at a time or both together.

Noticing the upper arms,

Elbows,

Forearms,

Wrists,

Hands and fingers.

Travel back up through your arms and meet yourself again at your shoulders.

Scan your attention through the heart space.

So across the chest,

Across your upper back and the space in between your shoulder blades.

Passing down towards the solar plexus,

The lower ribs,

The upper abdomen,

The middle part of your back.

And then observe the lower part of the torso,

The belly,

Sides of the waist and lower back.

Noticing your hips,

Scanning your attention around all sides of your hips as well as under.

And then travel down through your legs once again,

Both together or one at a time.

Noticing your thighs,

Your knees,

Calf muscles and shins,

Ankles,

Heels,

Tops of your feet,

The soles of your feet and sensing all 10 toes.

Now imagine sensing the whole body and almost feeling like your breath fills your whole body.

Every cell filled with vitality on your inhale,

Every cell releasing on the exhale.

Now we'll pass back down through the body but this time in a little bit more depth.

So get curious here.

This is where curiosity,

Exploration,

A little bit of play come into hand.

So what would you intend to observe?

Place your attention within your headspace,

Observing your headspace from the inside out.

So it's almost like your attention is within your head or within your mind and observing this world around you.

If you were sat there,

What would you see,

What would you feel or would you experience?

Maybe that is a sensation,

Maybe that is a colour or visualisation,

Maybe it's darkness,

Maybe it's like a space-like image,

Maybe it's nothing.

Get curious.

What do you experience?

Observing your headspace from the inside out.

We're going to continue in this way.

Now travel down towards your throat,

Observing the neck and throat from the inside out.

So again,

Your attention is deep within that central channel of your neck.

What do you experience from this space?

Sometimes we feel muscles or body reactions.

Sometimes the sensation is a bit more abstract.

And again,

Sometimes it can be a visualisation,

A memory,

A thought,

A judgment,

A feeling of discomfort,

A psychedelic image.

What's there?

And really listen for what's truly there,

Rather than what you think should be there.

I'm just giving you some ideas,

But there's no such thing as right or wrong here.

Everything you experience is absolutely valid.

Everything you experience is right,

Even if that is nothing.

We're going to keep travelling through the body and now observe the heart space in the same way.

Observing your heart space from the inside out.

So placing your attention in the core of your chest.

If you were sat there,

What would you see,

What would you feel or what you're experiencing from this space?

This is a centre that's quite vulnerable,

Being the heart.

So sometimes emotions can come up and if that's happening,

Allow it,

Don't resist it.

Just allow it to flow out without kind of dwelling on it too much.

Feel the feeling,

Let it go and then come back with curiosity to observing your heart space from the inside out.

From here,

We're going to travel down through the body to the solar plexus.

So this is the top part of the abdomen,

Underneath the diaphragm or underneath the kind of dome at the bottom of the ribcage.

Again,

Observing the solar plexus from the inside out.

What do you experience here,

If anything?

We'll continue travelling down and observing the abdomen from the inside out.

So coming to the lower part of your abdomen,

Around your navel or below that and again observing the abdomen or the belly from the inside,

Looking outwards.

What do you feel,

What do you see,

What do you experience?

Also listening for things like judgments,

Memories,

Body reactions.

Meet with curiosity this space within your body.

Everything is welcome.

And lastly,

Travelling towards your hips.

So observing the pelvis from the inside out,

Placing your attention inside that kind of bowl of your pelvis and observe this world around you.

What do you experience here?

Now see if you can sense your whole body as one unit from the inside out.

So it's almost like your skin is a shell and you're within that shell,

Just observing this space around you.

From here we'll shift towards our visualisation.

Our visualisation,

As I said,

For today will be around overwhelm.

A note about visualisation that I like to guide people to remember is that it's rare to have a perfect continuous image in your mind.

It might be more like putting a puzzle together of flashes of images,

Small fragments of memory,

Things that people have said,

Places that you were,

Small things.

So start to bring into your mind's eye that situation or that feeling of overwhelm.

If you can pinpoint some area of your life that's welcoming that feeling of overwhelm,

Maybe you're feeling overworked,

Maybe you're feeling overwhelmed emotionally in terms of your relationship or for something else.

Maybe you're feeling overwhelmed just because you've given yourself a little bit too much to do.

Start to visualise aspects of your life that come up when you think of that word overwhelm.

It might be welcoming that feeling into your body a little bit.

Again,

Just observing with curiosity fragments of that story,

Moments in your work life,

Moments here and there.

Or if it's one specific situation,

Just visualise that situation.

And continuously replay that moment or those moments in your mind.

So once you've kind of gathered a little bit,

Rewind the tape,

Watch it back again.

Rewind the tape and watch it back again.

You might also get little nuggets of insight.

While you're sitting here being patient,

Allowing this feeling to be here without resistance.

Sometimes we can get little nuggets of insight as to maybe where this feeling is coming from.

Where we've been perhaps expecting a little much of ourselves,

Where we can give ourselves a bit more grace.

But for now,

Instead of trying to solve it right now,

See if you can just feel the feeling.

Observe that visualisation in your mind of things that are welcoming this feeling of overwhelm.

And the more you replay that tape,

Begin to come into your body once again,

Observing the whole body from the inside out and just get curious.

In the presence of this overwhelming feeling,

Where does my body respond?

Where in my body kind of lights up in the presence of this feeling of overwhelm?

And I'm going to come back to what I said earlier,

And that is everything is welcome.

I'll give you a few ideas here for things that may happen,

But also absolutely anything you experience in terms of sensation,

Visualisation,

Memory or anything else is absolutely welcome and valid here.

All is welcome.

But some common spaces to feel overwhelmed is around the throat,

A big kind of weight,

Literal weight on your shoulders or a clouded feeling around that space.

Sometimes you can feel a tightness in your chest or a knotting in your stomach.

Sometimes it's this feeling of pent up anxiety or urgency.

It's like a feeling like you're not doing enough.

And it's almost like a little ball of energy somewhere in the body.

You might feel worry,

Which could be anywhere in the body,

But often around the spleen,

Underneath the ribcage on the left side.

You might feel muscles in your pelvis just cling and tighten up.

You might have other experiences,

Heat somewhere,

A tingling.

Just observe with curiosity.

If this feeling of overwhelm was a sensation,

Where in my body is it?

And now kind of imagine almost bundling up that sensation.

So wherever in your body you sense that feeling of overwhelm,

Can you almost encapsulate it or kind of bubble it up a little bit?

That will come up differently for whoever's listening in different ways.

Some of you might visualize a bubble around the sensation.

Some of you might feel just a sensation kind of forming a bubble.

Nothing's right or wrong.

As I said,

Just imagine or feel that sensation kind of coming together in some way.

Now can you start to feel like that sensation,

Wherever in your body you feel it,

Slowly starting to rise through the body.

So if you felt it mostly within the pelvis,

Imagine that feeling traveling up the body to the belly,

To the solar plexus,

To the heart,

To the throat,

Into the head.

Likewise,

If you felt it somewhere else in your heart space,

Just travel up from there through your body.

It's almost like that feeling is starting just to lift through the body from the inside out.

Feel it traveling upwards,

Lifting its way up,

Finding its way to your head.

And then imagine it lifting outside of your body.

So now that kind of ball,

That encapsulation,

Is just right above your head.

Sense the feeling of having that sensation or emotion above you,

Not within you.

And while it's there,

Just come back to your body and notice how you're feeling.

You might notice that feeling of overwhelm diminished by five percent,

Ten percent.

You might notice that sensation that you had before dissolved a little or a lot.

And then as you sit here,

Start to question or be open to that bubble that was floating above your head.

Is it still there?

Has it gotten smaller?

Can you imagine it gradually starting to dissolve?

Come back into your body and just for a moment,

If you'd like to,

You can rest your hands on your heart space or you can just feel the heart space.

Ending this somatic healing practice just with this feeling of.

.

.

Even though you're feeling a little bit over.

Know that we don't need to fix everything today.

That you're doing enough,

That you are enough,

That you're trying your best,

Doing the best you can with what you have.

After this practice,

I would suggest if you feel like it would help to just note down on a piece of paper a few tiny,

Tiny steps you can take to offload a little bit of whatever has been overwhelming you,

Whether that's work or emotion.

But otherwise,

Cultivate this little moment of gratitude for yourself for releasing even five percent of that,

Taking time to process that emotion instead of living from it.

And taking this time to connect to your body and to yourself.

Whenever you're ready,

You can gradually open your eyes if they were closed.

Thank you so much for joining me for this somatic healing practice.

I really hope that gave you some relief.

Sometimes after this practice,

Insights or emotions can come up a bit later.

So if you feel a little bit emotional afterwards,

Allow it to be it.

Don't resist it.

Or if insights come up,

Maybe just journal them out or note them down on a piece of paper.

Otherwise,

Just let go of your experience,

Allow it to be what it was,

And come back to this practice whenever you're feeling that weight of overwhelm.

Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.