Hi there!
Welcome!
I'm Hannah.
I'm a neuroscientist and a therapeutic photographer and I work with the felt sense to move the nervous system from states of fight,
Flight or freeze back to states of safety.
Today we're gonna do a grounding practice that is specifically for people who have experienced trauma and addiction.
The Polyvagal Theory is kind of like the ground on which I'm building this practice on.
It is stating that when we've experienced traumatic experiences in our life,
Sometimes the nervous system can get stuck in those states of survival and is perceiving threat all the time.
It's very common that people who have experienced trauma have ongoing trauma effects and it's very common in people who have unidentified traumas try to regulate the nervous system through substances and certain behaviors which can then lead to addictions.
So to work with the felt sense can take some time and usually the longer you work with it the more your body reveals to you.
But we have to learn to get in touch with that sense first.
We will experience through interception and neuroception,
That part of our nervous system that detects stimuli without us seeing,
Hearing,
Smelling,
Touching or tasting them.
You probably have experienced this before actually without consciously knowing what it was.
I bet you've been in a big room or party or something like this and you have talked to the people around you and suddenly you felt like you need to look up and turn around.
When you turn around and look in that direction you see someone looking directly at you.
This is nothing you could have heard,
Seen,
Touched,
Smelled or tasted but your nervous system detected it.
This means we have something in our nervous system that detects stimuli beyond our physical body that is not connected to our common senses.
These cues are constantly detected wherever we are and constantly processed in our body and sometimes they're wrongly connected to a perceived threat even when we're not in threatening situations.
So unconsciously we're constantly perceiving those cues and we might then fall into states of anxiety,
Of feeling in fight-or-flight,
Feeling aggressive,
Angry,
Feeling frozen,
Paralyzed,
Numb and then we feel like we need to regulate although we don't really know where it comes from.
This is why it's so important to get in touch with the felt sense,
To identify the cues and when it is perceiving threat and slowly but surely reprogramming and transforming the nervous system so it understands there's just wrongly connected little cues of threat and that actually you are safe.
Working with the felt sense can be so rewarding and once you get in touch with your nervous system and really listen and really understand it will start to meet you in a place that's much more connected and beautiful,
Colorful,
Creative.
Just this strong heart connection to the body where you're just like realizing that it's always just been there to protect you and to care for you because that's what nervous systems do,
That's what they are there for.
I hope this little talk gave you a little bit more insight about what it means to work with the felt sense.
If you like this talk please do leave me a review,
If you think someone you know might benefit from it please forward it.
Alternatively to find out more about how to work with the felt sense check my other tracks here on Inside Thai Man and the link in my bio.
Hope you have a great rest of your day.
