Welcome back to Healing Trauma Part 2.
Why is it so important that we are in the present moment?
We see this emphasized so much in my 30 years of meditation.
I looked at it from the perspective of allowing thoughts to settle so that I could access stillness in the mind.
Present moment awareness during that practice was more to keep myself out of the past and out of the future.
The goal of meditation is in part to reduce the amount of activity in the mind or to reduce our compulsive interest in the activity in the mind in order that we can come into stillness in the deeper parts of the mind.
We can access stillness.
As I've developed a deeper understanding and way of working with the nervous system and healing trauma,
There's another perspective we can bring in that's very helpful.
It has to do with traumatic memory.
Our nervous system has a negativity bias.
We're set up to really care about any potential danger and that is what our nervous system,
Our brain,
That's what we notice first.
A lot of the signals around that are nonverbal.
They are in our unconscious mind,
Our body.
Trauma is stored in our body with associated thoughts and memories.
We are afraid that we are going to be swept back in to an experience of trauma from the past when we were hurt,
Overwhelmed,
Scared.
We could not cope with what was going on.
We didn't have the resources to cope.
A big part of healing trauma is building the resources to cope,
Building the resources to stay here in this moment.
Why do we need to be in this moment?
Because right now,
Right here,
In this moment,
The danger that we're feeling in sensation and perhaps in flashbacks and in memories is not happening right now in this moment.
It's happened in the past and our body is recalling it.
As we do these practices,
Of staying present in this moment,
We build the confidence that we are able to stay with the sensations and energies in our body,
That we can reassure ourselves that right now in this moment we're safe.
Let's do a few practices that help with that.
If you're really activated right now or if you can remember to do this at a time when you are,
Look around the room.
If you're in a position to say this out loud,
Say it out loud.
That helps.
Look around the room and notice five things that you can see and name them.
I can see a picture on the wall.
I can see the tree outside the window.
Name five things that you can see.
Let's move to the sense of touch.
What are four things that you could touch?
I can feel the coolness of my hand on the desk.
I can hold my own hands and feel the warmth and support of my hands.
Name four things that you can touch.
What are three sounds that you can hear?
You might be able to hear the sound of your fridge or the wind outside.
Name three things you can hear.
Now with the sense of smell,
What are two things that you can smell?
Or maybe two of your favorite smells.
I love the smell of the earth after rain.
What are two of your favorite smells?
And then one thing that you can taste,
Or perhaps a favorite taste,
And say that out loud.
And notice that what we were doing there is we were bringing ourselves into the present moment by using our senses.
That 5-4-3-2-1 senses practice is a great one to do when we're feeling a little bit off,
And especially when we're feeling really dysregulated.
We're having a hard time with persistent thoughts,
Sensations,
Or frightened or anxious.
Use that practice to anchor yourself in the present moment.
Another practice we can do to use our senses to stay and be aware of this present moment is looking around the room.
Oftentimes when we're caught in a traumatic memory,
Or we're ruminating,
Or we're anxious,
We lose awareness of our present moment circumstances and surroundings.
So as you're beginning any kind of a practice,
Open your eyes,
Look around the room,
And notice what you see.
Our eyes are continually scanning for danger and feeding that information to the nervous system.
If you're looking around,
And it's the same as always,
We have a pretty good certainty that we're safe.
If you look around and you see something unusual,
Then our brain perks up.
Our nervous system's like,
Oh,
What's that?
And then it goes into some kind of prediction about that.
When we're driving along and all of a sudden someone's brake lights go on,
We might be talking to somebody or thinking about something else,
But our brain alerts us there's something different here that could be a cue of danger.
Our nervous system works that way.
We don't have to do that.
Suddenly we pay attention.
One of the benefits then of looking around the room is that we can notice that there is actually no danger here.
Look in front of you.
Also,
Look to your side and look behind you.
Is there anything behind you that's dangerous right now?
Look to the other side.
Look up and down.
So often we brace our shoulders and upper back against danger.
But in fact,
When we look behind us and see that there's nothing dangerous behind us,
That helps to release that preparedness out of the body.
Another way that we can work with our eyes is to look for cues of safety.
We've realized that there's nothing dangerous in our immediate environment.
We might look to see,
Oh,
There's my favorite plant.
There's that picture of that place or that person.
We have reminders in our environment that we're loved and safe and connected.
We can take those in as well.
Often it's something very simple.
We use our sense of touch.
Holding our own hands or placing a hand on our heart really brings us into this moment.
We focus on something other than the past or the future.
Right now in this moment,
We could hold our own hands.
Feel how supportive and warm they are.
Take a few breaths.
What a relief.
Throughout this series on healing trauma,
We're going to come back to this over and over.
We become aware that we're grounded on the earth.
We feel our feet,
Our seat.
We notice sensations of air in our nostrils.
Focusing on breath can sometimes make us a bit uneasy.
Generally speaking,
Using our eyes and using our sense of touch and feeling grounded is accessible to all of us.
Whenever we notice that we're starting to get dragged back into a memory or we're compulsively ruminating about the past or worrying about the future,
That's when we can bring these practices into play.
If it's quite intense,
Use the 5-4-3-2-1 practice and say those things out loud.
We can also use touch.
We can also look around the room noticing that we're not in danger.
Opening our eyes and noticing that we are in the environment we're in right now in this moment.
We're not back in the past.
We're not in our childhood home.
We're here right now and that helps us to anchor into the safety of the present moment.
