There's a lot of good neuroscience now around how we approach our day,
How we approach our mind.
We know that our mind believes our thoughts,
And we know that coming into a space where we feel comfortable and we have a pretty good predictability of safety really helps.
Settle in and notice,
Here I am.
Look around the room.
Are there cues of safety that you're noticing?
If there's nothing too alarming,
Then that gives us an opportunity to just really settle in and experience the moment.
We can take a few breaths.
There are a lot of good things happening.
So I thought what we could do today is go through a series of reflections,
Just a couple of minutes each.
When we bring something to mind,
Then it takes a moment for our brain to notice.
Bring to mind a regulated nervous system.
Might be you,
It might be someone else.
Just take that in for a moment.
There's a lot going on in the world that's challenging.
That's true.
We're getting in touch with kindness and an open heart.
So what does that feel like?
There's a co-regulation happening here.
Each time we settle a little more,
We become a regulating presence for others.
Perhaps someone who's a little anxious a lot of the time,
And when they get together with you or talk to them on the phone or something,
Then you have that experience of,
I can feel that they are becoming more regulated,
Less anxious.
There's a magic and a power in co-regulation.
Babies do it with a settled adult.
Babies don't have the capacity to regulate their own nervous system.
And as adults,
We've also been very affected by everything that's happening in our nervous system.
And just coming in and taking a breath and looking around.
Bring to mind for another 30 seconds or so,
Someone who seems to settle when they see you.
Maybe it's that big smile on your face.
You sense that they can take a breath,
Relax their grip a little.
Let that face and that person come to mind.
Another element of what's working well is that healing moves across generations.
As people regulate their own and we do our own healing work,
We affect people in the generations behind us and the generations ahead of us.
When we think about our own parents,
Grandparents,
A lot of times the healing wasn't maybe as advanced as we would have liked it to have been.
We can still see it in their eyes.
We can see looking back some of the trauma that was still playing out in them.
And then we go forward into future generations,
Whether that's biological children or other children.
Healing moves through generations.
What is something that you have been able to work with more gently perhaps,
Or that you've healed?
Doing our own work,
How has that changed what your children are experiencing now with you?
How that child carries something different now into the world,
Into their own family.
Our healing affects others.
Let's sit with that for a moment.
Notice what that feels like in your body.
Hard things are true,
Especially right now,
Things are difficult and challenging.
And a lot of this is also true.
Let's look at kindness.
People research all kinds of things that I think is so interesting.
So one of the things about kindness research that they've done is that when we do something kind for a stranger,
We underestimate how much that gesture meant to the person.
Person is giving,
We think it's small,
But the receiver experiences as significant.
Bring to mind a time when someone did something for you.
They were generous,
Perhaps with money or with words or with their heart.
And let yourself remember what that felt like.
And then bring to mind a gesture that you made for somebody.
Maybe you were kind to a really busy waitstaff in a breakfast restaurant.
You waved at a neighbor or let someone go ahead of you in line,
Some small gesture for you.
Feel that in your body and how might that have landed and how much that other person have appreciated that.
Maybe in a social setting where you invited someone in.
Hey,
It's good to see you.
Or what are your thoughts about that?
We know from the other side,
What it feels like to be included.
Let yourself kind of play with that for a moment,
Being the giver and being the receiver.
And as we're doing this,
Just take it in,
Breathe.
And another element that people have found through research,
But I think we also know intuitively,
One caring adult is enough to really change a child's life.
For me,
It was one of my teachers.
He was such a kind person and he connected with me.
He was really an anchor for me.
So what's that like for you?
Did you have that person?
The neighbor or a friend's parent or an aunt or an uncle.
Did you have someone who included you or loved you or you had that feeling of connection with?
Let yourself feel that.
And then are you that person for someone or a series of someones?
Are you that person who reaches out to a child and let them see the kindness in your eyes?
Or could you be for someone?
Let yourself feel that too.
Feel it in your body,
Look around,
Feel your seat,
Your feet.
And then let's work with how our presence ripples out in the world.
When I think about my work,
I really value the influence that I have on other people,
Helping people work with their nervous system,
Bringing forward things that heal,
My own kindness and compassion with people.
So that's something I know and what makes my life really meaningful.
What's that like for you?
It might be on a stage like mine,
It might be on a bigger stage,
On a more personal,
In your family or something.
Our mood,
Our nervous system regulation affects and ripples out into people beyond the immediate person that we're working with.
Maybe I'm in a good mood or I offer kindness to somebody that changes their regulation and their mood and then they go off and they're kind to a stranger or to a partner or to a child.
Let yourself reflect for a moment how your own healing work that we're doing that so clearly benefits us,
How does that ripple out into the world?
Bring a few specific examples to mind.
So we all know how bad mood can spread.
How does a good mood spread?
An act of kindness,
Of seeing somebody.
And then however that comes to you,
Visualize that moving out into the world.
And then bring to mind a place where you feel at home.
Whatever first came to mind might be interesting to work with.
It might be a childhood home or for me what often comes to mind is a certain clearing in the prairies where I grew up,
It's a lake or a garden.
What are the aromas in this place?
Somewhere in nature on the land where you feel at home,
Might be where you live right now.
And then bring that into your body,
Into your heart,
Into your awareness.
Let yourself fully engage with what it feels like to remember this place.
And what does it feel like to eat foods that are familiar to you,
Foods that are medicine for your people,
Perhaps.
So it might be certain berries that are on the land,
Foods that have been eaten for generations.
Our body knows these foods,
These medicines,
The land.
What comes up for you around that?
Do you have traditional foods in your family?
Your body remembers through the generations.
And also we remember because we ate them when we were young.
The smell,
The sight,
Perhaps who was with you.
A lot of these traditional foods happen at feast days or at times when we're celebrating together.
Continue to notice your breath.
And then coming a little bit more out into the world stage,
There's a lot of violence in the world and there's a lot of things that concern us.
And one thing I thought was interesting was that in 1970,
Only one country had domestic violence legislation.
And now 127 countries have legislation that protects people in intimate partner violence.
And that clearly doesn't mean that the violence is over.
And it does mean that it's something that's really shifted in our culture over the last 50 years.
Laws are important.
Laws aren't the only thing,
But there's a recognition.
When they do research on that too,
What they find is that communities who work together in a multi-pronged approach have a lot more success with this.
And so that's something that we could reflect on going out into community.
Maybe that's something that you're involved with right now that you work at a shelter or you volunteer or you're somehow involved with helping people to be safer,
Children and women primarily.
Laws have changed in a lot of countries that say this is wrong.
We acknowledge this is wrong.
Child marriages are another.
This is more difficult.
There's harm happening here.
So we're not pretending it's not.
And we're also looking at,
It actually is changing.
When people get together,
We can change a lot.
Letting that go,
Take a few deep breaths.
Cyclic sighing,
Deep double inhale through the nose.
And then breathe out like you're breathing through a thin straw and let yourself release that.
Then if we think about some species of animals,
Whales for instance,
There's a lot of protections for whales now.
And one of them is slowing ships down.
That's something that really wasn't in awareness until fairly recently.
Whale populations are rebounding as are many populations of animals around the world.
In the UK,
They brought back beavers.
Now they're changing the wetlands.
In the Yellowstone Park in the United States,
They brought back wolves in 1995.
And it has completely changed the environment.
Sometimes we've removed things that we needed.
We can't make it the way it was,
But we can make a positive difference here.
So let's try that.
Bringing back the wolves changed the deer population,
Changed overgrazing.
There's a lot of good news environmentally.
The Chicago River has these floating islands where it's an attempt to clear up some of the pollution,
But it also provides environment for bees and pollinators and they plant it with plants that are good at removing toxins from the water.
So many people now are having wildlife corridors and bee corridors,
Flowers planted on the top of bus stops.
And let's just take that in for a moment.
All of the wonderful things that people are doing for the environment.
And maybe you're part of that.
Most likely we all are in some ways.
Maybe we try to reduce packaging or we recycle or we buy local.
We're conscious of this now.
In Italy,
A bunch of people were knitting these canopies that help to keep the cities cooler,
The streets cooler underneath.
There's so many ways that this is happening.
We organize cleanups in our neighborhoods in the spring.
There's a lot of issues with the environment that are really concerning.
And there's a lot of ways that people are getting engaged.
It's easy to forget how many awesome things are happening.
Let's feel that in our body.
Let yourself visualize it.
Maybe it's the ocean cleanup.
They're also cleaning up rivers now so it doesn't get into the ocean,
Plastics.
There's a lot of alternatives that are being brought forward.
The ozone layer,
Which in the 80s,
90s was discovered,
The hole in the ozone layer,
And now that's almost completely sealed again because we're not using the things that damaged it.
It was an adjustment,
But people came together and went,
Ooh,
We can't afford that.
How are we gonna fix that?
So we've done that.
And take all that in,
All of the positive things that people are doing,
Some of them in our own bodies,
Eating some traditional foods,
Or we're going back into connection with nature in a way that we've perhaps lost for generations.
We're working with our own nervous systems and we're bringing that blessing out into the world.
When we have the space,
Communities can get together and really work on things that help.
Neighborhoods in Detroit that have taken down buildings that were condemned and they have community gardens now.
There are a lot of other places too where there's a food desert and then communities get together and create an organic garden there.
Some communities are planting fruit trees and then the fruit is free for everybody who needs to eat.
There's so many ways that we can work with this.
We could remember this and bring it into our mind,
Let ourselves remember that this is also happening.
And we don't know all of the effects of what we do in our life.
When we were working with giving and receiving,
Maybe you're the person who really makes a difference in someone's life or someone who made such a difference in yours.
All of these different ways that we can remember things are also going well.
Let our brain experience that as well.
And we become stronger,
We become more resilient,
We become more engaged with each other when we have this optimism that it's actually gonna help.
