All the talking in the world won’t bring about change if we ignore whats going on in the body.
What we repeat can delete old patterns, and with repetitive consistency, we can start to give our bodies messages that we are safer..
I am not letting my flight win today. I am breathing, I am sitting with the discomfort and I sit with it, enough to stretch but not stress or flood it.
I see healing and the window of tolerance a bit like a pizza dough.
If you stretch the edges slowly you get growth, pull it too quick and that dough will snap.
Stretch but dont stress is how we heal. Low and slow. To stop retraumatising, flooding or shutdown from happening.
My way to start today is purposefully slow.
If you’re constantly in rush mode notice it and if you can’t get going notice it.
We can move through states when we start to notice, what the body is doing.
Often the steps can be just too big to meet the body where it is at.
Self care can be as tiny as a sigh, as tiny as listening for the birds to switch on sound or brushing your hands over the narly bark of a tree to switch on touch.
Purposefully we switch back on dulled out senses. Slowly we feed messages into the body that I am ok. Or we dial back what is over stimulating.
Just some of my ways to ground and selfcare this week have been walking, gardening, photography, baking, swimming.
I check my breath and body scan regularly to see what I need.
If you want change critism won’t work. Neither does will power or pushing yourself harder.
Nervous systems are clever, quick and instinctual though, so it takes regularly practice to keep repeating and deleting those unhelpful patterns, with new practices.
Survival patterns once noticed can be changed. I am living proof as I was about as dead as you could possibly be but still with a pulse.
Working your way back to aliveness post trauma takes more than knowledge, self awareness. It takes constant work on tiny droplets that you can increase over time.
I am fully booked but still like to help where I can.
Notice your breath
Notice your jaw
Notice your shoulders, give them a jiggle all of this is tiny manageable and free..
You may feel a tense tightness if your body is bracing.
Thats enough from me today.
I got my favourite breakfast today, which is eggs benedict.
What can you do to support you today, because you are worth it?
