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# 2023-12-16 - Principles of Becoming Safely Embodied by Dierdre Fay
There are some principles underlying the Becoming Safely Embodied
Skills that I want to introduce you to.
# Community/Relationship
Over the years I continue to see the important value of connection
and relationship. So much trauma happens/happened when people are
kept secluded from each other or don't feel safe to interact. Finding
safe ways to be in relationship is one of the key pieces of the
Becoming Safely Embodied Skills.
Coming out of isolation and separation is, in and of itself, healing.
Group experiences that are built on safety and connection are
inspiring in part because a larger wisdom emerges. When you practice
with others who have similar backgrounds, you discover you are not
alone. You'll experience kinship.
It's important to feel safe and comfortable.
This comes about when you are with people who are receptive,
nurturing, caring, considerate, and willing to let you find your way
and keep loving you as you learn from the small mistakes you'll
inevitably make.
You might have family or friends that fill that need. If so,
wonderful! I'm very glad for you.
If you don't, watch any tendency of the mind to swing you into
despair or negative thinking that there's something wrong with you
because you don't have this.
You can learn to the skill of cultivating relationships.
Twelve step programs as an easy--and free--way to begin practicing
being with others in a safe, contained way. You may not be an
alcoholic or drug addict but you could seek out some of the other
twelve step programs, like Al-anon and see if that's a fit.
Churches or religious communities are also a very good way to make
connections and build relationships.
Online communities have been found to be extremely helpful for many
people.
What is important, whatever the form, is to build an environment
around you where you have access to safe and sustaining relationships
in which trust can grown. With that in mind I strongly encourage you
to seek out other like-minded people.
# Safety/Being Present
Safety exists when you're present. We feel safer when we are in the
present moment. When we're here, now, the entire weight of our
histories, the unknown nature of the future, is not constantly
bearing down on us.
When we can be "inside ourselves"--aware of their shifting thoughts,
feelings, and sensations--we have access to a feedback loop that we
begin to trust. We can also be aware of the space between and around
whatever is arising.
One very good way of helping to establish this kind of awareness is
through meditation or centering practices. These skills provide ways
for you to listening to yourself, while supporting you in
discriminating between what is working and what is not.
# Meditation
Meditation practice provides two foundational skills that are useful
in navigating your internal world. Mindfulness is one; concentration
is the other.
Mindfulness practices are the kinds we engage in when we are being
with something inside or outside of us, without judgment, criticism,
evaluation or story making. We're noticing, dropping the content and
the interpretations. For most of us, this takes practice since we're
so prone to adding in layers of concepts, stories, interpretations on
top of what we observe.
Unlike the mindfulness practice briefly discussed above,
concentration involves focusing our attention where we want it to go
and holding it there. Imagine how critical this is for trauma
survivors. Handling flashbacks is an example of concentration's
usefulness. As you learn to concentrate on something in the present
(such as your breathing, or the sensory experience of seeing or
touching something), you'll learn to stem the tide of dysregulation
that threatens when a flashback pulls you toward the emotional
experience of earlier trauma.
# A spiritual framework helps immensely
There is no logical understanding or reason for all the pain and
suffering people endure in this world. Many people find that
exploring the possibility of something larger that can help you hold
the suffering and provide some opening to a spiritual framework that
works for you can make an enormous difference.
As we contact our clearer, wiser experiences we form an antidote to
despair and build a sense of strength and realistic hope. Only you
can know what spiritual framework works for you.
There is no way to do this right. There is no way to do this wrong.
The attitude we cultivate makes all the difference in how we
experience our lives. Perhaps the most helpful attitude is an
experimental one. In an experiment, there's plenty of room to modify
strategies and directions, depending on what we find.
There is no grading system, and no one is expected to do anything
"right." There is just pure exploration.
With regard to BSES, I know that if you give these practices a try
and see what happens, you'll learn something. You'll find out
something that will help you. If something doesn't work, discard it
or modify it so it does work for you.
One thing that's certain, old habits of blaming, shaming, and
humiliating don't work very well. If we encourage ourselves to
maintain curiosity we can hold open the door to discover what is
fresh and new and untainted by the past.
# Simple Things that help being in a body
Becoming Curious: When we're in the midst of something new or
intense, we can become blinded by our fear of the unknown. Learning
to stay open and become curious about what's going on creates the
opportunity to explore what's happening and to learn from it.
Breathing: So often you'll hear the suggestion to take deep breaths.
If you've experienced trauma, you may find that difficult, because
taking full, deep breaths may sometimes expand the range and/or
intensity of what you're feeling. And that may not be exactly what
you want to happen!
Some breathing patterns are better for calming, some for energizing.
Experiment with different breathing patterns to see what happens.
Here are several to try:
Little sips of breath:
Sometimes you might need to just take in a little bit of breath so
that you bring some fresh oxygen inside, without disturbing your
internal state too much. Try taking a little sip of breath, not a big
gulp, but just enough to keep going. This is not about
hyperventilating and it's not the same as panting.
Kumbach:
Yogis practice many different kinds of breathing. The variation that
includes holding the breath on the in-breath or the out-breath is
called kumbach. When you feel anxious, try taking a breath in and
holding the breath for a brief second, then exhale slowly and hold
the breath out for a brief second. Don't do too many cycles, which
could intensify your experience instead of calming you. Try breathing
one cycle of inhalation and exhalation; breathe normally and see how
you are. If you're comfortable, try again: breathing in, holding,
exhaling and then holding. Some people find it helps to only hold the
inhalation, or only the exhalation. See what works for you.
Three-part breath:
In order to fill yourself with oxygen, imagine filling your lungs up
completely. Begin by taking a deep gentle breath, so deep that your
belly gradually stretches out. This does not involve force; it's more
a matter of opening and allowing. Next time when you breathe into
your belly, take some more breath in and feel your chest expand. On
the third breath top it off with some breath into the collarbone
area. You'll also want to see what it's like to expel your breath in
three parts too--first from the collarbone area, then from your
chest, and then from your stomach. You might think of it like
emptying a glass. Practice this for a few cycles.
Relaxing the body:
When we get upset, our muscles tighten and contract. Letting go of
that tension allows us to relax more fully. But for some who have
experienced trauma, relaxing may feel dangerous. Try letting your
body relax when you are in a safe place, and invite yourself to
mindfully experience what's happening in the process, rather than
close yourself off to your own experience. Use your breath to stay
focused on the here and now, and to help observe (rather than
identify with) your experience. Go slowly.
# Discriminating Aspects of Experience
What do you feel when you focus your attention inside yourself?
What's the experience you are having right now?
Is it happening because of thoughts you're having, or feelings, or
body sensations? You might not know, or you might not yet be able to
distinguish one sensation or feeling from other. In time you will be
able to differentiate more easily among the various internal states.
Right now, just begin to notice what's happening without trying to
change anything. You might want to start a journal and record what
you discover. See if you can use the ideas listed below to help you.
Externalizing:
Often there is so much going on inside it's hard to be really aware
of each and every element of your internal experience.
It may help to externalize something that seems overwhelming--that
is, to imagine what you feel inside as if it existed independently
outside yourself. Give it a name, a shape, or a character, and engage
in a dialogue with that part of you. Write or draw that aspect of
your experience.
By externalizing an aspect of your experience, you may be able to
stay in touch with it, without getting lost in it. And you may begin
to discover something about it that had remained hidden or
unarticulated.
Noticing and Naming:
We aren't always aware of what is going on around us either. For
example, walking across the street we might be so caught up in what's
going on inside that we aren't aware of the light changing, the
people around us, the scent of fall leaves, or the touch of a soft
breeze. Sometimes we just space out.
Practicing awareness opens us up to what is--inside and out. Try it
out. Notice what's going on around you right now, but don't get
caught up in a story about it. Just notice, name, and let go.
Catching yourself unaware is already a victory! I can't stress this
enough. So what if you were spaced out or obsessing about something?
Now is the perfect time to start noticing what you were filtering out
of awareness. Coming back is all it takes.
Dis-identifying:
Practicing naming what is there allows us to be more fully aware of
an experience without getting caught up in it. Dis-identifying from
something is different from dissociating from it. When we dissociate,
we leave ourselves behind; dis-identifying from something reminds us
that we are very much present, without getting lost in whatever it is
we are experiencing.
# Harnessing and Directing your Energy
Awareness:
Once we become aware, we can make changes. It's hard to change things
when we don't notice what's going on or can't pinpoint precisely what
is happening. We become empowered when we intentionally direct our
energy and attention for our own learning and healing. No longer are
we trapped.
Compassion:
In order to shift our negative mind states, most of us need to
cultivate compassion for ourselves and others. Unfortunately our
world, and often our internal experience, is inundated with harsh
criticism and judgments. Caring and kindness may be in short supply.
Since these qualities tend to be rare, consider yourself a pioneer
every time you embrace them.
# Practicing Becoming Safely Embodied Skills
We've heard it all our lives: Practice makes perfect.
Yet, the discipline of doing something over and over and over and
over again can get boring.
We lose our interest. We lose our focus.
Whenever we get engrossed in something our attention focuses
completely and totally on the object we're focusing on. If we do
focus over a period of time whatever we've been focusing on becomes
the subject of our thoughts and feelings over the ensuing days/weeks.
I see this a lot when I've been on a meditation retreat. The hours of
practice changes the background noise in my mind. There's a tipping
point when I start meditating in my dreams or chanting is happening
in the background or the stillness I've been cultivating rests my
mind and the chatter is negligible.
Other arenas bring this out as well. Say you've been skiing for a
couple days. At night when you're ready to sleep your muscles are
still participating in the sport, small muscle twitches and shifts.
Conditioning is happening.
It happens to me as well when I watch the all-consuming three
week-long Tour de France.
Certainly, I'm not a participant! But watching and engaging with the
material hour after hour, day after day I find myself thinking about
the riders, the race at various times of the day. I can even dream
about it.
The focus of concentration alters my internal experience.
One of the things that will make a difference in what you get out of
this course is how often you put what you're reading and hearing
about into practice.
One of the ways that we practice is to share what we're learning,
what we've opening up to and the insights we're getting. We often
hide ourselves thinking that gives us protection and will keep
ourselves safe. It's scary to share some of these vulnerable, tender
places inside of ourselves, so we hide that often and don't let
people see that.
If you're anything like me, you'll want everything to change
instantly, including yourself! I've found from working with many,
many people that it's only by practicing something frequently that
you can master these simple skills so that they're available to me
when life gets challenging. When the heat is turned up, you need to
have these skills so well developed that they function almost
automatically. That means practice, practice, practice.
It's essential to practice what we hope to learn. When you practice
the BSE skills they'll become more familiar and easier to remember.
Eventually they become part of procedural (habitual) memory and begin
to replace old dysfunctional habits.
Each skill has a practice component.
Actively practicing in every session shifts the "wisdom" from someone
outside you to finding your own inner wisdom.
Practice every day. Many people also find it helpful to keep a
journal of their experience and re-read it at those times when using
the skills is difficult.
(HTM) From: https://www.safelyembodied.com/downloads/BSEPrinciples.pdf
tags: article,self-help,yoga
# Tags
(DIR) article
(DIR) self-help
(DIR) yoga