This episode is part four of a nine-part series of body-centered practices. Dr. Janys originally recorded this as part of a crisis counseling course. Their students kept asking to download it so here it is for anyone and everyone. Body-centered practices can be helpful in gaining resources for calming the nervous system. If you are looking for brief practices for personal use, resourcing for counseling, or for being a counselor- this will be of use to you! Transcript included.
In addition to being a therapist and a professor, Dr. Janys is certified as a yoga instructor and yoga therapist. In addition to using her own experience leading guided body-centered practices, they referenced the readings below to create the body-centered practices series:
Levine, P. (2008). Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body. Sounds True.
Menakem, R. (2017). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and Our Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Central Recovery Press.
Rothschild, B. (2000). The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment. W.W. Norton and Company Inc.
If you like these practices, please share them, like this podcast where you listen, or support the show! Thanks for listening and be well!
Support the Show.
Body centered practice for. Resourcing.
Before you begin, allow yourself to find a space where you can focus your attention, one mindfully on your own lived experience.
Find a way to center yourself, settle yourself being with your breath.
Noticing your thoughts, your feelings and your sensations.
Allowing yourself to feel safe and secure.
Allow your attention to go to a person, an animal or a place. That increases that sense of safety and security for you.
If you'd like, you can imagine that you are there right now if it's a place. Or that the animal or person are there with you.
With each breath, allow yourself to be even more clearly focused on that person. As if before that image or that place was fuzzy and now it's come more into focus.
Give yourself an opportunity to visualize. And have a felt sense of what it's like to be here. Or be with this person or this animal.
Allowing yourself to sink in to the experience of being present.
Enveloped in the safety and the security.
If you'd like, you can pause here and just give yourself a few minutes, just enjoying your time.
Taking it all in, using all of your senses to feel really connected.
After you're done with this exercise, allow the image of the person or animal or the place to just gently fade away. Knowing that at any time, if you need to bring your awareness of this back into your body is a resource that you can do this. When you practice doing this in a calm state, you allow yourself to have this as a resource when you're under stress.
So now that you have identified a person or an animal or a place that brings you more of a sense of safety and security. Try at different points in a couple of weeks to just bring it back when you're feeling at ease, maybe after your next body centered practice.
And now that you've done this practice, notice what you experience in your body.
I invite you to open your eyes, look around. Take in everything in your environment just to bring yourself back to the present moment.
Perhaps wiggling your fingers or your toes or rolling your shoulders or stretching. Gently easing yourself up. And out of your relaxed state.
And please take a moment to write down anything that came to mind. Remembering that any experience is acceptable.
And if you found this to be a resource, see if you can find a way to stay connected to that resource as you move throughout your day.