We're going to spend the next few minutes together shaking out some stress and tension.
As you might know,
Shaking is a very natural response and way that we release anxiety,
Stress,
Overwhelm.
You can think about animals in the wild that naturally shake after they've gone through something that was truly life-threatening and then that helps them regulate to continue on with life.
Now we often can think of it as a sign of weakness or vulnerability if we shake when we're scared or anxious and many of us might even try to hide that,
Right?
If we're gonna do some public speaking or if something is causing us stress or anxiety and we start to visibly shake,
We might not be so comfortable with people seeing that,
Especially if we are in a workplace or a place where we are really wanting to seem like we have it all together.
So for these next few minutes I invite you to not have it all together and to let your body really move and shake out some of what might be stored inside.
So to start you can take a few nice deep breaths and just be really mindful of where your body is.
Maybe you're sitting,
Laying down,
Standing up,
In whatever position is most comfortable for you.
Just really anchor in your breath,
Really feel the ground beneath you and if you'd like you can think about a specific stressful event.
Maybe it was a stressful day at work,
A stressful meeting,
A hard conversation that you had.
We're not necessarily looking to get into a trauma here.
If there are traumatic things you'd like to process,
I encourage you to bring that to a safe and trusted therapeutic space with a mental health professional.
For today just starting with something that's been stressful,
Something that bothered you,
That you maybe felt a reaction in your gut or you felt your muscles tensing up.
And you can slowly start by moving your hands and your feet and maybe they don't shake yet,
Maybe they just kind of move side to side.
Maybe that leads to your legs and your arms moving a little bit,
Kind of almost like spaghetti.
And whatever pace and rhythm works for you,
You can play with increasing the speed and the movement or decreasing it and turning that into a bit of a full body shake.
Be mindful of your neck and your spine to not harm yourself with any of the movement.
Just gently exploring some shaking movement with your body that feels comfortable and feels safe.
Continue some nice deep breaths.
You can continue that movement and see what it's like to speed it up maybe a little bit more.
Really accenting that movement as you're maybe pushing away with the shakes.
Maybe making it a little bit bigger,
A little sharper.
Maybe focusing on the top of your body or the bottom of your body.
If you feel ridiculous or silly you can just let yourself laugh knowing that when we laugh it opens our diaphragm and that's really great for our nervous systems.
Some nice deep breaths.
And wherever you are and whatever that movement is looking like for you right now,
Just noticing what is happening in your body as you shake.
How does it feel?
I'm curious to see can you visualize that stress that's been in your body shaking out,
Moving out,
Maybe even breaking up into little particles or pieces that get to just shake and fall out almost like loose change falling out of a pocket.
Or maybe you visualize it as though it's water that's flowing out of you almost like a tree that has raindrops on its leaves that shakes in the wind and it almost looks like and feels like it's raining again because of the way that the water shakes off.
Maybe you see yourself as a wet dog that's just shaking and all that water or all that mud or whatever might be on that wet dog that's flying off is the stress that you're saying goodbye to for right now.
If you've stopped shaking I invite you to press in to just a few more shakes.
If you're still shaking you can let those shakes start to slow down nice and gently and if something inside of you is saying you know what I am NOT done you can press pause and you can shake shake shake as long as you'd like.
Whenever you're ready you can really slowly and gently bring your body to stillness and just notice how does your body feel?
How does it feel different?
What changed?
What shifted as you let yourself shake?
Before we close I invite you to curl yourself up into a little ball bring your knees into your chest holding them in with your arms and if this is not comfortable you can choose any other position that's more comfortable for your body.
We're gonna take three nice deep breaths noticing how those breaths feel with the lungs compressed as the legs are brought into our abdomen.
So breathing in through the nose,
Out through the mouth.
Doing this two more times in through the nose,
Out through the mouth.
Last time.
Now slowly releasing your legs,
Opening your arms and gently moving into the rest of your day.
Thank you so much for taking this time to shake with me and feel free to let me know in the comments what kind of audios you'd like me to create next.
