Self-Soothing Touch

Welcome to Day 4 of the Nervous System Reset here on Insight Timer,

Where you'll learn how your nervous system responds to stress and how to calm it when life starts to spiral.

Let's jump into today's session.

Welcome to the Insight Timer's Nervous System Reset Challenge.

My name's Scarlet Grace and today's practice is a really gentle,

Self-soothing touch practice.

It's designed to help your nervous system feel supported and grounded.

So slow,

Intentional touch actually activates sensory pathways that communicate comfort and reassurance.

This helps your body to basically shift out of tension to come into that rest and digest and to signal that basically we're okay,

We're safe,

We're well.

This is instead of thinking about trying to calm ourselves from the brain down,

We're actually thinking about calming ourselves from the body up.

So when you're ready,

Just finding a comfortable position.

This can be a little easier to do sitting up,

But I invite you to lie down if you feel more comfortable to do it that way.

And just know before we begin that touch can be difficult for some.

It can be a little uncomfortable if you're not used to that gentle touch in your body and especially if you're actually used to staying very much in your mind,

Not coming into the body.

Just take it your own pace.

If anything feels uncomfortable,

You can just blink your eyes open.

You can come back to the space you're in,

But if you feel okay to and if you feel ready,

I invite you to start to close your eyes and let's begin to turn inwards.

So that signals straight away that we're coming away from the outside world.

We are coming inwards and just beginning to take a slow deep breath,

Slow deep breath in through your nose.

I'm going to slow deep exhale out through your mouth.

Really seeing if you can allow your shoulders to drop as you arrive here.

And perhaps right when you think your breath is going slow,

Just slow it down even more if you can.

And we're going to start now to just gently place the hands on the lap.

So that can be your knees or your thighs and just see if you can find that comfortable position where your hands,

Your palms are just simply resting on your lap.

And so we're beginning to arrive in that very gentle touch,

Our hands are meeting the knees,

The thighs and just notice how that feels,

The sense of coming further into the body.

And what we're going to begin to do is we're going to just gently start to tap from left to right,

Left to right,

Left to right.

So you're just tapping your palms on your knees or your thighs back and forth.

Maybe almost imagine as though you were listening to a piece of music and you were just tapping your thighs to the beat.

Feeling that contact between your hands and your legs.

We're going back and forth,

Back and forth,

Left to right,

Left to right.

And what we're doing right now,

We're doing for a reason,

It's called bilateral stimulation.

And this predictability of going back and forth can help your whole system to slow down.

We're rebalancing as we breathe,

We're going to gently move further up the body.

So bringing either both hands or one hand simply to your belly.

So that can be over your belly button or anywhere that it naturally lands.

Breathing from this place and feeling the connection between your hands and your belly.

Perhaps even the warmth of your hand as it lands here.

Allowing your belly to move in and out as you breathe.

You might just want to deepen that connection now by allowing yourself to rub your stomach in a really soothing way.

So almost as though you had a bellyache,

That motion we might do over the stomach to signal comfort.

Signifying again to the body that we're safe,

We're showing up for ourself.

One more deep breath and then just allowing the hands now to come together.

So we're bringing the palms together and just beginning to rub your palms together.

So creating some heat in the hands,

Warming the hands up,

Getting some energy going.

Feeling that heat rise in the palms and then bring your palms now to anywhere on your face that feels comfortable.

It could be around your jaw,

Over your eyes,

Your head.

Wear needs softening,

Wear needs relaxing and trusting that you have the ability to do that in your hands.

So placing your hands over whichever part of the face feels good and just allowing yourself to absorb that heat and again that sends some gentle touch.

When you're ready now just gently dropping your hands back to your lap.

We're coming back to where we were at the beginning of this practice.

Checking in with your body now,

How is my body feeling since the beginning of this practice?

Do I feel calmer,

More connected?

When you're ready just gently rolling your shoulders back,

Blinking your eyes open,

Coming back to the space you're in.

Thank you so much for practicing with me today.

Well done for coming this far in the challenge.

I really hope you're finding the benefits and join back in tomorrow.

Namaskar and hope to see you again soon.