I think the truth is most of us are absorbing a lot more than we let on.
And there is just so much going on in the world that can pull us away from our center.
And if you are trying your best,
Like I know I am,
And I know so many of my clients are,
To really stay centered,
Stay grounded.
With everything going on in the world,
That's a lot to hold.
And when we don't have ways to hold it,
Stress,
It just quietly takes over.
And we mistake that this is maybe just how things are going to be from now on.
And I don't think that they have to be.
I don't think that it has to look like that.
And so this hour I've put together is really to dedicate all kinds of tools designed to help feel resourced and supported.
So today we're going to look at the inner resources that we really need to pull out in order to live in these turbulent times.
And doing that alongside others who really understand what the time we find ourselves living in,
What they're asking of us.
So because this workshop is all about living in turbulent times,
Let's begin with a practice.
So right now,
Wherever you are,
As long as you're not driving,
I would love to ask you to really settle into your body.
Just set down whatever you've been carrying whatever came before this time the to-do list or whatever you just read on your phone on the way into our to our time together or the conversation you might still be half inside that still pulling on your energy Give yourself a moment to set that all down.
And find the most comfortable place in your body.
Just settling in.
And feeling its support holding you whatever you're leaning up against.
That for this moment you don't have to hold yourself upright right now.
That something else is holding you.
And take one breath through your nose,
Slow and easy,
At the pace that is right for you.
As you let the exhale be a little longer intentionally than the inhale.
Like you're truly sighing something out.
Exhaling that long release.
And now gently see if you can find one sensation in your body.
That feels good right now.
Maybe it's the warmth of your hands in this moment.
Or a small gratitude for something lovely.
That happened this week.
The simple rhythm of your breath moving in.
And out.
That this is what we're going to be working with today,
Some of these inner resources,
Not the headlines,
Not the fear.
But your capacity to come back to yourself when things feel like too much.
And that capacity it can be built.
It can be expanded.
It's within you already.
And we're just going to take a little bit of time here to grow that.
And so bringing yourself back into the here and now.
And I wanted to share with you all that lately I've had some clients say to me,
Why am I struggling?
More than I feel like I should be.
Well,
The truth is,
What's happening in the world right now is genuinely hard.
And for many of us,
It's landing harder than we can explain.
So many of us have been utterly shaken to our core.
We find ourselves more anxious than usual.
For me,
I know it's been more exhausted than typical.
More reactive to our loved ones.
Maybe even lying awake at 3am with maybe a feeling we can't quite name.
Snapping at the people close by just over something small.
Scrolling at night when we promised ourselves we wouldn't before bed or scrolling when we first wake up in the morning before giving our senses the chance to see nature or take a sip of coffee.
Being able to really step back.
From the images that feel horrifying or from the headlines that make us wonder how have we gotten here.
And I just want to be able to open up a different way of understanding what's happening.
Our reaction to what's going on out there is never only about what's going on out in the world.
Because when our outer environment feels unsafe,
Genuinely,
Persistently unsafe,
The way the news cycle has felt for many of us,
It doesn't just register in the thinking mind,
It really lands in the body.
And our body has a long memory.
Long before we ever had words,
Long before we could make sense of the world intellectually,
We learned what safety felt like or didn't.
Through our earliest relationships.
Through whether people around us were steady and loving.
Or frightened and reactive.
Present physically maybe,
But not emotionally available.
And whether our needs were met.
Or whether we learned early on to stop expecting that they would be.
These experiences were though still alive in us today.
Not as a conscious memory necessarily,
But as a kind of body knowledge.
You could think about it like a set of grooves in your entire nervous system.
And it falls into those grooves when things feel threatening.
So when the world starts to feel chaotic or unpredictable,
When trust in larger environments start to erode.
It can quietly reactivate something much older.
A younger part of us that already knows what it feels like.
When we're not okay.
When the adults in the room were struggling,
When we were looking outside of ourselves as that child to find a sense of safety.
And then if safety wasn't something we could count on.
When the tone in our home could change in an instant.
We're not always aware that this is happening.
It's not as if it announces itself.
It just shows up as a feeling.
And maybe we're feeling more than we expected to.
Maybe it's more of a vague or persistent unease.
That we're not able to match up in today.
Well,
Here's what I've learned in 20 years of sitting with clients,
That when our outer environment feels unsafe,
It can bring us back to what I've called a body memory.
Of feeling unsafe.
So all the way back to in utero.
That symbiotic connection with mom.
So if mom and dad are struggling,
We feel it.
We are in that same stress response.
If we were an unexpected pregnancy and we're not sure mom and dad are ready,
We feel that too.
As an infant.
If mom is super stressed and can't meet our needs consistently,
That changes the way our brain gets set up.
In our childhood,
In those first 5 years of life especially,
When different neurons and different pathways are being either pruned or thriving and growing.
We know by different areas of brain science that our brain is growing in relation to mom's connection with us.
And so if mom can't see us because she's stressed or overwhelmed,
Maybe if dad's drinking is causing our environment to feel chaotic,
These are all of the reasons why what hasn't healed all the way inside of us,
Typically because it's not conscious,
It's a body memory.
Remember I'm talking about the first five years of our life,
What happens right after birth and in utero.
Everything it already knows about surviving uncertainty.
It's almost like it comes to the surface of our awareness now when we're facing uncertainty in the outside world.
For the first five years are the most important.
It's what basically builds our sense of safety.
Safety is an inside job and if we're feeling anxious or stressed about life it has its roots in those first five years.
This is the bulk of the work that I do in my practice,
Is really recognizing,
I call it an imprint.
My institute is called the Family Imprint Institute.
That imprint is running the show.
And this is not set in stone.
But unless we know how to work with the root cause,
We tend to just repeat the same patterns and the same hurts.
And we're stuck in the anxious loop in our thinking.
And it doesn't have to be that way.
Let's not stay stuck and struggle and complain.
Let's find tools that we can support ourselves and our loved ones to feel better.
And so what I just shared about the importance of in utero,
After birth,
And the first five years of our life,
It's sort of like one area,
One thread that really creates who we are and what we might struggle with today.
The second is a body of work called epigenetics.
I should really talk about it as a science,
Which is what it is.
It's research in epigenetics that shows us that trauma,
That unresolved emotions in our family of origin,
It leaves a biological imprint.
And that this can be passed down through the generations.
So if your father really lived inside a family and say grandpa survived a war.
And he brought all of those imprints that are now shared with your father.
Maybe your grandmother had to flee her country.
And your parents then would carry those sets of fears.
But they never would have words for them.
And some of that lives in your body too.
Through epigenetics we know this imprint passes through three generations.
And it's past not like a family story,
But it lives in you more as a sensitivity.
Which means that when you see images of conflict today,
You may not just be responding to what's right in front of you.
You might be resonating with something your family already knew in their bones.
And it's worth sitting with for a moment because one of the most liberating things a person can do is begin to understand their own family history.
This is not about assigning blame.
But it's about finding and following that thread.
So some important questions to ask could be.
Where did this fear actually begin?
Or whose anxiety am I carrying?
Alongside of my own.
What do I need when I'm beginning to connect to what happens inside of my loving connections?
What do I need to feel safe and secure?
What was life like for the people who raised me,
Including my grandparents and my parents?
What were they carrying from the people who raised them?
Getting curious let's say if mom shut down around conflict or dad shut down around emotional expression.
Let's get curious about why.
What happened in their growing up environments that we begin to make sense of how mom and dad showed up in the ways that they did so that you can get a little more freedom around it.
The truth is,
When you start to dive into some of those themes,
When you start to explore those threads,
The triggers that you feel today become much less mysterious.
They get louder when they're connected to something older.
Or something unresolved.
And when they begin to soften,
And maybe they don't soften immediately,
But they genuinely release over time when that connection is finally named.
This is actually some of the most meaningful work that I do with my clients,
Helping them trace the roots of why they're anxious back through their own story.
And sometimes back through their family's story.
So they can finally understand why certain things land so hard.
And from that understanding,
They begin to put down what was never really theirs to carry in the first place.
When we don't know what's happening,
We tend to do one of a few things.
Sometimes we can get very busy.
We just sort of dive into all the to-do's of life to distract from the overwhelming anxiety.
Or we scroll.
We try to be informed.
A lot of my clients will say that.
But are we really being informed?
You know,
When in the history of,
Let's think about our parents or our grandparents,
Did they know what was happening in every area of the world?
I just don't know if our nervous systems were built to hold all of that.
Or we might stay in our heads,
Analyzing and trying to problem solve,
Trying to think our way out of something that really isn't a thinking problem.
We tend to numb out a little.
Or a lot,
Because the feelings underneath feel like too much to turn towards.
And so all of these strategies,
They make complete sense.
And for many of us,
They got us through,
Especially when we were younger.
But this also means that the little one inside of us that was scared a long time ago never really got to process that,
Complete that.
And that little one inside is likely still waiting,
Still carrying something that never got put down.
And so what we're going to do today together is start to change that,
Start to shift out of that stuck place.
I'm going to share with you how to meet those feelings when they rise.
Feelings of restlessness,
Hopelessness,
Or overwhelm.
And we're going to meet them gently.
With presence.
So that what's going on today can be a little bit easier to navigate.
And really that's the definition of integration.
None of us can erase what happened,
Not to ourselves,
Not to our parents or our grandparents,
But we can begin to make sense of it,
Enough room so that it stops running the show.
I'm sure you all remember that image of the iceberg,
Right?
The part that we can see.
And maybe that's our reaction in the news,
In the moment,
That visible tip.
But the intensity of the reaction.
Is often drawing from something much older and much deeper.
And of course,
That's going to be different for each and every one of you here today.
And we really want to practice compassion with ourselves,
Compassion with those we share our lives with.
You might be responding very differently than your siblings or your spouse.
And recognizing that we're all bringing this element into how we're responding today.
So let's dive in.
Let's explore some tools to stay in our bodies when the stress of today finds us.
I have colleagues that talk about creating world peace one family at a time.
And I think that is the most profound and powerful work we can do these days,
That we're the meditators,
We're the ones that are dedicated to personal growth.
And we can make that ripple effect.
We can send out those ripples of calm and resourcefulness and resilience.
And we're all here,
80 people strong,
Doing that together.
And let's just take a moment and visualize the impact of that across space and time.
So let's dive into some tools so that you can stay embodied and grounded when the world comes at us.
The first step is to really be connected to notice where you feel certain things in your body.
This is where I want you to become like a sensation scientist,
To track where in the body you're feeling it.
So let's say you see something distressing,
You get some intense news from a friend,
Any reason that stress comes into your world,
The first step is to find it.
Where are you feeling that emotion,
That sensation in your body?
The second step.
Is to imagine pressing pause on everything else that's going on in your world and really give yourself a minute,
Three minutes to feel it.
So whenever those triggers arrive,
I want you to imagine it's like gold rising to the surface and we want to grab that gold.
We want to feel the quality of the sensation.
An important step here is to figure out,
Hmm,
Is this familiar?
Does this sensation remind you of how you once felt,
Perhaps,
In your childhood?
Perhaps in a difficult relationship in your past or how you might feel shut down in conflict over over road that your point isn't getting across.
So the stress comes in,
We find where in the body am I responding,
And we allow ourselves a moment to feel it.
This is where we are metabolizing stored pain and if.
The anger flares if sadness moves whatever is there allow the quality of the sensation space to be felt And this is where you have the capacity for the third step,
Which is to free it.
We find it.
We feel it.
And we free it.
So that we are not stuck in an old loop that perhaps goes all the way back to our childhood,
That might not even have started with us,
That belongs more to our father or our grandmother.
By being able to just stop in this moment.
To allow the body to process what's being felt,
This is how you have the capacity to free yourself in the moment.
The other consideration when we look at this practice is really understanding what happens in the body when that stress comes in.
I'm sure you've all heard of fight,
Flight,
Or freeze.
Well,
Here's another way to look at it.
This is what I take with me.
Fight is tight.
That stress response is what you notice out there,
But it tends to be held in the body as tightness.
And so how many of us can say,
Oh gosh,
I feel it in my shoulders or I'm bracing,
I'm locking my knees.
Recognizing how much the body is having to take hold of that tension.
When fight is tight.
And then flight.
Is to push the feeling away.
A feeling of like,
Just take me away from this threat.
Which is why we might distract.
Drugs,
Alcohol is only one way.
We might also distract through TV,
Even social media,
Which is also part of the problem.
And then we've got freeze,
That piece where we're just disconnected,
We're just numb.
We literally become unavailable to ourselves.
So let's break it down.
Let me give you a few suggestions for what you can do when those responses come,
When the stress comes at you.
So for fight.
When you're tight and activated.
What we want to do here is give that tense energy somewhere to go.
How do we dissipate it?
So if we feel what's happening in the body,
Let's let the body mobilize into action.
Push your palms up against a wall.
Just allow yourself to really engage for 10 full seconds.
You could also use your feet.
Press your feet into the floor,
Like as if you could push the floor away.
This discharge,
It doesn't have to be dramatic,
But it has to be real.
We want to bring that feeling into the body.
You're completing a circuit that the nervous system started.
So that stress comes in and we give ourselves a place for it to go.
Closing the stress cycle.
And so what I found really interesting about the research that's in her book is that the threat doesn't have to be resolved.
The body just needs a signal that it's over for you.
I think that is the problem with this particular moment in history.
The news cycle never closes.
There's always the next crisis,
The next thing to be outraged about.
And so if you choose to engage with the headline,
Or that image that comes across your scroll that feels terrifying.
The stressor keeps arriving before any of the other ones have even been processed.
And so the body feels like it's bracing for something else.
And so that fight response.
Is the signal.
From us that needs to be physical.
So the energy can be summoned for action and it needs somewhere to go that feels real.
And so I wonder too,
After reading that book,
If this is why many of us are carrying feelings of deep exhaustion.
In a way that sleep just doesn't fix.
Like the mind has been working overtime and the body has just been waiting for us to step into action on all of those triggers that have been built.
And so if you seem to fall into that flight,
I gotta get away,
I gotta escape this.
I want you to drop in.
And connect to the part of you that feels overwhelmed.
Or believe that they've got to run away in order to find safety.
That you turn towards that part of yourself as if to say,
I've got you.
I'm here.
I'm going to breathe with you and let's integrate this overwhelming feeling of anxiousness.
I'm going to breathe with you,
I can meet that intense panic.
Be with it until we connect.
With our breath,
With the rhythm of our heartbeat.
What we're doing here is slowing down enough to connect with those life-giving sensations that live right underneath.
The anxiousness,
The anger.
We want to come back into ourselves through the senses.
And so that flight response that pulled you out of the present.
So the antidote is something concrete and immediate.
One of my clients really likes to place her wrist under the tap and just run cold water on her wrists.
Or really feeling,
Okay,
My feet are on the floor,
I'm grounded,
Here I am.
Meeting it with one slow breath.
Where you make your exhale.
Longer than your inhale.
And now for freeze.
To be honest,
In my practice,
I see a lot of this.
Where there is a fogginess or a distractedness or a difficulty really being present.
Freeze.
And what you need here.
Is gentle movement.
Warmth really helps not more stillness so maybe a slow walk or wrapping yourself in a nice heavy blanket.
Those weighted blankets are great.
Humming is great here.
Humming really works with your vagus nerve and begins to open up something very gently,
Very slowly.
The freeze response shuts down social engagement.
So sound is especially powerful here.
Maybe you want to put on your favorite music and sway,
Your own voice,
Or even someone else's.
Like tuning in to a guided visualization right here on Insight Timer that supports you in going inward,
You're listening,
You're letting it come through for support.
And that you're moving through your own emotions and your own sensations.
Think about it like thawing what went offline in you.
This is why a phone call with a trusted friend can really feel like coming back to yourself.
So reach out and do that.
We are truly stronger together.
I think the next step here,
After we have a few tools to draw from,
Is really about sustaining the integration.
It's really about building a new baseline.
The nervous system learns through repetition,
Not through new insight necessarily.
So the understanding of why you got activated is one part in responding to stressors in a new way.
But then doing that practice again and again in just small doses and ordinary moments,
Not just in responding to crisis,
This is what rewires.
Small amounts,
Little bits,
Every day.
So that idea that we naturally move between activation.
And then settling.
And this concept that integration isn't like some flat com.
Where?
Stress comes in and you just expect yourself to not react or to be calm about it I want you to trust yourself that there's an oscillation that happens.
That you can feel the charge,
That you can understand that this is a stressful moment for any human and then still come back.
To center.
That movement done repeatedly is what builds resilience.
The goal was never to stop the waves.
It's much more about knowing that you can ride them.
You can trust yourself.
And I also think it's so important to remember we regulate through each other.
So being in the physical presence of a settled nervous system is one of the most powerful tools we have.
This is why isolation during stress is so corrosive.
And why gathering,
Even imperfectly,
Really matters.
And so maybe you bring some friends together for a potluck.
Maybe if you're at a distance from your friends,
You get on Zoom.
You come to these classes that are available here through Insight Timer and you give yourself that deep sense of community.
However you tap in.
Let's talk about a few practices that you can bring into your everyday.
I want to fill your bucket with all kinds of tools for these turbulent times.
A great practice in the morning is to arrive in your body before you let the news in.
And so it's no surprise to any of you that none of us are supposed to be picking up our phone when we're still in bed.
I'm guilty of it too sometimes.
But we really want to be able to step out into the sunlight.
Go into a meditation.
Integrate and connect with our family,
Whomever might be around.
Before engaging with the headlines.
Give yourself that break.
Protect that first morning entrance into the day.
Now if you're feeling a little agitated or up midday give yourself a reset when any activation has built up.
Maybe take a walk,
A brief meditation,
Absolutely go outside,
Get into that ground barefoot.
Take a shower.
Rinse off the heaviness.
Make yourself your favorite cup of tea or fresh lemon water.
And then to really notice,
How am I stepping into sleep in the evening?
And what might you be able to do to close the stress cycle?
Before sleep.
I want you to be sure not to compromise on whatever it is that nourishes you.
So you could ask your partner or a dear friend for long hugs.
Allow yourself to be held.
And maybe you even ask them,
You know what,
I'll be the one that breaks the hug first.
Just let me sink in.
Spending time in nature as much as you can.
I've been giving myself extra sleep.
Whether that's in sleeping in or taking naps,
Letting yourself actually respond to feelings of exhaustion.
Instead of just telling yourself and others I'm so exhausted these days.
Getting a coffee with a good friend.
And what I've been doing lately with friends is taking talks of crisis and politics and the news altogether,
Even complaints,
Off of the table.
Let's talk about what we appreciate,
What we're looking forward to,
What's going well.
Really our mind is wired for what's called a negativity bias.
My gosh,
Two-thirds of the time our brains are scanning for what's wrong,
What could go wrong,
And these type of negative,
The negative news,
It sticks to us like Velcro.
And the good literally bounces off.
And so if we don't properly propagate the good,
The negative can take over.
It's kind of like weeds in our garden bed.
If we don't pull the weeds out,
They just take over all the space for our beautiful flowers and our herbs and our plants to thrive.
So just allowing yourself to lean in on the positive.
My favorite is music.
I am a music lover and I've got playlists for all the different moods and being able to sing along and it really helps to shift out of the state of intensity.
Of course we all know the benefits of meditation and that can be such a wonderful refuge.
I think that intentionally reducing social media and the news is a good plan these days.
And of course engaging in apps like Insight Timer or Gaia is a wonderful network to tune into.
You can go to the local library and find a book you can get lost in.
I love reading and a great book that kind of just takes you into another world.
Is so great these days.
And if you really feel the need to remain informed,
Consider reviewing the news,
You know,
Once a day or even better,
Once a week.
That you just take a step out.
I think adding good things to what you're already doing is a really great way to stack good habits.
So maybe that morning coffee becomes a one minute body check in.
Oh,
My chest feels a little tight.
Let me just breathe into that area.
Get a little more space,
Get a little more calm.
Any time you might be doing a commute or running errands,
Maybe it becomes a breath practice at every red light.
You're connecting with your body.
You're finding greater calm.
And bedtime now becomes a brief release ritual where you find your way back into the here and now.
Balancing,
Balancing the body and releasing the day.
These might just be a few suggestions for you to weave in more of the good.
Into what you're already doing.
