Somatic Mindfulness Practice For Unsatisfactory Behavioral Patterns

This is a mindfulness practice is geared to address unconscious tendencies to wind up in unsatisfactory interpersonal situations or relationships, otherwise known as repetition compulsion. The meditation draws from ideas found in contemporary somatic therapeutic modalities, alleviating unsatisfactory patterns by changing the underlying sensorimotor predilections.

Transcript

Imagine there's a ball of energy at the base of your spine,

Near your sit bones,

And then just imagine this ball of energy moving up the body,

Bringing energy and life into your spinal column,

And your body unfolds and slightly lengthens all the way up.

And then when you reach,

The head is like a flowering moment where the head opens up and slightly tilts back,

The chin up as if you're looking at the sun or a tall building.

And take a full in-breath and squinch all the muscles in the face,

A lot of the micro-muscles on the eyes,

Pinched in those,

Locked in join those,

We breathe out ever so slowly through the mouth,

Release all the muscles in the face.

This is your ventral vagal cluster,

The micro-muscles in the face.

So,

Sun furrow,

The brow,

Imagine that your eye sockets are warm pools where your eyes can float,

Encourage your eyes just to settle.

It's like they're floating in swimming pools.

They no longer have anything to keep track of in the world.

Your jaw is unclenched and the corners of the mouth are wide apart.

There's no tightness or contraction in the lips.

And then take our second full in-breath and lift the shoulders up,

Trying to lift them above the ears,

All the way above the head,

Just really high shoulders.

And then before you breathe out,

Rotate the shoulders back,

So you're opening up your chest and then long exhalations.

The hands are dropping lifelessly,

The shoulders are now just fully released like limbs for the tree that are just dropping away from the tree trunk.

Just two weighted down,

Droopy limbs without any energy and the chest is open,

Engaging the vagal break,

Lowering your heart rate.

And then for our third full inhalation through the nose,

Allow your belly to extend,

To be imploded,

Distended,

Like you're pulling the air in through the belly.

And then as you breathe out through the mouth,

Feel the belly releasing,

Softening,

Finding the most comfortable state without any tension.

Abdominal breathing is such a wonderful tool to create a state of ease.

It's the base of the vagal nerve.

And when people have their sympathetic nervous system engaged,

The first thing that generally happens is the muscles,

The abdomen tense,

Sending the blood out to the limbs.

If your stomach is soft and client,

It's very hard to stay in a hypervigilant alert state.

So one of the quickest ways to deactivate is to one,

Make your out breaths as long as possible,

That engages the PNS and also softening the belly,

Keeping the eyes from bouncing behind the eyelids.

Now that we've gotten the body in a good conducive state to calmness,

Try to cultivate a state in the mind as the great Buddhism,

Ayakkema called it,

Nowhere to go,

Nothing to do,

Nobody to be.

That state of mind where you're on the first day,

As I like to say,

Of your vacation,

All of the unresolved issues of your life back home are suddenly disinteresting.

There's nothing you can do about them.

Worrying about the future is utterly unattractive because you're now at a place where you feel safest and a place you've yearned to be for a very long time.

Your mind is no longer racing in front of your body trying to get somewhere,

To get something accomplished,

To meet any timetable.

Your mind is now completely in line with your body and doesn't want to go anywhere.

You're now at a full stop,

We've landed fully in our lives.

The mind is in no way moving in front,

Trying to get anywhere else.

We'll just sit here in silence and just incline the out-breath to be twice as long if you can as the inhalations.

Moving in,

Believe it or not,

Through the left nostril is very conducive to calmness.

If your mind wanders away,

It doesn't want to stay and land in your life and relax.

If through habit,

The mind always jumps to some memory or unresolved issue.

You don't need to feel any frustration or impatience at all.

Every time you realize that your mind has wandered,

It's a wonderful event.

It's another opportunity to ingrain your way back home,

Which is to simply replace the focus on the thoughts with focusing on the sensations of your body or the sounds going on around you.

Each time you realize you've gotten lost in thought,

Cherish this opportunity to just re-ingrain a way back.

The more you do this,

The more in your daily life when you get triggered and trapped and repetitive,

Anxious,

Catastrophizing thoughts,

You'll have a way out.

ט So at this point,

Keeping the body in a nice relaxed position.

Now I'd like to invite you to bring to mind any interpersonal situation in your life where you feel you regularly don't get your needs met,

Where you rely on old ingrained fear patterns or compulsive behaviors,

Times with other people you feel stuck.

For example,

Social situations where other people feel permitted to talk and relax and we struggle to be confident to join in.

Times with individuals that have some degree of power over us,

Perhaps at work or other situations where we struggle to state boundaries,

To take care of ourselves,

Where we agree too quickly to take on obligations,

Relationships where we struggle to state our needs or where we take care of others rather than ask for our needs to be taken care of.

Just bring to mind some interpersonal tendency that's all too familiar and doesn't feel that we can achieve satisfying behaviors.

So whatever you come up with,

Don't go into the story,

Just visualize or just name the situation.

It could be speaking to my boss,

Asking my roommate not to be so messy,

Stating my needs in a relationship or stating a need to take time for myself.

And then while you hold this image or situation in mind,

Observe what you feel in your body.

I'd like you to scan the feelings in your face,

Any slight contraction in the muscles of the face or tightening in the throat.

Perhaps the chest,

Which we had opened previously,

The meditation begins to tighten a bit or the shoulders begin to creep forward or up.

Maybe you've noticed a slight contraction or heaviness in the stomach.

Look for even the subtlest somatic marker.

These are the foundations of repetitive,

Sticky behaviors.

The body goes into a vulnerable,

Frightened,

Fleeing,

Disempowered state.

If nothing is available to you,

Visualize a situation that's even more triggering,

Something that happened recently that was unsatisfying,

That led to avoidance or shutting down or getting angry or deeply triggered in some way.

And then again,

Connect with the feelings in the body.

And then once you've connected with something,

Just give it a label.

Don't overthink the label.

It could be jumpy,

Tight,

Tiny,

Agitated,

Heavy.

Just one word.

Don't overthink it.

Then what I'd like you to do is imagine you could take this feeling,

This part of our self,

This frightened,

Anxious,

Small,

Whatever part,

Just imagine we could sit it next to us so it's no longer in our body,

Thanking it for expressing itself,

Just putting it right beside us.

Go back in your mind to the triggering,

Difficult situation and ask,

Okay,

What else is there?

What else do I need to feel?

Okay.

Maybe you can connect with another somatic state.

Maybe this time there'll be more energy moving upwards or maybe there'll be anger or maybe sadness,

A sense of heaviness behind the eyes.

Give this second set of feelings a name,

A label.

Imagine you can actually lift these feelings,

This part of ourselves,

And put them to our other side.

If you put the first set of feelings to the left and put this to the right.

Now,

If this was a regular situation where we could go on and on and unpack more,

Then you'd do that.

But for the sake of this practice,

I'd like you now to visualize a situation where you feel really confident,

Really good about your skills,

A situation where you can enact your highest sense of self,

Some endeavor that you feel really efficient at.

And if nothing comes to mind,

Just visualize using your imagination,

Yourself engaged in an activity where you're helping someone.

Again,

Open up the chest,

Pull back the shoulders,

Lift the head up.

Keep in mind this situation where we feel confident.

Once you've attained a body state that feels stronger,

More enlivened,

Bring back into your imagination the triggering situation that we've been working with.

Keep your body in this new state.

This set of somatic markers with the settings that in the past have led to repetitive behaviors.

Okay.

Okay.

Breathing into the belly,

Breathing into the chest,

Energy moving up the body,

Not stuck.

And lastly,

Making a note to ourself that in the future when we are in these activating circumstances where we have in the past not felt empowered to speak up or to act in ways we feel good about,

That we will first bring this body state back and we will act from this body.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

So whenever you're ready,

Very,

Very slowly open your eyes,

But while you open your eyes,

Keep part of your awareness on your body so you bring this sense of openness,

Confidence,

Expansiveness with you.

Reviews

Great stuff as always from Josh.. thank you for gently leading me to greater somatic awareness whilst exploring my personal triggers in a safe space 💚

Interesting & (for me at least) helpful and innovative meditation. Love Josh's works! 🙏

Interesting perspective on parts work and having your parts step aside I liked the idea of them sitting next to me rather than ask them to step back. For some reason that was easier because I have a hard time, imagining exactly what they look like, or pretending to look at them, but I could feel them sitting next to me.

Separating the 2 feelings to the left or right was insightful.

Namaste 🙏🏼

Excellent!! Thank you 🙏

Recording starts and ends a little abruptly but found this a useful practice that I will return to again. Thank you Josh 🙏

Could have taken longer, didn’t quite get there, but I’ll practice, repeat...

I have problems with behavior not matching intentions due to my past circumstances. I need help with somatic body work to help be free of my past and live now fully & in a healthy state.

Thank you for you help in this.

Very effective for working with difficult situations and for self soothing

Josh is the best!