Nervous System Regulation To Support Healing

During this meditation, you are invited to consider what healing means to you and perhaps what part of your body or mind desires healing. You will be guided in observing any shifts in your nervous system, both subtle and obvious, and in developing awareness of habitual tension-holding patterns. To support this exploration are two breathing practices designed to mitigate the stress response and gently take you into parasympathetic arousal which supports healing and recovery.

I hope you enjoy listening.

Transcript

I'm Lindsay.

Welcome to this meditation on focusing on your nervous system and how it can support the process of healing.

So let's just take a moment to settle.

Whether you're choosing to sit or lie down,

Make sure that you're comfortable as much as possible in a position where there's no physical discomfort.

I appreciate if you're doing a meditation on healing,

Then there may be some discomfort in your body.

So making yourself as comfortable as possible.

If you're not quite ready,

You're welcome to pause.

Otherwise,

Begin to focus on your breathing.

Simply follow the in and out flow of your breath.

Observe its natural rhythm,

Pace,

The depth of your breathing,

The ratio of your breath.

Is your inhale longer?

Is your exhale longer?

Or about the same?

And arguably,

Maybe most important,

Is where the breath is in your body.

If you notice you hold your belly tight,

It's likely the breath is up in your chest.

Or if you're working with physical or mental discomfort,

Again,

The breath might be up in your chest.

So I invite you to relax your belly.

And see if you can bring the breath down into your abdomen.

Can you allow the breath to be gentle?

No force,

No effort.

Just gently breathing in your belly.

And just allow your breath to follow a soft,

Steady rhythm.

And can you make your breath as smooth as possible?

The first step to healing is awareness of the desire to heal and perhaps what healing means to you.

Does it mean a full recovery for your mental or physical health?

Are you seeking reduced pain and symptoms or improved overall function?

Whether you wish to mend a broken heart,

Come to terms with interpersonal conflict or perhaps conflict within,

Or recovery from physical or mental illness or surgery,

It can be useful to consider healing in a broader sense rather than healing to mean to cure.

Take a moment to sit and observe your breathing.

Notice if anything's changed.

Notice if any pockets of tension have arisen or maybe they didn't pass at all.

And can you take a moment to soften into any tension in your body?

Perhaps send your breath there.

Gently breathe in,

Find space and exhaling,

Moving tension away from your body.

I'm going to ask you to reflect on healing from a slightly different perspective and invite you to notice how your body responds.

Does it soften or tighten?

Does your breath stay steady?

Do your thoughts become clearer or more jumbled?

The path to healing may include,

As Buddha said,

Returning to the island of self,

The essence of who you are.

To heal can mean restoring a sense of meaning and purpose which guides you on a path that cultivates deep well-being and connection despite the struggles.

Holding compassion for your mind and body as you gently navigate this path,

Whatever your reason and meaning can be empowering.

The meaning of the word heal,

Therefore,

Can have varying connotations.

It may invoke feelings of hope or conversely a sense of worry that healing may not occur.

How did it feel to consider healing from a broader perspective?

Did you notice any shifts in your body?

I encourage you during this meditation to hold in the background what healing means to you as a way to sense any shifts in your nervous system.

If negative thoughts arise which may feel fixed or jumbled,

You may notice your heart beating faster,

Your teeth clenching and pockets of tension throughout the body.

This is an opportunity to work with your nervous system which is providing a huge amount of information at that moment.

Becoming a witness to arising sensations can be a valuable tool in regulating negative thoughts and emotions and therefore your nervous system.

We will explore this now.

Let's return to your breath and settle any areas of discomfort or habitual holding in your body that may have sneaked back in.

Come back to belly breathing.

So soft,

Gentle.

And tapping into the gentle expansion and contraction of your breath.

If it's helpful,

Place a hand above your navel and feel the movement in your belly.

Notice if you have any habitual holding still residing and can you send your breath there,

Create space and a softening into that tension.

And see if you can keep this breath throughout the rest of the meditation.

And if not,

The moment of insight can be noticing when your breath has changed or noticing any of those shifts in your nervous system.

There may be specific parts of your body that you have a challenging relationship with,

Where there is or has been illness,

Pain or surgery,

Or perhaps struggles in managing your mental health or navigating difficult relationships.

Whatever your experience,

Attending to these parts by pouring love and compassion into them supports healing and recovery and the journey back to your sense of self.

I invite you to witness your experience with curiosity replacing any judgment or expectations.

The parts of your body that harness your attention may have a color,

A sensation,

A texture,

Or a shape.

Perhaps the color is dark.

The sensation may feel heavy or tense.

The texture rigid.

If it has a shape,

Does it feel solid or movable?

Direct your attention to what is there and allow the light of awareness to shine on that part of your body.

Land your attention gently and observe if there are any changes in your nervous system.

Do you feel like your heart is beating faster?

Perhaps your breath has quickened or is there a general sense of unease in your belly or your whole body?

Do you tend to clench your teeth?

When tension arises,

It holds on tight to negative thoughts and often creates more discomfort,

Which then creates more tension.

Releasing tension in your body can support breaking this unhelpful loop and provide an opportunity to observe,

Accept and release.

Accept and release.

Let's pause here and see if we can soften any tension holding in your body.

I invite you to bring your attention back to your breathing.

And this time we're going to purposefully elongate the exhale.

Now you can either do this through just a sense of the exhale being longer than your inhale or you can do it with a count.

For example,

Inhaling one,

Two,

Exhaling one,

Two,

Three,

Four.

To pause now,

Focus on your exhale breath and as you make it longer than your inhale,

What happens is that we're putting a little bit of a break on the heart.

We're slowing it down.

Our inhales naturally lift the heart rate,

So the longer our exhale,

The longer our inhale.

The longer our heart spends being slow rather than fast.

This is a really great way of dropping out of a sympathetic response and into parasympathetic.

So continue with the lengthening of your breath out.

Just check you're not applying any force to your breath.

Check there's a softness,

A smoothness in the transitions between the inhale and the exhale.

And continue to make your exhale longer.

And perhaps notice.

Is there a deeper sense of ease in your body?

This doesn't mean we no longer feel discomfort,

But perhaps we can soften the edges and recognize that we can hold both discomfort and ease in the body at the same time.

As you turn your attention to what you find challenging and you notice what happens to your nervous system,

You can begin to feel a little bit of a sense of relief.

You can feel a little bit of a sense of relief in your heart.

You can feel a little bit of a sense of relief in your lungs.

As you turn your attention to what you find challenging and you notice what happens to your nervous system at that moment,

You start to build interoceptive skills and tune into your felt sense experience.

Does your perception of internal sensations increase negative thoughts and pain sensations?

Pouring love and compassion into what you find difficult when those challenging sensations arise,

Begins the process of acceptance and then insight into your mind and body's responses.

Let them know they are heard by listening,

Validating and being receptive to the messages and being receptive to the messages that they are sending.

Training the mind to observe arising sensations by considering their color,

Texture,

Shape versus attaching content to them can free up space in the brain to lessen the habit of zooming in and creating stories and instead view your mind and body as layers of wisdom and wholeness.

And perhaps noticing that if you found the color was dark,

If the sensation was heavy,

The texture rigid and the shape solid,

Notice if the color has become more porous,

If the shape feels like it's more transient,

The sensations moving,

Feeling more fluid and light.

And there's no right or wrong answer,

It's simply your experience and coming back to that space of witness,

Observation and curiosity.

So learning how to zoom out rather than zoom in can be a useful tool in creating space around what feels challenging.

We're going to finish this meditation with a meditation we're going to finish this meditation with golden thread breath.

So how we do it is we breathe in through the nose and on the exhale we purse our lips and imagine a golden thread is moving out of our body and away from us and on that golden thread you can carry with it whatever you like.

It might be a challenging thought or sensation or emotion and the golden thread breath also allows us to elongate our exhale which as you know is a parasympathetic response.

So let's begin now,

Take a gentle breath in through your nose,

Purse your lips and gently breathe out your golden thread as far away as you can.

And when you complete your exhale don't force it,

Breathe gently in and as you exhale purse your lips and have a sense of this golden thread of this golden thread traveling away from your body as you find space.

Continue at your own pace and observe if you feel this sense of space being created,

This zooming away.

As we zoom out,

As we observe sensations without a touching narrative,

You may find the hold on you becomes lessened.

You may find the less you give it attention,

The less you provide narrative or your interpretation.

You may find the sensations lessen.

It doesn't mean that we no longer feel pain or discomfort but our response to them changes.

So allow this to be a process of discovery,

Of exploration.

Continue with the golden thread as you breathe out.

Take a golden thread breath for just another few rounds.

Every time you breathe out the golden thread can you feel a softening in your body,

In your mind and perhaps a deeper sense of overall well-being.

If you have time you're welcome to stay for a bit longer.

Otherwise this meditation has come to an end.

Thank you so much for joining me today and I hope there's been some useful insights for you or certainly a sense of understanding what tools we can use to help support our healing journey and the process of observing and regulating our nervous system.

Enjoy the rest of your day.