Return To Safety

A gentle nervous system reset with breathwork and orienting to safety by finding five neutral or pleasant things you see. Learn how to signal to your body that you are actually safe, right here in this moment, so you can shift out of "fight or flight", the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, and back into "rest and digest", the parasympathetic nervous system.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this guided nervous system reset that I call Return to Safety. If you haven't met me my name is Norma Serena and in this practice we are going to remind ourselves that in this moment we are actually safe. Before we begin a few words about why this matters. Your nervous system is constantly scanning for safety or threat and when it senses any kind of threat whether it's just pressure or uncertainty or something that could overwhelm you it automatically shifts you into a protection mode. This is what we call fight-or-flight sometimes freeze or fawn and it's its way of protecting you but it also leaves us unable to shift out of it and into the other part of our system the rest and digest system. So as a result we are often on constantly bracing and creating that feeling of unease from constant pressures on that system. Nervous system regulation is not about being calm all the time it is about having the capacity to return to safety to clarify and into a place where we can choose balancing the two parts of that autonomic nervous system the sympathetic nervous system activation so that fight-or-flight mode and a parasympathetic nervous system activation which is your rest and digest mode that really we should be in most of the time but unfortunately we are mostly in the other one stuck in our own. So this short practice helps you to signal to your body that in this moment you are safe and that allows you to shift out of fight-or-flight and into rest and digest so into calm and clarity and a place of safety. So let's move from this bit of theory into the actual experience. So we're gonna start with an extended inhale and exhale breath such that comfortably we can be in a chair on the ground or on a couch just feel your feet grounding into the ground the floor if you feel safe for you you can close your eyes or you can just soften your gaze and let's inhale through the nose for a count of four then we hold for a count of two and exhale for a count of six so in for two three four and hold one two and exhale one two three four five six and again inhale one two three four and hold and exhale for two three four five six it feels comfortable just keep going and you can even start to extend the exhales to eight. These longer exhalations stimulate that parasympathetic nervous system so again that rest and digest system gets naturally activated with these longer exhales it signals safety to the body and there's no perfect breathing here right there's no forcing just gently lengthening the exhale continue at your own pace few more rounds inhale for four and hold for two and exhale for six or even eight and notice if your mind wanders that's okay it is trying to make sense it might not be used to you shifting out of the thinking mind into the feeling body but practices like this help you train your mind like a puppy pulling on a leash gently guiding it back again and again until it learns to stay with it stay with the awareness and the sensation of breathing and breathing is the only vital function that is also under voluntary control right we don't have to think about breathing it does this automatically thank goodness but because you also can impact it voluntarily that makes it a really powerful tool for regulation now you can let go of the breath and just return it to normal and begin to notice your body not your mind analyzing the practice or even the body not judging it just sensing how does your body feel right now where do you feel surfaces pressing against you notice that in this moment you are actually seen if you had your eyes closed you can slowly open them and let your gaze gently move around the room let's orient ourselves to safety by naming five pleasant things you see maybe you see a loved one or a pet maybe a plant or a photo maybe something beautiful like art or a book that you love or maybe a blanket that reminds you of comfort anything at all just find five anchors five different things notice their colors their shapes notice how that feels in your body to look at things that are positive for you let your eyes move around naturally and slowly can we get to five it's been or stressed our vision narrows and this helps to widen that vision again it allows you to ground yourself in your actual physical reality in safety if you like you can soundly see yourself in this moment nothing is chasing me this moment I am safe in this moment I am safe now if you like to go a little deeper and reflect on this and might you to grab a journal or a piece of paper even just open your notes out I'll give you a couple of prompts so without overthinking feel free to pause the recording after each of the journal prompts and just write for as long as you like there's no minimum requirements just whatever feels right and then you can just pause and go on when you're ready you can also just reflect to these prompts for a moment so the first one is what shifted in my body during this exercise what shifted in my body what feels differently than it did before what feels differently where in my life am I reacting from urgency rather than a place of calm so where am I reacting urgency rather than calm essentially where are you reacting from a fight-or-flight position and finally what might change if I responded from this place of regulation what might change if I responded from this place of regulation just allow your inner wisdom to come to the surface and integrate thank you for joining me today and I hope this was helpful in realizing that you are in fact safe and you can signal this to your own body and mind I look forward to having you join me in a different track or a life session in the future bye for now