Walking Each Other Home - Nov 17, 2022

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Transcript

So welcome to project sanctus embodied anti racism practice,

Our mindfulness embodied anti racism practice.

We're going to start as we always do with the bringing ourselves home to ourselves.

We want to start with our environment,

Right what's around us bringing ourselves home to our home,

So to speak,

Wherever you are watching this or listening to this.

Just look around the room,

Look to your right,

Look above you look to your left and always look behind you above and below just to center ourselves into this physical space that we're into just ground ourselves.

And then we want to come home to our body.

So we start with breath,

Breathing in breathing out.

You know every human body is unique every human body is a little different.

Every human body has different abilities,

Different limitations as different warning signals when,

When the body says oh that's enough.

We want to honor our own abilities,

Our own strengths,

Our own limitations.

We want to be able to know and own and claim the places where our body says yeah,

That's a little too far.

Without avoiding discomfort,

But adapt as needed.

Maybe pause what we're doing even as needed,

But always wanting.

It's okay a little bit of tension.

It's how we build our resiliency.

How we build our,

Our capacity to respond to challenges.

You know,

And all of these embodied mindfulness practices that we do are not just to do once,

But to do over and over and over.

Some can be done to use throughout the day,

Through your regular life where you just pause you know a 30 second kind of thing,

Or a minute.

And some embodied practices are longer meant to be,

You know,

Revisited periodically.

When you have 15 minutes or 20 minutes.

And many of these practices that we offer are meant to be repeated for the rest of our lives.

What we're doing is we are conditioning ourselves.

We are conditioning ourselves to be able to be in difficult conversations and difficult experiences.

Some practices are more meaningful than others.

There may be a practice that you really enjoy now and maybe in six months,

Not as much.

That's why I come back to honoring the body,

Honoring what the body says,

Not the mind,

But what is listening to our interior world.

Again,

Doing what's meaningful doing what builds our ability to be in difficult situations and conversations without reacting right without coming from,

You know,

Our amygdala hijack.

So let's take another breath together.

And this is one of those practices that I've done before I did this last night in a class.

And it's,

It's titled it comes from inspired by the work of resume menachem and it's,

It's titled your former freak out.

And I think all of us have an experience with freaking out or spinning out,

You know,

Or flipping out we have different words for it.

But it's recognizing that we all lose our temper sometimes we all just,

You know,

It's like you can feel a switch gets flipped.

And we just,

You know,

I call it,

Our right that's my kind of a pirate word but that's my.

That's my word when I realized that I flipped,

And it's just a part of being human.

It's just a part of this human experience.

It's when our,

You know,

We,

We flip into where we,

You know,

The biological switch that we don't have any control over a fight,

You know,

Or flight response,

Because we something happens.

And the amygdala the reptile part of the brain says danger danger.

I'm not safe and so it fights,

Or it flees,

You know we fight or we flee or freeze or peas but generally the you know the fight in the flight are natural responses.

So know that these practices will not not meant to make you never have any stress and to never notice it or experience it,

But to help us have a sense of how we get to that edge,

How we get to that freak out place,

You know what brought us there to that edge and how we went over the edge,

Kind of fell into the,

The spin spinning out.

And then how we brought ourselves back.

So let's begin all things as we've taken one breath together let's do that again.

Let's take another deep breath.

You can have your eyes open you can have them closed.

You can be lying down.

You can be sitting.

Just stay in the body.

As you breathe in feel the air come through the nose or the mouth and down into the lungs.

Sometimes I put my hand on my chest so I can feel my body moving with the breath that helps me be grounded and settled in my body space.

Body space.

And just remember that whenever we,

You know,

Get close to an edge of the freak out or spinning out.

We can recognize what's happening,

We can bring ourselves back to a more settled state.

And at this time,

As we practice,

It will reduce the number of times that we tumble over that edge.

And I wanted to move through this process today because at the moment,

You know,

This is being recorded on November 17 2022.

And at this moment there's a lot of freak out going on.

There's a lot of chaos and mayhem and so much fear and angst and and reaction and tribalism and just bodies,

Reacting,

You know,

I want mine,

This is right,

That's wrong.

Violence,

Physical violence,

But an enormous amount of mental and emotional violence,

Really caring at each other.

So I wanted to do this mindfulness practice today because it seems like there's a lot of us that are at the edge or have gone over the edge.

And we want to just be able to see it and name it,

Sense it really feel into our interiority and see how we got there and bring ourselves back.

So pause for a moment and recall a recent incident.

Right,

As recent as you can maybe yesterday maybe last week,

Last month,

But a recent incident where you just spun into,

You know,

You all of a sudden you feel your brain kind of unhook from anything rational and,

And just real intense emotion and that,

You know,

Freak out moment and the spinning and realizing you're in the fight or flight response.

So take a moment and recall a situation and really bring it to life in your body we live the incident in your body.

I know it may be uncomfortable.

And this is how we do our healing work individually and collectively.

Learning to settle the body,

Learning to work with our traumas.

So relive that incident what what's the vibrations running through your body.

What images come to mind can you see the experience sort of playing through your mind like a little video or,

You know,

Slideshow of images.

What are the thoughts,

Like can you hear the words that you were using or someone else.

What thoughts what judgments.

You have about it.

What do you have about yourself.

Like,

I shouldn't have responded that way or if only they would have listened.

Why are they so stubborn.

What judgments do you have.

Do you hold about that experience.

Bringing that incident to life within you.

Focus in on what created the stress what created the conflict.

What created the,

You know,

The spinning out the pain that brought you to that edge,

And then move into what did your body experience as the stress mounted.

Did you notice places where you contracted.

As you relive the experience.

Did you notice maybe you clench your jaw,

Or even your toes some people clench their toes.

Did you feel tension in the shoulders or muscles maybe got a little achy in some places.

As you relive the experience what went on in the body the physical body.

And did you start to experience yourself getting close to the edge.

Could you kind of feel,

You know your emotions and your bodily sensations and,

And you're thinking and judgments ramping up and kind of moving more quickly or,

Or,

You know,

Really kind of congealing into this ball of stress that just started moving closer to the edge,

The edge of what I'm lovingly referring to as the freak out.

And then,

What was it that finally pushed you over the edge.

Oftentimes it happens so fast.

We may not even,

You know,

All those things I've asked so far what did your body experience,

You know what created the experience what did your body experience as the stresses were mounting,

You know what did you notice as you were getting closer to the edge.

Sometimes that happens so fast.

We may not know what pushed us over the edge so this is a time to pause and a step back and walk through the experience.

And then start noticing what happened that finally pushed you over the edge,

Something you said something the other person said,

If you heard it in the news,

The podcast.

Maybe you were in a class.

Perhaps you went over it right because we do know judgment to human experience,

But as I went over the edge and just almost that out of control feeling.

I come back to the body what did the body sense,

What did the body experience.

Sometimes my body has this very fleeting moment of relief or release to just explode.

And then I can feel my body contracting again because it's not how I want to be.

As he went over that edge into the freakout spinning out.

What did you experience.

What emotions.

And at the time,

You know we're hooked to our amygdala so we're not,

We're,

We're not actually thinking.

But in hindsight,

Sometimes we can identify.

As we look back as a witness,

We can identify the bodily sensations the emotions judgments that thinking images.

And then what did you do,

As you freaked out.

Did you go silent.

Did you talk louder and faster.

Did you clench up even harder.

Did you cry.

Did you become.

And then what happened after is eventually what happens is we move out of the amygdala hijack.

And we come back into our mind.

Or the expression of being in your right mind.

That's kind of what this is,

Because when we are in the freakout.

We are in our reptile brain.

We are not in our cognitive rational thinking mind.

So what happened after one time,

You know,

Kind of the freakout pieces done what happened after that what did I do to enable my body to begin to settle.

See if you can't look at,

At the experience,

Again like a slow motion video or a slideshow of images what happened after the spinning out.

Did I yell some more Did I cry.

Did I just do a heavy sigh.

Just stop.

Did I walk away.

Did I hang up the phone.

Did I go hide under the covers of my bed.

And then we eventually do something that enables us to begin to settle settle into our space.

As we did at the beginning,

Settle into the body.

Have a sense of being grounded in the body.

So what did you do,

Was it just pausing and breathing.

Was it remembering something that you're grateful for.

Was it listening to some music.

What,

If anything,

Do you remember doing that brought you back to being settled.

And maybe someone else was involved in helping you settle.

Maybe you picked up the phone.

Maybe the person was in the room or online with you.

So we come full circle.

With this experience.

And this is one that you can do repeatedly.

It may not fit into your daily life.

It's a practice though that if at the end of the day,

You look back at your day.

Notice.

It's a time where you,

You were just triggered and it doesn't have to be real big or real small just something that you remember.

You can do that at the end of the day as you review your day and and pause and do this practice.

And the more we do this practice,

The more that we find ourselves having less of these moments.

But it's always important to pause to breathe,

To hold on to ourselves.

To build our capacity to,

To be in the challenges so that we can back ourselves away from the edge.

It's all part of the human experience,

It's all part of being human,

And we can learn to temper ourselves we can learn to condition our body.

So as you,

As I bring our time to a close.

I just encourage you and invite you to move through your day.

Maybe a little more slowly.

Maybe a little more joy or aliveness.

And with a little less spinning out.

Take two more breaths together inhale.

Thank you.

Okay.