Come into this space in a moment of anxiety when you really know you're needing to come back into your body and you're wanting to feel a sense of peace and calm.
This can be done right in the very moment you're feeling really anxious or it can be one to listen to to save and come back to when you need it.
I'm Scarlet,
Qualified therapist and meditation teacher and this is a practice I use frequently with my clients especially in these moments when anxiety is heightened.
So settle in,
Find a comfortable space and let's get started together.
As I'm talking all I want you to do is just take a few deep breaths and although this isn't technically part of the practice itself I'm going to teach you,
It is always good to come back into the body by breathing.
So deep breaths perhaps in through your nose,
Out through your mouth and just listen to my words guiding you.
When we feel anxious what can happen is many things in the body as you probably know and as you probably feel sweaty palms,
Racing heart,
All of those symptoms we can feel in the body and a lot of tension can come into the body too and another thing that we tend to do is we actually have this tendency to narrow the eyes and focus on one spot.
So we do this because of back in those primitive days we needed to keep an eye out for any threats and we got really good as so many animals at knowing how to focus and really homing on on that.
So the problem with that is that day to day when we're feeling stressed especially when we're concentrating really hard and we're focusing on the computer screen and we're focusing in one specific point what happens is this can exasperate the feelings of anxiety and it can really block us from resetting our nervous system so this is a really powerful exercise and it's going to involve moving the eyes around in order to orientate.
So this is called orientating and this is about as i say moving the eyes around and it has a really powerful effect on your nervous system.
So hopefully even just by now taking a breather it helps you settle a little.
Let's move into the practice so what you're going to do you can do this walking along you can do this sitting down but all you're going to do is you're going to start to take your focus away from one point so we're taking the focus away from just your phone or computer or one point just in front of you and we're going to start to actually look around so start to move your head your neck your eyes and start taking your surroundings noticing what that feels like you might not have noticed the things around you all day and i quite like to make a figure of eight when i'm doing this so it can be a horizontal eight or a vertical eight it doesn't matter so this eight can kind of be up and down around or side to side but this really gets our eyes moving and this signals to the body we're safe and it helps the nervous system to settle so take some time to move your head your neck your eyes and don't worry about getting it right there's no right or wrong but experiment with this kind of figure of eight where you look up and around and back down and around and up and around and back down and around taking in all of your surroundings and then you can do this from side to side so to the right and around to the left and around and keep going with that for a few moments breathing as you do so and then maybe taking a moment to just gently and slowly take in more of your surroundings by even looking around you so around and behind you and the key here is see if you can do this slowly see if you can make sure you're not doing it frantically or quickly even if you're feeling anxious and i know that might be hard but see if you can do this very slowly really take it in your surroundings because it will tell your body that you're safe because otherwise we'd be narrowing the eyes and we'd be focusing in on one specific point or one specific threat and you are not in danger you're safe you are okay and you are able to look around and regulate your nervous system there is nothing wrong with you it's just that sometimes the body gets stressed and anxious and feels unsafe due to so many life factors that we're bombarded with every day take a few more moments to do this slow measured figures of eight look around you behind you maybe even name the things you can see well done so when you're ready just allowing yourself to begin to finish up that exercise and just check in with how you're feeling now did it help even if it was subtly and if you need to go on to do another practice that will help with your vagus nerve stimulation or nervous system regulation which is what we were doing here today this is a powerful practice especially one to be used when there is no rationalizing with the mind the mind is not the place we need to go to we can't just say to ourselves hey you're okay you're all good this is a practice or practices to come to when we know we're technically okay but it's our body that needs to hear it well done for showing up for yourself here in this space today and i'll see you again in another exercise another meditation really soon
