Soothe Anxiety: The Butterfly Hug

A gentle somatic practice to calm your nervous system and soothe feelings of anxiety and overwhelm. The Butterfly Hug is a gentle touch based practice, to help the body feel safe again. Follow along as we use rhythmic tapping to settle the mind and body.

Transcript

Today I'm going to teach you something that's called a butterfly hug. So you may or may not have heard of this, As with, I guess, All of these practices, But this is incredibly soothing on the nervous system. And it's actually specifically used if. . . We've gone through any traumas or any difficulties that really come up and get triggered. So it can almost be especially for things like past memories, Past old triggers, You know, Those things that come up where all of a sudden we feel maybe really unsafe. And this is, Again, Why we need to get into the body in those moments, Because as you might find. Almost no amount of talking to yourself can sometimes help. And so your body needs to know it's safe. This is why we need to activate our vagus nerve. We need to activate our parasympathetic nervous system. This is the stuff that really, Really soothes. So I'm going to teach you the butterfly hug and what that looks like. And I would say just kind of follow along with me. You might really, Really find it soothing, Especially if you are actually feeling quite stressed or anxious right now. I might you know might use it at some point So what I want you to do is I want you to take your hands and you're just going to place them in front of you. So with the palms facing towards you and we're going to take the thumbs and then we're going to interlace the thumbs. So what you'll see is we're almost making this like it looks like a butterfly. This is why we're calling it the butterfly hug. So once you've found the butterfly the thumbs interlacing what we're going to do is we're going to then place the hands right to the heart So I would say almost some people say that almost where your thumbs are sort of down from the soft part where your throat would be to the hard part. Right when you reach that, That's where we might want to place the thumbs and then hold the hands over. But I would say just go where it feels actually right to you. It might be that actually you just intuitively feel like you want to place your hands a little bit further down. And that's OK. So I'm going to place mine a little bit higher up because I feel okay to be somewhere around there. And then what we're going to start to do is we're going to start to just sort of pat the hands. Side by side so we're going to just kind of pat the chest either side Just take your time to do this. Take your time to really feel into this. And you might want to close your eyes and just allow yourself to pat. So these are just gentle pats, Nothing to heart. But we're getting back in touch with the body. We're balancing the body out and we're getting in touch with. . . That all-important vagus nerve, Parasympathetic nervous system, The stuff that really tells our body we're safe and we're soothing. Now, You might want to stretch your hands out to actually try what it feels like to do this either side of the body on, Say, The shoulders, Because this is almost like a bit of a hug too. This is when I like to kind of not worry about what the thumbs are doing, But you're almost just placing, Again, Crossing your hands over the body like this. And you might even feel like I'm really aware, Say, For example, Of the warmth I can now feel from my hands on my arms. And even that can feel soothing in itself to sort of feel like. I need someone else and I need someone else to soothe me, Which we all do, Right? There are going to be times where we definitely need someone else to soothe us. This is you recognizing I can actually soothe myself. So what does it feel like to actually be in this position with yourself where your arms are hugging yourself? And can you feel that warmth? Can you feel that safety? You may even just even give yourself a little bit of a rub like you would to someone else if you were trying to comfort them. Then let's come back into the butterfly hug. So let's try it here with just passing either side. And again, I'm going to close my eye. I just feel is what this feels like. I would almost say just don't even try to think about this. This is not about you being in rational head. This is just you passing either side of the body. Well, Just look some deepness as you're doing this. Maybe come back to the heart space again and go with what feels good. So I'm just going to kind of cross over without again worrying about the thumbs and just play around and experiment with what this feels like. This could be so grounding to just come back into the body, Especially if we feel heightened. You can use this wherever you are, Really. You know, You can use this if you get a moment yourself. Even at work, You can just take a step aside, Maybe go to the bathroom or take a walk outside and just do this. Do this when you're feeling triggered. I can feel for myself, It just connects me back to my body. And those nerves that we've got running along our body that tell us we're safe, Tell us okay, That we're okay. This is what you're activating. Okay, So when you're ready, Maybe just dropping the hands back to the left. And again, Just checking in with how I feel now. You might want to repeat that again and check, OK, Again, What feels good, What feels not so good. This one may be something that you think, God, This is going to be my go-to. Whereas for other people, It might be like, Actually, I don't feel it so much of this one. And what really soothes me is a different one. I'll leave you with that. I'll leave you with a butterfly hug and come to this anytime you need.