Daily Practice Is Key

A tree has giant roots to stop it from blowing over in a storm. Our daily practice is what keeps us centred in our bodies and our ability to respond. Should we lose our daily practice, we may lose the ability to respond. We become more reactive and start to recreate the past by living in a reactive state. As our health habits disappear, so does our awareness and our ability to stay grounded. Daily practice is so important in allowing us to make healthy choices towards our blueprint.

Transcript

Hi everyone, I'd just like to welcome you to Thrive with PTSD and today we're going to go through daily practice. So daily practice is so important to me and so important to everyone that's trying to move through this label of PTSD and our daily practice is what keeps us centered in our body and our ability to respond. And should we lose our practice, We may lose our ability to respond and we may become more reactive and start to recreate our past. As our healthy habits disappear, So our daily practice, So does our awareness and our ability to stay grounded. A daily practice is so important in allowing us to make healthy choices towards our blueprint. So I just want to talk you through a few of the daily activities that I undergo for my daily routine and one of them is breathing into my body. So I'm very passionate about breathing and using the breath to move through this label of PTSD and as we become more aware of our body and able to breathe into all parts of our body, We start to become more connected. So how can we be truly grounded in our body if we can't feel our oxygen and breath through all parts of it? So a large part of us returning to our vital healthy self after PTSD is being able to breathe into our hips and I know this mightn't happen automatically but a lot of people might just be breathing into their upper chest or a lot of people might actually just be breathing into their belly and not a lot of people allowing their breath and their awareness to go beyond the waistline of their pants. For us to be truly grounded in who we are, For us to reclaim our safety, For us to reclaim all parts of our mental body, Our emotional body and our physical body, We really now need our breath to get all the way down to our hips. So you should be able to feel as you breathe into your belly, Your lower diaphragm should expand and you should have an awareness of your pelvis slightly tilting, You should have awareness of your genitals and you should have awareness of your tailbone on the ground. For us to do a daily practice, For us to be extremely grounded in who we are, This is very key and very powerful. So I'd really recommend for a daily practice a guided meditation and then breathing into all parts of your body and should you feel that there's not oxygen or your breath is not able to reach certain parts of your body, I'd ask you to just gently use your hands to stimulate that part of your body to see if you could assist oxygen or breath in reaching those parts. So this is really, Really powerful. So I'll just take you through a quick guided morning meditation. One of the strongest practices you can have to get on the front foot within your body and your mind is to have a glass of water and to have something like lemon or apple cider vinegar in that. It actually allows your body to recover from the night's sleep and actually come back to an alkaline state. The state that our body is in is very important for our emotions and our mind. As we come back to an emotional state and we put emphasis on doing something good for ourselves first thing in the morning, We're creating that positive habit. We're creating our positive habits in the right direction towards our blueprint and the person that we would like to be. So this is extremely powerful. Before you get out of bed, Take a second to breathe into your body. Take a second to use positive affirmations and really start to change that dialogue that you might have. So before we've actually stepped out of bed, We've had our glass of water, We've used positive affirmations and we really started to breathe into our body. That's three really healthy choices before we've even started the day. I really recommend cold showers as a way for you to start to strengthen your nervous system and your immune system, But also just strengthen your mind. Cold showers can be extremely powerful at allowing you to do something that is good for you that you don't want to do. So often there's a lot of resistance from our body and from our mind around having a cold shower first thing in the morning. But if we know it's good for us and we step in and we do it, We're actually starting to create a very, Very powerful habit and that habit is allowing us to do something that doesn't feel good, But we know that it's good for us. Also our daily meditation practice is very similar to this also. So I'm not going to run you through a guided meditation. I'm just going to give you all of my brain hacks and all the things that I do in the morning to make sure I feel amazing. To be honest, I think Ruth taught me most of these, But I've put my own little flavor and spin on them. Morning meditation is something that's very powerful for me and a lot of people across the world are struggling to meditate each day due to the fact that we're such an instant gratification society these days. If we're not getting something instantly out of meditation, Our reward system, Our body, Our mind and our nervous system says, There's nothing in this for me. I'm not going to do it again or I'm going to create a disempowering story. Second on that, Our mind can actually be afraid of meditation. Our mind is stuck so much in this loop of wanting to move forward and distracting ourselves from our past that often when we sit down to meditate, This can be very daunting for the mind. So the mind can actually want to take over and create stories about meditation not being helpful. So you can see in both those instances there, The mind is trying to work against us for meditation. And with the key of meditation being to control our mind, You can see the irony in this. So one of the things I really love to do with meditation is create a powerful story. I create a story that's so powerful that I love meditation and I tell my partner, I tell my friends and the story that I've created and I live under these days is that meditation is so powerful and I love it every day. As we create a powerful story, Our thoughts, Our feelings and our actions align with this powerful story. Even if I have a bad meditation, I still don't walk away and doubt my meditation or doubt if I did it right or wrong or doubt where I'm at in my process. I still create a powerful story and I still walk away with powerful intention to meditate again. Another reason why we're not meditating as I said before is that our mind brings up fear. So as we're so stimulated in this modern age, We can find it difficult to go from hero to zero and offer. And the zero phase is very important for us to heal through this journey of PTSD. That zero phase is actually a place that exists within our automatic nervous system. It's a place within our parasympathetic nervous system as opposed to our sympathetic nervous system. And a really good way to look at these two nervous systems is one is up and one is down and the parasympathetic nervous system is the down and the one that we would like to actually spend more time in. When we spend more time in our parasympathetic nervous system, Our mind and our nervous system has a chance to rest. And often our mental health and our stories are just a reflection of the state of our nervous system and how much time we've spent in either. So meditation is extremely powerful at allowing you to get into your parasympathetic nervous system. So is the breath work that I spoke about before your meditation. So whilst laying in bed, This would be the breath work that I recommend. I recommend breathing through your mouth like this. I recommend you taking 10 large breaths and feeling into all places of your body. If you use your hands to move over your body to try and allow yourself to stimulate certain parts of yourself that you might not have feeling to or connection to. And then I ask you to repeat that 10 breaths five times. So in total you should do 50 breaths. Depending on where you're at and your relationship with your breath is depending on maybe how deep these could be. But after you build some confidence in this style of breath, They can actually become quite deep and they could sound something like this. The larger the variation we have between our breath, The larger the variation we have between our heartbeat. And this is called our vagal tone. And our vagal tone is one of the keys for how parasympathetic we are in our state versus sympathetic as well too. So that breathing is very important and the breathing will set you up for success for you to stay grounded in your body and not be in your mind. Should you be in a very acute phase of PTSD, I highly recommend this breathing throughout the day also. A really good opportunity for this breathing is if you're parked your car and you're about to go back into your house, Breathe in the car. If you're about to go to bed and you've had a very restless day, Do this breath work. It'll allow you to switch off some of those processes and some of those worries that we're holding onto and allow you to relax more into your body. So as you can see, I have a pretty powerful daily routine and this is something that I hold very dear to my stability and something that I work on constantly. So just to refresh, I really recommend having some lemon or apple cider vinegar and water first thing. I really recommend you staying in bed and breathing into your body, Using your hand to touch parts of your body to awaken it. The goal is for us to feel our lower diaphragm pushing down into our genitals and our bum and our hips beyond the waistline of our plants. This could take some time, So don't get disheartened. The next one I recommend is positive self-talk. So getting your brain rewired and becoming a positive influence in your life. The next one I recommend is cold showers and then beyond that, I recommend a meditation practice. So there you go people. That's the daily practice that Ruth and I undertake. We have for years and it's one of the reasons that we've really been able to ditch this label of PTSD and it's been very amazing. If you have any questions about daily routine, Please reach out to the Facebook page or our Instagram. We'd love to hear from you and we hope that you've enjoyed this daily practice talk through and we hope that you've got new exciting ideas. If you're looking for a daily practice meditation, Please head over to Insight Timer. We do have a daily practice guided meditation that you can listen to also. So please have an amazing day and we'll speak to you soon. Thanks man.

Reviews

Very helpful.
Thank you.

Thanks for sharing your practices! I just learned that I suffer from PTSD and I am determined to take care of myself so I can have a healthy life and build healthy relationships. Thank you for sharing your wisdom! 🙏🏻