Visiting The Past

This meditation was made for military and first line responders to visit and release the past. Through connecting to your breath in the present moment we can connect to our inner world. I will guied you and holdspace while you revisit the past and release your attachment. Thank you for listing, I was in the Australian Army for 10 years, Ruth and I have used meditation and the breath to rise above PTSD.

Transcript

Hello and welcome and you're listening to a Thriving with PTSD meditation.

Today's meditation is specifically built for all of the ex-military and first-line responders out there.

And we're going to go revisit a moment in the past.

So I just invite you guys to start breathing,

Start breathing deep into your stomach.

So on your inhale,

Your belly is going to want to expand outwards and on your exhale,

Your belly is going to collapse and come inwards.

So you're just going to keep breathing like this for two or three minutes.

So as we breathe in,

The belly comes out.

As we exhale,

The belly comes in.

So as you continue that breathing,

Every time we breathe,

It allows us to connect back to ourselves as soldiers,

As firefighters,

As policemen,

Police women.

We've really disconnected from our bodies and disconnected from ourselves through our training and through our stimulation and through our work days.

We've just been trained to react and disconnect.

What you're doing now by connecting to your breath is allowing you to come back into your body.

And when we come back into our bodies,

It allows us to actually revisit the past and actually release some of the trauma,

Release some of the stress that we have tied to certain situations.

But it's not until we actually anchor into our body via our breath,

Via this deep breathing within our stomachs that allows us to turn off our fight or flight response,

Turn off the stimulation of the outside world.

So just keep breathing deeply into your belly.

Deep breaths.

Gently close your eyes.

As you continue to breathe deeply into your belly and hold this style of breath for the length of the meditation,

I'm going to ask you to go back and just think of a time at work,

Could be when you're on a deployment,

On a tour,

Could have been just a simple call out and go back to that moment.

And try and steer this towards any particular moment,

Just let whatever arise come naturally and start to explore that.

Continue to breathe and as you continue to breathe in and out of your mouth,

If any situations or any feelings come up,

You can actually just start to breathe through these.

Start to know that you're safe in this present moment and that anything that you're revisiting that you have control of and that in your breath that you'll be able to move any emotion that's coming up to be witnessed.

So as we continue to breathe,

This memory that we've located,

This time,

This place,

We're going to travel back there and we're going to start to build it.

We're going to start to look at what that felt like within our bodies.

Were we visibly shaken?

Was our heart beating?

Were we distressed?

Were we concerned for somebody else?

And as we revisit this moment and we think about the noises,

We ground ourselves into what the smell,

How it felt,

And the more real it becomes,

The more we can release that realness with our breath.

So continue to keep breathing and as you're breathing deeper and deeper,

Know that whatever energy,

Whatever attachment that you still have to this moment,

That you can breathe and release and let go.

Now,

I just ask you to keep breathing.

Now,

We're just going to imagine our conscious selves,

Ourselves in this moment and we're going to go back to the past.

We're going to find this version of ourselves,

This stress,

This worried.

Whatever the emotion is,

Whatever you're feeling,

Distraught,

Pain,

Agony,

Whatever that is,

You're going to go revisit that version of yourself.

And whatever you feel called to,

Place a hand on their shoulder,

Walk up and give them a big hug.

Just let them know that everything is going to be alright and that you're safe in this present moment.

Start to talk to that past version of yourself.

If there's something that you need to forgive from that moment,

Tell them that you forgive them.

Let them know that they're safe and let them know that you're here for them now.

And let them know that they can let go of that moment and with the power of your breath,

Continuing to breathe in and out,

You can start to release that moment.

I'll leave you here for the next few minutes just to go through some internal dialect with that past version of yourself and you can start to release that past.

Have forgiveness or compassion.

Release anything that you need to and when it's time to come out,

I'll gently ring a bell.

You You You You You As we slowly start to come back to this moment start to Ground into the present moment again gently wiggle our toes slightly move our fingers We can start to know that we just released a little bit of the past We just released a little bit of attachment a little bit of energy that we didn't need within us any longer and through our breath through making amends and through Removing the attachment that we have to the past we can become a little bit more present a little bit more present in this moment A little bit more present in every moment moving forward So I'd just like to thank you today for doing this meditation I don't know being a sufferer from PTSD that this can be hard work and revisiting the past can be very traumatic I'd just like to thank you and You've done an amazing job and You can feel called to do this meditation as often as you want and if you feel like you have multiple Scenarios you need to go back and revisit please feel free to Just getting to that breath and use the breath to help anchor you into your body Anchor you into the present moment so you can feel and release The attachment from the past and release that energy and you can start to move forward in your life And you can start to thrive again

Reviews

Thkyou both namaste 🙏

Excellent although I'm not military or first responder, my trauma was done to me during a stay in hospital however I still found this useful to go back and talk to myself. Will be looking at your other meditations 🧘‍♂️

Thanks for the meditation 🧘‍♀️ I found it helpful

I list some emotional weight!!! I put my hand on my past self shoulder and broke the spell of fear!!!!!! Wow !!!! Thank you!!!!

I will listen to this over and over to release the many traumas I have suffered. Thank you for this simple meditation that brought me peace and release.

Really healing. I am not a former soldier or first responded but deal with ptsd in other forms. This was super grounding and supported me in releasing stuck energy. I will revisit again. Thank you 🙏🏻

Really useful for calm down the motion

Huge help

Thank you! It was really what I needed to release some painfull feelings from the recent past.

This was amazing. I barely noticed the words as I was taken back to 12 years ago. I realized my ongoing fear of rejection is still extremely strong. Something I can work on.

Thank you so much for this meditation.I am doing a MDR at the moment and this was really helpful.I can see the memory from a different perspective and its not as painful .... Thank you again💐💐

Thank you so much ! I feel as if I have been wrapped in a weighted blanket of beautiful energy😋

Hello. That was very useful. Thankyou! Please be so kind as to add a "c" to the ptsd. For this exercize is equally needed there. Took me a while to figure I ought to search ptsd instead of cptsd. This can be very beneficial for bpd, hpd, npd, ocd, gad and others as well.

I woke from ptsd nightmares and found this meditation when looking for help. Thank you so much for this. This brought calm and reminder that I am healing and can trust that. 🌸

As a person without PTSD I used this meditation to heal some childhood trauma and it worked. I went back to the incident and told my 12 year old self what needed to be said. Thank you so much for this guided meditation!