SELF CARE
BUILDING RESILIENCE
Learning to respond to stress resourcefully means
MAINTAINING SOCIAL SUPPORT, CONFIDENCE IN LIFE AND SELF, AND A POSITIVE WORLD VIEW. “Perspectives from Clinical Neuroscience”
(This is my light reading these days. LOL)
THESE EMERGENT HUMAN CAPACITIES MUST BE CULTIVATED.
I like to think about that.
Cultivating confidence.
Emergent human capacities!
If we do not actively engage in befriending stress, the body chooses how to cope.
The body copes well.
But coping is not living.
Coping for a body could look like a human being strapped into a chair taking shallow breaths, drooling into a bib.
(I have a few bibs around the house)
The body is happy. The body is breathing.
BUT
The body does not evaluate quality of life.
NO!
The coping mechanisms only devolve into primitive fight/flight/freeze behaviours that, while periodically useful, become destructive when habitual or chronic.
Imagine CULTIVATING confidence
ONE OF THE BEST WAYS TO PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH IS
PHYSICAL HEALTH.
We can actively calm the vagus nerve. We can work with our microbiome that impacts how we feel. We can mindfully relax and play. We can practice bodytalk access daily. Have forest baths. Create community. Sit on your stoop. Bake extra and share. Turn up the music. Dance.
Because trauma is somatic (within the body), somatic practices are ideal. Use the breath while writing. Use the breath on the bodytalk table, while dancing, while typing, while speaking, while eating.
Re-train the body that even when stress is present, a calm state offers myriad possibilities; whereas, a stressed state contracts, deflates, destroys.
START TO NOTICE:
Remember our microbiome (the healthy microbes that help us digest, create vitamins, protect us) thrives on fibre, diverse foods, prebiotics (keffir, kimchi, sauerkraut) and probiotics (more friends for the party).
Support the microbiome. Support yourself.
Notice how you feel/think after you eat.
Our thoughts can get away on us but a fun exercise is to eat an unhealthy snack and notice our thoughts. Eat a healthy snack and notice our thoughts.
Exercise, notice the thoughts.
Do not exercise, notice the thoughts.
FEED THE CREATURE.
Eating well can be simple.
How much of your day could you devote to calm?
There is a website that helps:
I love that: calm.com
Take a breath right now. What is going on around you?
I’m in my office. I can hear the chimes. It is early in the day, blue sky, large shadows, more chimes, light wind, neighbour’s tree moving shadows on his roof, husband moving in the kitchen, a door opening.
Take another breath.
Tap out your cortices:
Notice your thoughts.
Let them move on by.
Breathe.
Roast some veggies.
Pass them around.
When calm, make decisions. Speak. Create. Problem solve.
When stressed? Breathe. Feed the microbiome. Tap out your cortices. Breathe some more. Re-frame the stress.
My brother doesn’t respect my opinions.
I don’t need my brother’s approval.
My staff continue to disregard the training.
Talk to them. What is going on? It is their burden, not your burden.
My life’s purpose is elsewhere. I can’t work here for thirty years. Look around the work place. Where might you find your purpose here right now, for now. Job changes can happen gradually or spontaneously.
Calm cultivates detachment.
Detachment is natural.
Natural is optimal.
Natural offers possibility.
What is possible for you when you cultivate calm?
If you’d like more bodytalk in your life,
I am teaching a bodytalk access class, Saturday, May 28th, 10 a.m to 5 p.m.
Six hours of instruction for a lifetime of calm. The fee is $150.00.
You receive a day of bodytalk and 6 techniques to practice at home, with your children, clients, friends, pets and plants.
You take home a gorgeous, colour manual with all the steps laid out clearly.
Registration is limited. If you would like to register, click on this link:
I’ve got a new website up, thanks to a gift from my daughter and I’ve started a blog.
Have a look when you have time.
Thanks.
Rest in the bareness of thoughts, feelings and perceptions as they occur.
Act only from calm.
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