Practices

Play belongs here. Being a lion, a tree, a hissing snake, the way children do it with no embarrassment at all.

A lot of people meet trauma work as something solemn, and solemn is easy to sit through without ever softening. Silliness is harder to fake. If a…

Say it plainly: my anger is allowed here. It is a healthy feeling and it is usually the thing telling me where a line should go.

For anyone who learned that their anger made them dangerous or unlovable, it now arrives with shame attached, and the shame is what turns it into…

Watch for the small thing that happens right as a feeling starts: the reach for a tissue, the laugh, the change of subject. Notice it once and say nothing, notice it again, and only then mention it.

One instance is an incident and three is a pattern, and the difference matters when you name it, because a pattern can be looked at together without…

Sometimes the thing that stops your tears is an order somebody gave you decades ago, and you are the one carrying it out now. One woman found her father's words sitting behind a habit of wiping her face dry the moment she cried.

That is worth knowing because it changes who the rule belongs to. It was his voice, in her hands, running long after he had gone. Naming the source…

Before going towards a hard feeling, decide what will hold you while you are inside it: a way of breathing, a way of standing, a sentence, a person you can picture or ring.

Going in with nothing is not brave, it is flooding, and it teaches your system that feelings really are dangerous. Pick two or three supports in…

Whoever is going to do the feeling picks what to work with. The tightness in the chest, the closing throat, the anger, the grief, whichever one they are ready for today.

Choosing keeps the person in charge of the dose, and being in charge is a fair part of what makes this different from whatever happened to them. If…

Whether a feeling is nowhere to be found or far too much, the questions are the same: what breath, what movement, what sentence, what person helps me stay with this?

Numbness and overwhelm look like opposites and they are both a problem of not being able to stay with the material. The same supports work in either…

Anger wants the body to do something, so let it. Breathe deeper and higher into the chest, stand up, press both palms hard into a wall, walk on the spot, push down through your feet.

Pressing against something solid gives the mobilisation an outlet with nothing broken and nobody hurt. Keep going until the charge drops a little,…

Say it out loud before you start: you decide how much of this you feel, and when. Stopping for a bit is part of the plan, not a failure of it.

Being in charge of the dial is most of what separates useful contact with a hard feeling from being flooded by it again. If you are helping someone,…

Some people are not frightened of a place or an animal. They are frightened of their own racing heart, their own tears, their own anger, and it behaves like any other fear: it grows on avoidance and shrinks on careful contact.

That framing is useful because it tells you what to do next. You do not have to understand where it came from before anything can change. What you…

Ask what you were taught about crying, about anger, about needing anything. Not what you believe now, but what you were told then, in the words that were actually used.

Most rules about feelings were installed rather than chosen, and once you can hear the original sentence, boys do not cry, do not be so sensitive, it…

If a movement keeps cutting a feeling short, work with the movement rather than the feeling. Stay with the dabbing of the eyes itself, slowly, and see what turns up.

The defence is usually easier to be with than the raw emotion, and it often carries the memory. Repeat it gently, notice the arm, the hand, the…

When one bit of you wants to let the feeling come and another bit is frightened of it, you are not being difficult. You are two things at once, and both of them have their reasons.

The frightened side is usually the one that kept you going for years, so shoving past it tends to make it dig in harder. It works better to turn…

With your eyes closed, bring to mind someone who is glad to see you, and let your face receive that look. A small smile usually arrives in the eyes on its own.

It can be someone you love, someone who loved you, a teacher from years ago, or an animal. The point is not the memory but the feeling of being…

Open your mouth and put on a big obvious fake yawn. More often than not a real one follows, and the soft palate lets go with it.

Yawns are catching, so if you are sitting with someone else one of you starting will usually set off the other. Let it be a proper one: jaw wide,…

Let the corners of your mouth lift about as much as they would if you had just remembered something mildly pleasant. Not a smile anybody would notice.

This comes from dialectical behaviour therapy, where it is used as a way of softening without pretending. You are not being asked to feel happy, and…

Let something out of your throat. A sigh, a groan, a hum, or the word for whatever is stuck, said aloud to an empty room.

It does not have to sound nice and it will not. Most of us learned early to go quiet when upset, so the throat becomes very good at holding. If a…

Closed eyes are optional. If closing them makes you anxious, or the inside of your head gets loud, open them and look around the room.

Name a few things you can see, listen for the furthest sound you can hear, notice any smell in the air. Looking outward like this is a way of…

Sometimes eyes water during body work with no sad thought attached to it. Nothing has gone wrong, and there is nothing that needs explaining.

If it happens to you, let it happen. If it happens to someone you are working with, say something plain and warm: that this is common, that they do…

The first time you slow a rising panic with your own breathing, something changes that no amount of reassurance could have changed. You have evidence now.

Panic runs on the belief that the sensations are in charge and you are not. One demonstration to the contrary is worth more than a hundred…