Pause is the great restorer of health. We run scared from it if there is lots of suppressed trauma beneath it, ready to yell at us, but under that is the hum of contented existence. Pausing is how we get there, but we must know how to be with the mess that comes up before it.

The mess requires resourcing to quiet down so we can feel our natural hum.

Try this practice:

Anchor your feet, butt, back, and hands to something outside of you. Place your hands against the wall while you place your feet on the earth. Or, sit against a tree or a heavy couch and place a cushy blanket over you, holding it with your hands. If another body position calls to you, do that.

Link your body to your environment by feeling the energy flow between them. The sensation in your fingertips as you touch something is energy connecting two life forces. Our eyesight, hearing, smell, and taste do the same thing. Find the connection that gives you the largest sense of grounding and calm.

Now send that energy within you to every corner it wants to go and let it build.

This is your pause. Embrace and enjoy it as much as you can.

Can you observe other energy roaming around this center of pausing? It can be numbness, overwhelm, or simply your everyday thoughts and movements. Make this pause your meditation. It is building a safe embodiedment with yourself and your environment. Over time, it will grow to hold more of you in a calm and aware state of natural existence, away from whatever tears you apart from it.

The idea is not to change the franticness or numbness, not yet. It is to build your core self. There is another exercise you can do to shift discomfort or trauma with this practice. You can find it here:

My Practice

A huge part of my healing involved pausing whatever I was doing or not doing (like scrolling through social media) and just sitting with myself and my environment. My dissociation loves to keep me distracted, and my nervous system revved. I did A LOT of pausing and looking up to my world rather than whatever it was I wasn’t mindful of. These little moments cleared my head, brought me back to feeling my body, allowed me to appreciate Mother Nature, and, most of all, let me take long, deep breaths as my nervous system slowed down for just a little while. Slowing down is how it heals as it re-learns to regulate. This video is my little moment of relaxation.