[PODCAST] Move Into Coherence LIVE 12-03-23 – Episode 90

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Transcript:

Hello, friends! And welcome to Move Into Coherence. In today’s episode we will be learning about Post-traumatic Growth—yes, it’s a thing—how it happens, and what it is. We’ll also be doing an EFT tapping script—tapping or not, your preference—on releasing trauma, and the effects that it may have on us. So let’s get into it.

 

We’re gonna start as we have been with what I call Waking and Shaking. It’s a three-part motion that allows us to find more ease in the body; to wake ourselves up a little bit; and to get our brains ready for the learning. So if you would please join me as we come to standing and we do this three-part motion, Waking and Shaking. Thank you for joining in.

 

So we’ll come to standing, and we’ll have our feet in line with the shoulders. And we’ll start by doing the Waking up. Waking up, what we do is bend the knees, bring them in toward one another, we round our back, and bend over. Bend your elbows so that your hands come up towards your shoulders, drop your head down. And then on the release, s-l-ow-l-y letting the legs get long, letting the belly get long, letting the back and the arms get long. And we reach up and tip our chin up, and look up. And then let the arms float down by your sides. And take a breath here. Take a break, noticing what’s different for you. And we’ll do that one more time. So again the knees come to bent, knees come in toward one another, we round the back and drop our head down, bend the elbows, get small. And then s-l-o-w-l-y let the legs get long, and the belly, and the arms, and everything’s getting long. And tip your head up, and look up, reach up. And then let the arms float down by your sides. And take a breath here. Pause to notice what’s different. (pause to notice) And then we’ll do the Tongue. With the tongue we’re going to press the tip of the tongue to the center of the roof of the mouth. Press it up gently, and then s-l-o-w-l-y over about 5 seconds, release the tension in the tongue all the way down to the root of the tongue. Great. And you may notice a settling in the digestive tract because the tongue is connected to all the rest of it. I’s just one tube. And now we’ll do the Quick Shake. This one’s pretty fun and kind of silly-looking, so I appreciate that you’re joining in with me. We’re going to start by wagging our tail like a happy dog—back and forth, wiggle wiggle wiggle. And we’ll let the arms and legs be loose and wiggly. And just get that blood moving, and the lymph fluid, and your whole fascial network. And then we’ll let the shaking moving all the way up the spine to the top of the head. And pause. And with loose lips, like a motor boat: pbbbb Some people call that “horsey lips”. And then we’ll come back to sitting, noticing how you feel, noticing what sensations are there now for you. For myself… if you’d like to put this in the chat, I would love to see what you’re noticing… for myself I feel I guess aliveness. I feel tingly. I feel more awake. Definitely ready for some brain activity to take place, because I don’t feel like I’m thinking about other things. I guess I feel like a focused brain is happening for me. So anything like that. Great I’m seeing some comments coming in: nice relaxed shoulders. What a wonderful thing to feel. Our shoulders tend to rise when we feel we’re on alert. So when we can feel that relaxation through the shoulders, that would tell our nervous system we’re not on alert. There’s nothing to worry about here. So that’s great. Fantastic.

 

So the things that we’ve talked about before, let’s go ahead and get into our topic of the day: Post-traumatic Growth. Now we have talked about trauma before, and the definition that I have been using is “perceived threat”. And what’s key to that is “perceived”. Our world is interpreted by our own perceptions. So I could have two people… I could have 10 people, let’s say, all watching a scene, and each one of them is going to give me a different perspective because of our experiences/their experiences, their past, and how they were raised up in childhood, the books they’ve read, the movies they watched. All of the things that make us unique have contributed to whether or not this situation is a perceived threat for us. So I want you to remember that this is not an automatic it’s always going to happen that you go into the trauma response. It’s the perception that you have. And so this is where we can change the outcome. We can prevent a trauma response from happening by having an outcome that makes it so that that doesn’t happen for us. We can also change our perspective—our perception—of how we see things, dramatically. And that’s what trauma can do, is it can shatter our assumptions. We can be going along thinking oh, this is how this is. This is how the world works. This is how something we’ve been told this is true, and then suddenly we can find that that assumption has changed—it’s been challenged, it’s been shattered. And so some people define trauma in that way—that it’s a shattering of our assumptions. This can happen even with new information. So if we think that something is true, and then we’re given a new piece of information that tells us well, actually that’s not true anymore; this is true now, that can be considered perceived threat. So when I think about, in the days of Copernicus and the the Heliocentric Theory, and realizing by the movement of the planets that actually the sun is the center and we go around it, that was a shattering of assumptions. That was a big deal. And people got burned at the stake for this. So it was really challenging. So I’m inviting us all to realize that what we might think is true and what we might think is real, could be challenged at some point. So this is where we can relax into the knowing that the only constant is change. Change is happening all the time. Nothing will hold. We can be learning new things daily that shatter our assumptions, and is that going to throw us into a trauma response? I think that’s the perception piece. So there’s an old song from the 80s—it was a kind of country rock band—that there’s a line that’s running through my head right now that says hold on loosely, but don’t let go, but hold on loosely. And I think the “holding on loosely” is there may be some new information here that could challenge this for me, so just accepting that perceptions can change. All right so another thing that can cause the trauma reflex or the trauma response… and you may have noticed I use those terms kind of interchangeably. Trauma reflex was more defined on a physiological and physical level by Moshe Feldenkrais, in his Feldenkrais Method. And this is where we have kind of a twist or a raised ribs or raised hips and we’ve got kind of a crunching down on the side body. That’s what he calls the trauma reflex. And in the world of Peter Levine, the Healing Trauma guy. I had my book here—Healing Trauma, Waking the Tiger, all those books that he’s written. And he developed a modality called Somatic Release, er Somatic Experiencing, sorry. Anyway, the trauma response that he talks about—fight, flight, freeze—those terms are it’s intermingled, and basically it’s what happens in the body. OK, so you may notice that I say reflex or response—it’s kind of the same thing.

 

So one of the things that can cause this reflex or this response is something called moral injury. And I wanted to talk about this a little bit because this, I believe, that this is something that’s happening ongoing on planet earth, and especially in people who want to help. When we’re in a position like as a doctor, or a lawyer, or some medical provider/healthcare provider, mental healthcare provider, even teacher—helpers, let’s call them—those people are in a position where they’re trying to let’s say convey information, keep people safe, create some understanding, those kinds of things. If they see something that is in conflict with their moral code that’s happening, and yet they still have to do their job, this is where we can also have…this is moral injury. This is a challenging thing for people. Or when we see other people doing something that goes against the moral code. Now, what is the moral code? I’m sure that we all have a sort of a basic one, but I think the Golden Rule applies here. So we’re talking about do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Well, I like to think of it in terms of—it’s pretty basic—don’t hurt anybody. Just trying not to hurt anybody, right? Let’s be nice and kind, and trying to hurt anyone. So we can kind of sum it up with don’t take their stuff, don’t hurt them, don’t say bad things about them. This is kind of the basis of that. So when we see something like that happening, this is what can be a moral injury, and this can be traumatizing. So what can we do? Well, again, this “hold on loosely” So your beliefs, and what you feel is true, and what you know is right, and all of those things, sometimes we have to put a little bit of a pause there, so that it doesn’t throw us into the trauma response. And this is the challenge of being an adult in our world, is that things will come—things will come—and how are we going to handle that? How are we going to take care of ourselves so that we don’t go into the trauma response? They are challenges to our core beliefs. They are challenges to our assumptions of what’s true—of what we know the world to be or what the world we thought it was, right, now no longer is. These are trying times in the history of our planet. This is what’s happening right now. I’m going to get serious for a minute here.

 

I believe, and I’ve heard other people say this too—it’s not just me—that we are evolving as a species. We’re evolving really fast right now. And my whole life, like from the 60s and 70s, as I’ve come into understanding more and more about the world, there’s some things that we’ve been talking about for years—for 60 years—which is peace, and feeling comfortable, loving each other, being happy, no more war. We’ve been talking about it forever, and now I feel this is it. This is where we change. We have to make a change. And how do we do that? Not by more fighting, and protesting, and marching, but taking action in some way can be good. Can we help someone? Can we give in some way? Altruism is, we’re wired for altruism. It feels really good to us to give. So can we give in some way, and by our own doing/feeling state, our own experiencing state of ease and comfort and peacefulness and calm and confidence, we radiate that out. So that’s another thing that we can do, which is find our own personal growth and become our best highest self, so that we are a model for others to see; so that we are radiating out this frequency. Because that’s all this is. It’s all frequency. We’re frequency. All the things out there are frequencies. A thought is a frequency. A feeling is a frequency. Everything. So can we influence our field with these types of frequencies that make it so that it’s understood there is no justification for hurting anybody. That goes against our moral code. That goes against life. Life is always seeking more life. So if you are in a position where you have to do something that goes against that moral code, that’s traumatizing. And my hope is that we can see that at some point maybe we just say no, enough of this. We’re not going to fight anymore. We’re not gonna have any more wars. I grew up with my father, who was a Quaker, and I asked him about his going to meetings. They called them meetings, not church. There wasn’t a priest, there was just different people who would speak for the day, and meetings could last an hour, they could last four hours, depending on what the community needed that day. And one of the beliefs was that war is not OK. Now, defending yourself, that’s a different thing you know. Somebody’s coming at you, you’ve got to defend yourself. We don’t just turn away and run. We could run, that’s true, but we could also defend ourselves. So war, though, is something that the Quakers are very much opposed to. They were also opposed to slavery. There’s no logic that one person would be over another person that would be in charge of another person, especially against their will—doesn’t make any sense. So I love these concepts, and I loved these things when I was young. I was like oh, yay, no war, no slavery. This is great. So I’ve been kind of feeling that in my body and in my soul and my mind that this is possible. This is possible for our earth. And I feel right now is the time for us to learn these things, so that we can know them for ourselves, but also bring our children up with these thoughts too. It’s not OK to hurt other people. It’s just not OK. So let’s see if we can be models for ourselves, for our family and friends, and the people around us, to find peace within ourselves, and to find this ease and comfort, and to get out of this trauma response. Because that’s what it does—when we’re in that fight/flight/freeze—when we’re in that and we can’t think clearly, you’re not doing life with ease and comfort—the way it’s intended to be. Our natural state is one of a calm confidence, also called calm assertiveness, or soft power. That’s our natural state. So today’s presentation, today’s conversation, is going to be about this: finding the growth that’s possible after trauma. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

 

The person that came up with the term Post-traumatic Growth—he calls it PTG—is called Richard Tedeschi in the 80s. 1980s. He actually is the President of the Institute for Post-traumatic Growth. He’s written nine books. The practices that he starts with are with veterans and also with first responders. So check out that site: Institute for Post-traumatic Growth. Richard Tedeschi is his name, and he found these five domains/five components of personal Post-traumatic Growth areas by interviewing people who had had trauma and were now on the other side of it. Interviewing them about the outcome of that. He collected that information and was able to find a pattern there that there were these five different areas. And so let’s talk about what those areas are. We could call them domains or components, and these are the ones that he has listed in his books and what he talks about. So first one is in Personal Strength. I like to use these/break them down into “I” statements—”I _____”, “I blank”, based on a graphic that I saw in a lecture that he gave. So personal strength is I can. Alright. This is optimism—I can. We’ll get more details, but I just want to introduce them first. So that’s the first one—Personal Strength, finding your personal strength, I can. OK, another domain is Close Relationships get closer, or we find them to be able to be closer. So the “I” statement is I cherish. So this allows for us to be intimate, and intimate doesn’t mean sexual, it means close. It means able to feel the other person’s feelings and to allow ourselves to feel our own with that person. The third area of Post-traumatic Growth is Greater Appreciation, and the “I” statement is I thank. And this is a feeling of gratitude. We feel grateful—grateful to be alive—a greater appreciation for our ability to make it through, a greater appreciation for life itself. The fourth area is New Possibilities. The “I” statement is I dream. And this is where we can have thriving. New Possibilities. So we’ll elaborate more on this. And then the fifth one is Spiritual Development, and the “I” statement is I accept. We feel content—contentment. So when we hear those areas, it may be easy for some to say hmm, you know I feel like I’ve had some of those. And that’s great. We don’t have to have all five. These are just the areas that he noticed were the areas that people generally found for themselves after traumatic events that they had grown from. But we could have one or two. But just recognizing them, maybe you’ve experienced some of that yourself.

 

So I wanted to elaborate a little bit on these areas. OK. Personal Strength, let’s start there. So statements like if I did that, I can do other hard things. I think some people like to say, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” Right? There’s that phrase what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. And I’ve heard some people say, “I’m done with that. I’ve had enough of those. When does that hard stuff end?” And I would have to say, I’m not sure it does, and I’m not sure it needs to. If we were all just having it easy all the time and no challenges, and nothing changes, it would get pretty boring, and we wouldn’t grow. So this is what adaptation and evolution is doing for us, it’s giving us situations where we can find what we’re good at and how we can get better at those things. It’s that personal strength. And you know we know adversity is a part of life, but I can still be me. And that’s an important part of again staying out of that moral injury, staying out of that pushing against your moral code. If you’re doing something that doesn’t feel like this is right for you in your soul, you can step away. You can try something different. You can clear that away, and be done with that. So we’re finding our personal strength by having adversity. And this is what kind of gets set up here a lot of times, it’s these paradoxes.

 

All right the second area in relationships, what’s important here is that you can feel your compassion. You’re allowed to feel your empathy. It makes things more meaningful. The relationships become more meaningful. They become more, they can become deeper. And what’s important here, too, is to have the discernment. You will have the discernment of what’s safe, who’s safe, and who to trust, and who not to trust. Discernment. It’s not judgment. Judgment is kind of like I’m better than you, so I don’t want to hang out with you. Discernment is can I trust you? Can I trust you to receive what I have to say? Can I trust you to be here if I need some support? Can I trust you to not hurt me? Discernment is a really important quality of that development of close relationships, is to know who’s a safe relationship to get into with.

 

Alright. The third area is Greater Appreciation—finding the benefits. Finding the benefits of even in this mess of the trauma that I’m experiencing—in this mess of what’s happening. We could even look at this in the world situation right now—what’s happening in the big picture. Having the greater appreciation is for me, when I see hardship and strife and war and fighting and all this stuff, right, we can say wow, the world’s a mess. However, we can also see that people are going hey, wait a minute. Something’s not right here. Something’s not OK. I’m gonna do something about this? I’m gonna take some action. I’m gonna feel good for myself. I’m gonna step into my own personal evolution. Those things are happening. People are waking up to that right now. That feels really important and really good to me. So I feel like the Post-traumatic Growth can be simultaneous. We can have the trauma happening, and we’re still experiencing some of these things that can help us grow from it. So Greater Appreciation we can find some benefit here. It also helps us to know what’s important and what’s not. So if I was in this situation, and it got taken away, and my earth/my world is shattered, maybe there’s something good here too. It’s hard to see sometimes in the moment. I think about, for myself, I was in a long-term relationship—here is a personal story. I was in a long-term relationship—35 years—and I just assumed that that’s what the relationship was going to be like for the rest of my life, and it isn’t anymore. So that could/that definitely shattered my assumptions. It could have been the worst thing in my life, and yet what I realize is it allowed me to come into this work. It allowed me to have the freedom to do what I choose to do. It allowed me to see what trauma is. It allowed me to see what abuse is, and what I can take, and what I can’t take, and what discernment is, and how I care for myself, and all these positive things. So there’s a greater appreciation for what happened for myself, that I definitely feel the benefits of. And maybe that’s true for you, too. You can say you know, gosh, that thing was a drag, but I have this, this, this, and this because of it. So that’s the Greater Appreciation. And it also lets us know what doesn’t matter so much. Here I was thinking, oh I was going to be that old couple who could say oh we’ve been together 65 years. That’s not that important anymore. It’s OK. It doesn’t matter that much. And that’s part of this. This piece too. This greater appreciation.

 

Alright. The fourth area is New Possibilities—what’s possible now that wasn’t before. And, again, that kind of rolls off of that Greater Appreciation conversation that I just had which was, or statement that I just made, which was things are possible now that weren’t before. It’s opening up the possibility for, let’s say, humans on the planet to become more powerful. Oh yeah. We are. We are becoming more powerful by stepping into our selfness. We’re all individuals that are very unique. We are unique expressions of this energy of the universe. And when we realize that—when we step into that—we have the power. Not power over, this is the power of creation. And there’s a line, well there’s a few lines, but the concept in A Bug’s Life where the grasshoppers are having the ants collect the food and they get to keep the food, right, the grasshoppers get to benefit from that. So it’s kind of a microcosm or analogy for what’s happening on our earth, right? We have some big wigs who tell us what to do and we make the world work for them. Well the grasshopper leader says, “Well, what if one of those ants decides that they don’t want to do that?” And they laugh. He threw a seed at them, and he said, “That’s what it would feel like–one ant. And that’s not so bad. But he goes, “What if all of them decide that they don’t want to do that anymore?” And he let the grain come out, and the grasshoppers got to feel the power of those seeds coming on them. Basically, the idea is we stepping into our power is the new possibility of what is coming out of the trauma that’s happening right now. I see that for us, and I feel like this is our time to get ready. Yeah, pretty important stuff.

 

All right. And then the fifth area is Spiritual Development. And I like how someone said there’s something more than this moment. It’s a pretty important statement. There’s something more than this moment. It’s our purpose in life. It’s our existence. It’s our connection to others. It’s looking at our death. These are important pieces. So when we look at our death—I think a lot of people want to turn away from it—but when we look at our death and we say gosh, at some point, I’m not going to physically be here anymore. What’s that going to be like for the people around me? Are they going to remember me well? Are they going to remember things that I said? Are they going to have grown from my being here? How important am I? Well maybe this is something that I can do. I can help others. I can connect to my community. I can step into my purpose. I can find my passion. I can be the greatest me that I can be. Something more than this moment. And I really think that this is a powerful part of the Post-traumatic Growth. So when we say “spiritual”, I just want to be clear on that. We’re not talking about following someone’s guide of what faith they should follow. That’s not what we’re talking about. Spiritual is instead, it’s individualized. It’s you being you at your best. Knowing that, if I find what it is that makes me buzz—the thing that makes me feel my aliveness—and if I support myself in doing more and more of that, I am listening to the life force energy that’s moving me. That’s the spirit in me. Spirit is the breath that keeps coming, 20,000 times a day for us. Spirit is what’s making us be here. Nobody’s in charge, right. This is different than that. Nobody’s in charge of us. We’re in charge of us. I’m in charge of me. You’re in charge of you. That’s the spirit. And that can develop with Post-traumatic Growth.

 

So what I wanted to do now was to talk briefly about the “recipe” for Post-traumatic Growth that Tedeschi talks about. Briefly, and then what I’m feeling is perhaps we can do a little bit more of this next week too. I think next week we’ll talk about releasing the past because that’s a pretty nice thing to do as well. So let’s go over the Post-traumatic Growth Recipe. How do we get there? First of all is to appreciate paradoxes. In other words, two things can be true at once. Yes, and, in other words. When I was working with a group of children—one of them was my daughter—we had a comedy group. You can find it still on YouTube. Called Just Kidding, and there were two episodes that we filmed. And, yeah, it was really fun. But that group morphed into—we had the opportunity to do some improv, and to be part of a fundraising competition. And I didn’t really know improv, so I was like well, it’s improv, I’ll make it up. I’ll do it as I go. I’ll improv it. But I found a book called Impro, which helps you to understand how to do improv, and to help people to learn that as well. And the main thing—one of the main teachings of that—is Yes, and… So you receive what it is that someone’s telling you, and you add to it. So you receive their prompt, which is I went to the grocery store, and…you fill in the blank: I saw three people at the stand, and whatever it is you’re filling in the next part: Yes, and… And in this Paradoxes—the Appreciating Paradoxes—the reason why I think of Yes, and… is two things can be true at once. We can be vulnerable, and that allows for our strength, for example. That’s a paradox that exists. When we are, when we show someone our humanness, we can connect more deeply. When we allow ourselves to be more open, we can receive. So these are the some of the paradoxes that exist. It’s called dialectical thinking and it’s all around us. So we’ll just notice that sometimes when you think gosh, this is really not so good—like my relationship ending, right—aaah! this is really not so good. But that’s a “yes” right? “And”… There’s this other stuff that’s happening that is for me that’s really great—really great. So seeing both at the same time.

 

Alright. The second part of this Post-traumatic Growth Recipe is Constructing Meaning—finding meaning from the experience. What did I learn from this? what did I grow? what did this mean for me? Not that this happened because you needed to learn this lesson, but what lesson did you learn? There’s karma to a certain extent, because it’s kind of like we bounce our frequencies around, and so if we’re throwing out junky frequencies, we’re going to get junky frequencies back, right? There’s karma in that, just by creating dissonance we’re going to get dissonance. But if we see that this happened because I needed to learn this thing? Yeah that’s where I kind of like Oh yeah, I’m not sure about that whole piece. Except if we can find that oh, if I had had this scenario/because I had this scenario, I actually did learn this thing. That’s a little different. So not that it happened so that I would experience this karmically, but that it did happen, and there’s something meaningful for me here.

 

The third area or the third part of this Recipe—Post-traumatic Growth Recipe—is when we can seek, and find, and remind ourselves how I benefit and how others do too from my experience. So again this is/we’re constructing meaning. That’s two. But #3 is it’s we’re seeking, we’re reminding ourselves, we’re finding how did this benefit myself? how did this benefit others from my experience? Well, gosh, my experience with fibromyalgia led me to finding movements/movement practices that made it so that I felt better, and then I thought gosh, you know I feel better. I want other people to feel this too. So that’s the thing about this—how can this benefit other people from my experience? We’re looking for that. We’re actively looking for that, and reminding ourselves if I hadn’t had this, I wouldn’t be here. Here’s an extreme example of John Walsh, whose son got kidnapped from a grocery store. Well, he ended up creating the big Missing Children thing, and there’s a TV show and all of that stuff. And that became his life. So yeah, there was a benefit there.

 

Alright. The fourth area or the fourth part of this Recipe for Post-traumatic Growth is we can see the future. We can ask the question what now? What happens with these new different ways of looking at things? What is my future going to look like? What’s possible here?

 

Alright. And then the fifth part of this recipe is constructing a coherent narrative. In other words, I now feel that, after all of what I’ve been through with my body pain, and my emotional duress of relationship, and loss of relationship, and car accidents, and all the pieces that I’ve experienced in my life, what I put together—the coherent narrative that I put together—is actually created for myself, a mission. I have a mission. And that mission is to help people find their inner way of feeling great, strong, powerful, calm confidence. And also to bring people together, so that we can help each other/support each other, and grow into a community. I have a mission to take my musical background and to bring songs into the lives of children—songs that will be remembered in perpetuity. I’m still working on them, so this is happening. But this is my mission. So we’re taking the loss, we’re taking the bad stuff, and we’re transforming it into good. And usually, these coherent narratives that we construct for ourselves will be in a contribution—in a way that we contribute to others—that we serve others. We give back to humanity. What we have gained, we then want to share. And that’s part of this.

 

So one of the things that I think is key for this Post-traumatic Growth, is to understand that this isn’t just about resilience, like oh that bad thing happened, and now I’m bouncing back, and I’m able to go on to the next thing. That’s great. That’s resilience. Post-traumatic Growth is actually transformation—we’re taking the bad thing, the awful thing, and we’re transforming it. We are now different. Our priorities are different. Our perspective is different. The way we perceive the world is different. It’s a transformation. So this is a very evolution-oriented way of seeing this. When we’re looking at trauma as something that maybe happened in our lives, we could say it happened through us. I think that’s a nice way to say it. We’re transforming the bad into the good—pretty powerful.

 

OK that’s what I have to share today about this knowledge this information. And what I’d like to do now is the EFT tapping script for, well it’s got a strong title, but “Trauma and Abuse”. And what we’re doing with this is we’re, again, we’re kind of looking at the way that what can happen after trauma and abuse, is that we hang on to pieces of it. We kind of stay in this small place. And this script will allow us to find that we don’t really need to hold on to those things anymore. Now we can step away from that, and we can find ease and comfort. So some of the things that you’re going to be hearing in this script are pretty strong, but they’re also probably true, and that’s why we use the acupoints, which talk to the nervous system that tell us/tell our nervous system everything’s OK in this moment. When we do that, we are…At the same time, we are talking about the things that maybe have been upsetting for us, our nervous system is getting calmed around those thoughts and those words, so we’re actually able to release some of the power of those words—how strong they feel to us and our bodies responses to them. So that’s what we’re doing here. In one of our previous episodes—in the live episode—there is all of the tapping points. I go over them thoroughly, so you may want to check that out to get/to find where these tapping points are. But I’m going to teach you a new one today. Normally I have us spread the hand open with the thumb underneath one collarbone and the fingers underneath the other collarbone; resting the hand on the chest, over the heart area. That’s a nice place to do it. Today I’m going to teach you another one that I think is really pleasant. It’s using just your hands and holding your hands. So we’re going to bring the thumb of one hand into the center of the other hand, right into the palm. We’re going to wrap that thumb up with that hand, and then we’re going to take the fingers and wrap those around the back of the other hand. OK, so I’ll describe that again. Bringing the thumb into the center of the other hand, wrapping that thumb with the fingers, and then wrapping the fingers around the other hand. So we can just relax this hand hold down in our laps, and if we get tired of holding that way, you can switch to the other hand and just do that.

 

Alright. So we’re going to get into it here. We’re going to begin this script by breathing through the nose and taking three calming breaths, at your own pace. Inhaling through the nose, deep into the lungs. Three calming breaths. My stomach just gurgled already, and we talked about gurgles last week. So you may have heard that. I don’t know. But that’s what happens when we calm the nervous system. Alright. It begins with “Even though…” statements, and we can use the side of the hand—the karate chop points—if we’d like. Or we can go back to that hand hold like we described, and repeat after me. Thanks for joining in.

 

Even though this stuff happened, I choose to love and accept myself.

 

Even though this stuff happened I choose to love and honor myself

 

Even though this stuff happened, things have happened to me in the past that have caused me a lot of pain and I’m still carrying a lot of that pain. And even though this stuff happened, I choose to deeply and completely love, honor, and accept myself and, to whatever extent possible, I choose to love, honor, and forgive the others that were involved, because I choose to be free.

 

This stuff that happened

These painful things that happened

All this pain that I experienced

All this pain that I’m still carrying

I choose to clear it

I have a right to clear it

I don’t owe it to anyone to hang onto this pain

Part of me might think I do

Part of me might believe

That I should hold onto this pain

That I need to hang onto this pain

Maybe to make sure it never happens again

But I know I’ve had enough pain

And I choose to release it

Releasing it at a cellular level

And releasing it all the way back through my past

I don’t want to carry it anymore

 

And let’s take a breath here. We’ll do a Sigh of Relief. Small breath in through the nose, a larger breath in, and with lips closed: mmmmm Alright. And let’s move on. Repeat after me.

 

 

But if I let go of this pain

Does that mean I’m forgiving these people

Because maybe they don’t deserve that

And maybe I need to hang onto this pain to punish them

But the only one being punished is myself

And I deserve a break from that

I know I’ve suffered enough

And I choose to set myself free now

Setting myself free from this pain

Setting myself free from the fear

All the fear that I experienced

And all the fear that I’m still carrying

All the fear that it might happen again

All this fear that I think I need to protect myself

I can find better ways to take care of myself

I’m here now

Whatever that stuff was

I came through it

I choose to acknowledge how strong I am

And I choose to feel more confident in myself

And I choose to really love myself

So I’m allowing myself to heal with this love

In body, mind, and spirit

 

And, let’s take a nice breath here, in through the nose, deep into the lungs. Nice long slow exhale. And you can relax your hands. And notice how you feel.

 

 

And we will finish with some Heart Coherence here. It’s a very good thing for our nervous system and our subconscious mind. When we’re bringing in new information, it’s really very helpful/supportive to do a little Heart Coherence so that we’re sending the message of everything’s OK in this moment, and we can take that new information in—into the subconscious mind. So let’s do a little Heart Coherence and then I’ll ring my three bells, and that will be our day today. And I want to say thank you so much for joining in today. Send yourself some appreciation for doing so. This has been Move Into Coherence. I’m Pamela Stokes. And my stomach is growling so much, I think that that script was really helpful for me today. I’m feeling a lot of looseness. Actually, you know what, before we go into this last little bit, I would love to hear anything that maybe came up for you during that script: thoughts that you might be having or anything that you might have noticed, because I think when we share with each other, we get to see and hear what other people experience. So for me I definitely—I’ve done this many times, this particular script many times—but what I feel for me is there’s a few lines that keep kind of I go whoa, that one really/that one really hit home. Or that one’s like Oh, yeah, that’s a good reminder. “Hanging on to the pain to punish them”. That was maybe something that I was keeping. It’s like oh, I really hurt. See what you did to me? Right. This is all subconscious stuff. It’s not like we’re making a choice.

 

So someone wrote in feeling relaxed and motivated for the day. I love that, yeah. Great, yeah. And it’s OK for me to feel how I wanna feel and release the guilt. Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, when we hold on to stuff, it’s just basically our body’s just trying to keep us safe. Our ego, when it goes through a change, it’s like oh, that was really… yeah, I don’t know if I like change, so I’m just going to hold on to stuff. Right? So when we start releasing it, we start recognizing that actually we’ve been hanging on to this for a while, we can feel some guilt. There shouldn’t be any guilt because that was natural—it was just keeping me safe, right. The body was holding on to that. Ego mind was holding on to that. OK yeah. This is what we’re doing. We are strong. Yes, we are strong; we are so strong. We can change our subconscious mind. We can. We’re doing it right now in these moments. We can change how we want to feel. You wanna feel better? We can change how we do that. And this is the evolution that I was talking about earlier—it’s happening. So thank you for being here with us. Yeah, we are amazing. Thank you, Melissa, for being here with me and for speaking so clearly. I appreciate you.

 

Alright. Let’s go to our Heart Coherence. You can bring your hand over your heart—connecting with your heart—and slowing your breathing down as you’re feeling that connection to the heart. Slowing it down maybe five or six seconds in and five or six seconds out, through the nose. And this, we’re just going to do a little bit of Heart coherence to let all of that new information that came into our subconscious mind today. The change, we’re just going to allow that change, yes. And then imagine that the breath is moving in and out through the heart. And it may be helpful to have your eyes closed, if that’s comfortable for you. Great. So that’s just a little Quick Coherence. If we want to bring the brain involved, let’s go ahead and do that, by bringing to mind something that that helps you to feel appreciation their gratitude. And I like to think of something that has a neutrality to it like a scene in nature—picturing sunlight coming through the leaves of trees. Breathing slowly and deeply through the heart, feeling gratitude/appreciation. (continue for several breaths) And then over the next couple of breaths, you can relax your hand, let your eyes come to gently open, and come back into our natural breathing. Hmm, yeah, that’s a nice way to be. Alright. Well, again, I’m going to say it again, thank you so much for being here and do send yourself some appreciation for joining in. This is Move Into Coherence, and I’m Pamela Stokes. And I look forward to having you join me again for our gathering next week. Take it easy. I’m going to do our three bells.