Welcome to the third in the series of the Top 5 Mental Health Skills for the New Year! (If you are catching up, you can find the first Mental Health skill here and the second one here!)

Our third skill? Two easy ways to practice mindfulness.

What is Mindfulness, Anyway?

Great question. “Mindfulness” is a term that gets thrown around a lot and rarely explained.

So what is it? Really?

Mindfulness is simply being in the present moment.

Those of you who – like me – spent the bulk of your lives dissociating…I can hear you laughing. It’s okay, I did, too.

Remember how I said that survival mode is not meant to be forever? Neither is dissociation. It works, until it doesn’t.

While we all practice dissociation on some level (one example is daydreaming, which can be quite fun), CHRONIC dissociation in complex trauma, PTSD, and CPTSD can cause long-term damage (in short, we can become unable to integrate our experiences into our authentic selves and we can develop problems with memory, identity, emotion, perception, behavior and sense of self).

I started mindfulness practice in 2016. I started going to a Seeking Safety group with other women, all of us with a PTSD diagnosis.

That group is where I learned the two easiest ways to practice mindfulness.

My First Mindfulness Practice (that I remember)

I have this visceral memory of sitting in the group therapy room, on the couch that was set against the windows.

The group leader was going through the curriculum and I was having a tough day. The curriculum was good but difficult. I had a lot of Big Feelings and I didn’t know what to do with them. My brain didn’t necessarily believe that I was safe.

I felt myself begin to dissociate.

I stopped. I laid my head back against the headrest of the couch and began a silent chant in my own head:

“Do not dissociate. You are safe. Do not dissociate. You are safe.”

It worked. I stayed in the present moment, and something inside of me shifted.

I’ve repeated that chant for YEARS. In my most vulnerable moments, that chant still comes to me. The power of it is the STOP, the pause, that gives me the CHOICE.

If I’m in the present moment, I can act out of my authentic self, not out of my trauma responses. THAT is the power of a healing journey.

Practice Mindfulness While Grounding OUTSIDE of Ourselves

Sometimes we get FLOODED with Big Feelings and the *last* place we need or want to be is inside the turmoil.

Fortunately, there are ways to ground OUTSIDE of ourselves and sidestepping the inner spiral. The following ideas from the Trigger Toolkit help to anchor us in the environment:

• Take deep, slow breaths from your gut rather than your chest
• Start counting the number of red things in the room around you
• Go outside and focus on feeling the air and sun on your skin
• Rinse your hands with cold water or hold ice cubes until they melt
• Run your hands over a rough surface, like bricks or a tree trunk
• Fire up your iPod and sing along with songs you know
• Count backwards from 88
• Actively play with a pet or engage with animals
• Carry a talisman with you – a small item – that you can grasp tightly in your hand
  when you need it
• Eat something and focus on the flavors, scents and feel of the food in your mouth
• Trace your hand onto a piece of paper and fill the handprint full of names of
  things you can touch around you

My suggestion is to choose one thing and try it several times. Make that thing something that you either already do (many times, we’ve done things unconsciously that help us navigate our world as trauma survivors) and/or want to do.

Practice Mindfulness While Grounding INSIDE of Ourselves

I like to use this kind of mindfulness on a regular basis. When it comes to regulating our nervous systems, EVERYTHING counts. Practicing skills when you feel calm helps rewire your brain and make these skills more automatic. Even ONE MINUTE counts.

Plus, trauma disconnects. Mindfulness connects. Grounding inside of yourself helps build safety between your brain and your body, a central point that you can return to in times of distress. Practicing grounding techniques inside your body helps strengthen that central point of safety.

And sometimes I just don’t know how I feel. Taking time to observe my thoughts, feelings, and/or body helps me to stay in the present with my emotions.

Observe Your Thoughts

Observe Your Body

This is one of my favorite ways to practice mindfulness because it was easy for me to learn and I find it very calming. This is the Body Scan.

I’ve done Body Scan exercises anywhere from 1 minute up to a half hour. Here is the Body Scan document with links to guided exercises of differing amounts of time.

Observe Your Emotions

Observing feelings is a similar mindfulness practice to observing thoughts except that we are observing emotions that our bodies are sensing.

To start, start a timer for 5, 10, or 15 minutes and sit or lie down in a comfortable position. Feel your seat on the chair. Feel the breath go in and out of your nose for a bit.

Slowly bring awareness to the parts of your body that are having sensations. Name the sensations (for example, my heart is racing, my right foot feels cold, my calves are tingling).

Emotions like to spiral. There’s no need to try and stop the spiral. Instead, STEP AWAY from the spiral.

Observe the sensations in your body and what emotions and thoughts are spiraling. GET CURIOUS, naming the sensations and saying, “I’m very curious about that” or “I wonder what that’s about.”

Your brain and body will tell you. It might not be right away, but it will happen. The art of being curious helps set that stage.

If you are ready to practice but don’t want to be all by yourself, let’s chat – a discovery call is free.

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