Print and cut out a couple of these models to use during the day. Make this model as much a habit, as putting socks on in the morning.
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If thoughts pervade your space, take out the paper model and follow your breath with eyes partially open, using a finger. Maybe practice with this for five minute intervals, at home, at lunch or a short break.
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Throughout the day revisit the breathing track for a one minute refresher.
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This skill developed, then applied to trigger thoughts improves our condition and soothes our nervous system.
Posted by monica on April 23, 2012 at 2:03 pm
I started by drawing it and using that for both myself and my daughter. But what works for me is once i have established what it looks like having used the printed version at first…we draw the track on our upper thigh with our finger…this way it is avaiable at all times without having to pull out any paper model. We just use our upper leg as a drawing board. So whereever we are we just sit and have it right there.
Posted by Marty on April 23, 2012 at 2:36 pm
exactly, make applicable for you. make a minature model. if I were industrious and Rich maybe I could make models and T-Shirts. Anyone out there who does this kind of work.
make the model habit. If I am walking and think about my breath, it is already on the track and balancing itself. mine is habit and at times during the day I visit it.
Try and see if you can use it in public, in confusion, at an airport, in line somewhere.
Use your exhale to slow the pace of the nervous system. be aware and this attention to detail can help you improve more than some therapies.
Many are so confused from the complex subject, complex therapies and complex symptoms we face along with triggers and anxiety.
many are doing to many things and not devoting the time to one developed skill which will do more than all those other things combined.
I healed from a very specific, directed approach that I practiced over and over. It was like hitting a baseball for me. I broke meditation down into small skills and smaller skills. I eliminated the bowing and religious aspect and focused just on the breath.
What was the goal for PTSD sufferers not people searching Buddhism for awakening.
Eventually most focus zeroed in in the transitions as the issue. We get lost at the end of the inhale and exhale, where thoughts own that space for the unsteady mind. So in time and work and much thought, I connected the end of the exhales and inhales with a flat arch. This completed a continuum and gave the breath balance, flow, symetry and a concrete three dimensional aspect.
You can touch, feel and follow what you are supposed to do when we sit with eyes closed. We could trace, see, touch and witness mindfulness as concrete for the first time.
The mind does not use abstract long term thought or goals very well. it craves a specific concrete laser like approach. it is much easier and simpler than meditation or mindfulness.
You do not have to bean expert in mindfulness or meditation to improve PTSD.
therapy takes so long because it is not set up to heal us, more for insurance companies and the conscience of the therapists. I would never set up a program to deal,with someone once a week. Childhood complex PTSD does not heal with a once a week focus. That is a joke for healing us.
I worked five hours a day, rain or shine, I meditated, and practiced. I practice observing my triggers following the breath. My path was an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic, now I would take a jet because of all that I have learned about trauma and the mind.
Most therapists have never been where I have been or had to find their own way out when therapy failed. Therapy actually some of my healers made me worse, triggered me and never integrated it.
they have little knowledge on mindfulness, novices. So yes they have an education and experience but the old CBT model has failed so badly we have all these new cures. I read an article now that said therapists may be replaced by mindfulness. Please.
if you understood Mindfullness and the mind how could you ever say something so dumb.
So, if I have found a unique way out, why have so few even tried it. It is not you read that suicides from PTSD in the military is not an issue.
Therists do not have the Urgency in their dictionaries. What is wrong with a laser like focus approach with full time pressure to heal 90% quicker!!!!!!!
it is a fact, it works.
Posted by dlkleiman on April 29, 2012 at 3:10 pm
What Marty says: “If I am walking and think about my breath, it is already on the track and balancing itself. mine is habit and at times during the day I visit it.”
This always amazes me about the power of mindfulness and awareness!
Posted by Marty on April 29, 2012 at 3:29 pm
The ability to focus seems so benign, yes so you can focus, so what many say.
The ability to follow the breath to emptiness is nice but how much can that help?
The mind focused being empty if thought and directed can do amzing things. It can heal depression, anxiety, PTSD or supplement any therapy or normal life in miraculous ways.
The power unleashes the minds potential and our wellbeing. We are perfect but it is cloudy until you learned to focus and empty the mind of thought, distraction doubt etc.
This not accomplished by thinking but by not thinking and letting go.
Oh and it is not easy to get the ego to stop flooding our mind with thoughts, judgments and attachments. A cluttered mind is in the kindergarten of mindfulness. It takes daily practice to build our focus.
The breathing track helps us accomplish this task. I am not saying that this track can make you a deeper meditator than some monk who sits for decades.
I am saying this model can make it easier for you to reach the empty stage. You need not worry because the brain/mind heals itself without our thinking how or when.
let go and surrender with the breathing track.
Posted by Sense of relief…. « recoveringfromthestorm on July 12, 2012 at 6:17 pm
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